To believe in Ghana is to be devoted to her welfare and freedom. It is to stand up in defence of the state even if, in dissenting, you offend the temporary custodians of the state.<\/p>\n
It means believing in her economic capacity; it means knowing that such belief is not futile, for, clearly, the Ghanaian has the entrepreneurial capacity to create a prosperous society for the great majority.<\/p>\n
To believe in Ghana is to insist that those in authority lead by example. To believe in Ghana is to believe that for those who lost their lives for the good of this country, their sacrifices were not in vain; that indeed, Ghana is a country worth dying for. To believe in Ghana is to be a responsible citizen.<\/p>\n
To believe in Ghana is to believe in yourself as a Ghanaian, as someone capable of contributing to the building of a successful, modern African state, operating on the principles of democratic accountability, respect for human rights and the rule of law. To believe in Ghana is to believe in a state where fairness and social justice are essential attributes of its body politic. To believe in Ghana is to make Ghana, by our own efforts, what it should be: one of the greatest places on earth.<\/p>\n
Let us infuse more urgency into redefining our sense of national responsibility in order to make this 21st century the age that removes all doubt about our ability to manage our own affairs and more.<\/p>\n
We have an arduous, albeit feasible task: first, we must vindicate the faith that our founding fathers had in this country. Second, we must make our own bold generational contribution to Ghana’s progress; and finally we must pass on to our children, in all its fullness, the hope that has been rescued from the jaws of repression and retrogression.<\/p>\n
To some, patriotism has connotations of self-sacrifice, implying that individuals should place the interests of the community above their own personal interests, and in extreme cases above their own lives, as in Danquah’s unrivalled example. But, in my view, patriotism is also very much about self-preservation. Patriotism is constructively self-serving. Let me pose to this august audience a question that I posed to Cape Coast University students some time ago.<\/p>\n
Would you, for instance, avoid the battlefield if the alternative were to stay at home and be swept away by enemy forces? Would you stand by and watch your country to become impoverished by bad governance, greed, corruption, inefficiency and ineptitude? Would you turn away and mind your own business if the very foundation of your liberty was threatened by treasonous characters bent on setting aside the constitutional order and destabilising your country?<\/p>\n
Let us embrace the principles of democratic accountability, the rule of law, human rights and individual liberty and freedom, which some of us instinctively believe must form the bedrock of our national development and individual prosperity. Yet alongside this freedom, we must, with the same passion and commitment, uphold our individual responsibility to contribute proactively toward the greater good of society. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the vision of a free society. No society can be truly free unless its citizens feel the need to embrace both liberty and duty.<\/p>\n
Our people have overcome several trials and tribulations: slavery, imperialism, colonialism, tyranny and dictatorship. Undoubtedly, we will have many more challenges to overcome: poverty, apathy and a lack of belief in ourselves. We have had a chequered history.<\/p>\n
We have held elections that were not free and fair. We have had constitutional regimes without the limitations placed upon executive power known as constitutionalism. We have had rule by law without rule of law. We have seen leaders who tried to make us believe that multi-party politics was inherently evil, alien and destructive of national cohesion, and who attempted to establish various forms of authoritarian rule on our polity. We have lived in a nation where ‘participatory democracy’ was violently imposed upon us through techniques of intimidation and harassment such as Workers’ Defence Committees and Committees for the Defence of the Revolution.<\/p>\n
We have lived in a society where we were forced to accept that the economic and social well-being of the masses could only be achieved by bringing down those who had achieved success. This history has led to a whole new generation of Ghanaians who have been afraid to succeed. We cannot build a society where envy, rather than role-modelling, is the preferred option. It is this very dislocation of the psychological fabric of our society that we need to defeat – where self-advancement does not induce the proverbial skin pain.<\/p>\n
We have survived that era when long-standing commercial ties, private institutions, companies, factories, disappeared through envy\u2014through the stripping of capital, wanton destruction and confiscated assets. Such was the irony of the 1980s\u2014that the unconstitutional government which had set out, through the diktats of the Structural Adjustment Programming, to re-introduce economic liberalisation, was the very same government that launched a relentless assault on the players of economic liberalism: assaulting Ghanaian traders, pillaging manufacturers, undermining farmers and spitting on service providers.<\/p>\n
To believe in Ghana means that we must start believing that Ghana has arrived\u2014that we have graduated from centuries of liberation struggle to a new age of liberty and liberalism. When you are in liberation struggle, there is always the propensity to pick and choose which rules to obey and which to ignore.<\/p>\n
May I suggest that this could be partially the root of our quickness to ignore rules and regulations with impunity. This will require a deliberate and conscious effort on all our part to embrace the responsibilities that self-rule and self-determination bring.<\/p>\n
We must assert our legitimate, collective and individual ownership of our space: this land, this nation, its resources, and its wealth. The age of liberty means we are free to claim ownership of how this country is governed and what it can produce. Ephraim Amu’s song, ‘Yen Ara Asaase Ni’, which has been so beautifully rendered by the choir, should be the resonating chorus in our march towards our country’s transformation.<\/p>\n
What our long tortured and chequered history teaches us is that the spirit of the Ghanaian, in his and her quest for peace, progress and prosperity, cannot be quenched. We are a determined lot who cannot be deterred. We have had our failures as a nation. But failure is never fatal so long as our courage to persevere prevails. We saw the perils of indifference which allowed populists and hypocrites to take out their anger and frustration, their envy and bitterness on a whole nation. We must avoid at all cost a repetition of that destructive culture.<\/p>\n
The Ghanaian people have made valiant efforts to embrace a culture of respect for human rights. The early nationalists, John Mensah Sarbah, Joseph Casely Hayford, even Kobina Sekyi, as well as the latter nationalists – Obetsebi-Lamptey, Akufo-Addo, Ofori Atta, Ako Adjei, Nkrumah and Busia – all agreed with Joseph Boakye Danquah that the paramount and overriding concern at all times is the preservation, in his vivid words, of ‘our ancient freedom.’ When on Monday, August 4, 1947, George Alfred Grant, Danquah, Akufo-Addo, R S Blay, Ako-Adjei, Obetsebi-Lamptey, William Ofori-Atta, Awoonor Williams and de Graft Johnson founded and launched the United Gold Coast Convention, they had just one thing in mind, to give the country an absolute break from the shackles of foreign domination.<\/p>\n