You have to marvel at how we blunder from one day to the next, committed to success, but not interested in succeeding. We constantly fall short of seeing projects through to the end, resorting to prayer to complete the last ten percent of the flyover. But these days, the prayers are not working. At least not since Obinim started curing everything with a sticker.
I was engrossed with a documentary over the weekend on Trokosi, and what I gleaned from it was that we still nurture this belief in some parts of Ghana that by giving our children into slavery to some Deity, we will preserve our lives and wealth. I was even more amused because this family, looking abjectly poor had given the prettiest of their children into a coven in Ghana for their preservation. The images of the family home in the documentary didn’t show me what needed to be protected from who.
But the uncle who interviewed with half his dentals falling apart, was adamant that his niece was a necessary part of the spiritual jigsaw to wealth creation. And on it went comfortably leading the belief that this illegal practice was the only answer to their life success.
Right next to this Trokosi matter, thanks to modern science and the press of a button, Prince Harry was opulently displaying his half black Madonna, dressed in some expensive chiffon train, which could easily feed the Trokosites for maybe a decade, and would keep the children off the dirt roads and out of the mud huts.
And I couldn’t help but ask myself how do we solve this problem? Is it a cultural one so embedded in our way of life that wealth creation eludes us to the extent that we see chattel in human form and not sandcrete and stone with a value better acquired with hardwork and no assistance from weak deities parading in the guise of slave masters with obedient sex slaves away from sight and no place other than a remote lightless village?
So now I am asking myself. Do we dare enough, really to devolve authority to the community level and relegate decisions to the communities or would that be a dangerous devolution, especially if the Trokosites gain control over the District vote?
Do you remember a few weeks ago when a river deity was upset that females in their menses were crossing to get educated. Such a travesty that could befall the community if it were to be allowed?
I hear there is a lot of witchcraft and wizardry in our football, in an attempt that when we compete internationally, we camouflage our age with a mixture of religious fervour and a massive dose of anointing oil.
How much more of this can be found in our world?
I have been on record a few times that we need a law that will punish this kind of activity. It is becoming even more dangerous because the religious lunatics are crossing into wizard territory.
It is in our politics, in our universities, at our funerals, business, and in our daily devotion. Even in our colleges and free SHS.
And how do we kill it off? Or maybe we can’t ever? Can we package and sell witchcraft as a product? Is there even some methodology to it? I know South Africa has a degree program available and maybe we should copy them. For something of such importance in our society, we can offer a counter course on how to negate witchcraft. But do we have such creativity in our DNA?
And now look. OLD JDM has decided, after consultation with, we know not who, that he is going to be the next best eligible person from the NDC to win the election from a candidate who won an open and fair contest against him, just last election. A new President who by all accounts, is performing excellently both home and away. In an economy where power outages have become an aberration and clearly an impressed World Bank and major international institutions still looking to understand the turnaround.
Well, it’s not witchcraft, just plain good economic management. So if the NDC decide John Manama to be their best candidate, It will have to be a Trokosi Distin. That breed is gone from our society, unless of course, they stay in their comfortable lead with a whole load of endangered foot soldiers.
From Sydney Casely Hayford