Reflecting on the 24th February 1966 in Ghanaian History

I'm ashamed to admit that it was the BBC that had to be the one to remind me that today marks 43 years since one of the most dramatic events in Ghanaian history occurred. On 24th February 1966, the first President of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was overthrown in what was the first in a series of coup d'états that blot the landscape of Ghanaian history.

Hindsight 20/20 makes it easy for everyone to present differing points of view of how Ghana would have turned out without the coup. Some insist that Dr. Nkrumah should have been allowed to continue with his seemingly promising socialist agenda and pursue his dream of a united Africa. Others on the other side of the debate argue that Dr. Nkrumah was already showing signs of becoming increasingly autocratic and less tolerant of dissenting voices. History also tells us that he seemed to be devoting more time to pursuing his vision of a united Africa to the detriment of Ghana.

Regardless of what our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles tell us or what some of people may even remember about this time, today provides the perfect occasion to reflect on the Butterfly Effect that I rambled on about earlier. How could Ghana's history be different if Kwame Nkrumah was never overthrown? The possibilities and scenarios are endless. Possible scenarios without the coup:

• Ghana could have emerged as a leading industrial nation in Africa under the Nkrumah-ist socialist agenda with an almost egalitarian society as well as marginal differences between rich and poor. However, is there any country out there where a rigorous socialist agenda actually stood the test of time?
  

• Falling commidity prices in the early 1970s could have hit Ghana's socialist agenda in the same way they hammered another socialist country Tanzania rendering it one of Africa's poorest nations. In this scenario, Ghana may only have been able to recover years later in the same way as Tanzania.
  

• Ghana could have become a reactionary one-party state with Dr. Nkrumah as the aging dictator unwilling to give up power in the vein of a certain "Uncle Bob" way down South.

• The authoritarian nature of a one-party state under Kwame Nkrumah could have lead to a rebellious armed opposition that would have plunged Ghana into a bitter civil war. This war would have pitted Western-backed rebels against Communist-backed Nkrumah similar to the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
  

Alas, as with the Butterfly Effect, the possibilities are endless. Regardless of how history did in fact play out, this 24th February is different. Simply because this year, Kwame Nkrumah's only daughter Samia has just taken up her seat as a member of parliament for the latest incarnation of her father's party, the Convention People's Party. There is something about coming full circle about that.

Finding the unexpected in Osu

I spent last week in an antibiotic haze hobbling around in flip-flops after splitting my big toe in a hair-raising jump I made over our gate at home induced by 3am callers from MTWAG (Machete Wielding Thieves Association of Ghana). To add salt to my wounds, my laptop adaptor decided to pack in so I was forced to go out in search of a new one. So I dragged along my national service person (NSP) Kwaku. No, I actually do not have him assigned to me but rather to my department...There are about 10 young'uns in our department but Kwaku has interned with us before and is so much fun to pal around with.

To pal around: [definition] Associate as friends or chums, as in Bill and [Obama] have been palling around for years
Definition courtesy of Dictionary.com. [Obama] addition courtesy of Mrs. Sarah Palin

I should mention that Kwaku is a great sport about driving 'cross town to get all sorts of weird things for people including myself.
Anyway, Kwaku and I made our way to traffic jammed Oxford Street in Osu. For some reason, this seems to have turned into the IT store centre of Accra. We went to a couple of stores, in the first one the dodgy people in charge asked if we wanted the real adaptors for GHC 70.00 (approx. $70.00) or the fake type going for GHC 35.00 ($35.00). When I eventually found what I wanted in another store for GHC 70.00, I had an uncomforatble feeling that I may be buying the so-called fake type for double the price!

So anyway after dealing with computer stores, we made the obligatory stop over at Frankies for some ice-cream. It had been over a year since I last went to Frankies and I was left in shock when I saw that the price of 2 scoops of delicious home-made ice-cream had gone up dramatically. I wasn't sure if this was due to:
1. Sky rocketing fuel prices
2. World-wide increases in the price of basic commodities
3. Credit crunch and sub-prime mortage debacle
4. Stock markets crashing world-wide
These days things that happens in one part of the world has an effect elsewhere right? All about the Butterfly effect.

As I hobbled over to the door of Frankies something flashed before my eyes briefly to my delight....a vendor with The Wire DVD Season 4! Having watched Season 1 -3, I had been searching for Season 4.
So at last, I have another great way to procrastinate! I love this show. Apparently it is a bleak and realistic portrayal of life in Baltimore. It does raise some controversial questions about urban life in an American city where corruption, dirty politricks, poverty and a chronic drug problem all reign supreme.
One cannot expect any warm and fuzzy endings for any of the characters and the bad guys often win. Interestingly, some of the actors on the show are real former thugs and cops. I was really confused the first time I watched the show and one of the characters was called Jay Landsman and when the credits were rolling I saw that one of the actors was also Jay Landsman. I found out later that Jay Landsman was a decorated detective in Baltimore who the character Munch in Homicide: Life on the Street was modelled after. To make it more confusing, the real Jay Landsman also plays a cop in The Wire. One of the producers of the show who played a cop on the show and another actor who also played a cop both died while The Wire was being made. The other cops had wakes for both characters. Another actor Felicia "Snoop" Pearson uses her real name on the show. Apparently she was a former drug dealer and hoodlum. Basically, there are blurry lines between reality and fiction over at The Wire.

Life on Mars: Flashbacks to 1973 and endless possibilities

2 years ago my big bruv brought home a BBC TV series called “Life on Mars”. Since I had never heard of it, I stared at it for a couple of days and eventually forced myself to watch it out of boredom.

I stayed up all night watching episode after episode…mesmerized…Eventually I got the next season off Amazon.

I hear ABC has a remake lined up for an American audience….talk about ruining a good show!

Anyway, back to Life on Mars. I just could not get over the concept: in 2006 a policeman in Manchester (Sam Tyler) gets hit by a car and wakes up in Manchester in 1973, is he in a coma? has he travelled back in time? He is completely clueless and so are we.

Poor Sam is stuck in a 1973 nightmare without the internet, mobile phones or computers. While everyone thinks he is odd, he struggles to get home to the real world (2006) and in the meantime has to put up with police colleagues who are sexist, racist and smoke too much.The best character on the show is Sam's whiskey swigging wise-cracking boss from hell Gene Hunt: an expert in making off colour sexist comments, planting evidence, carrying out grievous bodily harm and taking bribes.. It is all a paranormal experience and Sam Tyler eventually meets his mum and the dad he never knew and they are both younger than him….The show is half fantasy half mystery with a little bit of police work that all seems to be related to Sam’s life in 2006 or to his past…

I don’t think I would have liked Britain in the 1970s. I think it would have been a depressing place with few foreigners and rife unemployment....After all, Maggie Thatcher was able to become Prime Minister back in 1979.

I think I was fascinated by the show because the idea of going back to Ghana in 1973 intrigued me. Back in 1973, we were hit by turmoil, we had just had another military coup and had just entered what is now considered the darkest era in Ghana's history. On the other hand, bell-bottoms, afros and platform shoes (“guarantees) were a la mode. I was not born yet and neither was my big bruv…My big sis was 3 years old and my parents decided to move to Lesotho in Southern African.

So if I had a chance to go back to 1973 what would I do?

1. Warn Ghanaians to keep the population hovering around 9million so we could all be REAL cedi millionaires
2. Invent the laptop or scout the world for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to marry
3. Be an environmental campaigner and warn against the thinning ozone layer
4. Warn people about the coming plague in the form of HIV
5. Hang out with my parents
   

Time travel offers so many possibilities. There are so many paths we can take in life and given the chance to do it all over again, which way would we choose?…if we choose a path opposite to what we chose the first time around, would that change our entire destiny and the course of our lives? Kind of reminds me of the Butterfly Effect.

Butterfly effect (noun): the phenomenon whereby a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere, e.g., a butterfly flapping its wings in Rio de Janeiro might change the weather in Chicago

wordnet.com

That's where the endless possibilities lie. If my parents had never gone to Southern Africa, I would probably be a completely different person. I would have never had the life I did, the friends I have as well as the experiences that make me...me! It is amazing how life experiences actually shape your destiny and open or close possibilities.