China Colonialises Ghana over fois gras

As we pulled into the tiny obscured driveway of our favourite restaurant in Ghana the other night for a predictably lovely supper, we were flanked on both sides by two heavily armed, camouflaged soldiers.

We didn’t expect that.

We also didn’t expect the four police cars and long black limos with tinted windows that filled the parking lot with their ominous presence and a disturbing but electric energy. The feeling that something important was about to happen.

As a sliver of gravel was found by the security guards for our car, we emerged hesitantly, and noticed the suited Chinese robot-types standing strategically around the lot. It was like an Asian replica of an American presidential security force.

It turned out that Ghana’s Vice President was meeting some Chinese foreign officials for a discussion over supper, and they happened to have good taste.

They dominated the space and the energy of the evening, as politicians and others with overblown egos tend to do – the entourage on both sides, ensuring their heavy presence was known and felt.

So throughout our supper, between my goat cheese and honey rocket salad and peppery yet creamy Portuguese chicken livers, I pondered the three Chinese guys standing outside, through the window in the front garden.

I thought about what the supper on the other side of the dining room really meant. I wondered what deals were being sealed over Cabernet Sauvignon and sole meuniere. I also thought it strange – important men from two cultures, both with strong and defined cuisines, choosing to dine together in another totally foreign restaurant…

Witnessing that meeting just brought home to me what I’ve been reading about and seeing from afar for years in Ghana – the slow undercurrent of Chinese stronghold in Africa. The new colonization in progress.


I thought it strange, when a few months ago we noticed the team of labourers who were busily erecting the colossal new Ministry of Defense building (funded entirely by a $50m grant from China), in Accra. They were all Chinese! In Ghana! Pushing wheelbarrows and heaving loads of cement.




You had to ask yourself why on earth there would be a need to import unskilled Chinese labourers to do grunt work in a developing country where the unemployment rate hovers around 71%!!!

A few years ago, China fronted $622m for the Bui Dam project in Ghana - and imported 500 workers from China at that time as well.

The stories about China’s extreme generosity toward Africa and specifically Ghana are abounding.

But the real question is what lies behind the grants and loans and projects.

The truth is that China stands to benefit, and indeed is already benefiting far more than Ghana. Government policies are bent and stretched and molded to facilitate China’s aims.

Ghana currently imports more from China than any other country in the world.
“From 2000 to 2008, China’s exports to Ghana increased manifold from $93 million to $1,512 million.” Something like 1500% increase?! I sense a trend here…

In terms of trade, Ghana exports raw materials like cocoa, gold cotton and timber at less than $50m per annum to China, while imports of cheap Chinese electronics, textiles, plastics etc. flood the market and threaten the precarious position of local manufacturers and merchants.

And China’s eye is on the big prize. Oil. China is only second to the USA in terms of oil consumption in the world, and large offshore deposits of oil have been discovered off Ghana’s coast in the past few years… a match made in heaven?

Recently a consortium of Chinese companies (CNOOC) out bid Exxon Mobil for a share in Ghana’s oil exploration. They allegedly added a $2billion concessionary loan to the Ghana Government, to help increase it’s infrastructure in gold exploration.

So they have secured their place and guaranteed China’s position to reap the rewards as the oil starts to flow.

Ghana’s professor George Ayittey, interviewed this week on TV3, warned that:

“Barter deals with China - in which China sets the rules - have a huge potential for graft and corruption. Everybody should be able to see exactly how much Africa is getting from the deal.”

Despite CNOOC’s dismal track record for human rights, environmental protection and general lack of experience, they now have a foothold and Ghana’s new oil business.



I wonder if the Vice President, having shaken hands with his Asian counterparts, then washed his French supper down with the bittersweet wine of his country’s impending colonialization.

Controversial - Obruni tears down Ghana and builds it up again

I am sure I will take alot of heat for posting this article - but it was truly interesting, thought provoking and it crudely tears open the wounds that neither Africa nor the West want to face...

A Ghanaian colleague of mine found this article on a popular news and editorial website here called Modern Ghana, written by a British man who lives in Ghana (who I have somehow managed not to meet)...

Please read the whole thing, before making sweeping judgments... by the end, the guy has come full circle on his appreciation of Ghana.

Happy reading! For those of you who really know Ghana - what do you make of this?

“What do you want in Ghana? Go back to your country!”

Are you the kwasia (idiot) who shouted this at me yesterday from your taxi while I was minding my own business and waiting for my tro-tro at Presby junction? What made you come out with such an exclamation? Was it just too much apio (akpeteshi - local moonshine), or do you have a matter you want to discuss with me? Have you been to aborokyire (abroad) yourself and learnt only the bad things from there, like racism and anti-social behaviour? Did you witness my brothers sticking pickaxes in your brothers' heads, simply for having the audacity to possess beautiful black skin, and has this made you want to treat all non-Ghanaians with a similar contempt? Why didn't you come back when I asked you “woye hwan?” and signalled you to “bra!” (come), so that we could continue the conversation? I wanted to know what warranted such an uncalled-for verbal attack, and to ask you why you are so keen for me to go back to my country. As you were too much of a coward to stop the car and allow me to answer, I am forced to write my reply down and publish it on the web for you. Your provocation will not make my readers happy- this article isn't going to be quite as positive as the rest.

SEBE.
I might have retorted by telling you that I can't go back to my country because the UK has been taken over by millions of African immigrants, asylum seekers and illegal workers, leaving no jobs, houses or white girls left for the obroni. I'll go back to my country if you can remove all the Ghanaians from there first. Or, perhaps I should have laid the blame for my continued presence here on the procrastination and incompetence of your empty-promise government, who invited me over here in 2007 for discussions that are still to be had (“The minister has travelled to South America to collect some more cocaine, the secretary will be with you as soon as she finishes playing Solitaire”). Perhaps you were just jealous of the injustice of our respective visa regulations and angry that it takes you ten times more money and a hundred times more documents to get a visa to my country than it does for me to get one to yours. Maybe out of the vexation your aboa (silly) question laid on me, I should have lied and answered that, like most foreigners, I'm here because it's so damn easy to deceive the black man and even easier to sleep with the black woman. Whichever reply I chose to use would have been an angry one: your unprovoked, out-of-the-blue comment from the safety of a speeding taxi really pissed me off. I wasn't in the mood to “fa wo adamfo” (make friends with you), buy you a Star and tell you the real reason why I'm here, which is because there's no waakye and nkati cake in aborokyire (abroad), and because the GHanja is a hundred times cheaper than the ganja. And don't you know that a true prophet is never recognised in his own country? Imagine if Jesus Christ had been told to shut up and go back to Bethlehem every time he went out to preach his Father's word.

Anyway, why do you have a problem with foreigners in your country? Don't you want us to bring in our dollars, pounds and Euros to help prop up your feeble economy? Does “Travel and See” only apply to Ghanaians struggling to get “inside”? Tourism is Ghana's third highest earner of the money you expect to magically appear in your pocket every day. The money's definitely not going to end up in your pocket if you permit the perpetuation of the paradox that the most loved tourist hang-outs, like the bambootastic Tawala Beach Resort in La and Kumasi's Four Villages Inn, are built and owned by foreigners. Your other big earners are begging the IMF/World Bank/International Donors for loans, and all your yahoo contacts and “bogga” friends and family for remittances. Doing something yourself to create wealth doesn't seem to strike you as being possible (and dozing in your kiosks and containers every day selling foreign crap to each other does NOT create wealth). If you do really want all the foreigners out of Ghana, do you want them to take all their foreign inventions and imports with them when they go? Should the Americans and Germans leave with all their cars which you sit in, should the Chinese tear up all their roads you drive on, and should the Japanese take back all their mobile phones you talk on? Do you want the Indians to leave too? How on Earth will you survive without all their razor blades, matches and biscuits? Your people will probably die of thirst if the Thais cancel all their deliveries of Vitamilk. You probably want the South Africans to head back south too, but you love their Accra Mall with its fancy apparel, expensive food and Hollywood movies, don't you? Let's also tell the Norwegians and Canadians to go back to their fjords and Rocky Mountains and take all their mining equipment with them, leaving you to dig up your own oil and gold with a stick. And just make sure that you can produce your own corned beef and rice before you kick out the Argentineans and Vietnamese, OK? Are you sure you are able to function as a 21st century citizen alone? You haven't even caught up with the 18th (toilet in every home), the 19th (electricity in every home), or the 20th (shoes on every child) yet. Should the British take back all their educational legacy, Eurocentric textbooks and Cambridge curriculum, leaving the black man to devise and implement his own more acceptable, appropriate and Afrocentric schooling system? (Well, actually, yes they should.)

The latter matter goes to show that, even though I thought you put your point across in a rather rude and very un-Ghanaian manner (you didn't even greet me first!), you are arguably correct. The white man has done nothing but rape, pillage and underdevelop bibiman (the black man) since he “discovered” it hundreds of years ago.



He tries to hide the fact that by that time it had already for thousands of years been the home of mighty empires, luxurious palaces, golden warrior kings, rich internal trade routes, and the world's first great universities, religions, civilisations and bushdoctors- a time when Europe was wallowing in Dark Age squalor and dying from bubonic plague. It's all gone downhill for Africa and uphill for Europe from then on: the white man should have been told to go home as soon as he arrived, just as strongly as you told me yesterday. Perhaps your forefathers should have had your same strong convictions back in 1471 and told the Portuguese to “Vai tomar no cu!” when all this kwasiasem began. Instead, they deferentially allowed them to build their dirty slave castle on Elmina's sacred ground in exchange for a few bags of shells and bottles of cheap whisky. Ayikoo (good going!). Why didn't your great-grandfather tell my great-grandfather to stick the Bond of 1844 up his sorry white ass, instead of sycophantically signing it, thereby forcing his own free black people to become subservient to some faraway white queen? In 1957 the “colonial master”, after making himself fat and rich through 300 years of slave dealing and 113 years of natural resource stealing, “granted” you independence of your own land. How noble and gracious of him. At the time, did your fathers follow your proud and outspoken example and cry foul over this “Mickey Mouse Independence”? Obviously they didn't, because Lucky Dube was still singing about such empty emancipations more than fifty years later.

That's one of the messages Kwame Nkrumah was trying to tell your predecessors before the CIA had him killed off. As well as Osagyefo, you have many more historical figures you can be proud of, who did stand up to the Imperialist immigrants, but can you tell me about some of them? Probably not- you didn't look very educated. Most schoolchildren should know the name of the Ejisu Queenmother who bravely defended the Golden Stool in 1901, but how many can name the Akwamu chief who whipped some Danish ass in 1693 to become the Governor of Christianborg Castle- the only African to ever gain such a status on the Gold Coast? Name the Asantehene (1720-50) who demanded that the Europeans set up factories and distilleries in Africa, instead of forcing his people to buy imported goods. When your son gets back from school tonight, ask him why MacCarthy Hill is called MacCarthy Hill, and what happened to MacCarthy before he became a hill. I'll pay his school fees for a year if he knows. The Ashantis should be proud of chopping off that white invader's head in 1824. But are your children learning about and celebrating these great people and moments in black history, so they will be inspired to become great themselves? Or are they just traipsing 5 miles to their dull little concrete schools every day so they can memorise some Babylonian nonsense in order to regurgitate for the BECE then forget it? More worrying still, where are today's freedom fighters and role models who will be the future inspiration for your children's children? Osofo Kantanka can't do it all by himself. Who is going to stand out from the crowd and make sure that Ghana 2050 is not just a photocopy of Ghana 2010 (only with more layers of plastic waste)? Your leaders will never achieve anything for you and your people by dressing in suits, flying in planes and attending conferences, Bretton Woods negotiations and HIPC summits. Don't tell me to go home to aborokyire, tell them to come back from there.

Perhaps you shouted at me to go back to my country because you also realise that no state which uses a foreign tongue as its official language has ever progressed, and no economy that relies on foreign aid, Structural Adjustment Programmes and 98% foreign trade has ever grown. Do you also agree that Africa can never develop until it breaks its dependence on the white man? Are you also aware that the West is deliberately keeping Africa poor so that they can remain rich? I can empathise with your point of view; you want the obroni to stop meddling in Mother Africa and allow her to go through her own agricultural and industrial revolutions, without which no developed country has ever been created. Next time you drive past your Vice-President, will you have the balls to shout at him that begging for Brazilian tractors is not the answer?

However, please don't make the assumption that all foreigners are wicked (only most of us). There are a handful of abrofo afrophiles with no hidden agenda who are here for positive reasons, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm one of them. I challenge you to charge me with any offence against Ghana (apart from the herbs, which I only use in my own home with a police officer present). I have never taken money, natural resources, state secrets, smuggled cocoa or trafficked children out of your country (but I do always return home with a suitcase full of Golden Tree chocolate and Mapouka Cream Liqueur: why are these delicious Ghanaian products never available overseas, but I can always buy overpriced European Mars Bars and Baileys here?) I am not one of these “foreign investors” who your government seems to love so much, despite the fact that even if these vampires invest a million dollars, they're going to suck out more than a billion in the future. I have no interest in profiteering from your people by owning a telecommunications company, Lebanese supermarket or Irish bar. I am not here to impose my English expertise on the primitive African. In fact, the opposite is true: I have learned more here about respect, personal relationships, spiritualism and good living than I gained from decades in Europe. I am not a paedophile or a batty boy. If you don't believe me, ask my wife. If you don't believe her, ask my girlfriend. I'm different to most Englishman in that I learn other people's languages, instead of expecting the whole world to speak mine. I've already written at length about the myriad reasons why I've chosen to leave my unfriendly country of birth and live in asomdweman, none of which I believe are detrimental to Africa. Quite to the contrary, I only want to lead a conscious life here and do as much as I can to help my beloved adopted country. That's why I'm writing this column- nobody's paying me for it, but I hear on the grapevine that a lot of people are “feeling” it. That's the only form of payment I desire. I'm also doing my utmost to bring more tourists to Ghana- if you and your friends would stop shitting on the beach, then I'm sure it would help to attract a lot more.

Of course, I agree with you that there are plenty of wicked, Godless, money-grabbing foreigners in Ghana who do deserve to be on the receiving end of your scathing attack, and I forgive you for getting me mixed up with one of them. They're the ones who are doing their best to keep Africa down, whether it be by stealing your oil, imposing the price of your cocoa, braindraining your best graduates, transplanting their “foreign expertise”, or forcing you to be generation after generation of hewers of wood and drawers of water. We refer to these neo-colonialists who are feeding off the dying remains of your continent as “white men vultures”. I'm sure you have heard the local appellation of “Obroni p3t3!” (white vulture) - I half expected you to add that one when you were shouting at me. Even though these people share my colour, they certainly don't share my principles, and I want to get them out of Ghana as much as you do. These people definitely do not deserve your country's Akwaaba (welcome). I can't wait for the day when Kofi Wayo becomes president- he promises to arrest all the Chinese vultures who are buying up your factories and farmlands and galamseying in your rivers, and send them all to the firing squad. With Blakk Rasta as his vice-president, there would be a similar fate in store for all the depraved sexual deviants who are coming here to rape your sons and daughters, and for all the crazy junkies who are flooding the country with their evil Colombia powder.

I might even go so far as to say that any foreigner in Ghana who is not a tourist, volunteer, charity worker, philanthropist, prophet, or anyone like Joseph Hill with a desire to help “bring back the money with the sign of the Lion on it and take back the money with the sign of the dragon on it” can be referred to as obroni p3t3. The businessmen, miners, foreign lenders, hoteliers, vehicle dealers and makers of porn movies are all here to enrich themselves at your expense, so I don't blame you for being angry when you see a white man in your country. Nor was I surprised when a Rasta man who didn't know I was one of his brethren shouted “Slave master!” at me as we passed recently. Rather, I'm surprised that I'm not at the receiving end of these anti-white sentiments more often, considering the brutal and exploitative way in which my forefathers have treated yours over the past 500 years.



I'm sick of hearing, when I reveal that I'm British; “Oh! Our colonial masters! We love you! You taught us everything we know!” If Ghana had colonised Britain and sold my ancestors into slavery, I don't think I would be so friendly to Ghanaians. So your outburst was actually a breath of fresh air. Maybe more Ghanaians should be like you and strive to kick the bad foreigners out- they're only going to continue downpressing you if you don't. But get out the car and talk to them first: there's a small chance that you might actually like them. Strangers are only friends who have never met.

Ian Utley is the author of
“Culture Smart! Ghana, the Essential Guide to Customs and Culture”

Today’s lesson in cultural imperialism

We have a couple of lovely visitors staying with us from the land down under. They were both raised on rural dairy farms and are quite down to earth.

I have been asking about the cultural relations between the Aboriginal population and those of European ancestry in Australia. Their perspective is quite honest and derived from personal experience as opposed to academic. They are not concerned with political correctness or viewing relations objectively. I find their candidness refreshing.

Last night I heard the following story: in the white farming community where our visitor *Pamela grew up, there was an Aboriginal grouping quite close by, living on what they called a ‘reserve’.

The story goes, that when one of the influential and well known Aboriginal chiefs died, the priest from Pamela’s village insisted that he officiate at the funeral, and ‘splashed out’ on a fancy, expensive coffin of hardwood and a plush interior for the chief.

After the funeral, the priest made a courtesy visit to the chief’s family some time later. What he found was that the body had been dug up and the children of the chief’s family were found in the coffin, splashing around in their makeshift bathtub.

Imagine the shock for the priest! I’m sure he was incredulous. To this date, the majority of whites assume that the people were simply ignorant, uncultured and ‘wild’…
_______________________________________________________________________________

So after Pamela’s narration of the story , I decided to investigate/research the beliefs and practices surrounding death and burial amongst Australia’s Aboriginal groups.

What I found cemented the notion I had about the blatant cultural/religious imposition.

Aboriginal groups have a completely different concept of what happens to body and soul after death and the traditional practices differ widely and wildly from the Christian conservatives who settled in these areas and proceeded to set up missions.

I found a highly detailed article online here (for those of you who might find this interesting), about the complicated funeral of an influential Aboriginal chief in 1997.

Basically, after a Christian funeral (to appease the ‘whitefellas’), the body is transported to a specially selected cave, removed from the coffin (which is simply a mode of carriage to the spot), and arranged on a high platform, protected from animals and exposed to drying wind.

After two years the bones are collected and ceremonially treated, and then presented to the family of the deceased in an elaborate ceremony of mourning and remembrance. Traditional belief sees the body being locked up in a box and sunk ‘six feet under’ as against the natural procession for body and soul.

Can’t blame them really…



Find here a very concise and well presented site on statistics regarding Aboriginal Australians.

*Any names of real people in this story have been changed to protect their identity.

From Mojos to the WWF - a lifetime of suspicion of religion

I’ve always had an incredibly suspicious view of religion. I guess we are all products of our upbringing to an extent, and neither of my parents were religious, despite the fact my father was raised a Catholic. There was no mention of God or church in my house, and it all seemed quite fine…

My first encounter with church was a mixed experience, and it went progressively downhill from there. Somehow at five years old I had been enrolled in Sunday school with a friend. The fun part was the bus that picked us up and dropped us off. We sang silly songs (which I’m sure were geared toward familiarizing us with the Lord’s word, but was utterly lost on me), and best of all they gave us little toffees called Mojos. Looking back it seems like shameless bribery! However, at the time it seemed great. Free candies and songs…

The actual Sunday school was in the back of a church, smelled musty and looked like a dusty store room. We sat on metal fold out chairs and made crafts out of uncooked macaroni, sparkles, Elmer’s glue (always a bit too much was used so that it oozed out from under the macaroni…), and paper plates. I was unconcerned as to the significance of the guy with the beard and the cross. I was always just waiting for the ride home for more Mojos.

I promptly forgot all about it until around the age of twelve one of my friends invited me to church with her family. I asked my mom and her answer seemed strange. “If that’s what you want, by all means go and check it out”, or something along those lines.

I think it was an Anglican church. It was all very stark and somber. Everyone was white and middle class. Everyone dressed up, but not too flashy. Lots of brown and grey suits. Dull floral dresses and sensible shoes… and it was BORING! There were hymns that no one knew the words to, but opened the booklets in the pews and made a half-hearted attempt at mumbling through, along with the priest/pastor. The actual sermon was irrelevant in it’s topic and content. I wondered why anyone would consider the tribulations of people centuries ago, given that the world had changed so much.

It seemed like the longest hour of my life – akin to math class, where I always had to come up with clever ways of keeping myself awake.

I never went back.

When I had a Jamaican boyfriend in my later teens, his sister invited me to her ‘revival’ church. Wow! That was the closest thing to a pop concert that I could imagine a church to be. It was held in a huge hall and 95% of the worshippers were black, despite the fact that it was in downtown Toronto. Everyone was dressed to the nines – big hats, flashy dresses, snake skin patterned suits (it WAS the 80’s…).

There was an air of excitement as everyone made their way in, serenaded by a full gospel choir with a rock band accompaniment. When the preacher took the stage everyone cheered. He was an ex-WWF wrestler, turned born again preacher. This seemed like a major career change until I compared the both - on stage, performing.. I guess it was a good fit. He preached with vigour and might, enthusiasm and omnipotence. It all seemed so happy and lively until he started with the ‘scare tactics’. I was shocked when he brought out the old testament threats of fire and brimstone… I looked around and the people looked entranced, like docile lambs. Why would they believe this stuff? Why would they come every week to be threatened with supernatural horror movie style afterlife nightmare speeches?

And then came the ‘healings’. There is a Steve Martin movie that comes to mind. In the movie he is a ‘preacher’ who does a completely bogus ‘healing roadshow’…

One after another, people went down to the front and fell willingly to the ground when the ex-wrestler’s chubby hand touched their forehead , some in crumpled heaps, some rigid and convulsing like epileptic seizures, many in tears. I was amused but flabbergasted.

There followed obligatory dancing in the aisles and I slowly realised the insistence on everyone getting up and moving was a ploy to get each of us to pass by the collection box. Extortion!!!! And this church service lasted close to 6 hours!!!
I never went back.

In the meantime I had been learning about evolution in biology class – I found it one of the only truly interesting topics. And I couldn’t help but think how drastically these scientific theories contradicted the simple teachings of the bible – with the 7 days God created the earth, and the clay moulding of Adam with Eve as his rib…
It confirmed to me at the time that religion is a tool in society/culture; something that gives simple answers to the questions that in reality none of us can comprehend. The world and it’s creation is beyond any of us, so how preposterous for certain people to claim ‘the knowledge’. How even more preposterous to teach that there are certain rules of conduct that ‘please’ a god…. More mind control….

This was all before I headed to the mind-opening years of University, and my sojourns in Africa where I came to learn so many more things – where I saw the similarities of the Christianity practised by Afro-Canadians and the continent they ultimately came from. Where I learned about traditional religions and colonialism and power struggles and politics and the role of Christianity and Islam... but I’ll blog about them tomorrow.

Thanks Esi - for inspiring my contemplation on the topic today in your great blog post.