The Ghanaian sense of judicial humour

Isaac Yeboah Features Jun - 01 - 2013 , 12:12

The Ghanaian humour mill is grinding and spinning new buzz terms. Do you know that the Kufour Dollar has been re-christened “The Pink Sheet” and its buying power is equivalent to one-half “bawumia”? Have you also heard that one “tsatsu” is the time it takes a witness who holds steadfastly to one story line to buckle under persistent interrogation? Why has the law-abiding Ghanaian suddenly grown sarcastic and prefers to talk in riddles?
Ghanaians have been required to gag themselves as an aftermath of the December 7 polls. They must tie their mouths with a red piece of cloth. They sorely would have liked to practise with free rein all the beautiful terms they have learned on the TV and the newspaper columns recently. Further, they want to be left to pronounce their own judgements but they cannot do so for fear of being charged for contempt of court - never mind that some notorious FM stations are doing so with their call-in programmes.

Most of the new terms are in Latin, a well-codified and tempting language to even those, like M Frazier and others, who have never seen the gates of a law school. Thus the term, subjudice, made of two words sub for under and judicium for in court or under trial so easy to pronounce carries grave consequences and one can only talk about it in idioms. There is another one: Amicus curiae (amicus friend, curiae of the court).

Two other terms that one hears very often these days are evidence by affidavit and evidence in voce. According to Wikipedia, affidavit is an old Latin term meaning “He has made a sworn statement.” In voce is Latin for “by word ” and stands for oral evidence.” Thus what Ghanaians hear at the Supreme Court with respect to the current Election Petition is largely the former with the prospects of a little of the latter thrown in for clarity. This is necessary because hard figures attested to on a pink sheet (Latin: charta rosea) do not always tell the full story. Some oral will lend the story more credibility; otherwise a welter of useful evidence is missed. In such circumstance, there is the danger of what is termed procedural injustice or what in our present craze for Latin one might term inuriae res gestae.

And there are yet other Latin words which must be of interest to the Ghanaian’s avid ears. One, errata meaning errors have the following examples: Technical error, administrative error, computer error, human error, political error, judicial error and typographical error. Some errors are only cosmetic while others are significant and do affect outcomes and therefore must be corrected immediately. Of course, all errors must be corrected but some of the corrections are meant to serve historical and academic purposes only.

Mr Frazier’s research into a landmark case in East Africa which, for better or worse has been quoted copiously in Ghana, has revealed an interesting error correction exercise. The correction was undertaken a month after the judgement which so affected the people that they are still battling to come to terms with the ruling. Thankfully, the corrections done were typographical. They concerned wrong citations, wrong numbering and missing pages.

It has been emphasised that the corrections would not affect the ruling. Nevertheless, the fact that some place names and numbers had to be changed has provoked furious Internet warfare with anger embellished in humour. The last contributor has left a caustic parting shot that urges the Supreme Court Justices “to continue correcting their errors till the judgement itself is reversed.”

At the moment nobody knows which way the decision on the petition before Ghana’s Supreme Court will go. Dr Afari Gyan the Electoral Commissioner has at last taken the witness stand and one hopes that as he is led through his evidence in voce, a lot of issues will become clearer and make acceptance of the judgement easier to swallow. It must be unnecessary for review or correction. There would be no serious errata.

Meanwhile, enjoy your buzz and Latin words but note that the matter of the election petition is still subjudice.