Subj: Why Ghana is not playing ball and other matters
Date: 24/08/97
To: Okyeame@mit.edu
CC: Okyeame@africaonline.com




Countrymen, Manbii and Amanfuor,



The Peregrinations of a Native Son



I would like today, in the week in which the remaining places to represent Africa at the World Cup in 1998 were determined, to address myself to the state of Ghana football. Yes, I would like to address myself to the national obsession with football and our continual failure to make it to the games biggest showcase. As I write, the big guns of the GFA, ever sucking their bloated egos, have dug their heels in and refused to ackowledge the inadequacies of Ghana football.

As an erstwhile useful footballer who has dribbled the ball round many a mid-fielder into well-worn penalty areas and tormented a few defences, I can easily see what is wrong with our national game. We are stuck in the past, and imagine that the glories of the 1950s and 60s when many African nations had barely woken up to the game entitles us to some continental superiority.

The bald truth is that since the 1970s when the game really took off in countries like Nigeria and elsewhere we had barely had a look in; in fact, we have routinely had a hard time even disposing of tiny Burundi. As in football so in athletics. While others have invested we have relied on antiquated infrastructure.and facilities.

To any informed observer the emergence of Nigeria as a great footballing and track and field nation actually coincided with the construction of the Surulere Sports Stadium. Together with countless other high class stadia located around the country, Surulere has enabled generations of footballers and athletes to hone their skills to sublimity. We bravely continue our vain efforts in football, but in international athletics we seem to have packed up altogether.

What went wrong?  Serendipity is our second national game; we imagine everything will fall in place; that somehow events will conspire to favour us. In our national politics this takes the form of the expected emergence of some new Moses to liberate us from the captivity of Rawlings' NDC. In sport it takes the form of do nothing; just attend the Olympic games or any number of preliminary World Cup matches and you will win.

The price has been the loud gnashing of teeth emanating from the Ministry of Youth and Sports. As if the plot had been scripted by some wickedly sarcastic satirist I hear that the government decreed that part of every workers salary was to be deducted to finance the World Cup campaign. Let us just hope that it was not part of the hundred million cedis booty looted from the residence of Obed Asamoah. Things, indeed, are getting curiouser in Ghana by the day. Meantime, the playing fields which nurtured the stars of yesterday vanish in our towns and cities as landgrabbers and improvident chiefs do deals to erect structures on every available space.

Which brings me to my latest visit to Ghana. I took a walk, diagonally, across the parched piece of earth that passes for the training ground of Accra Hearts of Oak. I was amazed that any self-respecting team should be practising on such a gravelly piece of earth with liberal outcrops of flint and rock. Do we really have any right to expect an excellent national team if the feeder clubs train in such abject conditions? It may well be that E.T. Mensah, the Sports Minister is well and truly out of his depths, but we will need more than his mere ouster to start a long-deserved forward march in football.

As I sat meditating on the Atlantic beach at Mensah Guinea, a mere stone throw from the Castle (the sea gulls floating on the breeze and muscular artisanal fisherman pulling in their nets) I could see a whole new dimension to the concept of misguided politics.

While, like piranhas, the powers that be engage in pork-barrel politics and the exuberant private media tuck into some more government-bashing, it was clear to me that we had taken the wrong road to the New Jerusalem. Having headed in the wrong direction we are never going to get to our destination anyway, no matter how the man at the helm hollers and rants. But holloring, ranting, personal abuse and misdiagnosis is what much of our national affairs has become. Only now a new ingredient has been thrown in - tribalism.

My peregrinations further took me around downtown Accra, viewing the old forts and castles and closely observing, in the suburbs, how ordinary Ghanaians live together in amity without the rancour of tribal differences.

Not so among the elite and the nouveau riche. Tribal slurs, abuse and innuendoes fly daily between the various political camps; some ridiculous, some downright bizarre in their projection of unsustainable new theories and views. Still nobody stands up to the purveyors of such irresponsible nonsense. With the new generation being fed on such badly concocted mental pabulum one can imagine what views they will hold and what danger they will pose for the integrity of our nation.

The press, is on the whole, no better. As I turned to page 7 of the 13-19 August of the Free Press, I saw a new group, The Akan Representative Council, advertising for new members with a map which incorporates the Guan, Adangme, Ga, Nzima and several Ivorian tribelets into their concept of Akanman. Several things struck me as strange about the advertisement and accompanying map.

First, Asante territory is shown as extending to the Atlantic coast; the Guan and Akuapim are totally obliterated from the map; the Chokosi, Kanyanga, Banda, etc. are included; and the solitary Ewe shown occupying the outer darkness to the east. But even if the promoters of the new organisation are so consumed with hatred for the Ewe as to exclude them, one wonders why no linguistic accommodation is made for the non-Twi speaking Nzima, Ga, Krobo, Ada, Guan, etc. who are included among the Akan, for all the words, including the mottos and slogans of the group are in Twi.

There is no easier way to shoot oneself in the foot. Even if the individuals have their own expansionist agenda in Ghana ala Hitler (remember Lebensraum) they should be subtle enough to make concessions to their new allies; but no, the only thing they know is to swallow whatever come their way whole.

The reality is starker. Groups like the Adangme, Ga and Guan are not Akan and neither do they wish to join any tribalist "Akan"  ( in the political context a smokescreen term for some disgruntled and frustrated groups and politicians  ) grouping ostensibly against alleged Ewe domination in Ghana. They are far more interlinked with groups in Togo than those in the Ivory Coast. The Guan are ethnically distint from the Akan; they are the true aborigines of Ghana; it is unfair and misguided to subject them to any further cultural imperialism. But I tarry here; I must proceed beyond the primitivity of tribe and ethnicity.

I passed through London and saw a leader in the leading quality newspaper, the Independent linking Africa to Mad Cow Disease. I replied instantly; this was published in the Monday 4 August  issue of the Independent as follows:

"Making Mischief with Africa
Sir :
Typical ! Attempts are being made yet again to link Africa with disease which first appeared outside the continent ( report, 1 August)
I disagree with your claim that the origins of BSE ( mad cow disease) may be found in the herds of the African plains. Curiously enough you never demonstrated that the African animals in question actually had the disease, only that they can catch it. Therefore your conclusion that the origin of BSE may lie in the import of meat and bonemeal from South Africa, Namibia and Botswana between 1970 and 1980 remains questionable.
We await publication of detailed statistics of the number of people suffering from Creufeldt-Jakob disease in the African countries in question. Until that and other evidence are collected, associating Africa with BSE would seem at best mischievous.

NUMO NOTSE AMARTEY
Director,  The African Foundation, London E.5"

Which leaves us with the question of what to do with the peoples money collected by government on the promise of sending Ghana to the World Cup. I say, use it to construct a new stadium; not only that use it to develop the necessary ethos to generate patriotism   We lack patriotism.

A friend who was part of the group, Ghana Black Stars for World Cup Association, which tried collect to money in London to help the Black Stars had this tale to tell:
The subscribers of the group pooled resources to organise a dance in Tottenham with Smart Nkansah and an assortment of session musicians playing. After spending well over £1,000.00 pounds only ten (yes 10) Ghanaians turned up. My dear friend and his friends were thus put in a situation where they had called a whole band, prepared food, printed tickets and hired a prestigious hall only to entertain themselves - 15 odd people altogether. Some would say this can only happen among Ghanaians.

This was when the Ghanaian musicians on stage decided to show their own brand of patriotism. Once they realised the dance was poorly attended, they stopped playing some thirty minutes into the show, and demanded that they be paid the rest of their money or they would play no more; no concern that the dance had been organised for the Black Stars and that the sponsors were heading for a serious loss.

Until we each demonstrate sufficient patiotism the Black Stars will go nowhere, not until the players, coaches, management, etc. etc. do their bit and proper infrastructure is put in place.

On the pitch itself the coaches could do with some realisation that successful Ghanaian teams have been built around imposing centre forwards and fast wingers: Edward Acquah, George Alhassan, Kwasi Owusu, Baba Yara, Frank Odoi, Ofei Dodoo, Osei Kofi, etc. We have sufficient natural talent in the other departments of the game and no shortage of flair.

I have seen no striker of the Acquah, George Alhassan mould since the Libyan African Cup of Nations; and one can hardly talk of a winger in the class of Osei Kofi since the eclipse of that wing wizard. Furthermore, anyone acquainted with our recent matches would have observed the paucity of goals from set pieces. Set pieces are the standard fare of international football. The more our game is turned around to accommodate these deficiencies the better.

As an end piece, I was mildly shocked when a friend tuned the radio and a disembodied voice announced from a pirate station that he was Nana Otuo Acheampong. Could this be the same Otuo Acheampong of Okyeame and Ghana Review?

It's too early to say; I am sure Big Brother Nana is too smart to associate himself with an activity as clearly illegal as fronting a pirate radio station, not with all the hullabaloo about the pirate radios interfering with airline frequencies over the skies of London.

Long Live Ghana !

Numo Notse Amartey