Anatomy of Falsehood: UCC reputation at risk (1)

A UCC news item, from the following link, is apt to gravely tarnish the reputation of the institution. http://www.ucc.edu.gh/news/administration/2014/07/25/produce-problem-solving-graduates-dr-isaac-kwame-amuah-charge-universities

It tells of Kwame Amuah’s dealings with university “management” in regard to technology development.

At issue are two points, one being that he made a presentation on a “Slim Tablet PC he has developed” and, further, that he presented his “newly developed Slim Tablet PC” (to Management of the University). The other has the Vice-Chancellor, who chaired the function, commending Amuah on “his outstanding global achievements in the field of technology”.

I observe here a possibly trim entailment of the two; i.e., praise follows claim of development, with extravagance of praise proportioned to exceptionalness of claim. For if Amuah, an alumnus of an institution in the most technologically backward part of the globe, did indeed create the device, then the rarity of accomplishment would entitle the institution to a pitch of pride blaring unmatched by its actual global ranking. The wrench, however, lies in the dubiousness of the claim. For, had he developed the gadget, the fact would, in these times, be common knowledge internationally, or at minimum in South Africa. But such knowledge is totally wanting, as borne out by a random Web search. “Who’sWho in Southern Africa” is an online exposure platform for accomplished professionals from the region.

His alleged creation would certainly be featured there in connection with his profile, as the website purportedly is the “leading guide to everyone who is anyone” in or from the area. Yet he is not even listed there. And this is a fellow whose fortune has long been riding the coattails of a so-called global icon of father-in-law. Would he, for instance, not be apotheosized in some ethno-proclamation of rare contribution to human advancement, in likely mimicry of the demi-god currency now attaching to the icon? So what kind of feat is it that is recognized neither in his home base nor globe-wise, but only in some obscure locality at a shadowy event of questionable import?

The granted entailment need not absolutely hold, though, inasmuch as UCC’s testament of ‘outstanding achievements” could well have predated the event under scrutiny, wherewith management might, for instance, have been compiling a roster of multiple feats to his name. The VC, after all, cites “achievements” of which the PC Tablet may be just one. But obverse to the supposition is a huge burden of proof.

For if it is hard enough to substantiate the claim of tablet creation, then it should be harder still to do that of the remaining achievements on record, jointly or separately. In exactly what, impliedly, consist the others? Where are they to be found or attested? Who are the beneficiaries? Above all, by virtue of what publicly certified skills and competencies could he have made them? These questions urgently call for plain answers the key to which management may hold in exclusivity.

I yet doubt the key to be of uniform turn, as management must have undergone changes from 1994, when Amuah rose to brief, hollow notoriety in South Africa, to 2012 by which time he had fallen into ignominy, with intermediate punctuations of scandal. Consistent with the changes is the inescapable conflict in judgment as to his overall academic relevance to UCC.

Hence, if management consensus on the substance of the putative roster is ineluctably elusive, then the truth seeker ought to prudently look elsewhere for some singular factor in the latest flourish of academic scandal. Said factor probably lies in the ruse of his latest venture, the so-called Singularity Institute Africa, a sham which has the semblance of chartered affiliation with the real thing, namely, the California-based MIRI (Machine Intelligence Research Institute), until January 2013 known simply as “Singularity Institute”, home to some of the keenest minds on the subject of artificial intelligence. Sited on the Web neatly as “intelligence.org”, it is a non-profit organization with a laudably philanthropic mission, the video display of its advisors and collaborators certifying its overall credibility.

If therefore this genuine group had wished to partner with some African entity, they would have chosen from the array of European institutions in South Africa. These being world-class, it would make perfect sense for a Western institute dedicated to innovative research to work with others of like pedigree and orientation. Credentials of the sort do fail Amuah and his so-called Omega Scientific Research, a family-run shelf company which is neither about science nor about research. Were it to the contrary, it would be vouched for through some productive association, at least, with the classy South African set.

Ponder, for corroboration, that Singularity Institute Africa, a dot.com homunculus, has the same physical address as “Akwaaba African Art”, his other venture of late (akwaabaafricanart.co.za), whose curator also doubles as a “researcher/writer” at S.I.A. Now what greater incongruity conceivable than for African Art peddling to be wedded to artificial intelligence/exponential technology concerns, given that art’s general primitivity in technique! Obviously, S.I.A is fit to be run from the innards of an African hut, the sort closed to natural light and to which artificial lighting, electronics, high-speed computing, advanced mathematics, and nano-whatever are all definite anathema.

The wedding evokes a 21st century avatar of the 19th century “Heart of Darkness” pathology, a sobering reminder that precious little may have changed since evolved outsiders chanced upon our forebears, some naked, some barely clad, but very few boasting anything for outsiders to write humanly home about, save under the redemptive influence of some of the same evolved set, like the Arabs. Barbarism, in sum, characterizes the arrangement, and it cannot but proscribe contemplation of all possible fair share in the “transhumanism” of genuine AI theorists, to wit, an evolutionary plateau beyond the current homo sapiens.

The anathema sharply contrasts with the fact of MIRI’s location in the San Francisco Bay Area, not far from Silicon Valley, and in working coordination with “Singularity University”, Ray Kurzweil’s creation. S.I.A’s website is overloaded with quotes from, and links to, the real experts and actors in the field none of whom is African. It features, too, such high-tech gadgetry as seems completely alien, in design or construction, to the Sub-Sahara. But why trouble to duplicate information already available on the Web and covering the accomplishments of superior intellects in the West, when S.I.A aims to “motivate, inspire, and educate people in Africa in the field of exponential technology”? What inspiration is to be had from an exercise so deficient in originality?

The imposture is all the more foul as UCC management may have naively fallen for it. S.I.A was likekly conceived or hatched prior to the July 2014 presentation, and the announced plan for the establishment there of an Exponential Technology Center, complete with pledges of future financial support, must have induced in the audience an inflated view of S.I.A’s caliber. Does not the cited commendation, for example, bespeak the inflation? Again, since there is no technological deed on record to his name, must not the sheer invocation of the institute have awed the uninformed into raptures? The rub nonetheless is in their apparent failure to, instantly or subsequently, check Amuah’s pretensions against exemplars of the real thing, a lapse rather shocking of one of the nation’s major public universities.

Further, the prospect of an E.T Center is all the more dismissible as the host institution lacks the research platform required for the center’s functioning. For UCC has neither an engineering school/faculty nor a materials science unit. Thus, as both are critical to the technical marvels envisioned, should not the center, once set up, amount to a mere façade, much after the fashion in which S.I.A itself is currently misleading the ill-informed? On the other hand, for what ultimate end would UCC be indulging the farce? Is it obstruction of rational knowledge growth or unbridled lucre in the afterglow of the “golden era of business” in Ghana?

An even crueler irony creeps in. The problems litanized are a symptom of severe intellectual deficits. Yet bearers of the deficits are being summoned to find solutions in creative resources beyond their capabilities. That makes absurdity of all assignation of transformative agency, and more so of S.I.A’s pretense to be a “rallying cry for Africa to rise up and join the technological evolution”. Note that artificial intelligence, the epitome of that evolution, is born of natural intelligence of a special grade, and such grade is not universally distributed. It is manifestly missing in the Sub-Sahara which has not contributed an iota of its intrinsic own to the world of humanly positive inventions.

Pressed to name just one artifice from the region that has been used or adapted for the benefit of humankind in general, the ideologue or pseudo-historian would pull a blank, head-scratch in vain, or babble. So abysmal a historical, failure then, forcefully disqualifies our general lot from automatic induction into the authorial circle of wonder works proclaimed by S.I.A, it being underscored that the circle is no equivalent of the UN General Assembly where the vote of the advanced equals that of the retarded. On that account alone, the “explosion of intelligence”, held to define “singularity”, cannot extend to the Sub.

Nor would it do to smuggle in the predictable reminder as to the prominence, in the West, of S&T professionals of African origin. For those relatively few have, mainly through colonization, assimilated fruits of Western civilization, S&T development being one. The deeper the assimilation is, then, the greater the odds of their shining. But the shine is a mere fractional borrowing. Impossibly, that is, would they have earned their recognition on their Sub-Saharan own, having attained renown under Western tutelage, supervision, or even strict surveillance.

For parity in endowment to contrarily hold, the West ought to have been assimilating something comparable from the Sub, with that thing proven to have existed prior to the first-ever encounter with the West, which reciprocity has not happened, and never may. (It has, in the case of Arabs and other Asian groups.) Unsurprisingly, then, at any global gathering featuring inventiveness and creativity, Subling representation tends to be drowned in a sea of mostly white. So, in view of their token presence, our few luminaries, if thoughtful, may question their fitness for belonging there at all. They absolutely must, when their European and Asian counterparts start drawing upon their respective histories. But if thoughtless, they would imagine themselves their full equals.

Yet betrayed by thoughtlessness, they cannot but risk having their token presence credited to patronizing quotas, diversity scaling, and equal opportunity amendments. Should anyhow this portrayal disconcert some readers to the point of comforting denial, let them recall the frenetic SOS calls, as recently as the mid-1990s, over the growing digital divide between developed and backward nations, with the Sub making up the bulk of the latter. The calls have been gradually muted only because the region has, since, been encircled with underwater fiber-optic cable, a momentous enabler of Internet access for, say, Dawurampong or the Ithuri forest. But, again, who did the encircling?

I mention IT merely as a fashionable signifier of a deeper pathology. Technology extends wider than IT, and, in the larger scheme, our failings get amplified. The amplifications, in turn, hark foremost to inheritances from forebears who collectively were up to little good. Yet what solution imaginable to the pathology is hardly to be found in charlatanism. Required, rather, are general average industry and ingenuity, and since the duo have been sorely and long lacking on the Sub, we, contemporary Sublings, must urgently inquire into possible causes, as a preliminary to possible future remediation. Is it, say, a case of biology, culture, or environment? Or is it one of a mix of all three? I will defer treatment of the question for later, but those already irked by its being herein posed may do well to consider general outsider perception of the Sub in the matter. “African IQ” is rated 70 (on the Web), with a standard deviation of 12.

Now in obviation of the temptation to disregard the figure as racist fiction, I hasten to ask: Why should Sublings alone be the victim? Other groups or regions (than the West) fare better by comparison, and may, in doing so, tacitly acquiesce in our poor rating. Accordingly, they should be co-conspiring in the alleged fiction. But, pray, why would the rest of humankind be contemptuously leagued against us? What about us generally excites so much negativity in nearly all others of our species?

The low rating is particularly interesting for its inductive value, I might add, per its connotation of a plausible argument from our manifest monumental failure to the postulate of some archetypal mean, independently of all data from actual psychometric studies. This, alas, is not the sort of average that makes for discoveries, inventiveness, and ET growth. So, if we fancy our inflated selves as potential geniuses with our ph.ds and other showy titles acquired mostly through the charity of superior outsiders, all with a view to impressing them as co-equals, then Subling posterity should be destined for the same degree of contempt as deservedly falls to ancestry in our time.

Else put, our own do-little generation is no less culpable than the bygone do-nothings who procreantly set us up for shameful failure on the global stage, for want of equipping us for our productive part, extremely poor players that we aggregately are. Under such curse, no amount of token accomplishment can erase the historical stigma redounding from cumulative or generational failures. It would hence be utterly vain to devise some special history moment, day, week, or month to showcase African firsts or eminences, at home or abroad, while underachievement characterized our year-round order of general business.

Caution against charlatanism compels more intense scrutiny of him who presumes to hold forth on problem-solving matters. Ghana does lack solvers; and our universities may not be “worth their salt” for failing to produce solvers. But Amuah is no solver, either, whether as an entrepreneur or as an academic out of South Africa. He is, rather, a huge beneficiary of post-apartheid’s Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), a government policy that affords a select few Blacks a stake in private, usually White or foreign-owned, companies that do business with state-owned enterprises.

Political patronage determines eligibility for stake ownership, and as the determinant is a rare commodity, few can at any time make the pick. The policy is moreover ineffectual against the widely reported income inequality under post-apartheid, which fact makes of the new Black Millionaire set a scandalous reflection of the inequality, “scandalous” because the impoverished are predominantly Black, under Black-majority rule.

Such model of “success” is at all events non-exportable to the rest of the Sub. For success in business requires effortful creation of some product or service, along with the readiness to compete in the marketplace. Coming after all brainwork and sweat equity, sheer stake ownership and board membership can scarcely add value to any economy, especially if value be measured by job creation and trickle-down effect, inter alia. Hence, having failed, through private enterprise, to help alleviate Bantu poverty in South Africa, he is markedly unfit to go lecturing on misery alleviation, through education, elsewhere on the Sub. His disastrous tenure at the ex-Foundation for Research Development is on permanent record. If that is insufficient, behold his BEE-rigged acquisition, in 2004, of Hartfield Business College (Pretoria, SA) which he would co-run into bankruptcy by 2006. (See full story at: http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/students-cry-foul-as-college-closes-its-doors-1.289781

http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/bee-company-accused-of-dodging-sars-1.290230

As UCC management seem to have overlooked or suppressed the foregoing unsavory facts, I cannot resist pointing out the ominous analogy between the reported event of July 2014 and the scandal involving the fake sign language interpreter at Amuah’s father-in-law’s memorial service in December 2013. As later revealed, the fake is a mental case. But the memorial gig was not his first. He had been “performing” at other events prior; and to land that famous role, he must have been widely accredited by officialdom. Yet officialdom cannot have adequately told between fake and genuine interpretation.

Surely, furthermore, would he have gotten away with his hoax, had not Western experts widely exposed it. Most doubtfully would his ignorant local audiences have found out the truth, on their own. Now Amuah, who touts himself on the S.I.A homepage as a “widely respected academic and entrepreneur” can get away with such falsehood only under the pseudo-license of his dealings with parties that are totally clueless as to the facts. To Adisadel College, for instance, he is a professor of nuclear science, and to UCC a tech guru.

If those two exemplify his “circle” of respecters, then the extent of respect must be only as “wide” as it is populated by like ignoramuses. And if he dares smugly trade falsehood between South Africa and Ghana, then the axis of the area must run from his adoptive Xhosa base to the nucleus of an assortment of bodies in Ghana, some ephemeral, others stable, but all congruent around one oddity: the improbability of self-knowledge. Plausibly, thus, Doctors Bobonya, Onushishi, Gyimigyimi, and Aplanke can all indiscriminately make the canon of salvific know-what and know-how, only because the canon setters themselves know naught of that of which they judge.

As pertains to “circle” proper, it is a misnomer for what is really a one-dimensional magnitude, hence something admitting of no width at all, and originating, insignificantly, in temperate South Africa where standards of genuine respect abide beyond his Xhosa enclave and terminating, in hype, in tropical Ghana where discernment between light and darkness perpetually fails no less in the material order than in the mental.

To such enormity, I hasten to cite one counter-example. Elon Musk, of South African origin, is globally recognized for his accomplishments in technology. A true genius, he is also profiled on “Who’s Who in Southern Africa”. His is the type that may rightfully, from down below, venture to pontificate in the barren equatropics over problem-solving challenges. I doubt, however, that he would be so tempted. For he seems rather concerned to exercise his faculties, letting the results publicly tell of their exceptionalness. Expect the opposite of a pseudo-Musk, one imbued with a distorted sense of acquired powers. This type would come, not from the Silicon Valley whence the real Musk operates, but from the sub-Limpopo where mockery of accomplishment is on the ascendancy. And dark as can be, this dubiously arrived-type would presume to remonstrate with fellow darkies elsewhere on how to get anywhere whatsoever from somewhere.

Guardedness, then, is wisely tolled against bearers of success stories from down there, to which end I must alert here to the supreme pathos in what seems a practical suite to the July 2014 event. S.I.A’s website reports a visit, arranged by Amuah/S.I.A, of a UCC delegation to the Potchefstroom campus of the North-West University. Appointed with photos, the highlight of the visit is the delegation’s meeting with the faculty of engineering, attended with a showcase of the latter’s photovoltaic project. A fuller account, by the already referenced S.I.A associate, is available at: http://www.bdlive.co.za/business/innovation/2015/05/12/chance-for-africa-to-skip-bad-practices

The account, somewhat unflattering to UCC/Ghana, features a photo of Amuah captioned “of Cape Coast University” and hitch-riding a solar-powered scooter piloted by the project engineer from Sunfarming, the German company collaborating with the faculty. Eminently iconic is the photo, in the sense of its capturing the dr Aplanke complex, this with its curse of back-seating seemingly typical of the lot of the Sub in nearly all critically human endeavors. We cannot seemingly go places on our initiative, but may do so only upon hitching a ride with some group adept at locomotion. Such is the mode of the Sub’s historical presencing, be it via slavery or via appendage-like appointment, as with Arab introduction of Africans into China centuries ago.

So, in place of the scooter, useful merely for short-distance terrestrial travel, just fancy a spacecraft like the one conceived by Musk for the future human colonization of Mars. The likes of Musk would be captaining, while the dr Aplankes would make it narrowly aboard only by charity, if not by political coercion, and even then not to engage in the labor of exploration and discovery of what is “out there”, but probably to clean vessel toilets and perform other subaltern tasks.

Therewith is the classical master/slave relation reaffirmed, not however as some refresher of an outmoded social dynamic, but as a necessary vindication of justice in the realm of the intellect, per the following principle: to be lorded over by their betters are the demonstrably inept in mind.

Unsettling symbolism aside, substance lapses even more. The photovoltaic project is not about artificial intelligence or singularity. So, what business does S.I.A have brokering an exchange between two institutions over something involving standard engineering of which S.I.A/Akwaaba has no grasp? Again, such exchanges are ordinarily direct, as between administration or faculty representatives. There is thus no need of go-betweens, especially of the non-academic variety. So what warrants non-academic Amuah’s meddling? Also, the highlighted meeting is between the engineering faculty and the UCC delegation.

But the last cannot include engineers, as UCC has no engineering faculty. What academic benefits, then, stand ultimately to be reaped by UCC at large from the arranged visit? Further, if it were truly an exchange, what could Potchefstroom have usefully gotten out of UCC? If, by contrast, it were a learning experience trip, what lessons could have been taken back by the delegation for the enhancement of UCC academics? To be duly remarked, Potchefstroom, the flagship campus of NWU, is a research institution which, until the January 2004 merger, went by the name “Potchefstroom U for Christian Higher Education”. Its partner used to be U of Bophuthatswana. For evidently good reason must the delegation have been steered, away from the Mahikeng campus, to the European, mainly Afrikaans-language, flagship, an appropriate enough partner for the German high-tech company. UCC, a mostly teaching institution, is no candidate for such partnership, and Amuah’s brokerage of the farce of meeting/visit is unmistakably redolent of the dr Gyimigyimi complex.

Farce of the kind can be avoided through transparent institution-to-institution dealings of which UCC has ironically a few, on record, with some American universities, like Eastern Washington U and Kennesaw State U. These transactions required no shady meddling, and did comply with standards of international academic exchanges. Something, then, may have gone terribly amiss for those standards to be breached in this particular case, and I find no more probable cause than the bewitching force of the Slim Tablet make-believe allied with the Singularity voodoo gospel. Between July 2014 and March 2015, the spell would have gained ample ferment to wreak havoc with recipient lucidity.

The solace perhaps is that UCC is not the sole victim yet. New African Magazine’s online edition (16 March 2015) has an article gaudily entitled, “ Unleashing the African genius: a case for Singularity”. ( http://newafricanmagazine.com/unleashing-african-genius-case-singularity/ ). It references S.I.A and Amuah, described as a “nuclear physicist and entrepreneur”. The citation is self-serving, in that the correspondent is also an S.I.A “member”, and may have used the piece as a promotional lever. As might have been expected, however, the title is completely askew with the content of the article, which is about artificial intelligence developments mainly in the West, but overall elsewhere than in Africa.

The “case”, hence, for the Sub is blatantly mishandled, with the slight feeding height of ridicule in the oxymoron of “African genius”. For the two terms are provably incompatible. And I mean this: said genius, if real, would, like all genuine geniuses, be self-evident, with its products openly on display for many—around the globe—likely to witness, and for some possibly to emulate or envy. But there are no such products, which accordingly raises the question: where is the genius, and who/what are its embodiments? It is a rhetorical one, the answer, firmly in the negative, being foregone. Thus, from its ascertained non-existence, its unleashing becomes an epic impossibility.

The epic, in turn, tolls outrage at the express enlistment of Amuah/S.I.A in the suppositious enterprise of unleashing. “It is time to unleash the African genius,” he is quoted as stressing. By “African” nonetheless is to be properly understood the Sub. For the Arab North (of the Sahara) and the European South (of the Limpopo) are essentially in, not of, of the continent. Yet those two areas are home to genius, whereas the vast middle is not. In fact, North African/Arab contempt for “Africanity” is undisguised, an attitude quite revealing of their willful non-identification. The Europeans may be diplomatic or indulgent in that wise, especially if openly sworn to “non-racial” something.

Appositely, the same journalist should stand informed that his so-called “world’s oldest university”, Al-Karaouine in Arab Morocco, is not at all African. For were it truly so, it would have comparables on the Sub, long pre-dating the University of Ghana, for one, which, founded as lately as 1948 by the British colonials, bides forever as a gift of civilization. Therefore, the credo of African genius can publicly hold only upon general disregard of the proven impossibility of genius. But such attitude must betray cretinism, it being no less oxymoronic for cretins of reader-respondents to dare judge the content of genius than for anyone to dare proclaim the coming-to-be of non-existent genius.

Between UCC and New African Magazine, however, lies this crucial difference: the former deals in knowledge/scholarship, whereas the latter does in current affairs. One would hence, as a rule, expect a reporter to fudge matters (of fact and history) where the academic toed the line. Awareness of the difference quickly dissipates what solace UCC may feel from its joint circumstantial lot with the publication. For it should have known better, by which verdict is underlined the learning community-specificity of the institution. That specificity is hardly measured by “management”.

In fact, very grudgingly have I heretofore used the term, not least for its denotation of the executive branch of an enterprise, often commercial in description. A university, by contrast, is constituted largely of its faculty and student body, parties whose nexus is shaped negligibly by bureaucrats. Amuah’s intercourse is/was, not with the nexus, but with bureaucrats, it seems. These were at least the reported beneficiaries of his “invention” and gifts thereof. It is therefore no triviality that the intercourse occurred during the long-vacation break in the academic calendar, when students were away, and faculty in recess. He may thus have shrewdly timed his visit in order to elude informed community scrutiny, as some diligent faculty and students could have easily caught the hoax if he had made his presentation during the semester, likely at the university auditorium where distinguished visitors usually address the community.

Rather than deal in the shades, management could more usefully work at enhancing UCC’s external stature. Its global ranking (on the Web) is pitiful for the 2014/2015 ranking cycle, and its continent-wide one disappointing, even among institutions of the Sub. The criteria for the first-order ranking are exacting, and much of the Sub may understandably fail to measure up. But even within this beleaguered class, UCC palters by failing to make the top 100 listing. Nationally, it ranks 3rd, after UG and UST. But UG places 24th, and UST 77th, among African Universities.

(http://www.4icu.org/topAfrica/). (The top-rated are, of course, European and Arab.) What factor, then, relegates UCC far below UST, when it stands immediately behind it by national ranking? Is it that the national standards are per se defective, as even the premier university itself fares lusterlessly by Sub metrics which matter little by global gauges? Or is it that UCC is in peculiar violation of some national norm, which accounts, in turn, for its poor Sub showing? And would that violation afford impostors the license to go staking the high ground with the institution when they would likely not dare do so with the other two? Conversely, would not UST eagerly have a real tech guru (of Ghanaian origin) go visiting and demonstrating the “how” of things already done or requiring urgently to be done?

Poor farers may pooh-pooh International rankings with solipsist excuses, which recourse could well tract if the poor opted for provincial insularity. The implied injunction is simple: Let none go dabbling in things global if they do not give a damn about external rankings. But UCC ostensibly has an international outlook, whatwith management’s express interest in “global achievements”. Thus, in order to boost standing with worthy outsiders, it ought to heed global ranking criteria. These exclude fund-raising capability, a rather trite element for a publicly funded institution. They, by contrast, include research quality and its global impact, employability of graduates, and international reach by way of external faculty and student representation. But potentially obstructive of that representation, and with it all fruitful external co-operation, are enormities like the sham of Exponential Technology Center and—more damningly—association with Singularity Institute Africa.

For, if high-ranking Arabs and Europeans of-the-Sub be well prone to laugh off both center and institute, then what reputable scientist or technologist from the West or Asia would endorse them through open association? And if UCC were deprived of much needed co-operation in S & T, would not the loss hurt its research growth potential, as a low-research institution generally stands to gain much more by the inflow of advanced research work from the West or Asia than the other way round? Again, how can external stature be improved in the short term, given the predictable stain from UCC/S.I.A intercourse?

I pose the last question out of suspicion of some S.I.A effect in UCC’s observed decline in ranking. Some three years ago, it was hovering obscurely near the bottom of the Top 100 African Universities list. But it is currently missing from that batch. Might, therefore, the assessors have learnt of the intercourse about a year ago and judged accordingly, which would explain the fall from obscurity into invisibility? But if they did not, and are yet to do so, then may not an even sharper drop be comprehensibly due in future ranking cycles? If, however, neither supposition holds, and the decline is unrelated to S.I.A dealing, then could not whatever cause thereof have portended the dealing, and, as this last is intrinsically aberrant, would not its inescapable conjugation with the assumed portent spell international disaster for UCC in the years ahead?

The postulations are not without bearing on the philosophic promptings of the anatomy. For we are thereby witnessing debauchery of Reason in the Academy, with the main culprit widely certified as an academic criminal. UCC’s motto, Veritas Nobis Lumen, implies commitment to the service of Reason. Yet the modality of commitment is ambiguous, as the Latin phrase may be rendered equally in the indicative and the optative. Loosely, that is, “Truth is Our Light” and “May Truth be Our Light”.

Or, stringently put, “T is L for Us” and “May T be L for Us”. The ambiguity, if designed by suppression of explicit verbals, bespeaks punishable sophistry. If, however, it arises from an arbitrary play on some established, univocal rendering, then the foul (UCC/S.I.A) intercourse makes nonsense of that standard altogether, insofar as it is, in tenor, inconsistent with either modality. For if institutional culture does revolve around pursuit of Truth under the guidance of Light, then all intercourse in the shades subverts that culture.

If, by contrast, the pursuit is merely a desideratum awaiting fulfillment at some unspecified time ahead, then shades business must indefinitely postpone the climax of T in the life of the institution. For business of the kind properly belongs in the interior of a mud hut. (NB: The belated translation on the homepage smacks of solecism. “Truth, Our Guide”, by its notional leap, occludes the instrumentality of Light while bungling the matter of goal or mission.)

It is moreover duly to be wondered how T and L can productively be conjoined on the “dark continent”, whether from within a hut or out in the open. For T abides 24/7, while natural L does for part of the cycle, only to be supplemented—under civilization—by artificial L. Yet sustainable human-made L is an extreme latecomer, via civilization, to the Sub which has no verifiable traditions in optics, theoretic or practical. Culturally, therefore, it may be very difficult for Sublings in general to fully engage, around the clock, in such T business as is continuously regulated by L. Tempting, accordingly, would it be for the general average of Intellect to habitually take breaks from Truth, within the Academy or without.

The breaks, a clear invitation to the usurpation of Falsehood, add up to a pollution of certain universally recognized standards governing the examined life or the life of the Mind. The pollution is, clearly, an affront to civilization, and Fortune forefend that, in the future, a wholesale embargo not be slapped, in righteous reaction, on transactions of the Intellect emanating from the Sub. No nightmare fantasy at all is the scenario, I stress, with needed recall of the panicked quarantining, not long ago, of Ebola-infected suspects (out of West Africa) at various points of entry in the West and Asia. The feared threat, at the time, was to Body merely. That to Mind could elicit a more draconian menu of measures of which racial segregation and concentration camps in the past would have been bland appetizers.

Harder to track and punish are breaks from Truth outside the Academy, because the referenced standards have weaker sway there. But occurrence there detracts no less from the estimation of the general average than occurrence elsewhere. For at stake is the worth of the Mind of the Sub, loosely dubbed the “Mind of Africa” a generation ago. In this connection, too, Amuah’s dealings with non-academics bring forcefully home the point. His interview with the same correspondent for New African Magazine (2 December 2013) is ridden with distortions and outright lies. http://newafricanmagazine.com/features/interviews/how-do-you-write-on-death-when-you-havent-experienced-it-nelson-mandela-to-his-son-in-law

About the only part-Truth is an accidental confession. “Maki is always telling me I wasn’t cut out for academia and that I should have gone on my own immediately after my doctorate, instead of wallowing in a sector which nearly destroyed my career. In many ways, Maki is right but I will not characterise my years in academia as wasted.” (Emphases mine.) This is a curious admission from a “widely respected academic”, as the sector in question is academic alright.

So how could he, with his ph.d in physics education, have been unsuited for a career therein were it not for his painful realization of severe ineptitude at that European-groomed institution governed by meritocracy alone, and into which he was thrust, under nascent post-apartheid, thanks largely to the in-law connection and partly to his being just Black? The meritocrats, with their superior intelligence and mettle, must have had sufficient grounds to be suspicious of all nepotistic meddling and reverse discrimination in a field where demonstrable competencies alone count. Hence, in unguardedly conceding destruction by sector, he can intelligibly intend only self-destruction in that sector, not harmful agency of that sector per se.

Also, rather than set him up, the meritocrats would likely have anxiously awaited the inevitable moment of collapse, having, under apartheid, observed the pattern of wanton incompetence and mismanagement all over the Sub. Again, had he really been cut out for business, would he have needed a ph.d to succeed? Academic doctors are generally not known for entrepreneurial acumen, and his queer business model requires hardly any thinking. Verily, instead, he wheeled to business only after shameful failure in academia, which makes of his much-hyped success in thoughtless business an upside-down measure of the failure.

The most blatant falsification is by way of his response to the question how he transformed himself “from an academic to a highly successful entrepreneur”. He had “ a cancer scare in 1999”, he says, and, while he was hospitalized, his then employer started investigating some project he had been running. “Not in a position to mount any defence, because of my hospitalisation, the investigators concluded that I had violated all the financial rules of the institution in paying a consultant I had engaged from New Zealand. On the advice of both my oncologists and lawyers, I submitted my resignation and the rest, we say, is history. So this is the circumstances that led to a business offering to manage a research and development project.” (Emphases added.)

The quote encapsulates arrant crookedness, and underlined therein, too, are bald lies as well as misleading innuendo. He did have a cancer scare, but that was in mid-April 1997 when I coincidentally revealed to the South African academy and mass media his attempts to plagiarize my works. By 1999, he was no longer working for the employer, the former Foundation for Research Development (FRD), (now renamed National Research Foundation), from which he was fired for “severe misconduct” in February 1998. He cannot therefore have wilfully “resigned” when he had been dismissed, and, as he was not later reinstated, his mention of 1999 fouls up fact and narrative. His insinuation, moreover, of having been framed because of his inability to defend himself suggests shoddy investigation work on the part of the FRD. But if he did have legal representation, could not his lawyers have held brief for him while was “recuperating”?

Actually, the facts are otherwise. His hospitalisation with cancer was short-lived after mid-April 1997. Concluded in February 1998, the investigation had been launched in September 1997 when he was, not hospitalised, but at work, and it was conducted while he was healthily under suspension, not hospitalised. The launch came shortly after I had once again widely alerted to his de facto plagiarising of two commissioned works distributed among some reputable Western institutions and listed on the Web.

With these facts recognized by the Europeans, and his academic reputation irreparably damaged, superior intellects would doubtfully have offered him an R&D project to manage. Nor would inferior ones have been even capable of conceiving one. His business venture thereafter consisted rather of his founding of the so-called Omega Scientific Research (OSR). But this, as already disclosed, is no less of a fake than Singularity Institute Africa. Add to those counter-Truths, the interviewer’s failure to run the account by the NRF or some other notable body before publishing it, something easily doable from his South African base.

It is, besides, a reflection of the overrated stature of his father-in-law that, on the very eve of his death, this individual’s thoughts and feelings about the “icon” should have been avidly sought. For the two personas should in principle be incommensurate with each other, if the one is supposedly heroic globe-wise, and the other attestedly villainous internationally. Much aslant principle, furthermore, has he, per the in-law effect, been persistently getting away with his villainies. And well may he do so with the latest if UCC opts to play ostrich.

The possibility of play is not at all to be trifled with, in view of the latest variation on the slim tablet transaction. As reported on 22 June 2015, UCC management had organized “a three-day consultative forum to chart a new path for the university”. ( https://educationgh.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/ucc-organises-management-forum/ ). Funded by Kwame Amuah, and held at the Busua Beach Resort, the consultation was intended to help reshape the course of the UCC “in the face keen competition from other institutions” and ultimately reposition it for “academic excellence”. Precisely what prompted the frantic micro-caucus may perchance be filtered from the pre-stated suppositions regarding UCC’s external standing. The cause, however, seems less dire than the effect, which rings of stern malediction in the form of a horror continuum from questionable patronage to shady dealing.

The variation occurred almost a month to the anniversary of the seminal foul intercourse, during a hiatus of regular institutional business, the sort hardly conducted in the guise of a “retreat” or at venues associated with pleasure for a select few. Does it anyhow not beggar Reason that matters of averred gravitas be compromised with extreme levity of manner? For a forum proper should be open, transparent, and inclusive of as many community stakeholders as possible. This pseudo-one was closed, similarly to conventicles, supreme councils, central committees, clerical enclaves, in brief to enemies of the open society. Stunning, too, is the choice of location; i.e., of one so far away from campus, as if the university lacked meeting facilities of its own, large or small. There is, then, no overstating the obvious failure of Light, from management’s failure to act consistently with UCC’s motto.

The lapse in ethics, if not predicable, is to be blamed on this wrench: usurpation by the Prince of Darkness. An academic outlaw extraordinaire has no business presuming to shepherd an institution beset with self-doubt yet pledged to academic excellence. So long as the usurpation held, well might perish the prayer/wish, “Lumen sit/Lumen fiat.”(“Let there be Light.”) For the reign of Darkness stands to eternity what that of Light does to temporality, wherefore the ideal of Truth in the Academy cannot but indefinitely languish under perdurable Light failure.

Likewise, if Knowledge is derivatively Power, and Light axiomatically such, then Truth business, predicated of Knowledge, must be determined to absolute perdition from axiomatic Power failure. Practically urged on the UCC community, accordingly, is the momentous issue of whether to be constitutionally in-time or out of it. It calls for a genuine forum, one neither externally funded nor consigned to amusement, and inalterably set against all lure of ostriches.

Pending probable lure, though, let me rehearse caution served on Adisadel College about two years ago in a comparable case. As the anatomy is being internationally distributed, with some institutional recipients globally certified as beacons of Truth and Knowledge, any PR foul play would augur ill. Adisadel, a minor, is bound by national education standards only. UCC, by contrast, is of a major class, with ethical mandates exceeding those standards.

Its membership, for instance, of the Association of Commonwealth Universities marks eternal indebtedness to civilization, and servicing of the debt requires a regimen of inter-generational conscientious ethics. At the impetus of civilisade, therefore, do I re-affirm my allegiance, via Neo-Maat, to the Kingdom of Truth (KOT), a driver not only of the anatomy but also of relentless concern with the developmental challenges facing the nation. As Truth correlates with Light, so does Falsehood with Darkness, and if T admits of rulership, then so must the other categories.

Thus, the Kingdoms of Truth, Falsehood, Light, and Darkness can all be held to cohere around some moral co-efficient of national development. The coherence is, however, not subject to idle theo-babble or warmed-up Manichean metaphysics, as the co-efficient turns on the physicality of our getting things emulably done, possibly after the fashion of some others outside the Sub. Appropriately, then, I will return, in Part 2, with some home truths, not restrictively about UCC, but about the state of techno-rationality in the soul of a nation.