Last night I heard long bursts of automatic gunfire around the fence-wall that encloses my house, which lasted for about an hour, all told. And I, who had always thought of himself as being exceedingly brave, was reduced to a shaking and frightened emotional wreck. “So much for your bravery,” I kept on telling myself.
Having considered the ordeal in the cold light of day, I have come to the reassuring conclusion that actually, I really am as brave as I had always thought I was. How do you defend yourself from myrmidon killers wielding automatic weapons - if you yourself are an unarmed pacifist?
Prelude to that brief midnight, hell-on-earth experience of mine; I had had two rather odd encounters with three strangers who called at my house, earlier that day.
Yesterday morning, an elderly gentleman wearing sunglasses (yes, what a dead giveaway - the poor clueless soul!), was led to my house, by the local busybody in my neighbourhood - the ever-friendly and ever-helpful kebab-seller, who operates from a popular drinking spot that lies due north, downwards of the part of McCarthy Hill where I live
But I digress, dear reader. I immediately knew something was up, when I asked the old man in dark glasses, who he wanted to see - as I had never set eyes on him before. He adjusted his dark glasses and mumbled something about being a Chief.
Well, to cut a long story short, I asked the kebab seller to take him to a house near Jayees Commercial Institute - where some NDC big shot lives: having ascertained that it was Jerry Nii Acquaye Thompson who he apparently was after. I felt that the NDC big shot would direct him to wherever it was that that Mr. Thompson, whom Mr. Dark Glasses was apparently seeking, lived.
As a parting shot, the dear old soul asked me to come out - so he could see my face: whereupon I promptly told him, I was wary of strangers, because of the constant stream of death threats I receive. “Ah, so you are a reporter, then?” Yet another clue - as I had not told him anything about myself. Perhaps he had been interviewing the ever-friendly kebab seller?
Well, it so happens that the previous day, I also received a message from my broadband internet service provider, Ghana Telecom, informing me that they were coming to change my phone. Naturally, my ears pricked up - and I said that it was better they came to change the phone the next day: as I was on my way to my village.
Well, not too long after the old man in dark glasses had departed, a lady and a gentleman then turned up - with a telephone (which weighed a ton and looked suspiciously like something from the stable of Lorraine Electronic Surveillance - and had the rather odd number: 021 9762238!). So, I welcomed them, by asking them if they were from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) - which seems to think that critics of the government are enemies of the Ghanaian nation-state, for some extraordinary reason. Incredible.
So, why am I boring you with all this dreary stuff, you might wonder, dear reader? I acknowledge that all the events I have enumerated above, may not be connected - and could be a series of sheer coincidences.
If they are what I think they are - the hirelings of some faceless individuals who are the lackeys of the powerful crooks in the presidency whose greed knows no bounds and think they are invincible, and who are trying to intimidate me because of my outspoken views and refusal to heed the many death threats I receive - then I am outraged and livid at such monstrous impunity. Just who do these cowards think they are?
Perhaps the time has now come for the UN and the EU to put aside political correctness -and take a second look at the notion of sovereignty.
In the 21sth century we must let sovereignty lie in the people who are the citizens of nation-states - not the men and women who make up the government at any given point in time, in any given nation-state: some of whom are mass murderers who commit crimes against humanity, regularly.
The international community must always intervene to protect the citizens of nations around the world when the regimes that rule them, abuse their human rights in such egregious fashion, as is currently occurring in Zimbabwe and eastern DR Congo. Period.
Why should I and others like me be terrorized - simply because some powerful crooks who should be behind prison bars for the gang-rape of mother Ghana, if there wasn’t such a culture of impunity in this country, don’t like what I write and say on radio sometimes?
Why should millions of DR Congo citizens living in the eastern part of their country, today’s forsaken Africans, pitiful human pawns, be sacrificed daily as lambs to the slaughter on the alter of the tribal-supremacist ambitions of that cruel warlord, the self-styled "General" Nkunda, that narcissistic monster, who commits crimes against humanity with impunity, on a daily basis?
Must Africa and the rest of humanity continue to close their eyes to this pogrom because they are afraid to offend the sensibilities of Laurent Nkunda and Rwanda’s ruling elite - ruthless people who have dreams of setting up a Greater Tutsi nation, as a larger successor to the apartheid state they have succeeded in setting up, in that police state masquerading as a democracy and known as Rwanda?
Why should the sovereign people of Zimbabwe end up as slaves of Robert Mugabe and the greedy generals who hide behind him to gang-rape that once-prosperous African nation they have succeeded in destroying with their greed, selfishness and incredible stupidity?
Why should a law-abiding and ordinary Ghanaian be terrorized by agents of some powerful crooks embedded in the government that ought to protect its citizens - in whom sovereignty really ought to lie: just because he criticizes the regime in power today?
What is the difference between those powerful Mafioso embedded in the presidency today, who seek to terrorize law-abiding critics of their regime, such as Kofi Thompson, and the brutes who terrorized us in the days of the "culture of silence"?
Today, are journalists who speak the truth as they see it, as well as those who refuse to sell their conscience and engage in regime praise-singing, not intimidated subtly (as was the case in the firing of automatic weapons outside my house), all the time - and sometimes beaten up, today, too? I am sick and tired of the antics of these bloody fools who tricked their way to power in 2000 and now seek to enslave ordinary people permanently. What perfidy!
Hmmm, Ghana – enti yeawiaye paa, enia? Asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
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