KB Asante: Voice From Afar column

A Journalist asked me why the abolition of international slavery should be commemorated on  December 2.  I said I was in favour of remembering unpleasant past events provided we take advantage of the commemoration to understand what happened and the light it throws on present events.

Take the abolition of the Slave Trade itself as an example.  At school we learnt about the heroic work of non-Africans like Wilberforce.  As Africans we get the impression that only non-Africans can help us out of our difficulties and unsavoury plight.  The history books we read at school did not tell us about the fight against slavery by African pastors like Sam Shorte of Jamaica or the Haitian revolution of 1791 to 1804.  French troops were defeated but the fruits of slavery and subjugation were too attractive to abandon.  Development in Haiti was thwarted from outside and this much explains the sorry state of the country today.

Slavery was followed by colonialism which in its later years was justified on the humanitarian grounds of helping the colonial people to abolish cruel and violent practices and to assist them to adopt democracy.  We need not be confused by learned treatises about colonialism.  Colonialism did not promote the self-confidence of the African.  The inferior mind-set sown by the slave trade persisted. Abolition of the slave trade is not enough.  The mind should be emancipated from the debilitating vestiges of slavery and colonialism.

And how do we go about this? We need to be educated to understand and believe in ourselves and be proud of ourselves.  To bleach our skin to be like the slave owners and imperialists is a sorry acceptance of inferiority.

Education should make us understand the past.  Text-books about the slave trade and the colonial era should reveal economic and social motivations and truthfully tell of the part Africans played.  We may then better know ourselves and come to understand our own social and economic practices.  We should know why we want free compulsory education for the young today.  If a 12-year-old roams the streets during school hours we should charge the parents for negligence and not jump to the conclusion that the young roam the street because they are hungry and have no uniforms or sanitary towels.  We should not swallow foreign-inspired suggestions without observation and thinking.  We should certainly feed the young not to entice them to go to school but because malnutrition affects their mental development.

The education system is under serious strain.  English, the official language and supposed lingua franca, is not spoken or understood by the majority, including the many who left school at 16.  And we the adults who believe we are educated are developing our own English which would raise eyebrows at the UN and other international fora.  We say and write “He went to THE Adisadel College” instead of saying “He went to Adisadel College’.  We say and write “The people THAT demonstrated were not all Trade Unions”.  People instinctively copy from those expected to know and so very soon we shall speak our own English which would question our competence and undermine our confidence outside Ghana.

Meanwhile, some of our television stations roll out news with affected unintelligible accents.  And yet not long ago we had our Hammonds, Amamoos and Ghartey Tagoes who were snatched by foreign stations.  Recently, we had Dumor who made Ghanaians proud by his verbal command of the English language which he spoke as a Ghanaian without affectation.  The command of the English language is improved by the example of such Ghanaians.  But when anything goes and standards of writing and speaking are mutilated, education suffers a nose dive.  Let society therefore accord high respect not to those with money but to the learned and accomplished and education will improve.

Meanwhile, we should carefully examine the educational system.  We should impart a Ghanaian character to all who go to school.  The Ghanaian should leave school with confidence in himself or herself and with the belief that the government and institutions of Ghana and not foreign entities can fulfil the aspirations of Ghanaians.  Education should help jettison the burdens of the past and make Ghana great and strong to render its true contribution to the progress of the global village.  Commemoration of events and episodes like the slave trade would then be useful.