Ghana and Egypt – Getting a Million to “Sit-In”

How serious are Ghanaians?

There seems to be interesting stuff going on around our world these days, and let us see what is happening in Egypt: http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/22/world/africa/egypt-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 One has to admire the spirit of the Egyptian mostly educated youth to stand up and push the military to cave in and call for elections! The Egyptian people seem obviously more serious, more advanced and courageous in their quest for freedom than our people in Ghana!

Egyptian youth are calling for a “million-man” sit-in. If you don’t know what that refers to, it refers to the MILLION-MAN march on Washington DC organized by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored people) under Ben Chavis and other civil rights organizations on October 16, 1995, at which controversial Rev. Louis Farrakhan was invited to give the keynote address.

The word “sit-in” was coined in late 1950s and used extensively during the Civil rights demonstrations in America. In the 1960s when Students at the University I attended, University of California at Berkeley, would go en mass and sit in the administration building all day, it was a very peaceful way for students to engage in peaceful protest! Those were the days when students stood against their American government and Presidents to end the Viet Nam war through massive peaceful demonstrations across the 50 states and all 2000+ Universities across America. This writer learned that the youth and students in a nation also have power!

All human beings everywhere and in each era, have to stand up and fight for their rights to have opportunities to work and to live a decent life! Migrating and fleeing from one’s country as many Ghanaians do, never bring permanent peace and satisfaction. Every nation deserves to have the same freedoms, human rights, and improved clean living conditions and opportunities for jobs and engage in creative endeavors as people in other nations. They elect a government to facilitate the building of such desirable living conditions. These may include the provision of common water, electricity, roads, health care facilities, and provide other opportunities. When that government fails to deliver, it is left to the people in the nation to let the leaders know and sometimes, as in Egypt and Libya, topple that government by such demonstrations if the neglect persists.

Venting through Radio talk shows are just the beginning of democratic freedom of speech and not enough! When workers and people are taking 4 -6 hours round trip in traffic every day to go to work and come home, for an 8 hour pay, and they are tired and frustrated due to lack of intelligently engineered and designed transportation systems to meet traffic demand some action needs to take place. When in addition government imposes bridge and road tolls, heavy port duties and taxes are levied on vehicles, and the leaders refuse to consider the pain of the people, there is no choice left but a boiling point and possible societal disruption or revolt.

There is a limit of pain any humans in society will take. When water and electricity and other fundamentals are missing and government keeps building open gutters that are known to breed mosquitoes that cause malaria known to kill hundred thousand per year, it not anybody outside who can instigate the people to find who their representatives are, and hold them to account! Nobody, and I repeat nobody can build Ghana for us! All talk, expectation and calling foreigners and lenders as “development partners” is only a sham!! It never works. People have to stand up for what they want!

Cheers,

Kwaku A. Danso East Legon-Accra, Ghana & Livermore, California, USA President - Ghana Leadership Union (NGO), Moderator-GLU and GLF Forums. http://groups.google.com/group/glu-ghana-leadership-forum?hl=en?hl=en

Author: Leadership Concepts and the Role of Government in Africa: The Case of Ghana - http://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Concepts-Role-Government-Africa/dp/142572499X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319743034&sr=1-1