A FOLLOW-UP TO KUMASI GOOGLE MAP MADNESS-where one secondary road is named after three big men with
_ _ _ _ you fill in the blank!
In the letters section of June’s NEW AFRICAN magazine, there is a comment entitled “A betrayed reader” taking the publishers to task for publishing in Europe. My criticism goes further speculating that the “NEW AFRICAN” is the diasporan African, the brains that have drained away who occasionally drip a fatuous commentary back in the form of a magazine column.
I refer to regular columnist Akua Djanie’s “Reflections of an ordinary woman” who writes for the New African. Ha! There is nothing ordinary about Akua who writes for a magazine with an estimated readership of 220,000! Witness her latest column, “George Bush Highway. In Ghana?” that takes two Ghanaian governments to task for naming the 14 km stretch of ultra modern highway leading out of Accra, one for promising to name it after George Walker Bush and the following different government for keeping that promise.
Highlighted at the beginning is the following:
“George Walker Bush Highway . Really? Why would anybody in any country of the world want to name a street or a road, a major one at that, after former American President George W. Bush? Therefore, for Ghana, a country in West Africa, to name a major road after him is shocking, disappointing and totally incomprehensible.”
In the column, Akua asserts that streets or roads should be named after local heroes. She puts forth two suggestions, somebody who has started an N.G.O. to help street children and another a medical flying service. Hey, Akua, you’ve been gone too long from Ghana. It’s money that talks here. If your government funds a highway, your leader’s name goes on that highway, no matter what history might have to say. So what if that leader went to war on the basis of deception.
A further example, Akua takes an exception to a another major artery in Accra that goes from 37 Hospital to Gold House called Obasanjo Way. Now Obasanjo didn’t fund the road. He gave Ghana oil when Ghana’s reserves were down to one week, way below the thirty-day international requirement. So what if he tried unsuccessfully for a third term despite constitutional restrictions.
Yes, what I’m upset about is not Akua’s criticism of the highway’s name. It’s the fact that she is a regular columnist and yet she doesn’t live here, doesn’t have her pulse on the nation. Most streets in this country are named after those who can pay and do pay. And sometimes its three people who can pay and do pay and it’s three names that go on the signposts for one road!
I’m no expert on the NEW AFRICAN magazine. It would be interesting if someone in a journalism school did a study on their writers’ perspective and the content of the magazine. I’m just tired of the indigenous African’s voice being high-jacked by the diaspora…
Akua Djanie
June 25, 2012
I lived in Ghana from March 1995 – April 2012!
uigei
June 29, 2012
So…where did this concept of give money and a street will be named after you come from. Hence the so many signs in Chinese. I’m sick of all the ignorance, really !…oh and all the slickness.
madinghana
June 30, 2012
Signs in Chinese? Where? Sick of the ignorance, slickness…blog, it’s a great catharsis…
uigei
June 30, 2012
True !
thebellower
December 16, 2012
hey you’ve got a point about the diaspora voice. and perhaps i’m a bit biased because I’m a blogger living in London but I and my peers, really do care about Ghana and the continent, otherwise we wouldn’t talk about it, trust me, rarely do Africans living outside of Africa actually benefit from writing about Africa, the guardian newspaper only recently begun their “Africa network” and you won’t be surprised that the editor is not of African descent and hadn’t followed African lifestyle before getting the job, but he lives in South Africa now and I guess that means he’s more qualified than me or any other blogger living outside of the continent who have followed ‘the pulse’ for decades, right? cut us some slack. the question shouldn’t be about her geographical location, it should be about creating real partnerships so that the magazines are published in the lands to which they refer and there is cross dialogue between those at home and those away, because those away at times didn’t have much choice. it’s not right to question their logic, opinion, or intention based on geographical location.
madinghana
December 20, 2012
Hey, I wasn’t bashing diasporan bloggers-I just hope your blog reaches many eyes on the continent here to act as a catalysist to promote voice here. Hope you share my voice.
thebellower
December 21, 2012
hey yeh, having read it a second time, i’ve perhaps taken one sentence and amplified it a bit, my first reading came at the end of a big debate about diaspora voting so i was probably still in that mindset. I totally agree with your opinion of the New African Magazine, and I think you’d find that true of many new magazines, the New African Woman Magazine inspires so many blog posts that I dare not publish because they verge on the “i’m gonna rant” side. but like you said it’s cathartic!
muvunyi timothy
May 20, 2013
Naming a street George Walker Bush is worth and worthwhile. No problem. He is a war legend of a certain recognition.