TAN – The Afro News

Ghana Ex-President Jerry Rawlings

Comment/Ghana/Africa :

All progress starts from the mind. The better the mind, the better the progress. How better the mind is driven by how serious, sophisticated, and deep the thinking is. If the society thinks poorly, its development becomes poor. This is glimpsed from the society’s intellectuals, their Big Men. Read the full story

Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II

Comment/Ghana/Africa  : By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong

“Of all the manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most,” – Thucydides

Both as America’s first African-American Secretary of State, National Security advisor, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, kept an epigram of Thucydides, the Greek thinker, in his offices. In his years in office, Powell has to deal with complex networks in every foreign-policy squabble. Powell has to deal with North Korea and was alone in Europe’s defence scheme; he was dove among hawks on Iraq, and an internationalist among isolationists on Kosovo and the Balkans.

But Powell soldiered on, advising against some un-American tendencies and demonstrating the fact that “might is right” isn’t always right and that self-restraint is the real might is right. The powerful Powell’s self-restraint practices came to mind when I read about Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, angrily threatening to arrest the Techimanhene, Oseadeayo Ameyaw Akumfi IV,” “if he dares travel through Kumasi… I am closely watching with keen interest and I will arrest the so called Techimanhene and bring him to the Manhyia Palace whenever he storms Kumasi if the government fails to take action against him for kidnapping Tuobodomhene.”

The Tuobodom conflict had claimed three lives, for sheer stupidity, and pitched the big Techiman against the small Tuobodom, and traditionally over how the Tuobodom chief owes traditional allegiance to the almighty Asantehene and not to the tiny Techimanhene, and opened up the deadly old African ancient tribal wounds and rage carried over into modern Africa. Traditionally, by kidnapping and disgracing the Tuobodom chief in public because he is an Asantehene’s subject, the Techimanhene had also disgraced the Asantehene and his people.

In ancient times, the whole Brong Ahafo had been under the powerful Asante Kingdom through conquest, now it is part of the modern Ghana amalgam but the ancient traces still run through, occasionally popping up and disturbing modern Ghana, as the Asantehene-Techimanhene-Tuobodomhene quarrel demonstrates. And if not contained wisely, it can be deadly and crumple Ghana, as other African states’ disasters show.

This has made the Asantehene, unarguably Ghana’s most powerful King, and other traditional rulers entangled in the complexes of tradition and modernity. Unable to disentangle himself from traditional ancient traces, the Asantehene threatened to deal with the cocky Techimanhene, which is unGhanaian, and runs counter to modern Ghanaian laws and global civility, and dents the Asantehene’s worldwide image where the rule of law, and not threats, of which African Big Men are notoriously known for, drives the development architecture, of which the Asantehene has been appropriating shrewdly through the World Bank and other international organizations, for his national development ventures.

The Asantehene’s outbursts tell how that the Ghanaian nation-state is yet to deeply modernized some of the ancient traces of its traditional foundations, especially where traditional rulers have had absolute power and are driven by their primordial caprices. Despite being seem in higher esteem, the regulations of the modern Ghanaian nation-state make the Asantehene, and any traditional ruler for that matter, equal before the law, and democracy, as anti-dote to traditional tyranny that has sent some African societies to flames, effectively cuts the proverbial Big Man to size, making him behave like any other citizen, no matter the person’s station in life.

The Asantehene is by nature a liberal person and has been working to deepen Ghana’s budding democracy, but his Tuobodom utterances expose the fact that the unhelpful African Big Man syndrome is a developmental disease that has to be cured through rigorous rule of law, freedoms, democracy, and human rights. And aside from enforcing modern development principles, part of the solutions in dealing with the conundrum between tradition and modernity may be the Collin Powell practices of Thucydides’ self-restraint axiom. That may be the therapy for Asantehene’s frenzy and Ghana’s progress.

"Students at Salt Spring's Central School, 1929, courtesy of Salt Spring Archives."

Evelyn C. White The Afro News Salt Spring Island

With the blockbuster success of his book Roots (1976) and the subsequent television miniseries, author Alex Haley tapped into a deep longing among the descendants of enslaved blacks to claim ties with our African forebears. It was my understanding of this history that prompted me to burst into tears when I recently accessed my e-mail and found an image of a beaming man in Lesotho holding a copy of my book, Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: A Photo Narrative of Black Heritage on Salt Spring Island (EGAG).

The book was opened to a page featuring a photo of the man’s daughter Tankiso, age 5, shortly after she’d arrived on Salt Spring last May to begin a new life with her adoptive family. I’m not privy to the circumstances that led to the separation of birth parent and child. But it was clear from the father’s radiant smile that his bond with his daughter now in Canada would endure.

For me, the arrival of the photo from Lesotho marked the culmination of a three-year journey I’d spent documenting the historical and contemporary presence of blacks on Salt Spring. Having toiled a decade on a biography of Alice Walker (best known for her novel The Color Purple), I had not intended to begin another major writing project when I moved to Salt Spring from the San Francisco Bay area. But one day, in 2006, I was standing in my living room when a cosmic voice exhorted me to write a book about the black heritage on Salt Spring.

Over the years, I’ve learned to honour the spiritual guidance that I believe is available to all who heed its call. And so, working with local photographer Joanne Bealy, I began the task of producing the first book to focus exclusively on Salt Spring’s 150-year black heritage and to examine its unique racial history through a 21st century lens. See www.dancingcrowpress.com

The ancestral home of the Coast Salish people, Salt Spring welcomed its first black settlers in 1859. Literate and highly accomplished, the free blacks had fled Northern California after the enactment of a series of racially repressive laws that threatened their hard-won freedom. Interestingly, the disaffected blacks in California were seeking refuge at the same time that B.C. provincial governor James Douglas (himself the son of a black woman born in Barbados) was in need of skilled labourers to support the boom town frenzy after gold was discovered along the Fraser River. A core group of the blacks that had first landed in Victoria later migrated to Salt Spring.

The early blacks on Salt Spring included the community’s first teacher, John Craven Jones. A college graduate trained in Greek and Latin, Jones taught the youth on Salt Spring (without pay) for several years. As one who was educated (K-9) by a coterie of dedicated black teachers, my research on Jones was especially uplifting. And who could look at a 1929 class photo from Salt Spring and not marvel at the ethnic diversity of the students?

The force behind Salt Spring’s first public recreation site, Jim Anderson was another early black pioneer. An archival photo finds him in the company of a black youth in a canoe. Here’s a reflection I was thrilled to include in EGAG: “Most people find it tiresome to have to sweep their back porch but Jim Anderson made a hobby of keeping his beach clean and he was down there every morning [with a broom]. This was [Anderson’s] little park and he delighted in having people … come down for picnics.”

The boy in the photo was a member of the Whims family, also among the black pioneers. Born on Salt Spring, octogenarian Bobby Wood is related, on his maternal side, to the Whims clan. A dapper gentleman with a quiet demeanor, Wood enjoys fishing and the Calgary Stampede.

Long attractive to retirees, Salt Spring is also awash with children. The youthful ranks include many children of African descent such as Calla Ann Amma Adubofour-Poko whose father is Ghanaian. Like Tankiso, Ethiopia-born Selamu and Dexter Patterson were adopted by white families on Salt Spring. “The story of the early African American settlers is deeply moving for us,” said Shauna Klem, who is pictured in EGAG with her sons. “ Everyone has embraced the boys so enthusiastically.”

Given Salt Spring’s status as one of the top artist colonies in North America, it was especially rewarding for me, as an author, to profile black artists on the island. Born in Kenya, Sav Boro is an acclaimed muralist and painter of wildlife and landscapes. The daughter of a Moroccan musician father and a teacher mother of French, Egyptian and Tunisian heritage, Yasmine Amal is a skilled potter who sells her wares at Salt Spring’s renowned Saturday Market.

As the world turns to B.C. because of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, I’m elated to have “answered the call” to create a book that celebrates the compelling black history of Canada. Photographer Joanne Bealy and I will sign and discuss Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone at 7 p.m. on Friday, February 5 at the Rhizome Café, 317 East Broadway in Vancouver. We’ll also do a presentation at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 24 at the central Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia Street. Both events are free and open to the public.