What is govt doing about the weather?
I am yet to read about any government anywhere in the world that was able to do anything about the weather, even prevent natural disaster. From the two almighty nations of United States and China, to the least developed in the world, the weather bears down on us all.
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The difference is in the efficiency that attends the handling of attendant catastrophes. That is what separates adolescents (teenagers) - in-government from governments in the hands of adults; it tells the difference between rulers with vision and those who are in government just so their families, tribes and political parties can dance.
I have not been to Rwanda, and had, until 2015, sworn never to travel there. After all,I had told myself who wants to live among the dead! Even if I refused to believe the images of the genocide as brought to us by CNN, Al Jazeera and BBC in the fateful 1994 genocide, I could not fail to imagine what type of war it could be whose handling was the only blot on the image o
‘The Unexpected’
A shift in dissonance came when Rwandair flew into Accra. Unbelievable! To cap it all, I listened to Citi FM’s Breakfast Show this week, and the change became total. Was it an African country they were describing!
No slum in Kigali, the capital?
No street-children?
You get a receipt for everything you buy, including sachet water!
It takes a few days to register land to do business!!
(Above all – for me): No littering.
What accounts for the change today which even moderates refer to as a miracle? Even non-Rwandans have a word or two in praise of Paul Kagame. But is it really Kagame? Would anybody else not succeed in the type of “democracy” he has created and is practising – one described by human rights organisations as "marked by increasing political repression and a crackdown on free speech".
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Ghanaian reaction
The reaction of many Ghanaians when the case of Rwanda is brought up is the same as when mention is made of Singapore and Malaysia. Description of their rate of progress is always in superlatives. But people cringe, others pause to reflect when it is pointed out that these are countries that have come under near one-man rule. We in Ghana know what it means to come under the hand of a dictator. Our very national anthem is a prayer to God to “help us to resist oppressor’s rule”.
I was very young when Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown and I saw the naked joy on the faces of people. The many strikes by professional bodies in the SMC rule, especially between 1976 and 1978, were not in protest against economic hardships; they were the actions of Ghanaians who were resisting an oppressor. By 1990, Jerry John Rawlings had descended from a Junior Jesus to one of Ghana’s most oppressive tyrants. People could not wait to see the back of him.
Ghanaian paradox
Paradoxically, many Ghanaians admire the achievements of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew who is reputed to have transformed that country from a Third World status to a First World, but we do not add that he ruled from 1959 through 1990 – and with what some describe as an iron fist. Malaysia’s Mahathir Muhammed is also cited with some degree of awe. Should it matter that he enjoyed an unbroken rule for 12 years?
Is that what we need in Ghana? To answer this question, ask yourself: What did the length of rule under Acheampong and Rawlings do for us?
So, what is the problem with Ghana? It has become a mantra to speak of our natural endowments. We have it all, including brainy intellectuals. Ever heard people describe something as not being “rocket science”? Meaning, that rocket science by far, the highest peak of human intellectual capacity in science. For our information, dear readers, Ghana has (at least) two rocket scientists in America. They work at NASA to send people off to space. One of them is credited with being the first African to command a spacecraft in orbit. Professor Francis Allotey of Ghana has a universally accepted scientific theory (Like Archimedes Theory) credited him.
So what does Ghana need to change? Is it leadership?
Here is my definition of leadership. We may not be able to prevent natural disasters, like outbreak of meningitis; but how fast do we react to prevent its death toll from reaching epidemic proportions? That, for me is government. Governments that cannot solve the sanitation problem are not worth the name.
If you cannot solve sanitation, you can’t solve anything else. You are not government if, for more than one decade there are citizens who see nothing wrong with selling cooked food near overflowing public toilets; citizens who live, not in poverty but in filth and squalid conditions.
Anybody, even a Class Six pupil, knows that we have to build clinics; and he will go for loan to build clinics. But why are the people still easing themselves into drains and at beaches to create illness? Anybody can go for loans to build schools, but what is school when none of the country’s many universities, especially the science-based ones, also sleep in darkness?