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THE SMELL OF IT: CRISIS OF THE
BUFFOON STATE
Yaw Nsarkoh
March 02, 2014
Just for the heck of it, let us say any country where more than
one in twenty – five percent of the population, that is - is
condemned to open defecation as a fact of daily and regular
life, is a Buffoon state. For in that one single fact is bound
to be a failure of Law, multiple failures of Infrastructure and
a long term consequence of a weak public Education system. I
call this the LIE principle – to ignore the need for this in a
functioning democracy is to give a lie (pun intended) to the oft
repeated chorus that the objects of governance ought to be the
welfare of the citizenry. There was once, in much of Africa, a
pulsating sense of greater glory – at Independence, the first
liberation. And then there was the riveting expectation of the
Second Liberation, the advent of constitutional democracy.
What has gone wrong? Has anything gone wrong? Why has democracy
of the present day variety in many African countries morphed
into something that resembles a mangled version of electoral
capitalism, one that has ensured a few elites are mighty
prosperous but the many remain in stark naked poverty;
demoralized, disillusioned, discouraged and disgruntled? Is the
model broken?
Sonallah Ibrahim wrote “The smell of it” and angered the ruling
classes of his time. The celebrated management writer, Sumantra
Ghoshal, was later to come up with the term the smell of the
place, in reference to a non-quantitative yet reliable indicator
of how well an organization is run. It is a view I subscribe to,
with passion. Some things do not need metrics to be obvious –
our democracy, the one for which many fought with clenched fists
and endangered their lives, the democracy that was meant to
deliver sustained prosperity to many, refuses to be what we
wanted it to be. The smell of our condition in many parts of
Africa today must lead us to reconsider. If the future is left
to be just as the present; one of bickering, insensitive and
greedy elites strangling an already emasculated and emaciated
throbbing mass of the populace, then the future will consume us
all – some day for sure.
Misguided notions of patriotism are hurled at those who insist
that the benchmarks of excellence for any nation are universal.
When that fails to deter enough, the more corrosive charge or so
it seems, of being part of a Utopian and out of touch group of
intellectuals is tried. For that reason let us shout it out:
Africa has no excuse, none at all, to explain away contentment
with mediocrity. Yet a tyranny of low expectations continues to
dog us in every way. Africa must be part of the definition of
the centre of excellence – that was Ngugi’s point in his work,
“Moving the centre”. Our present condition may herald trends
that point to a better tomorrow but let us face it, the present
is definitely not good enough and that is simply the fact. HOPE,
by itself and all alone, is a thoroughly incompetent strategy.
We have stubbornly refused to become a law-based society. The
dangers of “might is right” in governance still lurk very close
to the surface. With the least provocation, the volcano erupts
and brutal signs of state power or money-power are marshaled to
silence intellectual independence. Examples abound. Like Samson
we tear down gates to show we are the powerful, damn the courts
and the judicial process! Democracy must be founded on strong
and independent institutions. And the democratic state must be
led – in government and political opposition - by those who are
nourished on the juice of, to use Montesquieu’s phrase, The
Spirit of Laws. A major indicator of how fractured and desperate
the condition of lawlessness has become can be found in the
dysfunctional but heaving bosom of property rights. The
unchecked, ungoverned and explosive emergence of private militia
to act as extra-judicial enforcers – for better or for worse, is
just one more dangerous example of society ignoring blinking
lights. The fault-lines do not disappear merely because we
ignore them. Why will a civilized and functioning state see its
elites so taken by the use of land-guards? A dense and opaque
funding structure for political parties means we do not know who
lubricates the wheels of the engines of our electoral politics,
in reality. As a result, we do not know who our elected leaders
are beholden to when they are elected. And then we seem
surprised that the oxygen flow of transparency is cut off by the
putrid smells of crony capitalism? Judgment debts’ remain the
scarred face of an unembarrassed and never satiated vampire
elite. The arteries through which the governed can hold the
governors accountable continue to be blocked by those who can.
Until, someday, the whole edifice will come crumbling down and
then the poor will have nothing to eat but the rich. Have we not
learned from our own history – the populist sensations of the
past? The Arab Spring? And so on? How much higher will the walls
and the electric fences go, in order to separate the elected
elite from the electing deprived, before the futility of this
way is realized?
All elements of our infrastructural competitiveness lag the best
in class in the world. Our ports, our roads, our energy supply
and worse, our schools and hospitals. A world that gets
increasingly connected, at the middle class at least, will race
past those who misapply precious resources. Yet this is exactly
what we do and with that, our capacity to compete turns to
ashes. Global capital has no citizenship, it has no
predetermined destination. It heads where it can make a return,
among those with conscience, where it can make an ethical
return. Ghana or no other nation has any birth right to capital
just because we are, we must compete by making ourselves
competitive and by building sustainable capabilities. Yet before
our eyes, as other athletes in the global race for development
prepare, we atrophy and fade our chances of success by this
model of partisanship that snuffs out any chance of a
meritocracy ever being established.
Education which used to be our saving grace – the sure vector of
social mobility, the one delicious promise that the children of
the peasant could become the leaders of advanced society on
merit has now collapsed to the extent that we expect the
children of peasants to accept the fate of being condemned to
peasantry? Our public education system now so woefully lags the
private education system that we, wittingly or unwittingly,
consciously or unconsciously, are cementing a rabid class
society. With all the attendant dangers. Left unchecked, this
boiling cauldron will explode in social mayhem, some day for
sure. Aside this danger, even among our best, our readiness to
play lead roles and be part of the crème de la crème of the
global talent pipeline remains suspect. The culture of
excellence that used to come with education, the aspects of
civilization that were supposed to accompany a good education
seem to have been trampled on by shallow notions of success – at
any cost. The values of a functioning society have been
displaced by the anomy of a buffoon state, until, perhaps, the
morning after. It is okay to live on a dunghill, so long as you
can construct a palace on it and no matter how you acquired the
funds. The place of art, culture and science are now viewed as
the private conversation topics of unrealistic philosophers? Our
condition of terribly mismanaged public sanitation, if I must
single out a marker of the buffoon state, is the most egregious
element of shame that the elite in Ghana must be damned by.
Who are we? This generation, who really are we? A delusional
partisan lot? A nihilist collection? A construct incapable of
any notion of values built on excellence? Or just a biological
reality? Are we truly a generation that can reconsider the
certain damning end that awaits this reckless abandon? Or is
there no one in charge? No people, no society, no community of
the modern era on earth has made progress without leadership.
And in all spheres of our existence, that is what is lacking the
most. There are many times when one encounters the shamelessness
and incompetence of a system so far gone and wonders whether
even daring to make a wake-up call is worth it. Should we simply
succumb to the cocoon that builds around enclaves of conceit
that any middle class can erect to insulate itself from societal
dysfunction? Is this possible – or do we soon find out, that the
walls of the enclave are never enough to maintain the anger and
frustration of a marginalized many at bay forever? It was
Soyinka, in prison, who inferred that to give up even against
the stampeding boots of brutal incompetence is to die. So while
we live, we must either act or wait, for, The Fire Next Time. We
have no choice really but to act or die as a society. To all
those, who in anyway, struggle for a better tomorrow, this was
put down for you. Someone notices. For today remains full of
pain. Maya was right I know why the caged bird sings. But, will
the falcon hear the falconer before things fall apart and mere
anarchy is loosed upon the earth? Time, the ultimate arbiter,
will tell.
Yaw Nsarkoh
March 02, 2014
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