Of Sexism, Northern Preference and Divorce of the Odd Couple

In the month of Janus in the year of our Lord 2010, President the Professor John Evans (formerly-Atta) Mills strolled down from the mountain top after consulting with the oracles of wisdom. The Prophetic gates opened up wide and edicts of reshuffle were released. Let’s explore three delicate matters arising out of the first reshuffle of the Mills administration. They are: the reverse regional preference in public appointments, sexism and the divorce of the odd couple.

As a backdrop – lay side-by-side the front pages of both the Daily Graphic and The Ghanaian Times editions of Tuesday, January 26. After only a cursory look at the mug shot photographs of the who-is-who of ministerial appointments and reshuffles, a phenomenon emerges. The Daily Graphic carried photographs of eight reshuffled ministerial appointees. Here is a break-down: One female and seven males; six northerners and two southerners.

Similarly, The Ghanaian Times featured ten photographs on its front page. They comprised of three females and seven males; six northerners and four southerners. Specifically – six from the north, two Ewes and two Ga-Adangbes.

So what? Striking! “It’s a man’s world”, they say. But is it also a northern world? Akan names appear visibly and loudly missing. What’s happening? Is ours a case of the minority ruling the majority both from ethnic and gender vantage points?

Here are some statistics of the ethnic make-up of Ghana from a 2000 Ghana Statistical Service Report. It is estimated that there are about 92 ethnic groups packed tightly within our fairly small 94 square mile finite-size land space. The major ones are: Akan (49.1%), Mole Dagbani (16.5%), Ewe (12.7%), Ga-Adangbe (8.0%), Guan (4.4%), Gurma (3.9%), Grunsi (2.8%) and Mande-Busanga, (1.1%).

During the Kufuor administration, it looked awkward that Akan names dominated the airwaves as public office holders. It smelled like nepotism, tribalism and small-mindedness. Now, it looks like the scales have simply been flipped and public office holders are more likely to have names which place them either in the three regions of the north and the Volta Region.

I love oranges but lemonade does a thing or two to my aging enamel-eroding teeth. Ghana is nothing but a collection of tribes that form a nation state. So therefore it looks odd when names like Bagbin, Amidu, Ayariga, Avoka, Tia, Pelpuo are overwhelmingly present in public appointments without the corresponding names from other ethnic groups.

The hidden agenda behind this phenomenon is obvious. It has nothing to do with national development but an effort to consolidate support for more votes in future elections in the ‘World Banks’.

Now, gender. Women constitute 50 plus percentage of Ghana’s population but remain on the fringes when it comes to public office. Assumption: women should be content with tokenism, cooking and cleaning, petty trading, and secretarial jobs and be the sources of hot amorous pleasure.

How does a country progress when the majority of its population is left giggling on the sidelines, smeared in make-up and dressed up for roles as side-kicks? The economic geography of the world says a lot about this phenomenon – the underdeveloped parts of the world leave women out of governance while the vice versa persists in the developed world. The message is obvious.

A major ticklish feature in the Mills reshuffle is the appointment of the first ever female Minister of Sports, a perfectly estrogen-filled creature, Akua Sena Dansua. A woman is to occupy this highly male-dominated testosterone-charged ministry? Undoubtedly, this has upset many sports enthusiasts. Some have experienced palpitations, tottering on the brink of heart attacks.

The distressed comments have been wild and varied and furious and at times, truly sexist. Giving vent to bottled-up sexist thoughts makes it obvious that there are many people (males and females) who need redemption about their idea of sex role stereotypes. Male chauvinism does not pay. Female sexism toward its own sex is pathetic and backward, to say the least.

The following is an internal dialogue I’ve had with sceptics who go on the loose saying sexist things which make the skin cringe. Some of these people talk ‘by hat’ (by heart) without realizing the full meaning of what drops out of their machismo mouths. The voices of the sceptics are in quotes while the voice of The WatchWoman is presented in free-range, without quotation marks.
“Oh, but Akua is a woman! How can she become the Minister of Sports?” Yes, she’s a woman all right but what has her gender got to do with the Sports Ministry portfolio? As a minister, her role will not include becoming a defence, mid-fielder, striker/attacker, centre-forward or a goal keeper for the Ghana Black stars. She will not have to pass a ball to Michael Essien. Her mandate does not include kicking balls.

“Ah, but what does she know about sports?” Does she have to know anything about sports to become a minister? Akua is definitely not one of the boys regardless of her lowly-cropped hair. But like all other ministers who might not know more than the basics of a ministry but learn to succeed in implementing government policy, so can a woman who has brains also succeed.

Then bizarre and ridiculous comments drop from perfectly intelligent folks. “Sports is so critical to national unity. It’s a game we enjoy. A woman will spoil it all for us. Akua cannot manage an active department filled with people who are engaged in physical activity. ” Can a woman be a Minister of Mines, Works and Housing? “Yes of course, mines, works and housing will be alright but not sports. A woman will be overwhelmed in the sports ministry.”

With the dialogue rolling, one skeptic moves the protestation and argument from the nonsensical to the profane. “But when she has to travel with the boys, will she have a male companion? After all, male ministers travel with concubines? Remember Muntakagate? Yiee! I would love to be her companion. Do you know her? Please propose me as a travel companion.”

Are you for real? So this concern about a female Minister of Sports is about who lays who? Who accompanies Akua on her sports travels is none of your freaking business. I can bet my last ugly bottom cedi that the first ever female Minister of Sports will be one of our best ministers of sports. Watch!

“The President should decouple Youth from Sports and turn it into two ministries. Akua will excel as a Minister of Youth Affairs.” Outlandish! So as a woman and a mother, she’s only good enough as a minister of youth but not sports? What has estrogen got to do with football? We might as well just find a pretty girl to sit at every door in Ghana.

Footnote. At long last, the Ayariga-Anyidoho Disparate Communications Company Limited has been disbanded without any ceremony. The divorce of the odd communications couple was the comic relief of the reshuffle. It’s no secret that they were no sweethearts. At best, they were bitter-lungs. I wish I could be a fly on the wall to perform a communications audit to figure out the grief the odd couple caused Ghana and the damage their union laid onto the Mills administration. Fare thee well, folks!

dorisdartey@yahoo.com

The madness known as Accra and the Millennium City Project

Accra does not make sense. Accra is broken. Accra is mad. Why is Accra mad? Oh, go figure! Haven’t you taken a look lately? Chaos galore! Lawlessness galore! A free-for all regime! Yet, we have all the bye-laws needed to run a city but they are not enforced.

You want to put a kiosk somewhere to sell whatever? Go ahead; have fun with it. At some point, any of the two D-Words – Decongestion and/or Demolition might chase after you. But the dust will quickly settle and you could move right back. You want to sell luscious yummy roasted ripe plantains over a funky gutter? Oh, just do what floats your boat. You want to throw your garbage, regardless of the quantity – sachet water, a bag of ‘bola’ – onto a street? Who can stop you? No one! You want to build your concrete house in water-ways? Go right ahead. Drivers are mad too; especially so! There are no elders in this town.

With the above as a backdrop, and the horrifying devastation of biblical proportions with earthquakes in the capital city of Haiti two weeks running, I am very excited about the recently announced Millennium City Project for Accra. We must give this initiative a chance, regardless of anyone’s negative feelings toward the Accra Metropolitan Assembly and its lush-bearded
Mayor, Alfred Nee Oko Vanderpuje. Let me state my case.

Accra’s madness is currently at a fever pitch and is brought into sharper focus when you observe the layers of development under and over the layers of under-development. It makes me wonder if the gods are crazy! Nothing makes sense. Accra cannot continue like this. The madness must stop. Now! If the status quo and/or the degeneration does not cease, imagine 5, 10, 20, or 30 years from now! If nothing changes, Accra will one-day one-day unravel.

We should not wait to become home to the unspeakable horrors of Haiti, the poorest country in the western Hemisphere, the Africa outside Africa, where poverty is so desperate and ugly and filthy that it can make you speechless and wanna cry; Where governance has long broken down, making the country win the accolade of a failed state.

Accra is in an earthquake-prone zone too. So imagine what would happen to Accra if the earth sneezes – etsssieen – and an earthquake comes a-licking? We’ll be buried under rubble, with life and death blending into one horrendous whole.

For the most part, the people of Haiti are our kith and kin – the confused descendants of slaves who were dumped on an island to labour in vain for slave masters, and who, long after the fact of liberation, have not figured out how to run their own affairs. Haiti gained independence in 1804, the first Black country anywhere in the world to do so. Ghana was the first African country to gain independence. The similarities are too eerie to catalogue.

That’s why we must give the Millennium City Project a chance. It’s OK if we can’t pronounce millennium. You might pronounce it as ‘miririum’ or ‘milliniom’ and no one would put you into prison for funky pronunciation. Millennium is a statement about having arrived. If this project does not work out, we are toast and Accra will surely unravel.

Last year, my work took me to a fascinating ingenious state-of-the-art development project in a forgotten part of the country, which is only one hour drive from Kumasi. It is dubbed the Millennium Villages Project (MVP); located at Bonsaaso, a leading cocoa producing part of the country. This project aims at changing the depressing circumstances of the inhabitants of a cluster of what has from time immemorial, been a deprived, poverty-stricken villages. The project applies science, as well as tried and tested best practices to improve the living conditions of the people.

As I got closer to the community, I witnessed the magic of MVP. In several meetings with the residents, I heard joy and hope because of the interventions of MVP. Politicians and governments had failed them over and over again. They go to them for votes then move on in complete disregard of their needs. They had no health care facilities, no schools beyond the basic, no motorable roads, no electricity, and no pipe borne water. In short, they had nothing.

Entered MVP! In just a period of three years, hope has replaced hopelessness and a dying community is rising from the dull ashes of national snobbishness. Step-by-step, little-by-little, lives are being changed. The human condition of the residents of the cluster of villages is already showing improvement through the implementation of measures to lovingly and tenderly guide them.

The successes are many – still counting. A health care facility, ambulance service, improved agricultural practices, a school feeding programme – and these are not connected with any national programmes of similar names.

What’s the relevance of the MVP to Accra, our mad house of a capital city? The same concept that informs the efforts to improve rural communities might be applied to Accra by the same consortium led by The Earth Institute of Columbia University of the USA. Their strategies are working for the Bonsaaso villages so I’m hopeful that if we follow through, it would work out for Accra, madness and all.

The path Accra has embarked on is not sustainable. Accra needs a major intervention. Accra needs redemption. This city has nurtured its madness for a long time. This is a dysfunctional city par excellence, way beyond understanding. Modern trappings like house numbers and street names are foreign.

Accra is over-grown with a lawless population. Accra is exploding at the seams. The residents need drastic behavioural change in all aspects of city life. Accra has become ungovernable. Accra is crying desperately for sanity, for healing of the madness. Even Dr Akwasi Osei of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital will excuse himself. Understandably so!

Kumasi is already mad. Kwame Nkrumah will not recognize his well-planned well-built harbour city of Tema if he dares come out of his plush grave. Sekondi-Takoradi will become mad as petrol-dollars pour in. Tamale is tottering in madness. Mid-size towns are catching the madness flu. Our cities and towns are not breathing right.

Garbage piles up and we have no clue of how to manage the waste that is a natural offshoot of human existence. Plastic waste is choking us. Our gutters are a national shame. We don’t treat excreta. Accra, Sekondi-Takoradi and other coastal towns violate international protocols by dumping excreta directly into the Atlantic Ocean. Out of shame, Accra has nicknamed its liquid waste dumping site “Lavender Hill.”

Without the combination of a well-coordinated, incisive, surgical and meticulous intervention, Accra will implode – one day. As the capital city goes, so the country. The Millennium City Project might be a blessing from heaven. And, I can’t wait to experience heaven here on earth if at all possible. God is! But the journey will be tough. To change such a broken city will not be a walk in the park so gird your loins to be annoyed. Inconveniences galore! AMA should not disappoint us – again!

Area Boys of Ghana

Do you know your Area Boys? You must. Knowing might give you peace of mind and probably even save your life from idle male youth and young adults who hang around in your neighbourhood. They might not necessarily be troublesome or are looking for trouble. The problem is that trouble can and does find idlers. They can potentially slide into crime.

The phenomenon of Area Boys first hit me when exploring to own a piece of Ghana to construct my own concrete tent under half the sun. One boy came through my radar. With veiled threats, he sheepishly informed me that he is one of the Area Boys. Clueless, I asked him, “Are you a Land Guard?” He replied, “No, an Area Boy.” Proudly, he offered to become my eyes and ears, with services to provide labour for any construction work I’ll undertake. Of course he assured me that he knows just about everything, a master-of-all-trade master-of-none kind of guy.

Here is the profile of Area Boys I’ve developed over the past one year since this phenomenon came to my attention. They are young males within the teens and late-twenties age bracket. They have had basic school education and have effectively dropped out of school before or after JSS either because they barely passed their examinations or had no support to continue. So they hang around in neighbourhoods, waiting for opportunities – any opportunities.

They are in a state of arrested development. As should be expected, among the rank and file of Area Boys are some knuckled-headed crack-heads. They are permanent fixtures in some neighbourhoods, probably in all neighbourhoods in the country.

They live within the frail crumbling fringes of our society. Our national edges are so frayed that it’s easy for anyone who is stuck at the edge to fall off. There are no social safety blankets to provide a buffer to anyone who is about to fall or who actually falls. Not even prison. Especially, prison!

Area Boys form ready crowds and gangs of foot-soldiers. Have you ever wondered where several young men suddenly emerge from whenever there is a vehicular accident or an incident like a fight in the general neighbourhood? These are Area Boys, idle and ready to come out of the shadowy woods to stand and stare and gossip about occurrences in the hot sweaty tropical sun. Such events offer much needed interruption to an otherwise drab existence.

Politicians benefit from Area Boys during electioneering campaigning. Once clothed in Tee-Shirts and given a little bit of cash, they are set as material at mammoth political rallies amidst gleeful cheers.

As Area Boys sit and stare, their shame factor about their idleness reduces to zero. They appear very happy, finding joy in idle-gossiping. They also display sheer bravado, on permanent expedition. On the initial look, they appear calm and gentle. Yet, they totter at the frontline of crime, disorder, indiscipline and rascality. They are trouble, no, disaster waiting to happen – any day.

Talented, no, potentially talented, these pockets of unemployed, underemployed, and mostly unemployable youth have few skills. It doesn’t appear that anyone is responsible for these male youth. They grow up doing odd and dead-end jobs, forever.

They live in uncompleted buildings and kiosks. Their sanitation and waste management needs are very simple with no complications whatsoever. They live purely at the whims of nature, truly next-to-nature. They bath at dawn in make-shift structures. When nature calls them and they have to go, they go ‘free range’ by way of plastic ‘take/throw-aways’.

But some live by perching on the edges of families with no one in particular taking full responsibility for them. Some are just defiant and have broken away from parental or guardian control.

You see them in plain view. In day-dreaming stupor, they sit around street corners and road-sides, under trees, near popular spots – gleefully chit-chatting. On several occasions, I’ve observed Area Boys watch me in wrapped attention. The stares are hard-hitting, without smiles. Beyond New York City, I never thought I’ll feel fear of idle young black men – in Ghana. But I find myself feeling intense fear of the presence and rigid stares of Area Boys. I imagine, deep in my mind’s eye, “That’s an armed robber waiting in the wings!”

They fight for dominance in neighbourhoods. For that reason, some self-identify as Area Boys, as if the title is a badge of honour. For people who don’t have anything, or don’t even have dreams of becoming anything, a fight for dominance in an area where they perch without pitching a tent is an accomplishment. Temptation lures them, smiling, grinning, beckoning them to bite the bait. Your Area Boy of today could potentially be your armed robber or petty thief tomorrow.

There are ways to relate to Area Boys. One option is to infiltrate their ranks; make them useful – for a fee. When you succeed in connecting with a few, periodically, drop some ‘gifts’ their way. A cedi here, five cedis there can simply blow their minds and win you their unbending loyalty. Such ‘tips’ could be packaged as, ‘here is no ko feoo’. That always wins you a broad, grateful but shy grin. Once you consolidate some form of relationship, they become your own Area Boys who could potentially protect your interests.

Without a connection, they simply remain Area Boys – not yours, because they owe you no loyalty. Area Boys who simply belong to the community at large are nothing but loose canons that can fire off at any time.

As I ponder over the issue of Area Boys, enduring questions storm my mind. How are geniuses made? Genius from nature needs to be nurtured and tutored, not left to fate at the mercy of the elements. Specifically, how was the genius of Shakespeare nurtured? For sure, he was not born and nurtured among labouring, idle, uneducated folks. Bill Gates did not rise from the hot ashes of despicable neglect. An environment can nurture or destroy a genius.

How many geniuses is Ghana neglecting to destruction? A diamond is just a piece of rough stone until it is identified and polished. We are abandoning our potential Shakespeare’s and Bill Gates’ as dirty stones, cast into the muck. Wild weeds spread themselves to choke our geniuses. This is the house Ghana is building; this is how Ghana is taking care of its unwanted youth. Is gangrene better than amputation?

I recall the mid-1980s horror stories of the Lost Boys of Sudan, the approximately 27,000 Sudanese boys and young adults who were forced by violence to roam around for about a thousand miles until they reached refugee camps in Kenya, parentless. The Area Boys of Ghana are our own version of internally displaced male youth who are forced by idleness to sit and stare while the years pass by with no hope for the future but pure luck and chance and prayers. God is!

Like the Lost Boys of Sudan, Area Boys of Ghana need redemption. In this year of grace, when Ghana will finally harvest commercial quantities of crude oil from under the belly of the mighty Atlantic Ocean, a progressive youth policy must be put in place and implemented without any leadership buffoonery.

dorisdartey@yahoo.com

Stop shameless begging at Kotoka International Airport

We have a blind spot at our only international airport, Kotoka. The blindness cannot be cured with any modern technological equipment, not even a full body scanner that x-rays passengers, literally stripping them naked while they still wear clothes. The blind spot at Kotoka is the human factor, what appears to have become Kotoka’s culture where staffers shamelessly harass passengers, asking for gifts.

Imagine if at JFK or Heathrow, while some white bloke is searching the body and luggage of a passenger, he or she finds a pack of garri and kobi and says to the majestic African traveller, ‘Hey Charlie, could you leave me some few grains of garri? I’ve heard so much about garri.’ Not a chance! Staffers at best-practice international airports are like hawks, watching out for anything untoward. They consider everyone a potential suspect for one thing or the other, until a passenger proves otherwise and has left their charge.

But at Kotoka, rules can be and are violated with impunity, and by that, compromise the security of the travelling public. Even with countries which have stringent airport security, things do happen. Let alone at Kotoka! Who knows what passes through on a daily basis covered flamboyantly by smiles, corruption, begging for gifts, and a general lousy lackadaisical attitude toward air travel! They forget that an international airport is nothing like the Neoplan Station!

Christmas time appears to be the cocoa season for airport staffers. Missing to pop the big begging question might mean missing a major harvest opportunity! So they ask and ask and ask for gifts. At Christmas time, the begging stench at Kotoka must be fumigated with a lot of frankincense and myrrh.

While a passenger is being frisked, while luggage is bring searched to ensure that the content conform to internationally agreed standards, airport staffers pop the question from underneath their breadth, ‘Would you leave behind your left-over cedis?’ It is very awkward to be asked for a gift when you’re in a compromised position and your armpits and possibly your dross are being checked; when you could be the carrier of the very thing the staffer is supposed to identify and arrest you for.

When a complete stranger to whom you are beholden asks you for a gift, it constitutes bribery. As what point in our national development did we lose our sense of shame?

There are fine staffers at Kotoka; well dressed and professional looking who without inhibition, pour warm smiles and goodbyes and welcomes onto passengers. Without a doubt, this is a free show of Ghanaian hospitality at its best! But then, Kotoka is not a tourism hub. The people who invented the airplane are now terrified of their own invention since it has become the terrorist’s potential weapon of choice to unleash panic, terror, misery and mass death onto passengers.

I reproduce for you, parts of one of the articles published in this column in the past two years about the unethical practice of airport staffers who beg passengers for gifts. At the time, my fear was about the extent to which their misbehaviour can open the floodgates for drugs and other contrabands to pass through our only international airport.

But the Ghanaian connection in the December 25 story of a young Nigerian man attempting to blow up an airplane over the US city of Detroit should be seen as an opportunity to once and for all, clean up the low-cost filthy begging acts at Kotoka.

Now, read the following excerpts from the June 21, 2008 issue of this column. “In the matter of our development agenda on the move into 2nd income status by 2015, various categories of personnel at our international airport – Kotoka, are digging us into a hole. Who is watching out for us?

In this column on December 29, 2007, I reported on the bizarre behaviour of airport staffers who shamelessly ask passengers for Christmas gifts. I had assumed that it was just a Chrismassy thing they did then. Not! On Tuesday morning, June 17, I was dragging my tired old self through Kotoka on a journey via Delta Airlines to New York City. To my utter amazement and annoyance, the begging was as much alive in June as it was in December. I was a very disgusted target of unabashed appeals like: ‘Mama, what would you leave behind for us?’ ‘Please do us some good.’

These incidents began at check-in during a search of my luggage. Then, as if to annoy me further, another batch of buffoons and low-cost staffers at the final departure point bombarded me with more shameless requests for gifts.I could not be nice to them.

I asked each person who asked me for a departure gift: ‘Why should I give you anything? You’re doing your job.’ I scolded them to stop disgracing Ghana with such distasteful behaviours. Frustrated, I queried one of them: ‘Is this how you harass every passenger for gifts?’ He said nothing. He just starred at me, sheepishly. So apparently, this behaviour was for them, a standard operating procedure and they do not expect anyone to raise objections. Passengers are supposed to suck it in, with a smile and hand over gifts to airport staffers. Why?My opinion?

Such behaviours must be stopped by any means necessary. I’ve never witnessed such low-cost behaviour at any international airport. Why in the world should we give space to a bunch of thoroughly greedy and shameless individuals to take passengers hostage at our only international airport?

Besides, considering the struggles we are experiencing with narcotic drugs, such behaviours only serve to weaken our already fragile defences, easing the way for drugs to come in and out freely, at the exchange of gifts (bribes).There are many organizations who give the airport and by extension Ghana a bad name.

Engaging in a blame game through finger pointing at a place like Kotoka or any international airport can get tricky because several stakeholder companies operate side-by-side, making it difficult for the uninitiated onlooker to identify them (with the exception of uniformed personnel).

The many organizational stakeholders include: Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana Civil Aviation Authority, Ghana Airports Company, BNI, Narcotics Control Board, the Quarantine folks from the Ministry of Agriculture, airlines, as well as passenger and luggage handling companies. Then in this day and age of outsourcing, there are private security companies.

For instance, the entry into the passenger arrival section is ‘manned’ by private security personnel. I’m reliably informed that Delta Airlines has sourced out passenger profiling and bag searches to private security personnel. However, CEPS officials perform these tasks for all other airlines. Why?

To save airport personnel from themselves and from giving Ghana a bad name, firm measures should be put in place to monitor them closely to prevent them from mortgaging away our beautiful country at the altar of gifts. It might necessitate eavesdropping on them and secretly recording them to tighten up supervision and monitoring. The ultimate goal should be to stop them cold in their ugly tracks at this very crucial frontline and gateway into Ghana.”

dorisdartey@yahoo.com