Ghana Life: How elastic is loyalty?

People in Ghana identify with their extended family, clan, and tribe in decreasing order of intensity. There is little shared identity with people from different tribes, and even hostility that occasionally breaks out in local wars that must be suppressed by the national army. At the national level, politics is essentially a competition between the Ashanti party and a coalition of opposing tribes forged by the first national leader, Kwame Nkrumah, although various steps have been taken in recent years to try to blur these tribal affinities. Progressive people seeking to forge a truly national identity have been fighting an uphill battle since Ghana was founded in 1957. The following is a description of how Kwame Mainu, a young man born in the year of independence, seeks to reconcile aspirations progressive from his father with the traditional expectations of his family, friends and clan members.

Traditional wisdom says that the borders of African countries were established by European powers regardless of people's ethnicity, as some tribes find their traditional territory divided by a border line, while others are cornered with traditional enemies. . The German colony of Togoland was mainly populated by people from the Eva tribe, but after World War I it was divided between the French colony of Togo and the Volta region of the British colony of the Gold Coast. When the Gold Coast became Ghana, the Eves became reluctant citizens of the new state, and during the Kwame Nkrumah era, in the 1960s, there was a political movement seeking to bring the Eva tribe together in expanded Togo. The move was strongly resisted by Nkrumah who could not afford to lose a powerful force in his battle with the Ashanti party, but the Eves later took revenge by participating centrally in Ghana's five military coups.

In this context of tribal rivalry, it is perhaps not surprising that few people respected the national government: its laws, its officials, or its property. Since loyalty extends only to the tribe, the central government was seen by many people as a holdover from the colonial government, serving the needs of those in power with its connections to big business and external business interests. And the material rewards of political power were deemed so great that successive waves of military adventurers made their offers during the first three decades of Ghana's life as a free country. Many people tried to leave the country instead of suffering increasing difficulties, and even those who started each era with genuine revolutionary zeal joined the ranks of the exodus when their dreams were replaced by the next nightmare. For more clcik here https://newsghana.com.gh/

At The Colonial Gentleman's Son, Kwame Mainu manages to move from a poverty-stricken childhood in a small town in Ashanti to a job as a technical officer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. His work is interesting but poorly paid, and he's torn between staying to participate in Ghana's grassroots industrial development and leaving to seek his fortune abroad. With each downtu
in the economy, the drive to leave grows stronger and she enthusiastically takes the opportunity to continue her education at a university in the UK.

Kwame soon discovers that being abroad does not automatically lead to easy wealth acquisition. Back in Kumasi, he discovers that some of his fellow fugitives are building large houses. His wife, Comfort, begins to ask why she cannot be accommodated in a similar way, and her mother and sister in Wenchi also have pressing needs, as do many other members of her extended family.