chapter 12: mister big stuff...who do you think you are?!

from the outside, ghana appears to have the foundation of a solid democracy. the constitution codifies individual rights, representative democratic institutions, independent judiciary, all the trimmings of what we in canada see as a good liberal democratic feast.

power to the people!

but if you examine that foundation a little closer, you'll notice a lot of it is built on uneven ground. there's a lot more to really putting power in kofi q. public's hands than meets the eye. and there's a lot going on at the unconscious level that takes me back to first year political science, and in essence, the whole reason for my being here.

are universal rights really universal?

i have no trouble arguing that freedoms like speech, religion, thought, assembly should be universal. but i've come to realize that for most people here, even if they pay lip service to those things, the reality is much different.

ghanaians excercise a kind of orwellian doublethink when it comes to their place in the pecking order. leaders at all levels constantly talk about serving the public, but they know that millenia of social conditioning will ensure that it's really the public serving them. respect the chief, respect your elder, respect authority.

such is the “BIG MAN” culture. it basically means that people who command a lower level of power in society will constantly be kept waiting, are not entitled to all the relevant information, and do not dare question or show disapproval. it's a way of showing your hierarchical inferiors who's boss.

the only person who can stop the big man is a bigger man.

a ghanaian friend recently had to pay a bribe to the police. he was promoting a movie he produced, getting one of his (28 year-old) 'boys' to put up posters around the city. the 'boy' was caught plastering some on a wall with a warning against posting bills, and subsequently taken into custody. my friend was called onto the carpet. we went to the cop shop. after sitting and exchanging pleasantries with the police, my friend eventually went inside, paid a bribe of thirty ghana cedis to get himself and his 'boy' out of trouble. once we were back inside the car, i asked him if it didn't make him angry.

“i am very angry,” he said. “thirty was too much.”

apparently, he didn't mind paying a bribe. It was the amount he was pissed off about.. i should mention that my friend is a radio presenter for a station with a large audience. it apparently never seriously crossed his mind to yank down the dirty cops' pants in public. instead, he phoned the district supervisor, who agreed the bribe was excessive, and chewed them out.
a couple weeks ago, me and a colleague had a meeting with the kumasi metropolitan assembly public relations officer. we showed up. she wasn't there. we hung around for a while, and she casually came ambling in as we were leaving. i asked her why we hadn't been notified that she wouldn't be there. if looks were flying daggers, i'd have been on my way to the morgue. she was angry and surprised, unused to being challenged in that way. i didn't back down. as a foreigner here for a limited time, i have that luxury. but i've seen this woman run roughshod over my young colleague before if he appeared to be critical.

i've also observed members of the army lazily lounging or sleeping on the job day after day, when they were supposed to be standing a post. did they not have enough to do, or were they exposing the people they were supposed to be guarding to danger? in almost any other country with liberal democratic institutions, this kind of disciplinary vacuum would be met with howls of anger from the taxpaying masses. but a suggestion that this is a story that should be told always elicits a helpless shrug of the shoulders from my ghanaian counterparts, meaning it wouldn't be worth the trouble it would cause.

i've tried to educate my colleagues, especially the young ones, that respect is fine, but as members of the media, they have a responsibility to occasionally challenge the big man, whether he (or she) likes it or not. part of a maturing democracy is citizens standing up to authorities who are overstepping their bounds, and it all starts with the journalists. this may result in disapproval or even ostracism. but can there be a cross cultural exception made in this case? not if ghana's journalists are to be truly independent.

"mister big stuff, who do you think you are?"

with apologies to jean knight, sometimes even the big man has to be cut down to size.