Politics: The cruel use of our youth as livestock feed
Fodder refers to food for livestock. A cannon was a huge gun-on-wheels used in war hundreds of years ago. Cannon fodder is used to describe the use of soldiers in the days of the cannon as nothing more than "food" to be consumed in war.
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It sounds so unbelievably cruel and unconscionable today but in the days when cannons were used in battle “cannon fodder soldiers” were used for “human wave attacks”, where vast masses of poorly armed and poorly trained soldiers were sent in a charging attack whose sole purpose was to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers rather than superior military strategy and strength.
Today, there are those politicians who use young people as cannon fodder in the battle for political power. Party youth invariably make up the mass of combatants in political and election-related violence, whether it be internal party violence or violence between political parties.
The country’s youth are certainly not incapable of independent thought or action but the frequency with which the youth are portrayed in news reports as chronically disposed to violence and vandalism, suggests their frequent use by politicians and other vested interests for the achievement of selfish and sometimes not too wholesome sectarian goals.
The words ‘the youth’ and sometimes ‘irate youth’ {of such-and-such a place}, are typically followed by the words ‘went on the rampage’, ‘blocked the road and burnt tyres’ , ‘have vandalised’, ‘have threatened to’, ‘have given so-so-and-so five days to…or else’, ‘have locked out’ etc.
As a result, they are most likely to suffer fatal casualties in case of a full-blown operation to force order in times of political and communal violence.
Criminal mobilisation of the youth to violence
It is criminal to use people in this way but the current pursuit of past political leaders to make them answer charges of instigating genocidal civil wars does not appear to deter politicians in many African countries.
The possible consequences of the corrupting influence of some leading politicians on the youth of this country could be dire if those adults playing such dangerous games with the youth are allowed free rein.
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Apart from young people’s hope for material reward, politicians are easily able to manipulate the youth because unemployment, insufficient educational opportunities, social marginalisation and exclusion and flawed or non-existent youth development policies disillusion the youth and increase the chances of their engaging in violence to vent their frustration, seize control of situations and make an impact on national affairs.
In the case of Ghana, many of the young people politicians exploit as tools of violence for the achievement of political goals are typically unemployed, restless young people, some with a very misguided understanding of partisan politics, who amid the nation’s economic difficulties and high unemployment rates, think by associating themselves with the country’s two leading parties, they may have a social and economic umbrella to take refuge under. They also hope to be offered jobs if a party they so back comes to power.
Some subversive politicians keep giving party youth the impression that anyone who does not belong to a rival party must be despised and kept at arm’s length.
Machete, stone and club wielding party supporters
Secretly mobilising large numbers of young people to go on the rampage for the achievement of whatever political goal before, during or after an election always has its dangers.
We came frighteningly close to bloody chaos the last time protesters went to demonstrate outside the offices of the Electoral Commission (EC): machete, stone and club-wielding party supporters rampaged through parts of Accra and others besieged the EC’s strong room.
This is not to cast the youth of the country as easily lending themselves to such exploitation and to violence: Without a doubt, there are many well-brought up, disciplined, intelligent and sober youth with demonstrated good human and leadership qualities who will inherit the leadership of Ghana when the present generation of political leaders is gone.
The snag is that the unruly and undisciplined youth who are very active in partisan politics today would by then have graduated into another breed of ill-motivated politicians and make those in authority sheer hell in the name of politics.
As a matter of fact, some of them have long graduated and are being deployed to wreak havoc on political opponents during radio phone-in programmes, in the print media and to a lesser degree on television.
With the advent of social media, some politicians have found that technology easily lends itself to patronage by large numbers of youth who can be deployed on the Internet to wreak another kind of violence against political enemies.
Party attack-and-maul dogs on social media
Such politicians have turned the youth who use the social media and Internet forums into ferocious party attack-and-maul dogs and launched them into cyberspace to discourage the expression of dissenting opinion and abuse political opponents.
When some of their nation’s accomplished political leaders, academics, scholars, clergy, traditional rulers and senior citizens express their views on matters of state and political events in Ghana and these are published on the Internet, these young people subject them to insults and vile abuse. Some of this breed in the service of political parties and some politicians who cannot spell “is”, “it” or “this’ let alone make sense of an intellectual’s argument, spend the whole day doing this. Their favourite insults are ‘stupid’ “idiot”, “baboon”, “fool”, ‘monkey” etc. with generous doses of ethically motivate hate communication. Visit Ghanaweb at the peak of the emerging election campaign.
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The arrest this week of young Jones Kyei Nyarko who threatened in a posting on Facebook to kill the new United Stated Ambassador to Ghana, is however a warning that the anonymity sometimes associated with social media cannot be guaranteed for young people engaged to perpetuate verbal and psychological violence on the Internet.
Ghana’s two leading and bitterly opposing political parties must promote a sense of discipline, nationalism and integrity among party youth ahead of national elections when young people are more likely to be exploited for the perpetuation of political violence.
It is the very height of absurdity for power-hungry politicians to ever imagine that all 25 million of us would without exception subscribe to the same political philosophy and vote for the same party.
Website: www.sydneyabugri.com/Web
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