Hogbetsotso to emphasise unity in diversity

Festivals play a significant role in the cultural setting of any community.

They also inculcate the unique values of the past generation in the present and those yet to be born.

For this reason, the nation’s focus will be on the ancient town of Anlo today as its citizens celebrate Hogbetsotso Festival.

Anlo will be set agog when thousands of its citizens from the 36 states and beyond converge on Anloga to climax this year’s Hogbetsotso Za (festival).

One unique feature of this year’s Hogbetsotso Za is the fact that the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II is expected to lead a delegation of 500 people from the Kingdom to the festival.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and other very important personalities are also expected to grace the occasion.

Hogbetsotso is a festival which reminds the people of Anlo of their ancestry. It rekindles the bond of friendship that existed between them and other Ewe-speaking people and affords citizens the opportunity to appraise their development programmes in the past year.

These great values play very positive roles, and in effect help to shape and re-direct the development of future generations.

In line with this, conscious efforts must be made to ensure that these values are not lost on the people, particularly the youth, who, when they deviate from such virtues, would have dire consequences for national cohesion and development.

In traditional setting, music and folklore have a lot to teach in shaping the moral attitude of the people, thereby significantly addressing the challenges of deviants and largely nipping crime and undesirable acts in the bud.

In the past, systems had been put in place to deal with crime and protect the environment from filth and other undesirables.

The mythology of fisherfolk not being allowed to fish on a certain day of the week, farming not done on a particular day and the inhibition placed on one entering the forest and indiscriminately felling trees were all deliberate ways of replenishing the fish stock, protecting the water bodies from pollution and guarding the environment against wanton degradation.

Suffice to say, due to westernisation, the virtues that used to protect humankind are now being treated with reckless abandon, a situation that has opened society up to diseases, poverty and squalor.

It is in this vein that the celebration of Hogbetsotso Za has a central role to play in bringing back the cultural values and development projects that were lost on society and the country at large.

It is a truism that no country that has ever imported development models from other lands has ever succeeded. The Asian Tigers, such as Japan and China, used their cultural setting to catapult their developmental agendas.

The Western giants consciously and deliberately continue to glow without necessarily relegating their culture to the background.

This is to stress that the Daily Graphic is mindful of the fact that it is not all cultures that are good and which must be maintained. Efforts must be made to denounce and abhor cultures that are dehumanising and infringe on the dignity and rights of the people.

There are some cultural practices in our society today that are abhorrent and yet are accepted in some areas in the name of “it is our cultural heritage.”

It is the considered view of the Daily Graphic that all repugnant cultural practices are banned while the good ones are passed on to the younger generations for national cohesion and development.

The laws that punish those who violate the human rights of people in the name of culture must rigidly be enforced and new legislation put in place to protect the vulnerable.