TAN – The Afro News

TAN - Canada Day Tribut

By Honoré Gbedze, The Afro News, Vancouver, BC  :

Citizenship - the duties and responsibilities that come with being a member of a community

After the Second World War, citizens realized how fragile our democratic society can be and took full responsibility to realize what needed to be done constructively to preserve long lasting peace and prosperity in our land. Read the full story

Le Gravy Train

L’archaïsme a-t-il fait son temps?

Un politicien populiste se faisait élire récemment pour avoir dénoncé une situation de “Gravy Train” ayant cours dans la mairie d’une grande métropole canadienne. Pourtant la plupart des gens aspirent à embarquer sur un tel train en temps de déclin économique. Que le train tourne en rond et n’aille nulle part importent peu. Il est après tout rassurant de voir de la continuation à quelque part en ces temps incertains. Read the full story

President Obama

Guest Columnist: Renford Reese, Ph.D. The Afro News International ;In the age of political polarization, perpetual finger-pointing, and accusatory rhetoric, being a popular president in today’s time seems to be an impossible task. Read the full story

Fabulous Kumasi Asante Kotoko, founded in 1935

Comment/Sports/Ghana/Africa :By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong ;Aside from politics, nowhere in Africa is the intersection between juju and groups more pronounced than soccer. From high schools to professional soccer teams, juju is heavily appropriated, so much so that it obscures tactics, efficiency, technicalities, discipline and team work.

Though there are no official figures, millions of dollars are spent on juju supposedly to help soccer teams win their tournaments every year. But yet most do not win and yet they go back to the juju mediums all the time. It is like being hooked on illicit drug, they can’t extricate themselves from juju, to their detriment.

But gradually as the debate to refine inhibitions within the Ghanaian/African culture (of which juju is one aspect) gains momentum and higher reasoning and rationality battle irrationality, strange and erroneous thinking, the cultural inhibitions are under siege. It is in this atmosphere that one of Ghana’s and Africa’s top soccer clubs, the Fabulous Kumasi Asante Kotoko, founded in 1935, have come to the conclusion that juju and other such African native spiritual practices are charade, irrational, wasteful and counter-productive.

In a way, Kotoko has “banned” juju from its operations. I was surprised to read Kotoko’s action. “Really,” I said to myself. Such actions also embolden Ghanaian/African enlightenment thinkers, who are campaigning to refine the inhibitions within the African culture, to push on. For any small step, in this direction, no matter where it comes from, such as Kotoko’s, is highly welcomed and further enrich the enlightenment campaigns.

The reasons for such radical conclusion from Kotoko managers are that the proud Kotoko didn’t do well and was nearly relegated in the 2009/2010 premier soccer season, that Kotoko spent nearly US$1-million on juju in the 2009/2010 season to no avail, and that despite all these juju dipping the level of motivation among Kotoko players was abysmally low to the point self-destruction. Kotoko’s comeuppance has come from such awful experiences and it has opened Kotoko to enlightenment.

Shaken to disbelieve, the Accra-based Daily Guide reported that “The newly appointed Kotoko Board of Directors, led by Dr. K.K. Sarpong, has stated that it has no interest in voodoo known in local parlance as ‘juju’, and would not spend the club’s money on ‘juju’ to win matches in the coming seasons.”

Kotoko’s ancient dabbling in juju emanates from the Ghanaian/African culture. Kotoko’s new found enlightenment reminds me of an interesting article I read weeks before the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. The author, a South African who sounds like an academic, suggested that either African juju mediums should use their craft to charm other non-African national teams to play bad for the six African teams to win hands down or individual African teams should seek the assistance of juju mediums to win the World Cup. (He failed to mention how the juju will work when two African teams play each other).

He recalled with seriousness how juju has been used in ancient African wars and other African endeavours and it is time juju is used by the African teams to win the World Cup. Anything like planning, tactics, discipline, efficiency and team work were minimized, or absent from the piece. After much laughter, I said to myself, here, Africa is moving backwards, the irrational outweighing the rational.

Whether Kotoko’s management enlightenment will have effect on individual players is different question in a culture where the players are socialized into juju and other such irrational beliefs. As a student at Kumasi High School (fondly called Kuhis), soccer-mad and one of Ghana’s top soccer schools, the intersection between juju and soccer was part of the soccer culture. In my years at Kuhis, during soccer matches, students were virtually forced to contribute money for juju rituals for the school to win games.

It doesn’t matter whether one belief in juju or not, one has to pay. The amusing part was that even the self-righteous “born again Christians” have to pay – you dare not refuse. Some of the top Kuhis players such as Simon Awuah (Sibo) and Albert Adade (Father) later played for top clubs Accra Hearts of Oak and Kumasi Asante Kotoko respectively. Before playing for these teams their minds had already been prepared, like other similar Ghanaian players.

Kotoko’s boss, Dr. Sarpong, wants the large amount of money used for juju used to “motivate” players, improve management and develop soccer infrastructure. That’s pretty sensible. And Dr. Sarpong is aware of the psychological implications of banning juju in a culture that has socialized the players and supporters into such beliefs. And to answer such implications, in a highly superstitious society of Ghana’s, Dr. Sarpong made it clear that “Kotoko fans that have firm belief in ‘juju’ could go ahead to do it at their own expense for the club. “They should not come to me for money for ‘juju.” That’s realistic, but it puts Dr. Sarpong’s thinking in a quandary.

And that makes Dr. Sarpong’s Kotoko enlightenment scheme limited, for whether Kotoko itself uses juju or supporters use juju to help Kotoko or individual players use juju, in the final analysis, Kotoko is using juju – it doesn’t matter where the juju is coming from. That makes the logical and the material in harmony, which in the Dr. Sarpong’s reasoning, shouldn’t be so – the juju shouldn’t mix with technicalities, discipline, tactics, efficiency and team work. Supposedly, to do so is to undermine Dr. Sarpong’s Kotoko enlightenment project.

For, the juju appropriation needn’t necessarily come from only Dr. Sarpong’s management; it could come from anybody – players, hardcore supporters and individual fans for Kotoko. Now come to think of Kotoko and Ghana in Dr. Sarpong’s thinking, Kotoko’s juju dilemma is a microcosm of the struggle Ghanaian/African enlightenment campaigners are going through – how to minimize the inhibitions within the culture and free the people for greater progress.

Floor of Ghana Parliament

Comment/Ghana/Africa

By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong :Member of Parliament Dan Botwe’s opinion that “President John Atta Mills should show more gratitude to ex-President Jerry John Rawlings than he is doing since the former president made him (Mills) what he is today” following reports that Rawlings is under 24-hour security surveillance reveals Botwe’s feeble grasp of Ghana.

Gratitude of all forms, whether in politics or personal dealings, is a two-way traffic – it is give and take. If Rawlings made Mills, then Mills, too, made Rawlings. If we go by Botwe’s logic, then Rawlings should show gratitude to Mills as Mills have shown to him. This means Rawlings should respect Mills and not rock the Mills’ presidency.

Botwe’s views, more coming from an opposition MP (of the National Patriotic Party) who is expected to demonstrate intensely critical conceptualization of Ghana and one who suffered under Rawlings’ military juntas that exiled him as a student leader, is an affront not only to Ghana but it also reveals how some Ghana/African elites rationalize their state as a development and security structure, more so from Ghana’s and Africa’s painful history that enabled a man of Rawlings’s contemptible background to mount power.

Democracy, of which Botwe’s NPP have for long stood for against the background of deaths, threats, intimidation, imprisonment and exiles some years ago, is fast revealing how Rawlings is, a man for long covered by his military and propaganda machines. In a way, Botwe is promoting Rawlings’ disorder and I am dismayed that the NPP, nationally known as elitist, have not come out down hard on Botwe’s mind-numbing and cheerful take on Rawlings’ gloomy attitude towards the Mills presidency and Ghana’s democratic and development future. For in the final analysis, there is no NPP, NDC or neutral, there is only Ghana as a development project.

To Botwe, a computer science graduate from Ghana’s top science school KNUST, who was former Information Minister and chief national organizer of the NPP, at issue is national security, more democratic and development securities, and not whether Mills is ungrateful to the chronically nauseating Rawlings. Humanly, let Botwe put himself into Mills shoes and feel what Mills is going through in the face of Rawlings appallingly menacing behaviour.

As much as everyone knows, Rawlings has been dragging Mills down the governance gutter and has been attempting to mess up not only the Mills presidency but also Ghana. Why Rawlings is doing this, is left to psychiatrists. No government in the world in its rightful mind will tolerate that, for to do that is to commit political suicide and derail the whole democratic process. Hence, the reports of Rawlings under 24-hour surveillance despite denial by Brigadier Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (rtd), Mills’ National Security Advisor.

And that demands highly objective positioning of Ghana as a counter-balance to the negatives of Rawlings anti-Mills mentality, of which Rawlings’ own NDC is coming to grips with, and not whether Rawlings made Mills or Mills made Rawlings (as some people argue, since Rawlings is semi-literate and his juntas were maintained by the intellectuals of Mills ilk, who equally exploited Rawlings ignorance to their advantage). And as the British-American thinker Christopher Hitchens would say, Botwe “is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking” himself “as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.”

Whether Rawlings made Mills or not, the accepted wisdom is that that doesn’t make Rawlings terrorize the Mills regime (and by extension the Ghana) – no civilized government any where in the world will mortgage its national security on the altar of familiarity – Rawlings shouldn’t be allowed to contempt Mills and Ghana. And Rawlings, if he is a sane man at all (of which he isn’t) and a good friend of Mills at all (of which he isn’t), who was his Vice President, should have to behave properly like all decent Ghanaians and not make fool of himself by constantly undermining the Mills administration and Ghana.

That Rawlings has being seriously troubling the Mills presidency, and by extension Ghana, though they come from the same NDC, is a fact; that Rawlings is consumed with destructive egocentrism a la the African Big Man and Pull Him Down syndromes that endanger Ghana is a material and psychological fact; that Rawlings has been threatening Ghana’s national security, especially so when Mills took power almost two years ago, is undisputable; that Rawlings’ behaviour will not be tolerated in any civilized country where the rule of law is a cornerstone is a universal fact; and that the reality that Rawlings and Mills come from the same NDC means he should be tolerated for his disgracefully appalling conduct as ex-president makes the state weak (of which Botwe is one of the weaklings as part of the elements that make up Ghana).

As a lawmaker, Botwe is expected to show higher grasp of Ghana, more from the point of the rule of law, especially Ghana’s history and that of Rawlings’. As a legislator, by implications, Botwe’s reasoning that because Rawlings is from the same NDC as Mills and therefore shouldn’t be subjected to the same national security measures like any other Ghanaian is absurd and smacks of a state pinned down by threats from primitive forces – forces that cannot think, forces that are immature, forces that are paranoid, and caught up in destructive sentimentality, of which Botwe’s thinking falls into and makes Botwe a contradictory person.

Botwe’s erroneous opinion is uncalled for at this stage of Ghana’s democratic evolution, where the likes of Rawlings are a real and present danger to the system. It borders on a lie to Ghana’s security and development wellbeing, and an immense falsification that can only maintain itself by a dizzying chain of smaller falsehoods (I am grateful to you, you should be grateful to me, no matter my conduct), beefed up by wilder and more-contradictory claims.

Lesley Lokko’s Novel Sundowners

By Djami Diallo, The Afro News Burnaby  : Rianne, Gabby, Nathalie and Charmaine form an unlikely foursome in Lesley Lokko’s novel Sundowners. Rianne, the daughter of the infamous Marius de Zoete, heiress to the huge de Zoete fortune, is a spoiled brat at best. Read the full story

By Thomas J. Powell

The following is a fictional example. It never happened, except for in my head.  June, 2006  Las Vegas, Nev.

There is and always has been stiff competition between Las Vegas casinos. Located miles from the strip, Sin and Tonic Casino relies on clever ideas from their owner, Dale, to increase profits. In the summer of 2005, Dale decided to unveil a ‘Play Now, Pay Later’ program to his loyal customers. Dale’s customers, most of whom rarely left the casino because they had no home or job to maintain, were allowed to gamble and drink while management kept tabs on how much money they were each blowing through.

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