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Opinions of Tuesday, 1 July 2014

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

The Dilemma Of A Failed State In Coma

They say The State is spiritually anemic. They say The State has lost all vitality, her sinews of moral virginity. They say The State has lost all sense of direction, of purpose. Yet, The State, a misguided strand of hair on the Head of Medusa, identifies, if unabashedly, with “The Gateway to Africa” anonym in the community of nations. Alas, that state, The State, seems to be in dire need of moral blood-transmission, of spiritual revitalization, as she can no longer, understandably, sustain her firm purchase on her spiritual-moral center. That spiritual-moral center happens to be the bruised popular conscience of The State, the psycho-emotional central nervous system of The People, now a helpless, hopeless political vassal of The State.

That state, The State, a stinking living carcass, is, materially, in a repulsive state of never-ending self-induced coma. Self-induced coma? Patently yes, albeit as an extemporaneous consequence of holistic infestation, a chain reaction, a nuclear reaction, of Machiavellian evil in the body politic, that state, if they say so. Holy moly! That limping state, a la-di-da afforestation of widespread corruption, fiery ethnocentrism, righteous lies, mismanagement, ethnic chauvinism, political primitivism, religious dogmatism, anomie, intellectual malnutrition, environmental degradation, political kleptomania, mental colonialism…That spiritually de-centered chichidodo of a parboiled-spaghetti state, an ignominious political eunuch with deep taproots in the vaginal silt of phallic cowardice. The State, that which we call a state of misconsciousness!

And you call this wetting-bed porphyric state “The Gateway to Africa”? Certainly, in the virginal days of Kwame Nkrumah, an epitome of humanism and of political consciousness. Those were the happy days then, the happy days of patriotism, of political collectivism, of unity, those days of Nkrumah’s progressive institutionalization of the Avoidance of Discrimination Act. Those happy days were, in fact, those days, long gone, time long past, when the political economy of nation-building enjoyed a practical consensus of active community participation in the body politic. Not in this superficial present era of apocalyptic muddiness, like the “Animal Farm” political dispensation of George Orwell, though. Indeed, those happy days witnessed a dynamic collaboration between the Iroko Tree’s vibrant sapwood and its scattered verdant leaves in the social carnal-knowledge of nation-building, what Kwame Nkrumah called “consciencism.”

Ironically, these days, these forlorn days, The State cannot even successfully manage her participation in the 2014 World Cup, held in Brazil, a country with the largest Black or African population outside Africa, after Boko Haram’s Nigeria, Africa’s roaring toothless Tiger. In any case, the consanguineous blackness of Brazil, the home of Pelé, the greatest footballer in human history, and of the late Abdias do Nascimento, a 2004 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, an ex-member of Brazil’s federal Chamber of Deputies, an artist and scholar, watched in arrant horror and fraternal disgust as The Black Stars fumbled on the soccer pitch of moral legginess. “The Gateway to Africa,” you call her! What utter nonsense! Before long, the Black Stars began playing in a charged matrix of sportily disarray, evidently, a psycho-emotional antithesis of Nkrumah’s “Africa Must Unite.”

Then, watching the tournament, however, the rapt viewer quickly observed the much-vaunted terpsichorean footballing-ness of The Black Stars insidiously morph into a seemingly irreversible psycho-physical state of confusion. And yet, like Franz Kafka’s novella “The Metamorphosis” and Ovid’s novel “Metamorphosis,” the collective player-psychology of the Black Stars inexplicably dissolved into a liquefied concrete symbol of internecine pettifoggery. Again, the soccer pitch of moral legginess, like The State’s shabby political system, took on a liberal democracy of mismanagement, of irresponsibility, of misplaced priorities. Even Ayi Kwei Armah’s “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born” stood far away, comfortably far away from the spiritual-moral center of The State. Likewise, the State, ruled by a cartel of spineless Satyrs and by a vampiric gang of Sphinxes, botched a golden opportunity to make Pelé and Nascimento proud.

Meanwhile, The State, otherwise Wole Soyinka’s “The Open Sore of a Continent,” Chinua Achebe’s “A Man of The People,” Kofi Awoonor’s “This Earth, My Brother,” Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s “Petals of Blood,” Ali Mazrui’s “The African Condition: A Political Diagnosis,” Tsitsi Dangarembga’s “Nervous Condition,” sits on the flimsy neck of The People where, among other things, she bestially rapes The People’s popular conscience at will, with reckless abandon. In that sense, O Lord of Mercy, The State’s wardrobe of uncaring mannerisms are not unlike the comic allegory, “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” with The State’s Machiavellian face taking on the distortive countenance of Kweku Bonsam’s well-primed misprophecies. The obvious question to ask is: What happens if you lose your spiritual-moral center, “The Gateway to Africa”?

Framed otherwise, what happens if you lose your disease-free hymnal virginity to a syphilitic pimping political-scarecrow? What happens if The Earth should lose its spiritual-moral center of gravity to the acidic tongue-lashing de-centeredness of The Sun? Possibly “darkness,” if you ask me, the vaginal source of the “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor” choral acrimony, a popular refrain of political incompetence. That choral acrimony, it turns out, provides the necessary cover for daylight robbery of the national coffers. The so-called “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor” choral acrimony tonically supplies the socio-political feeder-rivers running, helter-skelter, into an unwholesome bowl of mismanagement, which The State’s imprudent official chamberlains put up in Brazil. Public officials shamelessly putting up a bluff in the homeland of Nascimento and Pelé! “The Gateway to Africa,” you refer to yourself?

“Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor” foolhardy politics! What a Chichidodo Republic! What a Kweku Bonsam polity! Politics of democratic prostitution! They ceaselessly, if irresponsibly, call Kwame Nkrumah’s “one-party” democratic dispensation “dictatorship” without shame, without the proper context of The State’s political history, and today’s “winner-takes-all” nonsensical politics “multiparty democracy.” A democracy of mental retardation, of intellectual constipation. Rather, they prefer the “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor” open thievery to the social justice and egalitarian philosophy associated with the sun-lit Golden Age of Nkrumahism. Rather, they prefer Soyinkan vaginal “open sore” to Nkrumahist phallic “continental unity.” A democracy that presents with a distinctive case of recrudescent indigestion. Allegedly, the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kwesi Nyantakyi, Obed Nketiah, and Christopher Forsythe, etc., have taken the place of today’s venture-capitalist collaborators in The State’s political empire of neocolonial slavery, much like their Asante, Dahomean (the Fon), Ndongo (Angola’s Mbundu), Congo’s Kongo counterparts, in the “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor” Copper-Age days of yore.

Sadly, The State entertains no symphony of truth across her jigsaw-puzzle face. True? That truthful lie is embodied in the immoral fiber of The State’s jigsaw-puzzle face. Where is Kweku Bonsam to unravel this mystery for us? Another pressing question is: Why play Kweku Bonsam politics with the World Cup? Yet it would ultimately be “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor” soccer politics that shattered the interlocking morale of the patriotic members of the Black Stars. And while the Black Stars tirelessly, selflessly played to the rhythmic game theory of the opposing teams, the psychologically gonorrheic GFA officials tuned in their decadent souls on the emotional buttocks-gyrations of their concubines, paramours, courtesans, supposedly sent there as celebrity supporters of the Black Stars.

What have Rex Omar’s “Abiba,” Juvenile’s “Back that Azz Up,” Mystikal’s and Eminem’s “Shake Your Ass,” Elvis Presley’s and UB40’s “I Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Abuoba J.A. Adofo’s “Ankwanobi,” Yamoah’s “Serwa Koto,” have to do with the World Cup and the largely unchaste GFA officials? So, you now see The Politician’s Hypocrisy? He jubilantly sings John Newton’s Christian hymn “Amazing Grace” only when he is in The State, in the public eye. Why must the corrupt and insensitive GFA officials sing these vulgar songs as opposed to the National Anthem, “God Bless Our Homeland Ghana”? Is musical vulgarity the equivalent of the moral station of this “God,” as in “God Bless Our Homeland Ghana”?

Who is this “God” in the first place? Is he or she the “God” of vulgarity, of philistinism, of corruption? Is this “God” Kweku Bonsam or Cristiano Ronaldo? Is this “God” Ghana or Portugal? Or the “God” of social justice, of egalitarianism, of fairness? Who was this “God” behind Sullei Muntari’s extempore salvoes of copeira-kicks directed at the sagging jowls and puffy cheeks of that greedy pallid GFA official, The State? Why did The State allow these inconsiderate GFA armed robbers to accompany or chaperone the patriotic members of the Black Stars? Why should the GFA officials turn the stochastic winnings of the Black Stars into malodorous losses of orgiastic pimping?

The patience of The People is running out. The People demand justice, their long-overdue sweeping restitution. What happened to the guillotine, the pillory, of social justice? Should The President not have handed over the GFA officials involved in the so-called orgiastic prostitution to the flesh-eating bacteria of The People’s popular wrath, to execute their political euthanasia, their social suicide, that is? The moral decapitation of The People’s righteous anger. What of the Firing-Squad bonfire of The People? Why does The President not turn over the phallic harlotry of the GFA officials to the Lord’s Resistance Army, Boko Haram, or Al-Shabab? Those queries notwithstanding, the most important questions of all are: Is The State then a symptomatology of a failed state in coma? Why can she not do anything right? Why can The People not usurp their corrupt and inept government via popular franchise? Why do The People settle for mediocrity?

Oh The People will no longer pay heed to the “God” of The Politician, The State:

“Them crazy, them crazy”;

We gonna chase those crazy baldheads out of town;

Chase those crazy baldheads out of town;

Didn’t my people before me slave for this country?;

Now you look me with scorn; then you eat up all my corn;

Chase those crazy baldheads out of town;

Build your penitentiary; we build your schools;

Brainwash your education to make us the fools;

Hate is your reward for our love;

Telling us of your God above;

Here comes the conman, coming with his con plan;

We won’t take no bribe; we got to stay alive”;

That is Bob Marley's well-placed pre-mortem warning to managers of The State. No longer should The People tolerate the excesses and managerial inadequacies of The Politician, GFA officials, etc. (“crazy baldheads”). No longer should The People tolerate The Politician’s mismanagement of the fruits of their industry (“corn” or “slave for this country,” “country” being The State). No longer should The People tolerate the subpar education The Politician gives them (“brainwash your education to make us the fools”). No longer should The People tolerate the hatred of The Politician toward them. No longer should The People tolerate the con-plan of The Politician’s “God.” No longer should The People trade their popular conscience for The Politician’s blood money (“bribery”).

Against this background, let The People make Sullei Muntari The President of The State, Kevin Boateng his Vice-President. And let the new constitution of the Black Stars come from the lethargic, unproductive Parliament Members of The State, with Mr. John Mahama as the New Captain and Mr. Kwesi Amissah-Arthur the Assistant Captain. Let us then christen this new Black Star setup the “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor Team of National Decay”! Let Kevin Boateng and Sullei Muntari lead the national fight and social campaign against the canker of corruption in the body politic. Let Sullei Muntari deploy his kick-boxing tactics against corrupt officials in the body politic. And let The People give Sullei Muntari and Kevin Boateng all the moral support they need in order to make corruption minimization or extirpation possible, as The People can no longer tolerate the aerosolization of corruption by John Agyekum Kufour in the body politic on the eve Adam had carnal knowledge of Eve!

Get rid of this misguided Head of Medusa, the “crazy baldhead,” the great and incomparable Bob Marley seems to unequivocally say to The People! How? Via Kwame Nkrumah’s “Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization” and “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Nkrumahism”; Kofi Kissi Dompere’s “The Theory of Categorical Conversion: Analytic Foundations of Nkrumahism,” “Polyrhythmicity: Foundations of African Philosophy,” and “Theory of Philosophical Consciencism: The Analytic Practice of Nkrumahism”; Wole Soyinka’s “The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness”; Molefi Kete Asante’s “Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge”…Did Kwame Nkrumah bequeath a political terminal-cancer of “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor” to his beloved Ghana, The State?

What are The People doing about “The Gateway to Africa” label which is eventually turning into the lower opening end of the alimentary canal? Let public protest against social, economic, political injustices continue unabated. Let public protest against “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor” politics continue uninterrupted. Let public protest against the “Dumsor, Dumsor, Dumsor Republic” of the John Agyekum Kufours, of the K.A. Busias, of the J.B. Danquahs, of the John Mahamas, of the John Atta Mills…continue intensely. The battle for equity is not lost yet, however. The Politician’s ideal place is Mutabauka’s “The People’s Court” when all else fails. Let The People rise and take noble their place among men and women of conscience. “Wake up and live…Rise ye mighty people…There’s work to be done; so let’s do it-little little by little. Rise from your sleepless slumber…Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts; put your dreams to reality…,” adds Bob Marley (“Wake Up and Live”).

We shall return…