The Commenteriat: Bringing Down The Noise

On a night when you are not particularly inspired to do anything worthy of yourself, because you have been paid a visit by boredom or the demons of insomnia, I have a suggestion for a cure. Get up from the couch where at 2 a.m. you are still flicking through re-runs, commercials for escort service, and Jerry Springer.

Unknown to you, but competing for your attention is the comment section of this space, ghanaweb.com, latest news. It is a parallel universe, whose members, the “Commenteriat,” have interesting names such as “Ogya,” “Onipa Bone,” and Tuabodom. (What’s in a name? Go figure).

Dominated by a high-decibel minority, with fringe literary and philosophical values, they can take apart a thoughtful article or the ideas in it, and give it an interpretation uniquely theirs. What is offered is mostly amusing, except when you come across a comment whose logic is convoluted, or one lacking in graciousness. If you are lucky, you’ll chance upon a posting sublime in its prose, and evocative of the Ghanaian Mystique. But this might just be a tricky warm-up for the banality that follows. There are online equivalents of vicious food fights, trading of epithets, and low-brow tribalism. As soon as an article appears, the fringe elements transform the Commenteriat into a noisy landscape, which makes Makola market seem like a model of order and harmony. With some luck, a pacifist contributor steps in to perform adult supervision. Fifteen minutes in this parallel universe is enough gym exercise to drain you of energy and send you back to sleep.

I should know, because I am the bruised writer of the feature article that appeared last December 17th, titled “English and the one-language generation.” The article obviously touched a raw nerve, prompting a lot of comments, most of which missed my point. The article never advocated for a national native language as a replacement for English. Neither did I suggest that we use it in written communication. It was a fairly simple premise, which in hindsight should have been made in few sentences for the benefit of those who misinterpreted it. This follow-up represents admission of guilt.

My point in the article was that it has become a middle-class status symbol in Ghana to raise kids exclusively in English, and my feeling and those I talked to were that it was unnecessary. It should be noted that my focus was on Ghana, and not Ghanaian children in the Diaspora. For a Ghanaian-born child’s language development, the default situation is multilingual, English in addition to the language of the parents, or the language spoken in the community.

This trend ought to concern us because of the enormous influence the middle-class wields in Ghana. As goes this group, so goes all the wannabes, which means almost everyone. The children of the middle-class are the ones who get to go to the good schools, and manage to meet classmates who get to dominate politics and business. If they decide walking on all fours is the thing to do, everybody who can afford it follows. The effects of the trend are already evident in families who can least afford middle-class values.

There is nothing wrong in being functional in a second local language, be it Frafra, Hausa or Larteh. If anything, it enhances the minds sensitivity to new concepts. My multi-lingual generation is proof of that. Are we that bad in English that succeeding generations have to be scrubbed of any hints of crudeness? The cheerleaders of the unilingual generation, always looking to have an edge for their offspring, should refer to a study that was recently reported in the Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading mainstream newspaper. The study links fluency in two or more languages to mental agility. Readers may not have access to the full text, but the introduction alone offers a compelling argument for the rich tradition of Ghana’s multilingual tapestry.

In the article, although I felt strongly about the threat to multilingualism, I expected disagreements and other points of view from the comment section. What I did not expect was for the article to be a lightning rod for the expression of extreme views, and the resumption of personal hostilities.

The most personal attack came from a Commenteriat member called Onipa Bone, and it was directed at an individual, whom I had quoted in the article. Here is Onipa, who according to an earlier posting is an Akwapim, speaks at least three Ghanaian languages and had grown up speaking only English. “Nobody is saying that we should forget our local languages. It just so happens that it is those of you who live in the western world who are crying. You are happy your kids can express themselves fluently in English. If they were "throwing bullets" in Ghana you'd sing another tune. It might interest you to know that I know …deleted individuals.. very well and when they were in Ghana you couldn't have found a more "brofolized" couple than them. When one gets to the west and made to realize one's folly then the hullabaloo of the local languages. Leopold Sedar Senghor wrote about this long before Ghana's independence in his negritude poems. The choice is left for individuals in Ghana to make. Teach your kids to express themselves fluently in English or leave them to quiver and quake…...”

Shouldn’t such an attack come with a stronger argument? I am sure contributors to this space can see in Onipa’s posting a rich resource for an article or two. Reading Onipa’s posting, you get the feeling it must have taken some courage to make a pointed personal attack on someone who only expressed an opinion in the article. But the aura of bravery dissipates with the supporting argument and her choice of anonymity. The applause Onipa heard after the posting was the sound of one hand clapping.

There was a posting from a Northerner who educated me on the difference between the people of Bolga and the language they speak. The people are Frafras, but the language they speak is Gurune, not Frafra. I am a better person for this kernel of knowledge. Another posting, complimenting the article in a backhanded way, pointed to the faulty logic in the article, but failed to be specific, and provide another point of view. Ah, such is life in this alternate reality.

It would not be helpful to include details of the base section of the Commenteriat who occupy prime real estate on the site. They always take up the first dozen postings, and appeal to the baser instincts of the rest. This is the subspace for insults, tribal putdowns, and conduct un-Ghanaian. It seems the tribal chauvinists are mostly in the United States and Europe, in countries where the lessons of race relations ought to teach us about the simple-mindedness of tribalism and other kinds of bigotry. For these Ghanaians I’ll borrow a quote from a reluctant one-time philosopher, Rodney King, who found more than 15 minutes of fame as a victim of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) brutality. After getting caught up in the ensuing media hype, and realizing that racism was at the root of his near-death experience, he said in a press conference, “Can we, can we all get along?”

A frequent in-your-face presence in this space is a member who calls herself Nana Amma Obenewaa. She addresses her targets politely with the opening “Dearest…,” much the same way members of the mob exchange pleasantries with a traitor before taking him fishing and giving him a new address at the bottom of the ocean.

In my case, she had me on the receiving end of a frothy lecture on the late Pierre Trudeau, covering the complete arc of his life, from A to B, helped along the way by Wikipedia, and MS Word’s copy-and paste feature. A Good Samaritan, Osei Yaw London, must have felt sorry for me, because he came to my defence with such crisp language that there was no need for me to say more. A meaner writer might have gone for the blunt, mercenary services of Tuabodom, whose postings, name considered, lack a sense of irony.

Ms. Obenewaa did not stop there. Brimming with hyper-educated knowledge, she had to offload below what appears (to her at least) to be scholarly:

“The re-mystification of the foreign pedagogy, and its reintegration into contemporary indigenous spaces saddens me. Ghana’s self-destructive attitudes that valorize the West, despite its obscured hegemonic intentions to reconstitute an empire under a democratic banner is another phase of colonialism. Kwame Nkrumah foresaw its coming and he was aptly right.”

See what I mean? Comedy clubs pay for this kind of writing, and Obenewa, the turbo-typist of the Commenteriat could find a side-gig. A word of caution here: Think parody. But if you find this readable and the style speaks to you, then there is more where that came from. Obenewaa is a regular on the site, and has a loyal posse who miss her when she goes on “sabbatical.” Me, I’ll take a cue from Groucho Marx, who, asked what he thought of a novel written by his friend, said, “From the moment I picked up the book till the time I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”

At the risk of presumption, I’ll say the comment section is meant for reasoned debate, diverse points of view and the showcasing of the hidden resource that is the Ghanaian Diaspora. The topics on Ghana that animate the site are the usual suspects of corruption, mismanagement, and people in positions of authority behaving badly. No wonder the people who run the government never listen to us. They don’t take us seriously, considering the voices of noise and self-parody on the site. So here are some voluntary guidelines that could make us all “get along.”

Enough with the anonymity, and take off the mask. You are nicer and smarter than you think. We know this is what you did as a teenager, 20+ years ago when you would throw a stone or a can of piss over the wall fence of a house whose inhabitants you did not like. But you are now a grown-up, with bills and other responsibilities. Oh, and you have children who see you as a role model. So use your real name, and add your email address. You might find new friends, or old friends might find you.

Be thoughtful, and think over your comments before posting. If possible discuss with a friend what you want to say. If you have a lot to say, consider writing a feature article. No insults, they are so-oo last century, and not interesting.

No show off, no correcting other people’s grammar. If you must, write back the same thing corrected, and work it into your argument. Be subtle, because what appears in cyberspace is for keeps. Be careful what you say about other tribes. You can’t take credit for being the tribe you are, and in any case your tribe does not have a monopoly on virtue. What you think and say about Ewes, Ashantis, and other tribes, are merely variations of what rednecks in the USA say about people of African origin.

Stop the self promotion, and personal crusades. If you are selling something pay for advertising on the regular site.

We use the site to offer opinions on our country, and criticize those running it now. At least let’s show that we can have a disciplined discussion. Try and figure out the main argument of the article before making a comment. Quite recently, an article appeared that was a satirical piece, suggesting the next president should apply the method of hiring professional football players to the recruitment of his cabinet. There were several pro and con postings, most of which had a literal interpretation of the article. It was just a funny piece, with an underlying theme that the existing model has not worked for decades. Have a good time sharing your views, and don’t take yourself too seriously.

Lankai Lamptey
Toronto, Canada

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.