After #OccupyJulorbiHouse, what’s next? Do we cast our hopes to the gods of the government’s Cathedral, or channel our anger into a more resolute political action?
The level of insensitivity and/or oblivion of the ruling elite of Ghana to the unprecedented suffering of the mass is at its apex. The government has indulged in more than inhumane acts that only goes to enrich its allies and cronies, while intensifying the woes of the masses. For instance, three years ago, the sitting New Patriotic Party (NPP) government demolished LA General Hospital that served the health needs of the local community and mounted a billboard thanking the president for promising to rebuild the hospital to be an ultra modern one. After three years, there’s no hospital. This case is not an isolation. By cursory consideration, one in every thousand Ghanaian could name a promise by the government that has not been fulfilled, and this is likely an underestimate. Promises, a selling of hope to the masses is the hallmark of Ghanaian politics and governance. The NPP government seemed to authenticate this feature of Ghanaian governance by the proposed construction of a Cathedral where the masses will convene to project their hopes and expectations to an unseen entity, who resides in nobody-knows-where, while existential crises such as hunger, poor healthcare and job insecurity continue to ravage the 99% of the country.
It is true that the Cathedral, its construction itself marred with fraud and corruption, is the symbol of the illusion that the government sells to the mass through promises and fantasy. Yet, it’s not the non-fulfillment of promises that is driving the three-day long #OccupyJulorbiHouse protest. Rather, it is the use of these promised infrastructures as camouflage to embezzle tax payers’ money, the utilization of the plights of taxpayers to justify the appeal for external aids and securing loans; endeavors that only go on to deepen the deplorable conditions of living of the mass, that is driving the #OccupyJulorbiHouse protests.
Consider the promised building of the Cathedral. Without any signs of construction, an excess of 58 million USD has been spent, or being more accurate, embezzled by the so-called men of God put in charge of its construction, and their enablers in government. It is as if there’s a more godly deed than seeking after the improvement in the welfare of the impoverished. Men of God, who, according to their own Christian principles, have been mandated to look out for the down and trodden, have instead capitalized on the masses longing for a way out of misery, pain and stress to squeeze out the meager that is left after the government deducts the increasingly exorbitant taxes from their earnings. It is this act of extraction that the government seeks to solidify through the proposed mounting of a Cathedral. Because, the government, in many ways, sees this extraction by men of God as a microcosm of their own extractive economic tactic, a tactic that depends heavily on the plights of the masses.
The plights of the masses are discretized as datapoints and crunched into metrics to seek foreign aids, bailouts, and high interest loans from foreign financial bodies, which come with austerity measures. These austerity measures include, but not limited to the cutting of funding for support for social interventions, and other conditions spelt out over 60 years ago by the Keynesian inspired Bretton Woodsmen. The Bretton Woodsmen were the post-war economic thinkers such as the famous Brit, John Maynard Keynes, and his less famous (or rather infamous) American counterpart Harry Dexter White who gathered at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire to inspire the creation of two institutions that would anchor the emerging globalization of capitalism: the IMF and the World Bank. Indeed, since their creation, these two institutions have empowered global elites, especially those from economically less advanced countries in subduing their masses to extreme forms of poverty through their austerity measures, and other programs that provide multinational corporations the needed markets for their goods and services.
By creating hardships and/or stifling of economic growth through these measures and programs, organizations formed by these same elites or their allies establish NGOs which only project a messiah complex, as if any NGO has really made any substantial difference. In actuality, the NGOism of socio-economic problems serves two purposes. First, it’s a way for the elite to feel good and shield themselves from the moral burden resulting from their unrestrained accumulation of capital at the expense of impoverishing others. A more sinister purpose is the use of NGOs as a facade to laundering taxpayers’ money.
Many persons involved in the #OccupyJulorbiHouse have expressed their displeasure towards these and many more menacing acts of the current NPP government ( and previous governments really) that have incessantly plunged many Ghanaians into abject poverty. Basic needs such as food, potable water, good roads, quality healthcare, job security are hard to come by. So, what’s next after #OccupyJulorbiHouse? The protests cannot achieve meaningful results if the goal is to mete out displeasure towards the acts of the government. Time and again, the government has demonstrated that it’s not a listening one. What then needs to be done?
Perhaps the #OccupyJulorbiHouse could turn to Michael Walzer’s little book: Political Action, because, in my opinion, when the protest are left to any other resort, it will remain a passive protest. In Political Action, Walzer recommends first defining the issues. In the case of #OccupyJulorbiHouse, many disparate issues have been listed, but they need concrete definitions. The defined issues can then be channeled into the formation of the movement’s constituency, and ultimately lead to a political action. Admittedly, this is an over-simplification because space will not allow me to prescribe all the needed strategies. The key point though is that #OccupyJulorbiHouse needs to be channeled into a political action.
Written by: Alexander Kwakye, tweets @alexrepgh
Numb Dimittis 