Hmmm Ghana - eyease o: asem ebeba debi ankasa! On top of the rather depressing news emanating from the UK of late - about how low some of our ruling elite were prepared to stoop, during the 1990's, as they sacrificed the national interest in fulfillment of their private personal wealth-creation agenda at the Ghanaian nation-state's expense, by accepting even absurdly small sums in hard-currency from the British engineering company, Mabey & Johnson, because of their grasping and greedy natures - the last thing one wanted to read about was the lamentations of a politician stating the obvious, whiles pretending not to know its root causes.
That, dear reader, was the overwhelming feeling of a few friends who had gathered to talk about the need for the Ghanaian Left to take advantage of the renewed interest in Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, amongst young people throughout Ghana, and spread his message of hope countrywide again.
We all felt it was important for the Left to make young people understand why they ought to identify with the party of a man who wanted all who had the ability to study up to tertiary level, to do so, and fulfill their full potential as human beings, even if they came from the poorest families in the smallest hamlets in Ghana.
How many of such people know that Nkrumah's socialism was based on our communal traditions, and that as usual, he was far ahead of his time: in wanting Ghana to have the same mixed-economy model of development, which today, China is using to power ahead of many major nations?
It is a model of economic development that ensures that whiles the public sector works to ensure the delivery of a caring and sharing society (affordable housing; free education and healthcare; agro-industries nationwide, etc. etc.), the country also takes advantage of the creativity and innovation of honest and patriotic private entrepreneurs, who operate within a national plan, designed specifically to make virtually all Chinese citizens live dignified lives, eventually.
It was during the meeting of this group of concerned Nkrumaists worried about Ghana's future, in the hands of a largely-clueless and unimaginative political class, that one of our number mentioned an online Ghana News Agency (GNA) news report, which he had spotted on www.ghanaweb.com. I looked it up later on after our meeting, and found it on the general news web-page of the Saturday, 3 October 2009, edition, of the ubiquitous online Ghanaian internet portal.
It made very interesting reading, and was entitled: "Common Fund deductions suffocating district assemblies". Well, after reading it, I called up the chap who had spotted it, and asked him what he thought the obviously highly-intelligent honourable minister was thinking as he complained about that very intolerable situation that does not auger well for our nation one bit.
The problem the minister describes in that GNA news report, dear reader, has arisen precisely because that is what what will occur in any developing nation in which such Kweku-Ananse economic policies are pursued: just to benefit a powerful few with greedy ambitions (to paraphrase the far-sighted Nkrumah).
If a supposedly intelligent people like Ghanaians, continue to tolerate what effectively is a gigantic fraud, designed to enable a corrupt regime siphon state funds (for its party's war chest, one gathers: according to a former New Patriotic Party chairperson, Mr. Haruna Esseku) , why should clever politicians, who can bring it to a halt simply by the stroke of a pen, not complain to ordinary people with their sugar-coated and well-trained tongues, firmly in their well-fed cheeks, I ask, dear reader?
The fact of the matter, is that the Zoomlion palaver is not simply one that should be dealt with on the basis that it must be allowed to continue (when we all know that in reality it is an invidious system), because we need to end the vicious cycle and retrograde tactic of political parties (newly returned to power) quickly destroying private businesses, owned by their political opponents: which were set up during the era of a rival party regime that has just lost power after elections.
The bald truth, is that which ever way one looks at it, Zoomlion is a creature of a deliberate policy: dreamed up by apparently-respectable men and women whose egregious actions in this particular instance, in actual fact made them super-white-collar criminals.
The object of that policy, was meant to create for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), its National Democratic Congress (NDC) equivalent, and counterpart, in the lucrative and opaque local government waste-disposal sector of our economy: J. Stanley Owusu & Co. Limited (JSO), which was the undisputed king of the waste disposal business during the era of the first NDC administration led by President Rawlings.
The NPP turned its equivalent of JSO into a nationwide creature, to create jobs for its foot-soldiers, and if Haruna Esseku was telling us the truth, to ensure the continued flow of funds to the party nationwide.
Naturally, as no receipts are ever issued in such murky undertakings between politicians and clever businesspeople (despite what Dr. Kwabena Adjei, the NDC's chairperson apparently thinks!), no one can ever prove that such payments have ever been made - but alas, there is also the little local difficulty of Haruna Esseku's infamous words to deal with (as a complicating factor!), is there not, dear reader?
We all know, dear reader, do we not, just how close the ties between JSO and certain NDC bigwigs were - and only heaven knows why that was so. Suffice it to say, however, that it was certainly not because they loved to meet to have power-breakfast meetings, imbibing Huasa-koko and kako (because it was their favourite traditional African breakfast), as they discussed plans to ensure Ghana's economic well-being.
The same can be said of Zoomlion's nationwide reach. Any truck-pusher of average intelligence, who buys and sells scrap metal, and has a waste-disposal sideline serving one residential street in urban Ghana, starting out with one Chinese-made rubbish-cart tricycle, can parley his business into a zillion-dollar entity, if he can take the guarantee of regular up-front district assembly common-fund allocation nationwide, to any bank with the ambition to become Ghana's number one bank: and that is the real rub, dear reader.
The key to understanding why a company like Zoomlion can grow so big in an environment like ours, after there is regime-change in Ghana, does not lie in working out the range and breadth of its politically-savvy and extremely well-connected ownership.
It lies with the stated aim, as described by Mr. Haruna Esseku (when he caught a severe bout of verbal diarrhea, during an interview with the brilliant Raymond Archer, years ago), of creating NPP equivalents of prominent NDC crony-capitalists and their thriving business entities: so that they could fund the New Patriotic Party and enable it stay in power for as long as the cash came rolling into the coffers of that party.
The crime against humanity perpetrated against our country by the adoption of such an iniquitous system, is that by earmarking and paying up-front to private entities (such as Zoomlion), a portion of the development funds meant for district assemblies, those vital local administrations are denied the wherewithal to enable them uplift rural Ghana from the endemic poverty that plagues so much of it and traps and condemns millions of our compatriots to an existence that is incredibly harsh, brutish, and often mercifully short for some, (because of HIV/AIDS).
Yet, if we adopted the developmental model of sustainable livelihood organisations such as the South African organisation, Sustainable Villages Africa (SVA), we can transform rural economies in a relatively short space of time, and with the little available to them from the national cake: if we had a more creative political class (across the spectrum).
The business model of the Zoomlions of our age, are in effect a classic example of the socialization of private risk that saw its apogee in the greed-filled years of crony-capitalism (our equivalent of 19th century America's ruthless Robber-Baron era!) that enabled Kufuor & Co to exploit our national economy for their personal benefit: in the name of "private sector-led growth"
If we continue with such an iniquitous system without reviewing it, and studying its impact on the real economy of rural Ghana, simply because we do not want to repeat the sins of yesteryear, when we all know that (well, according to no less a well-informed personage than Mr. Haruna Esseku) it is simply a clever ruse to dump district administrations in the red financially, by transferring development funds and resources meant to transform the Ghanaian countryside and make that part of our country more productive, to wealthy and influential oligarchs and powerful politicians and their parties, why should we expect our nation to ever become prosperous?
If we allow that injustice to continue, the plain truth is that our districts will never be transformed to enable rural people have better quality lives, as long as such a monstrosity continues.
What is going on is abominable in the extreme - for, whiles the real economy in rural Ghana is strangulated, because of the result of such pure-nonsense-on-bamboo-stilts economic policies, which sanction the transfer of already-insufficient resources from the district assembly common fund, meant to pay for development projects to uplift living standards in our rural areas, to private entities owned by politically well-connected high net worth individuals, the gap between the rural and urban areas continues to widen: literally a social time-bomb ticking away inexorably towards a future disaster of apocalyptic proportions that will create political instability in our country.
We must never forget, if we insist that this iniquity be allowed to continue, that rural Ghana, which is where after all the bulk of the food crops and cash crops that comprise our commodity exports that earn Ghana the hard currency, which enables our largely-parasitic and politically well-connected educated urban elites to live lives comparable to prosperous middle class Westerners (although they often lack the creativity and innovation that keeps Western societies powering way ahead of societies like ours), that poverty will continue to stunt the growth of rural Ghana's economy till kingdom come.
If that is the case, then surely, dear reader, we run the risk of a social explosion at some point, when the masses finally understand that the so-called "democracy dividend" is only for those who are able to grab huge ex-gratia payments after relatively short periods in office, and their greedy paymasters and collaborators in the private sector?
The burgeoning underclass will explode in anger if the glaring disparities in wealth in our homeland Ghana, that result from such clever schemes, which sanction up-front payments from the district assemblies common-fund persist.
District Assembly common-fund cash must never be paid up-front and used to subsidize the operations of private entities - so that they avoid risk in the provision of goods and services to district assemblies (in what is effectively the socialization of private risk).
That is the harm advance payments from the district assembly common fund, paid to pre-finance the operations of the Zoomlions, owned by wealthy and powerful individuals, whiles their competitors are owed zillions by those self-same district assemblies that we are deliberately starving of funds, represents.
It is the same way that the Tema Oil Refinery took money from state-owned banks to enable it give credit to oil marketing companies, many of which were set up to create a wealthy class of crony-capitalists who would bankroll political parties and politicians: a criminal scheme that nearly bankrupted a vital national institution in the process.
Surely, that is no way to run a nation that aspires to become an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, is it, dear reader? Simply put, we must halt the pre-financing of private-sector service providers working with district administrations if we want rural Ghana to become prosperous.
Tel (powered by Tigo - the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): +233 (0) 27 745 3109.
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