As the Week Draws to a Close...Thoughts on the late Lumumba, Politics, CAN 2006, Black Stars

I am immensely disheartened by the fact that the 45^th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba practically went un-noticed. Why? Just because we are not Congolese, so it doesn’t matter? And why are the Congolese bloggers (if any they may be) writing about it?

 

For a strange reason, Global Voices, which usually picks up my posts, and feeds it into its summaries, did not cover it AT ALL.

 

Was there a political motive/reason behind this? Are those who write the summaries for Global Voices not also imbued by certain prejudices that may make them deliberately, or unwittingly, not cover the issue?

 

Or are we waiting a good fifty years—five years from now-in 2011 before we celebrate fifty years of the man’s assassination, when the consciousness needs to build now?

 

As for politics, that over pre-dominates the media landscape in Ghana, it has gone down a bit for the past few days, to be replaced by Ghanaian fears as to whether Ghana’s Black Stars can bring the cup from the CAN (African Cup of Nations) home.

 

Yesterday, there was some interesting analysis by the softly-spoken-British-accented football analyst (Nana Agyeman, lately working for CITI-FM’s Saturday programme “Final Whistle”) of Metro TV, hosted by Paul Adom-Otchere (CITI-FM news presenter-cum-lawyer), about the Black Stars, and why Chelsea’s Michael Essien probably did not want to come to CAN 2006 (hosted in Egypt: http://www.egypt2006.com.eg/english/

) because he is a player of international repute who does not need to show his calibre at CAN, which usually serves as a platform for up-and-coming footballers.

 

On the diplomatic front, the First Lady of the US—Laura Bush—was in town a few days ago to emphasize the point that Ghana is one of the countries’ that has a high AIDS-rate, which is TOTALLY untrue. Ours is falling considerably. Colleagues were saying that our President did very badly in not saying anything, allowing Bush’s wife to connect HIV AIDS to the country as if to say the country was HIV – AIDS-ridden. Here are some pictures of the meeting: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/photo.day.php?ID=97602, taken by Kwasi Kpodo. It revealed Bush’s daughter (I guess it’s not the one who had the drink problem) looking very, very personable. Yum!

 

I wouldn’t put it past Barbara Bush, Laura’s daughter, that she’s wondering why all those darkies are looking at her like that. From the pictures, it appears Ghanaians were not that enamoured!

 

In any event Bush transited through Ghana to attend the inauguration of the election of the first African female Head of State to be elected on the continent. Days earlier, down in Chile, South America, a very good-looking Dr. Bachelet – also a lady – had just won elections and awaiting inauguration as the first female Head of State on the continent.

 

Ghanaians are holding their breath for Ghana’s game against Nigeria on 23 January.

 

Let’s see whether Ghana can re-claim itself from the drip-drip of complacency that had been created as a result of qualification for the World Cup a few months back!

 

Have a good weekend!