On Independence Day
0Monday 11 March 2013 by Renee
So this Wednesday past was Ghana's Independence Day, marking 56 years of Independence.
School students and security personnel marched at Independence Square, many Ghanaians packed in to watch them, and President Mahama made a fairly typical speech imploring Ghanaians to join together to help develop their country and address poverty etc etc etc. The face and name of Kwame Nkrumah, Independent Ghana's first president, and icon of Pan-Africanism, was ever-present.
Ghana gained independence from the Brits in 1957, and Independence day is intended as a celebration of Ghana's achievements since. But in all the conversations I've had with Ghanaians about what Independence day means to them, there seems a common sense of frustration and disappointment. There is a gas shortage in Accra (we haven't been able to cook for three weeks), and one man last week told me, "I've had my gas cylinder in the back of my car for three weeks and no one can fill it. We have "light off" (power outages) daily, and the water doesn't often flow. What should I celebrate?"
Nkurmah led the new nation until 1966 when he was ousted by a military coup. (As an interesting aside, it's widely believed that George Bush Snr ordered the CIA to orchestrate the coup, in attempt to reign in the country's socialist leanings). What followed was 26 years of military coups and instability, until a referendum was held in 1992 to move the country to a multiparty system.
A few weeks ago, I encountered a older Ghanaian with an interesting point of view - his father was heavily involved in politics at the time of Independence, but had spent most of his adult life in Canada. When I met him we was returning to holiday here with his adult son. When I quizzed him on the changes he must have seen on his holiday, I had assumed his answer would revolve around improvements, and perhaps some negative comments around modernity and the increasing Western influence.
But instead, he was saddened by the poor infrastructure, the out of control traffic congestion and terrible roads, the poor standards of health and education, in a country that the World Bank has recently moved up the ranks to be considered a lower-middle income country. He explained that at the time of independence, Ghana had relatively good infrastructure, but the long years of coups had ruined a lot of it, allowed corruption to flourish and governance to crumble. Despite technically having a democracy since the early 1990s, the prior years of instability have continued to plague the government's ability to catch up and maintain adequate infrastructure for the growing population.
As any good researcher does, I like to conduct informal research with people I meet in everyday life like my taxi drivers. Acknowledging all the flaws in this research method, at the moment it seems a common belief that the key challenge for Ghana is poor leadership and the need to be able to hold leaders to account, without disrupting the peace of the nation which every Ghanaian is so rightly proud of. As I learn more and more about life here, I'm really beginning to appreciate how important good governance is to development. For example, food security in Ghana at least seems less about availability and more about accessibility - there are often gluts and shortages of produce in different pockets of the country, but the horrendous roads make it difficult, expensive and unpredictable to move produce between towns and regions. When you also start to appreciate how poorly the government manages its infrastructure, and how easily infrastructure aid can be corrupted, you start to see the bigger, complicated picture.
I'm also learning just how hard it can be in a developing country context, to create a culture of demanding good governance from leaders, within what is culturally appropriate. We might take the "governments should fear their people" concept for granted in the West, but here, as one taxi driver explained, people believe in their prospective leader when they mark their thumb against their name, but once elected, the people "fear them like the lion*" When you couple poor leadership, a culture that does not favour direct criticism, and the commonplace view that to protest is to disrupt the peace, and you begin to have a sense of how complicated the issue of good governance can be. My hope for this crazy, incredible place, is that Ghanaians do learn to speak out and hold their leaders to account in meaningful, peaceful ways. And that as a country, Ghana grows to value such approaches as part of their culture of peace, rather than something against it.
*Lions! In a taxi discussion on politics! I really do love African similes and metaphors
School students and security personnel marched at Independence Square, many Ghanaians packed in to watch them, and President Mahama made a fairly typical speech imploring Ghanaians to join together to help develop their country and address poverty etc etc etc. The face and name of Kwame Nkrumah, Independent Ghana's first president, and icon of Pan-Africanism, was ever-present.
Ghana gained independence from the Brits in 1957, and Independence day is intended as a celebration of Ghana's achievements since. But in all the conversations I've had with Ghanaians about what Independence day means to them, there seems a common sense of frustration and disappointment. There is a gas shortage in Accra (we haven't been able to cook for three weeks), and one man last week told me, "I've had my gas cylinder in the back of my car for three weeks and no one can fill it. We have "light off" (power outages) daily, and the water doesn't often flow. What should I celebrate?"
Nkurmah led the new nation until 1966 when he was ousted by a military coup. (As an interesting aside, it's widely believed that George Bush Snr ordered the CIA to orchestrate the coup, in attempt to reign in the country's socialist leanings). What followed was 26 years of military coups and instability, until a referendum was held in 1992 to move the country to a multiparty system.
A few weeks ago, I encountered a older Ghanaian with an interesting point of view - his father was heavily involved in politics at the time of Independence, but had spent most of his adult life in Canada. When I met him we was returning to holiday here with his adult son. When I quizzed him on the changes he must have seen on his holiday, I had assumed his answer would revolve around improvements, and perhaps some negative comments around modernity and the increasing Western influence.
But instead, he was saddened by the poor infrastructure, the out of control traffic congestion and terrible roads, the poor standards of health and education, in a country that the World Bank has recently moved up the ranks to be considered a lower-middle income country. He explained that at the time of independence, Ghana had relatively good infrastructure, but the long years of coups had ruined a lot of it, allowed corruption to flourish and governance to crumble. Despite technically having a democracy since the early 1990s, the prior years of instability have continued to plague the government's ability to catch up and maintain adequate infrastructure for the growing population.
As any good researcher does, I like to conduct informal research with people I meet in everyday life like my taxi drivers. Acknowledging all the flaws in this research method, at the moment it seems a common belief that the key challenge for Ghana is poor leadership and the need to be able to hold leaders to account, without disrupting the peace of the nation which every Ghanaian is so rightly proud of. As I learn more and more about life here, I'm really beginning to appreciate how important good governance is to development. For example, food security in Ghana at least seems less about availability and more about accessibility - there are often gluts and shortages of produce in different pockets of the country, but the horrendous roads make it difficult, expensive and unpredictable to move produce between towns and regions. When you also start to appreciate how poorly the government manages its infrastructure, and how easily infrastructure aid can be corrupted, you start to see the bigger, complicated picture.
I'm also learning just how hard it can be in a developing country context, to create a culture of demanding good governance from leaders, within what is culturally appropriate. We might take the "governments should fear their people" concept for granted in the West, but here, as one taxi driver explained, people believe in their prospective leader when they mark their thumb against their name, but once elected, the people "fear them like the lion*" When you couple poor leadership, a culture that does not favour direct criticism, and the commonplace view that to protest is to disrupt the peace, and you begin to have a sense of how complicated the issue of good governance can be. My hope for this crazy, incredible place, is that Ghanaians do learn to speak out and hold their leaders to account in meaningful, peaceful ways. And that as a country, Ghana grows to value such approaches as part of their culture of peace, rather than something against it.
*Lions! In a taxi discussion on politics! I really do love African similes and metaphors
