Opinions of Monday, 26 April 2021

Columnist: Rockson Adofo

Was the era of our forefathers’ indeed lacking in civilization with their generation being unwise?

File photo of a Ghana flag File photo of a Ghana flag

When I was growing up as a child, and until today, many a supposedly modern day Ghanaian, refers to the era of our forefathers’ as “abagyimi bre”, thus, an era overflowing with lack of civilization but abundance of stupidity. By our view, our forefathers were not at all civilized, or were less civilized compared to the current generation.

It indeed hurts to hear us refer to our forefathers as not intelligent, wise, smart and dynamic as their offspring of today.

Are we not tickling ourselves and laughing when we picture or perceive them as less intelligent than us? If they were stupid as we assume them to have been, and by that denigrate them, were they not able to achieve the following things in their lifetime?

1. Did they not successfully agitate or fight the colonial white masters to obtain Ghana, then Gold Coast, political independence?

2. Did they not go to war, especially, the Asante chiefs, to conquer their enemies to obtain lands that they bequeathed to the future generation?

3. Did they not have respect for the members of their community, act in cooperation to execute communal labour and always aspire to achieve things of collective interests to their society?

4. Did they not judiciously protect the lands and properties they had to pass them on to the subsequent generations?


5. Were they not more honest and loved their neighbour as themselves than those of us of today?

6. Were there not less or no corruption among them than the generation of today?


In our current time, the political leaders are without doubt corrupt and by their love of corruption, they are directly or indirectly taking us back into slavery under the hands of the more wicked foreigners, thus, the Chinese. Today’s political and traditional leaders are less farsighted than those of our forefathers’. As our forefathers knew the value of land, forest, water and air, they took the necessary steps to protect them for the use of the future generation. However, the present political and traditional leaders are selling off all the lands to foreign nationals who have no respect for the environment and human lives.

In present day Ghana, our leaders who are myopic, caused by their infatuation with acquiring quick buck at the blink of the eye, are directly or indirectly taking us back into slavery. They are selling the nation’s available lands to the Chinese and other foreigners. They watch as people without brains or a hungry dog sitting behind a bar of soap while the Chinese flock into Ghana like vermin to spoil our water bodies, arable and fertile lands and pollute the air.

The present day Ghanaian wants to be rich without hard work but to sacrifice his neighbour for ritual. This was not the nature of our forefathers who believed in hard work to succeed.

Do the current generation of Ghanaians and their leadership realise the problems of death, harassment, denigration, and maltreatment our forefathers went through to obtain us independence? Have they sooner forgotten the apartheid and death that became the fate of South African blacks in their own land under the hands of the Afrikaans in South Africa? How the blacks were killed in their numbers with their political activists imprisoned? Have Ghanaians forgotten how native Zimbabweans had no access to lands in Zimbabwe until the late President Robert Mugabe took the lands from the whites with force?

How can one convincingly explain to me that the current generation is wiser than our forefathers’ with all our criminal and short-sighted attitudes that are gradually pushing us into Chinese domination in our own land?

The era of today’s Ghanaians is rather the “abagyimi bre” but not that of our forefathers’. Are we not stupid to push ourselves into slavery under the Chinese knowing how our forefathers and other citizens of say, Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, the black people of South Africa, suffered under the hands of the white colonialists?

We have to rise up to defend our lands, country and its wealth before our greedy and brainless political and traditional leaders consciously or otherwise, take us back into another round of slavery where we may never come out? We should not allow Ghana to be annexed to China.

I shall soon be leading a crusade to take on our political and traditional leaders who are directly or indirectly assisting the Chinese to enslave us. Are we not stupid to sit on our backside doing nothing when foreigners are spoiling our water bodies and lands with the ulterior motive of creating the opportunity for them to eventually bring us under their full control to dance to the tune of the cracking of their fingers and the whistling of their mouth?



To be continued.