Am I foolishly idiotic? Is Ghana’s JRS paying off?

This would be the equivalent of the young Museveni, when he took power in 1986, executing the then surviving predecessors Tito Okello, Milton Obote, Godfrey Binaisa, and Idi Amin, with a few acolytes, and with them Aminism and Oboteism.

The withdrawal, or attempt to withdraw signatures from the petition a group of MPs have drawn up to recall Parliament brought to mind the brilliance of the graphic artist at ‘The Economist’. The cover of the year-end edition of the world’s premier newsmagazine has a montage showing Hell in a contemporary setting, illustrating the lead story ‘A rough guide to Hell’, and the kind of people they, cheekily, think should burn.

Those swimming in the fiery lava include Muammar Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar Assad, a nuclear rocket-juggling Kim Jong Un, an oil-guzzling USA, a prideful Barack Obama, envious Republicans, greedy bankers, and war-mongering Israel and Hamas. Urged on by devils with pitchforks, they await, on the edges of the fire the sexually lustful Silvio Berlusconi and David Petreaus, environmentally hazardous India & China, and a garbage truckload of British journalists. Had the ‘Economist’ editor known what was happening in Uganda, would he have thrown in a few of our MPs as well?

For what can explain how people of sound mind (is that not a condition for standing for Parliament?) turn around and say that they were duped into placing their signature on a document? Adults? Of sound mind? Little wonder the President referred to them as fools and idiots. But it is also just as well that ‘The Economist’ did not know about them, for we should not wish anyone Hell (in any case, as the scriptures say, “God our Saviour wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of him” [1 Timothy 2:4], and “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” [2 Peter 3:9]).

President Museveni is certainly well within his rights (as are the signature hunters in collecting) to fight his corner in attempting to defeat the signature campaign. But why, oh why, do those MPs brazenly tell us that they were duped? Am I foolishly idiotic to determine not to vote such people into power at the next election? Like Donna Summer sung, “Who do you think you are fooling? Who do you think you are?”
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Ghana is having it good. Last week, they swore in a President for a new mandate, an extension of the fourth smooth change of power in 20 years of stability. The economy is ticking along nicely, and has been identified as a resource-rich growth hub. Their oil (from the Jubilee Fields, so-called for their discovery and development at the 50 Years of independence in 2007) is being profitably and peaceably exploited. Ghana remains the sole sub- Saharan country the Africa-connected US President Barack Obama has visited. Heck, even the football team has obliged, thriving at the 2010 World Cup, and will be favourites for the Africa Cup of Nations which kicks off later this week. Why has Ghana stood out?

That Ghana has become a model for democracy in Africa, and an example of how to run an emerging economy was not always so. It may have become the first nation to gain independence, in 1957, but things did not work out well. It was an early declarant of the one-party state as Kwame Nkrumah consolidated power. It exported violent revolution, even before Tanzania, Mozambique, Libya, and Egypt - it was Ghana that first trained African revolutionaries in Chinese-run special camps with what one military commentator, according to Guy Arnold in ‘Africa: A Modern History’, observed as “Nkrumah’s principle that havoc could be caused in the political system of an unfriendly regime by a few men with a few primitive weapons.” Ghana underwent convulsions of violence, with periodic coups. But now it is stable. Why?

Could it be that Jerry Rawlings’ much vaunted “house cleaning” of 1979 and 1981-92 is paying dividends? When he took power as a young soldier in June 1979, Rawlings found a heavily corrupt system, even within the ruling military elite, so he promptly executed, by firing squad (on beaches!), not just the President, Lt. Gen. Fred Akuffo, but even Akuffo’s two predecessors, Gen. Ignatius Acheampong and Brig. Akwasi Afrifa, together with eight other regime luminaries.
This would be the equivalent of the young Museveni, when he took power in 1986, executing the then surviving predecessors Tito Okello, Milton Obote, Godfrey Binaisa, and Idi Amin, with a few acolytes, and with them Aminism and Oboteism. (Rawlings left the army in 1992, stood as a civilian president for two constitutional terms, and has since watched from the sidelines as other elected presidents have come and gone).

This is not to endorse bloodshed, but Ghana’s experience was that, because by many accounts he governed well, Rawlings was able to sweep out all the corrupt systems, using the executions and the subsequent roots and branches clean-up. In Nigeria, they call it the JRS (Jerry Rawlings Solution), of decisively and dramatically sweeping out the old and coming up with the new that actually works. Real fundamental change.

dsseppuuya@yahoo.com