Still waters, stalled democracy

The Wesley Towers auditorium was filled beyond capacity, with a strong sense of anticipation as attendees spilled into overflow areas.

It was the 25th Anniversary Public Lecture of the Methodist University Ghana, and the guest speaker, Justice Sophia Akuffo—distinguished jurist, former Chief Justice of Ghana, and member of the Council of State—took the podium to address a nation at a crossroads.

In a moment of quiet intensity, she painted a vivid picture of Ghana’s once-mighty rivers, now lifeless and lethal, poisoned by galamsey.

“We have powerful rivers from the top of the country all the way down,” she said, “but recently they are becoming dangerous, they are becoming toxic; they are becoming unusable, they are becoming dead.

They are moving, but they are dead.

Nothing is moving in them.”

That imagery gripped me.

It was more than an environmental lament—it was an unintentional allegory for something just as urgent: the state of our democracy.

Like those rivers, Ghana’s democracy is moving, but dead.

It flows with ritual and rhythm—campaigns, slogans, votes cast every four years—but beneath the surface, it is toxic, impotent, and failing the very people it was meant to nourish.

Why rivers, democracy dying

Justice Sophia Akuffo’s metaphor was not merely poetic; it was profoundly diagnostic.

That morning, as she prepared for her lecture, she watched a television programme on the devastation wrought by illegal mining.

“There was a programme on galamsey,” she recalled.

“And the water, the drinking water... and the threat that one day soon, we would be importing water.”

And then the question that pierced through the silence: How does a country abounding in natural resources calmly accept the label of ‘poor’?

Do we lack management skills?

Or are we deliberately mismanaging our wealth for ulterior motives?

That is the power of allegory—it exposes not just what is happening, but what we have allowed.

Just as we have permitted the slow poisoning of our water bodies, we have also stood by as the moral wells of our democracy run dry.

In both cases, the cause is not scarcity, but stewardship.

It is not nature’s betrayal, but leadership’s failure.

Ghana’s democracy has become an oxymoron: alive in form but dead in function. Its movement is noisy and periodic—political rallies, election-day drama, endless media commentary—but its lifeblood, the active and sustained engagement of the citizenry, has congealed.

The ballot box is treated as the final act rather than the opening scene in the democratic play.

The distinguished jurist and activist spoke passionately against this democratic apathy.

“Indifference is unacceptable,” she declared.

Voting, she reminded us, is only the beginning of “an ongoing relationship of trust, representation, duty and accountability.”

It is a sacred covenant that calls citizens to vigilance: to monitor, to evaluate, and to demand that those entrusted with power remain tethered to the public good.

Yet, trust in this covenant is waning.

It is not just a Ghanaian problem, but a continental one.

Across Africa, democracy is being hollowed out by both internal misgovernance and external manipulation.

Sophisticated disinformation campaigns—some orchestrated by authoritarian states such as Russia—are undermining civic confidence and sowing division.

Reports suggest that Russian-backed propaganda has targeted at least 19 African countries, seeking to destabilise democratic civilian rule, according to a 2024 article posted by the Kofi Annan Foundation.  

When the ballot is merely symbolic, democracy degenerates into a procedural performance—a civic Animal Farm where all are equal at the ballot box, but some are far more equal in the corridors of power.

The electoral machinery ticks on, but the soul of democracy—the pursuit of justice, dignity and shared prosperity—decays.

Political philosopher Achille Mbembe has rightly noted that Africa does not merely need elections; it needs substantive democracy—a democracy that delivers.

But what do today’s youth see? According to Afrobarometer, while many Africans still profess a preference for democracy, a growing number are disillusioned.

The ideal still inspires, but faith in its local expression is crumbling.

The former Chief Justice put it plainly: “A true democracy must be underpinned by a steadfast moral compass; an unwavering sense and reality of morally centred patriotism.”

Without this compass, she warned, democracy becomes “a mere mechanism of procedure, a formality devoid of conscience or principle.”

Governance then shifts from transformational to transactional—from service to self-interest.

In a transactional democracy, power is currency. It is accumulated, traded and wielded for personal gain.

Party financiers, serial callers and political footsoldiers often ask not what they can do for their country, but what their loyalty earns them in return.

Here, morality is optional, excellence is irrelevant, and the national interest is collateral damage.

In contrast, transformational democracy sanctifies power.

It is a mandate to serve, to uplift, to renew.

It asks: “What legacy shall I leave?

How do I make the nation stronger than I found it?”

Power in this context is a sacred trust, not a spoils system.

The rivers of Ghana once nourished our land.

Now they choke on mercury and mud.

Our democracy, too, once inspired hope.

But if we do not cleanse it of corruption, cynicism, and apathy, it too will become a poisoned stream—moving, but dead.

Justice Sophia Akuffo’s imagery was more than environmental. It was prophetic.

Let us not stand by while democracy becomes unusable, dangerous and toxic.

Let us reclaim it. Let us resuscitate it.

Let us make it flow with life again.

The writer is Head, Department of Psychology and Social Work, 
Methodist University Ghana
E-mail: abekoe@mug.edu.gh