“Akufo-Addo sold the country to the United States of America for 20 million dollars, and his lame excuse is that his hands are tied? That the last administration had already committed Ghana to the deal? That there was nothing he could do about it? Did he attend class one? If your hands are tied, and there’s nothing you can do, why is the United States looking for you to extend the contract? They need your signature (your hand to sign a document) but there’s nothing you can do? What a tool!”
NTOABOMA—Remarkable events often expose and shape the nature and character of nations. More than a hundred years ago, America fought a Civil War to abolish the enslavement of Africans, who mostly passed through Ghanaian forts and castles. But the ensuing promise of liberty for all Americans has since that war been stamped out of African American lives by the very Federal Government, which reneged on more than the promise made to Blacks, of forty acres and a mule. America is still stooped in the barbarism of police brutality on African American lives and the mass incarceration of Black men—a new Jim Crow. The character of America is exposed in that remarkable event of a civil war—that is a nation of violent hypocrites—and their violence upon Black Bodies continues to shape the nature of the Federal Government of the United States of America at home and abroad.
Since it is through the coasts of Ghana that most African Americans passed to the Americas, the violence they have suffered since slavery, since emancipation and since the American civil war is inextricably linked with the character of the nation now called Ghana (since 1957).
How? One has to first ask the question—why was it possible that a small territory like Ghana managed to control more than eighty percent of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade? What chiefs, what oligarchs, what alliances, what systems of government enabled the longest run of European barbarism on African soil? It is when one begins to unearth how certain clans, chiefs, oligarchs and families illegally leased traditional coastal lands to European slave trading nations (like Little Britain), for the building of European forts and castles that one gets a little closer to the truth of Ghana’s slave trading terrorist families, clans and chiefs.
This truth is inextricably linked to a new contract that Mr. Akufo-Addo, the president of Ghana, has signed with the government of the United States of America to expand military operations in Ghana. This contract, in much the same way that the forts and castles of slave traders were built on the Ghanaian coasts in the past, has no direct sign of a foreign military outpost in Ghana, but has signs of a foreign military activity expansion in Ghana that only mimics a foreign military outpost. It is another way to say to the president of Ghana, Mr. Akufo-Addo, who boasts of a law degree but who upon scrutiny is unable to produce one, that when a slave trader proposes to build a castle on your coast they do not have to say what it is, or for what purpose it will be used. Pirates do not boast of the obvious. If they did they will be unable to loot.
More, it is incomprehensible that Mr. Akufu-Addo, in an address to the nation, makes several silly mistakes. For instance, he berates those like myself for asking the obvious in a manner more akin to praising America, at the expense of dissenting Ghanaians. He claims Ghanaians with any righteous indignation against the American contract are people “who secretly wallow in the largesse of the United States of America while at the same time promote anti-American sentiment to a populist constituency.” It is as if he actually meant to claim that all Ghanaians, including himself, really have no right to question the deal because we wallow together, in American largesse.
Of what American largesse is Akufo-Addo speaking? Is this perhaps a Freudian slip? The president of Ghana then turns around in the same breath to speak of a democracy that clearly enjoys American largesse at the expense of ordinary citizens. He claimed it “is difficult to understand that such people, knowing what they do know, will go about so blatantly to confuse people and go as far as calling for the overthrow of our democracy.”
There is one thing the president is confused about: he confuses his oligarchic democracy of the few and chosen (like himself), in which he enjoys American largesse and gives the Yankees whatever they want, with another kleptocratic democracy of thieves, in which his opposition enjoys American largesse and feigns indignation. But there is one more democracy that the blackface politicians of Ghana and the Blackface president (who all may well be the new faces of the descendants of the erstwhile slave trading families of the Gold Coast) are unable to grasp—my democracy, in which Ghana engages in genuine diplomacy, cooperates with the world and does not unilaterally grant a single nation the sole military right to build what is in many respects a military base in Ghana.
In my democracy, all Ghanaians have an inalienable right to question clandestine deals and to show dissent without rebuke. In my democracy, there is only one deal that is good for Ghana and all Ghanaians: one that does not remind the populace of the violence of Kunyowu (Ewe for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which literally means ‘death is better’). The democracy for which our Ancestors fought and died is one that grants the people a non-negotiable sovereignty—a sovereignty that does not yield to a nation with the character of a United States of America, where the enslavement and violence on Blacks continues to reign supreme.
The blackfaced president has American largesse is in his ear and tightly wrung around his brains. To him it is unheard of to question an agreement with his great United States of America. Do you remember? After three unsuccessful attempt to win the presidency, his inaugural speech when he was was stolen verbatim from American presidents.
This is the president who swore an oath to protect is from domestic and foreign enemies. Domestically he has armed party vigilantes to cause mayhem and now we have the great United states of America to arm and train our soldiers. This means, we have to buy the only armament our soldiers are trained to use (more import of US arms) and we have to fight the way we have been trained (by US). Simply we have to fight at the command to the the US. What are we now? Puppet army of the United States.
Yea. You are a puppet of Facebook.
Narmer, just technically( without holding brief for anybody) in the current geopolitical scheme of things, can my people Israel begin to indict those ten clans whose fathers sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt? And can black people consider that the Arab/Muslim countries now occupying the Maghreb and Sahel of their continent in clear violation of Mohamed’s ban on jihad against Africa because we only gave all Islam’s prophets and their families (especially his own) nothing short of asylum, refuge and sanctuary when they needed it most, consider that we have no such Arab/Islamic bases on our continent? Beyond the myth of Afro-Arab solidarity, where else but in the western and Israeli military are there black people that can identify with retaking their continent for its original inhabitants? Do Farrakhan or Nkrumah speak to that anywhere?
Ebenezer Nii Amu First-quao, the vast majority of Maghrebians are Arabic-speaking Berbers. They’re not settlers from Arabia. Virtually all the ruling dynasties such as the current Moroccan one all fabricated Arab genealogies or claimed descent from Prophet Muhammad or his close associates to legitimize their dynasties. What happened in the Maghreb was really a language shift.
Read Chouki Hamel ‘s Black Morocco:A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (Cambridge, 2012) and Bruce Hall’s A History of Race in Muslim West Africa (Cambridge, 2011).
I really don’t see how invading Muslim Arab armies from a sparsely populated Arabia will replace Egyptians and Maghrebians (Berbers). Where did the Berbers go then? Virtually every Arabic and/or Berber-speaking Moroccan or Algerian or Sarahwi, or Tunisian or Mauretanian or Libyan today is a Berber.
Errrm, just about 12 % of captives actually left the Gold Coast for the Americas in the entire history of the Atlantic slave trade. Most captives passed through the so-called Slave Coast (togo, Benin, southwestern Nigeria ), the Bights of Benin and Biafra and West Central Africa (Cameroon down to Angola) check the http://www.slavetradedatabase.
Thank you for the fact-checking, and granted, but you understand that that is not the point of the essay right?
Narmer Amenuti I understood your essay very well. But the idea that most blacks in the Americas are descended from captives who passed through the Gold Coast is too deeply engrained in Ghana and among black American tourists/pilgrims who visit the forts and castles
I believe it is true that most came through the Gold Coast! But that is another essay – a debate about numbers and from where. For now we deal with the import of the topic, which is that Akufo-Addo may have descended from a slave selling family. This is a ghost that continues to haunt the country. It must be expunged.
I can quote u a 1000 books to disprove u. See we know so much about the slave trade since 1969. We know virtually all the 36,000 voyages and their embarkation and disembarkation points, names of captains, number of human cargo etc. It’s no debate really lol
And as for the military agreement thing , I don’t support it.
You keep beating about the bush. The topic at hand is a simple one: Akufo-Addo sold the country and his lame excuse is that his hands are tied? Did he attend class one? If your hands are tied, why do they need your signature (your hand to sign a document)? Is he an idiot?
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.
Wake up. You are nobody’s slave.
Quit romanticising your fears. The past must be a guide, not a prison.
Even those who were chained and slave-traded are embracing the liberty of self in a clowd of crowds.
Wake up! Playing victim is not emancipating.
Whining is not a plan. Connect with the world, it is inevitable, but have a firewall with YOUR protection settings.
Your mind is yours to manage. In there lies the realities or facades of who you choose to be.
Banish your fears or live them alone.
He who glories in a victim mindset is a slave of his own plantation.
I know why the caged bird sings.
With all due respect Kwaku Bio, who’s romanticizing fears? Someone has given another nation free will to roam in my country without being subject to the same laws as all Ghanaians, I complain about it and you say I am romanticizing fears?
The African American men in jail, decaying away in New York jail cells for crimes they did not commit, or for crimes all others are freely committing in Colorado, are romanticizing fears? I am romanticizing the slave trade?
I have a president who just sold Ga-lands to a US Military base for 20 million dollars. Which is illegal. The government of Ghana has no constitutional right to unilaterally assign Ga-lands to a foreign military without the permission of the Ga-Chiefs, unless the land is to be used by the Ghana government itself.
Frankly, I don’t know why we are not speaking of impeachment!
Frankly, you should lead a crusade for impeachment of the state.
Who granted land to all the embassies and high-commissions? Ga Chiefs?
Invite the African American men to relocate to Africa to escape New York’s jails. Wishing you luck!
What needs curing may be a deep-seated “need to be loved” syndromme which makes free men obliged to feel like slaves to other free men, in their own minds.
When a man’s shadow is his enemy, no light can cure him of his maladies.
No nation is a permanent friend nor permanent foe of another. All in the comity of nations navigate an ocean of interests, to maximise their own.
Unless we are afraid of rounding up our own people again, and trading them as chattel to foreigner merchants again, I aver we are still masters of our own ship, no matter which pirates we have spying on board.
Feeling helpless is not a plan.
Self-deprecation is not a virtue.
FEAR is not who we ought to be . . . unless we are too busy to keep our heads out of water.
As a ma thinketh, so is he.
Who has said America is an enemy. America can become a viable partner. For now it is a bully if according to Akufo-Addo they have tied his hands! What partner, friend, ties the hands of another friend?
But thanks for being the psychic. You read my palms and thanks for the encouraging words for those of us who are bleeding with fear that Akufo-Addo may have opened the doors to a new beginning: where they (the new elite) can begin selling us poor folks again into American slavery in a new way, however way that they can. Thanks!
Very disappointing !
So Us citizens , journalists, academicians , diplomats who have criticized this unequal one sided agreement are also “anti american”!
What thought process is this ?
So we as citizens dont have the right to disagree with a policy ? We must be labelled .
I thought we were practising democracy?
The idea that ” my “lilypad”
is going to be different”
is even so arrogant beyond belief !
There is a template of the US defense department for “lily pads ”
We are not the only country in Africa where they have been set up .
It’s a shame some of these people think the country belongs only to them.
We must remain non Alligned . Did US policy in the north of Africa create these problems 8 years ago when Col Gaddafi was overthrowned ?,