Social justice is not only when you profess it or when you become a victim; social justice is when you choose to stand out in defense of the vulnerable and the minority, regardless of the risks and the cost to yourself.
Three weeks now, I have written partially in support of Kennedy Agyapong’s banter with Anas Aremeyaw Anas, and I have earned myself the pouring in of questions concerning how much Kennedy Agyapong paid me to write what I had written. In the same way, people asked how much Ibrahim Mahama had paid me to write in his defense when his bauxite concession issues came up last year.
Admittedly, journalism has evolved. We are now in the era of citizen journalism, where everyone is a practitioner – which is great. But those of us who practise the profession with social justice spirit must not be lost out on the purity of the calling.
We spoke against the manner in which Ibrahim Mahama was perceived to be grabbing government contracts opulently when his brother was in government. We thought the power Ibrahim wielded was insane. So, naturally, we were happy when power shifted.
Naturally, one would expect that once Ibrahim’s brother lost power, his influence on public business would lose its power too. It is not because we wanted Ibrahim not to do business with government.
I did not anticipate that the change I sought was going to include having Ibrahim demonized or deprived of what rightly belongs to him. Our perception of him does not have to translate into a discrimination against him, and snatching his Nyinnahin bauxite concessions without due process.
And because of our perception of him, we all jumped in celebration of his fall, celebrating the unequal treatment given to one of our own, regardless of the distress he is going through. That is not social justice; that is mob justice – the same instant mob justice that leads to the needless killing of innocent people on our streets.
Of what moral courage would Simpa Panyin have to call myself a social justice activist and yet celebrate an injustice done to Ibrahim Mahama just because I might have perceived him negatively when I know that no court has so far convicted him? Do I need to be paid in order to raise my voice in his defence?
What has recently happened to Kwesi Nyantakyi is good for our football. He was definitely the person who needed to leave the leadership of the Ghana Football Association.
But social justice activists should not only be interested in him leaving. They should also be interested in how he is being treated even as he leaves. A wrongdoer becomes a victim when we push his back to the wall, with no dignity even before we give him the chance to speak.
You do not stage such a large scale investigation with such a large scale evidence, and become so categorical about the guilt of the suspect and invite the public to pay (and queue) to watch how you have caught the thieves. This is not social justice!
You seem to think that instant justice is good only if the victim is the other person – not you
I almost became a victim of mob justice. Under the Kaneshie overhead, as the mob kept chasing me in their numbers with hunger, anger and vengeance written on their faces, I knew the end had come. At that moment, I thought of the family I had left home; I thought of the many employees whose livelihood depended on my leadership, and I thought of my innocence. All that I wished for at that moment was someone, just one person, to come to my defense and prove my innocence.
So I put myself in the shoes of Major Mahama and what he might have gone through before dying in the face of those who threw the stones at him.
Those who were suspected to have participated in the killing of the innocent Major should be treated the same way as the Major wished he should have been treated. You do not begin to round up every member of the Denkyira Obuasi village, and begin to molest them, beating every single person when you know that it might not have been possible for every single person to have participated in the killing.
And when I wrote about this in the midst of the anger that greeted the killing of the Major, I was branded ‘an insensitive pro-galamsey journalist’ who had been bribed to write in defense of the village. I was accused of being insensitive.
Well, for your information, I have never taken money to write anything in my life. I have NEVER taken bribe in my life. And I can say authoritatively that I will NEVER take bribe for the rest of my life.
If you live in a society like Ghana, the world’s cleanest anti-corruption campaigner is unlikely to escape the frustrations and the antics that come with public officers inducing fellow citizens to give bribe.
We must learn to know that the crime of silence can be as loud as the genocide that happened in Rwanda. I get so frustrated with the insincerity of social justice; so frustrated with the inconsistencies in our social justice activism that sometimes it feels as though activists are perpetrators on the victims they defend.
If I profess to be a journalist who is a social justice activist, then I cannot ignore the lonely voices who have become victims. Remember social justice is not necessarily for the voice of the poor, neither is it for the voice of the rich; sometimes the most powerful, the rich, and the well-intentioned person are turned into a victim by the so-called vulnerable in society, and that also deserves our pens…
By James Kofi Annan