Wait a minute - Our thought base is faulty
Ghana is 60? Wise, ready to go on pension, and to say 'it's all over' ? Struggle for independence all over ? No sir ! Wait a minute. At '60, you are 'akora' - custodian of history, values, practices, wisdom....
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Last weekend, l attended the Speech Day of one of our secondary schools. The head prefect gave a good speech enumerating some of the achievements of students during his tenure. He had two quotations to spice his speech : quotations from a former English Prime Minister and one from a former American President. I bowed my head and thought of how poorly we had done as a nation.
Intellectuals, academics, political leaders, public speakers, chiefs, all Ghanaians/Africans are quoting from foreign philosophers, academics and public speakers to illustrate their various points of view. How sad !
Sorry, we got it all wrong. Those philosophers, political leaders aand academics were not talking to Africans; they were talking or writing within a certain context.Their researches were done in their own environments; the conclusions were arrived at because of the context within which they did their findings. Their history, geography, values and practices dictated their conclusions.
Throughout all my travels and studies the world over, l have never come across any philosopher, political leader or public speaker quoting from an African. Yes, l have met and listened to African-Americans quoting from Kwame Nkrumah and other leaders, but for obvious reasons. Asians, Europeans, Americans quote from their history, their struggles, their wars, their heroes, their values, their thinkers.
Rattray
I am submitting that it is the original and indigenous ideas of the people that can build a nation they can be proud of. We had a Kingdom of Ghana! We boast of Ashanti, Akim, Anlo, Dagbon, Ga kingdoms? So, who populated those kingdoms, what ideas did they have, and what have we done with those ideas? And don't let us repeat that the African had no history! By the way, how come we have tolerated a 'Rattray Park' on the soil of the Asante Kingdom whose proverbs Rattray described as 'primitive and savage' ? Read Robert Sutherland Rattray: "Ashanti Proverbs: The Primitive Ethics of a Savage People" (reprinted in 1969). Oh Ghana ! Oh Africa!
In the middle of the 18th century, an Nzema boy who was taken to Germany at the age of four, educated himself so highly to become one of the top philosophers of the time. Antonius Wilhelm Amo wrote a book entitled 'The Rights of Blacks in Europe', and became even more popular with his treatise on 'Absence of Sensation in the human mind'. He earned disfavour in the academic and intellectual world of Europeans, and agitation began for his deportation back to the Gold Coast. He died under explained circumstances on his return home.
But that even encouraged another Ghanaian philosopher, William Emmanuel Abraham, to research into the thoughts of Amo. The title of his book, published recently in 1996, is "The Life and Times of Anton Wilhelm Amo- the first African philosopher in Europe”. Abraham has authored several books, and so have Ghanaian Thinkers like Anthony Kwame Appiah, Kwame Gyekye, Kwame Nkrumah, JB Danquah James Kwegyir Aggrey.
Contributors to African Political Thought have included Edward Wilmot Blyden of Liberia, Kwame Nkrumah, JB Danquah, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, Nnamdi Azikiwe and many others.
We have writers who have illustrated in their works the original traditional thought expressions like Kofi Awoonor, Francis Kobina Parkes, Mabel Dove Danquah, Ama Ata Aidoo, Efua Sutherland, Ayi Kwei Armah, Amma Darko, name them.
If one goes through the Hansard of the Gold Coast Legislative Assembly of the '50s and '60s, there are great thoughts for quotations from eminent brains like Edward Asafu-Adjei. What were the words used by JE Casely-Hayford and William Hutton-Mills to oppose the Crowns Bill ?
The phenomenal Ephraim Amu, the illustrious Philip Gbeho, Akpaloo the poet, JH Nketia, the world-class musicologist, and others don't need mere mention. Dr Oku Ampofo, the western trained physician who saw value in our herbs and and was supported by Kwame Nkrumah to establish the Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine, and many others I have mentioned above are the ones to be projected by a nation that wants to build on the foundations of its own original ideas and values.
And are we ashamed to quote from the deep insights into our customs, practices and values enshrined in our proverbs ?
Creative thinkers are not necessarily those who have entered the classroom. The original designers of the Kente cloth, whether in Ashanti or Eweland, had never been to school. Some of our local chiefs who resisted colonial rule had no letters before their names.
What happened to all our research institutions? Why have we starved them of funding?
Let all policy makers, academics, intellectuals, researchers, journalists, speech writers, political and authentic African religious leaders wake up !
Africans have their own versions of Aristotle, Plato, Locke and Rousseau. Africa has a wealth of literature, wisdom and original ideas. Let us do more research into African
Thought, publish them and make them available in our schools. Let government and local assemblies name streets after local heroes,heroines, local writers, successful local business people.
Beyond the Council of State, let's have a National Think Tank devoid of politics, which can address this serious gap in our nation building.
Our independence is meaningless if we continue to wear borrowed robes ! Our mind is not Ghanaian, it is not African !!!
The writer is a Communication Consultant and founder of the African University College of Communications
