Ward-Brew and Ghana’s Retardation
By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong

Thomas N. Ward-Brew is presidential candidate of the obscure Democratic Peoples' Party (DPP) for the impending 2008 general elections. Like most of the small parties, the DPP is known to howl from the fringes; most times shallow, most times confusing, without any credible understanding of Ghana as a development project, or any alternative attempts to address Ghana’s complicated developmental challenges.

From a distance, Ward-Brew’s thick grey beard on his square-shaped face makes him look more like some of the booming juju-marabout mediums and other spiritualists disturbing the Ghanaian development scene than a politician of substance. His statement that “Ghana had retarded in her development agenda due to structural defects and behavioural shortcomings of the Government,” go beyond mere political rhetoric and show a country some of which elites, 51 years after independence, are far from grasping the complexities wheeling Ghana’s progress.

Hear Ward-Brew, "In Ghana, instead of going forward in development, we appear to be going backwards, the nation lacked in development on several fronts due to the absence of much needed reforms in economic, political, cultural, sociological and psychological spheres." That’s not true; Ghana is developing, and in some sectors, much more developed. After all Ghanaians are the happiest Africans despite their development challenges most caused by thoughtless elites like Ward-Brew.

For starters, in some sense, the fact that Ward-Brew has had the privilege to use the platform of his DPP under the 16-year-old on-going democratic dispensation to articulate his views, no matter how hollow they are, and could not do so under 26 years of military juntas and six years of one-party is one aspect.

As much as Ghanaians know, the main reason why Ghana is “retarded,” if Ward-Brew is anything to go by, is that it has had elites like the Ward-Brews, who cannot contemplate Ghana well, who do not understand their immediate environment, who cannot reason from within Ghana’s rich cultural values up to the global prosperity level, who think Ghana’s cultural values are inferior to others, who cannot blend Ghana’s cultural values with the global ones, and, who, for long-time, have been blaming all of Ghana’s problems on outsiders – “imperialism” and all the empty sloganeering. Yes, there is imperialism everywhere, but that’s it. So, if Ghana is “retarded,” then its elites, like Ward-Brew, as directors of progress, are responsible.

If not, why is it that since 1957 when Ghana “was almost at par with Singapore and Malaysia,” as Ward-Brew rightly says, “these nations were far ahead of Ghana?” The reason isn’t farfetched – Singapore and Malaysia have had good elites who have been able to reason and think very well from within their cultural values up to the global prosperity ones, blending here and there, and in the process, created what they call the “Asian Way.”

Fifty-one years after independence, Ghanaians, who pride themselves as the “Black Stars” of Africa, in progress context, are yet to see their elites like Ward-Brew create a “Ghanaian Way” as a development paradigm that could be replicated by other Africans.

While the developing democracy with its evolving decentralization reveal Ghana’s progress, and not “retardation,” Ward-Brew and his cohorts, for some time have not made better choices for Ghana’s development, chunking out policies that do not reflect the real Ghana. And that has made Ghana “retarded,” if Ward-Brew’s jaundiced observation is anything to go by.

For, because of elites like Ward-Brew - vain, shallow and unrealistic - and who have, by their thinking and actions, “retarded” Ghana, “a re-examination of” Ghana’s “development strategies both from the stand point of structures and behaviours of national leaders and the citizenry,” Ward-Brew says, is warranted. Re-examination from where? Re-examination from within Ghanaian cultural values and history in relation to the global prosperity values.

For, if in 2008, most Ghanaians - educated or not - still think certain deaths or misfortune or crime are caused by evil spirits or witchcraft, or juju-marabout mediums virtually influencing crime, or there is still tribalism without Ghanaians knowing that they all have practically the same culture that could be used to further consolidate the nation-state, or they have to wait for “Others” to develop them, then Ward-Brew and his cohorts are really “retarded,” and this make Ghana’s progress not only “retarded” but also the political and development processes infantilized.

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong, Canada, June 19, 2008