Elizabeth Ohene: it’s a question of language
The word SMART: (adjective)1, Intelligent (especially American English) clever 2, DISRESPECTFUL: Trying to seem clever in a disrespectful way,
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3, NEAT: a smart person is wearing neat attractive clothes and has a tidy appearance; 4, FASHIONABLE: used by fashionable people as in one of Accra’s smartest restaurants; 5,TECHNOLOGY: smart machines, weapons, materials etc are controlled by computers, as in smart phones, smart bombs; 6, The SMART money is on somebody/something, used to say a particular person or thing is likely to do something or be successful; 7, QUICK: a smart movement is done quickly, especially with force as in a smart blow to the head.
SMART (verb) 1, to be upset because someone has hurt your feelings or offended you, e.g. she was still smarting from the insult; 2, if a part of your body SMARTS, it hurts with a stinging pain as in my eyes were smarting from the smoke.
Then there is smart aleck (noun) someone who always says clever things or always comes up with a quick witty riposte in a way that is annoying; and there is the impolite version of a smart aleck, which is smart arse for the American version or smart ass for the English version as in smart arse remarks or comment.
I was away for a few days to experience at first hand the frantic last days of the British election campaign. I got back to find that dear H.E. Dramani had put his foot in his mouth yet again with comments he made at the May Day celebrations. The President has not learned that some subjects are best left well alone. He has refused to accept that on the subject of the power situation, there is absolutely nothing he can say right now that will sound right in anybody’s ears in this country.
President’s untrue statements
Even if he should say he was offering GH¢100,000 to the person with the best slogan to replace dumsor whenever the power situation is resolved, I bet you there will be no takers. The truth of the matter is that the President has used up whatever credit he had with the population on the power situation.
He has used the most sacred occasions and places to say things on the subject that have turned out to be untrue. He said in Parliament in 2013 that he had solved the power problem and we the people had not shown any appreciation. The President said: “Last year people were saying me ma mo dumsor—ooo, to which the reply was Yaaa Mahama. Now that I have solved the problem, nobody is saying anything.”
Last year he went to one of the charismatic churches and said before God’s altar that the power problem would be resolved by the end of the year.
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Now I hear his spokespersons tell us the problem persists because the President wants a long-term solution. Nobody had ever asked the President for short-term solutions and nobody had ever held a gun to his head to give us any of the many deadlines he had given us for the solution to the problem.
Now he rubs salt into our wounds by using language that can only annoy everybody. According to the President, the businesses that are smart are investing
during this time of dumsor. He leaves us in no doubt that he believes that those who are shutting down their businesses and laying off staff and are complaining about the effects of dumsor are not smart. I will keep away from the big businesses for the moment.
Struggling businesses
I have been watching Joyce, my dressmaker, going through desperate struggles to keep her small business afloat and I have agonised over her tears of frustration. She is a very talented designer and makes clothes that will challenge any of the celebrated designers anywhere in the world; she doesn’t strike me as someone who is not smart but she is currently at her wits end. Joyce is not alone, I also have Fanny whose story should normally make a most interesting feature for any news outlet; she is on the verge of giving up.
Then I have Kakra, Anita, Alice and Delight, they are usually cheerful hardworking young women who could be easily classified in the Hong Kong and India fast tailoring group and can make an outfit in 24 hours for a tourist or visitor or for me if I want something in a hurry. No one can suggest they are not smart, but now they have been reduced to nervous wrecks who no longer try to give a time or date on which they will deliver what they have undertaken to make.
I have watched my carpenter Zao in total despair as he has had to go back to 19th century tools to try and construct a kitchen; he has let go of his apprentices. His work is, normally, to amend John Keats, a thing of beauty that gives joy forever. No one can say he is not smart but he has been reduced to penury.
If you watch Mercy, my hairdresser at work, you would have hope in the future of Ghana; she is talented, hardworking and is ready to work all the hours that the good Lord gives in a day. She speaks five languages fluently and creates designs on young people’s heads that take your breath away. She has had to buy a generator, her customers don’t want to pay the increase in charges and her normal smile has disappeared.
I talked the BBC into agreeing to come to Ghana to record part of a programme on refrigerators. This was supposed to be the place where we would interview happy people whose lives have been transformed by owning refrigerators. Instead, everyone complained their food got spoilt and the fridges got spoilt. I spent a whole day with the producer of the programme in two shops that sell fridges at Osu and not ONE person came to buy a single fridge. I was probably not smart trying to sell Ghana as a country on the up.
The breweries
The President cited the ABL as an example of a smart company that was investing instead of shutting down. I have a story on breweries that probably requires some sociological study before I can draw specific conclusions but I offer it here for what it is worth.
I covered the Liberian civil war and at one stage, every building in the capital Monrovia bore bullet hole marks; schools, homes, shops, offices, every building that is, except the brewery, which never lost one day of production throughout the war and whose buildings stood safe and erect. All the various fighting groups contributed men to protect the brewery because they needed the beer to be able to make it through the horrors of the war.
In other words, I wouldn’t be so sure that a prospering brewery says very much about the state of a country. Plus I hear that some 80 per cent of the investment made by the company is really money spent to buy machinery to generate power to run the factory. That does not sound to me like a vote of confidence in the future. They probably have reason to doubt that the President will deliver on any of his promises.
I have looked at all the possible meanings of the word SMART and I can only conclude that the only one that can be applicable to our situation is the word as part of a noun, smart aleck. It should refer to our smart aleck President who is forever trying to say clever things that only annoy everybody.