Which description fits us?
How does a country qualify to be described as “small”, and if described as small, is it meant to be complimentary or derogatory?
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This is the question I have been ruminating on for the past few days as I have tried to understand how our country suddenly became an attractive destination for a certain type of person in the criminal justice system.
This past week, the people of Ghana discovered that our country has been hosting three notorious men; two of them, Guantanamo detainees, Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih are in our midst, courtesy of a deal struck between our government and the government of the United States, and a third, Arthur Simpson-Kent, who is described as being wanted for the murder of his partner and their two children in the United Kingdom.
Since our own government chose to be extremely economic with the details of the agreement made with the Americans that brought the two men to Ghana, we have all been reduced to having to rely on the foreign media to find out what is happening in our country. I apologise that this business of relying on the foreign media to find out what goes on in Ghana seems to be a running theme of everything
I write these days. Unfortunately, it happens to be true.
Guantanamo detainees
A clip from the American news channel, Fox News, on the subject of the Guantanamo detainees has a journalist explaining the what, who, where and why of the story to the American audience. She tells her interviewer the two men are being taken to “Ghana, a small nation in Africa”. She adds for emphasis that countries like Ghana who take in Guantanamo detainees do not take the decision, “out of the goodness of their hearts”.
I was intrigued by this description of “Ghana, a small nation in Africa” and I went back to investigate how the American commentators described us the last time Ghana took centre stage in United States foreign affairs.
The time was July 2009 and a certain Barack Obama, the newly elected President was making his first visit to Africa and he had chosen Ghana as the place to go. American officials couldn’t praise
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Ghana highly enough: A working democracy, thriving economy, an example to the rest of the continent; these and many more were the phrases used to describe Ghana at the time.
We were the envy of the continent; it wasn’t the most populous or the biggest economy or the most popular tourist destination in Africa that was chosen. Our Nigerian cousins couldn’t contain their anger;
Obama pointedly left out Kenya, the home of his father and the embarrassment there was palpable. No one described us as “Ghana, a small nation in Africa”.
And yet back in 2009, six months into the new Mills/Mahama administration, the landmass of Ghana was the same as it is today. Indeed, with a total area of 239,460 square kilometres. Ghana is about the size of the United Kingdom and I have never heard that country described as a small nation in Europe. The description of ‘small’ has nothing to do with the size of the population either; Ghana’s population is slightly more than Australia and nobody would ever describe Australia as ‘small’.
Fugitive from Britain
In the midst of the story about the Guantanamo detainees comes the story of someone who was being sought for the murder of his partner and their two young sons in the UK. It is probably difficult for the rest of the world, particularly the tabloid newspaper-reading public of the UK to appreciate that most of us in Ghana have never seen a single episode of East Enders and that sad as it might be, the name of Sian Blake, a famous East Enders actress, the person who was murdered, rings no bells for us here in Ghana.
When her alleged murderer shows up in Ghana, we are bemused to find ourselves making the headlines of all the British newspapers. Like the Guantanamo detainees, I wondered what the Ghana connection was; since there had been no description of the wanted man being Ghanaian. Usually, the British tabloid newspapers do not hesitate to point out the Ghanaian connection, however tenuous, of any person involved in any criminal activity in the UK.
One of the British newspapers kindly illustrated their story with the biodata page of a Ghanaian passport said to belong to the man in question, Arthur Simpson-Kent. They then try to give some idea to their readers of this place, Ghana, a small nation in Africa, where the alleged murderer was found.
The British newspapers reported that he was discovered in the beach resort and fishing village of Busua, which got electricity and running water only in the 1990s. (The story would have read so much better if the hideout had no water or electricity, and no one there had ever heard of the Internet, and the natives lived in caves, but the readers are alerted to the fact that such signs of civilisation as water and electricity only arrived in the village in the 1990s).
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry but I became thoroughly alarmed when I found a report in one newspaper that even though Arthur Simpson-Kent arrived at Kotoka International Airport on December 19, he had stated on his arrival form that he had arrived on December 7, 2015.
Dodgy deals
Suddenly, that did it for me. It dawned on me exactly what it meant when we are described as “Ghana, a small African nation”. It has nothing to do with landmass, nothing to do with population. Of the 54 countries in Africa, Ghana ranks at number 31 in terms of landmass, and in terms of population, Ghana ranks at number 12. It probably has something to do with having a small GDP but not very much.
But what it does mean is that you are a country where people can cut dodgy immigration deals and allow very dodgy people into your country. A fugitive can arrive at the international airport and write whatever date he chooses on his arrival form, and is allowed entry on the payment of a small fee.
It describes a country where the government can make a deal with the US government to take in two notorious Yemeni Guantanamo detainees and not feel under any obligation to make public the terms of the deal, most probably on the receipt of a small fee.
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It describes a country where the advertised democracy is not working. I doubt President Obama would dream of making the kind of deal he has made with our President Mahama without informing the leadership of Congress at the very least. President Obama might want to recall the Ghana that he visited back in 2009, which he described in such glowing terms and wonder if it sounds like the current one.
You can tell it is a different Ghana because working democracies don’t make dodgy deals. And it’s been a long time since we were described as a thriving economy.
Editor’s note:
President John Mahama, in a press conference yesterday, said the country received nothing in accepting the Guantanamo Bay detainees.