What is hard work? Does it mean killing yourself under the heat of the sun to cultivate one more acre of corn? Does it imply that one must continue in the daily ritual of burning the midnight oil to read/memorize/write one more book? Does hard work mean walking to work when your car breaks down or yet, and still, walking to work when you know well that the storm is coming? Does hard work mean praying one more hour for miracles?
What is hard work? And why do so many people believe they work so hard yet have little to show for it?
For someone like me, who takes the affairs of individual men less seriously than the affairs of groups of men, of communities and of nations, the more pertinent question is: What do we mean when we say a nation is hardworking?
Hard work is whatever men [must] do to protect their freedoms and to protect the freedoms of their homes. Hard work is what defines the sovereignty of a man and his home. A man who can protect his home is hardworking. A man who can defend his home and attack his attacker is a hard worker!
For instance, maintaining your freedom by any means is hard work. Defensive violence is hard work. Reacting violently to violence against you is hard work. At the national level, hard work is what a nation [must] do to protect its freedoms and its sovereignty. A nation must defend itself from violence: if attacked, it must attack back! A nation is defined by the fruits of its labor (hard work).
A nation that is not able to defend its freedoms from other nations is simply a failed nation. A nation that does not seek vengeance is not a nation! Look at it this way: A man who is not able to defend his home from being pillaged by other men (pirates) is a failed man. And if he cannot revenge his misfortune, he is completely castrated! Call it mishap, but mishap is a part of failure. A pillaged home is a failed home. A home that cannot support itself is a failed home. Further, a home that is not revenged is completely forgotten. A nation that cannot support itself is a failed state. A pillaged nation is a failed nation. A nation that does not seek to revenge itself is easily forgotten.
More specifically, a man who cannot protect his freedoms and the freedoms of his loved ones is not hardworking. A nation with 13,000 troops, incapable of defending the nation against a ragtag invader is not hardworking. For instance, Ghanaians are not hardworking since ultimately, hard work must be realized in the production of a weapon that can protect and maintain the freedoms of all Ghanaians. Ghana does not have a military plan capable of defending Ghanaians against USAFRICOM.
Our elites, largely made up of those more educated than their ancestors (the Metha), do not understand the meaning of hard work. That hard work manifests ultimately as utter and defensive vengeance! Our elites don’t understand that their job is to convert all the nations hard work – all the nations fish, yam, gold and cocoa – into something as tangible as to guarantee Ghana’s freedoms: they do not understand that hard work must manifest like a great weapon. They do not understand that they must seek vengeance ultimately for how others have treated us in the past. That’s it. Our elites do not understand the meaning of hard work. So with them, we suffer poor until we are completely forgotten!
But we now have “constitutional democracy” under whose banner all our rights are guaranteed as well as protected… and by extension our “individual freedoms”… or at least this is the dogma being openly sold by a myriad of NGOs, “advocacy groups” and “think tanks” in many parts of the continent… that the days of petty paternalistic protectionism are long behind us and we are now free (from the shackles of backwardness) to strive for our individualistic pursuit of happiness…
But for all its good intentions democratic freedoms have not translated to economic empowerment especially for men. And as we gave up control of our resources to foreign economic plunder, from the colonial days to the present, our sense of musculinity took a beating as the men in the local communities increasingly found it harder to provide.
If African men are to begin to reclaim their place in this society they have no recourse but to address their seeming helplessness in the face of foreign economic subjugation. Above all else, the reality of our times is showing that we must stop living our fates and our thinking to “Jesus”…it hasn’t worked in the last 100 yrs of foreign domination and it definitely won’t work in the next 100 to come… for Jesus is the real face of our collective emasculation as African society.