IT was a very humiliating experience for another person to come from his country to claim that he has ‘discovered’ you and your land and everything on it, which you inherited from your great, great, great grandfathers who lived there for centuries. That was how the European adventurers started the colonialisation process.
They came in search of adventure, land, gold or whatever and saw a complete civilisation strange to theirs and concluded that they had made a discovery. They set about to form governments and imposed themselves on the people who otherwise should have been their hosts. They renamed everything – our beautiful mountains, lakes, rivers and towns — they named these places after their imperial kings and queens or other fancy places in their home countries, and finally stripped us of our indigenous names, replacing them with what they claimed are holy names.
Strangely, our examiners continue to bombard us with such silly questions as: “Who discovered the source of River Niger?” and you are considered an unintelligent failure if you could not mention Mungo Park, a Scott who came to West Africa and rode on the back of the local people who led him through the jungle to make his ‘discoveries’.
But nothing can be more damaging, dehumanising and painful to a people than to see their own being carted away in cargo ships to foreign lands to work on plantations, not for wages but as slaves. All records on these unfortunate souls were obliterated to the extent that they had to be given names of either their slave masters, the plantations on which they were working or just after any object that their masters fancied.
This preceded the colonialisation process and by the time it was ended, members of the Black race had lost self-confidence, self-esteem, independent reasoning and the will to break new grounds. Ever since, they have become subservient, timid and always looking up to others for direction even in simple matters within their capability.
There is something called inferiority complex or slave mentality. This has soaked deep into their psyche so much that there is that fear that they will fail in anything they do unless there is the magic hand or direction of the slave master to guide them.
The question is, why should I inflict upon myself the painful memories of a past that should not have been in the first place? In the past two weeks or so, there has been a resurgence of the recurrent debate as to whether the Ghana Football Association should engage the services of an expatriate coach or a local one to replace Milovan Rajevac, the Serbian who has exited for greener pastures in Saudi Arabia.
One could appreciate the need for a healthy national debate on matters such as looking for a coach for the Black Stars, the national football team, because of the passion the nation has for the sport and we cannot but look for the best. However, some of us are getting repulsive about some of the arguments being made by some people by way of opting for a foreign coach. Some of us would not have worried ourselves too much if the debate had been about the best for our national team wherever it would come from but for that cynical conclusion that the Ghanaian is not capable of managing his own affairs, come what may.
The usual refrain that we are not yet there is reaching an amazing crescendo that is piercing our ears. One person who surprised me with that type of argument which can only come from people who have low esteem of themselves or better still inferior minds is Dogo Moro, a former player of Asante Kotoko and the Black Stars some of us grew up to admire as one of the players who advertised newly-independent Ghana’s brand of football in the international circuit.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Kumasi, Moro, now 75, said he was of the conviction that the local coaches “were not ripe for now to handle the Stars”.
“In my view the Stars have now carved a niche for themselves in world football and I expect the GFA to build a consensus with stakeholders to ensure that the next coach to be chosen matches up to the team’s pedigree”, Moro said, according to the GNA report.
In fairness to the old footballer, his observation that the Stars have ascended to a level that needs a coach to match their pedigree is very relevant. It is true we cannot afford to go backwards. However, I felt a bit sad when Moro was reported as saying that “local coaches lack the mental strength and technical capacity needed to meet the dynamism and tactical discipline of modern football internationally and that they needed sometime to understudy the coaching scene to catch up with the current trend”.
In the wisdom of the former versatile defender, while the local coaches should be maintained as assistants, the GFA should strive to go in for “a competent expatriate coach to sustain the philosophy and vision of Ghana football”.
The logic of that argument is that our footballers have gone beyond the level our local coaches can manage. Yes, that is the slave mentality. We cannot do anything for ourselves, not even coach our national football team. Our salvation must always come from the white man. At best, we can only be assistants to the white-skinned coaches, until when? Moro’s sentiments might have received accommodation in the hearts of some Ghanaians, who like him, do not see anything good about themselves.
To them, it was good we were ‘discovered’ as a people. To them, it was good the Europeans came here and colonised us. It was even good that they inflicted human slavery on us and dehumanised us. So why not continue to rely on them more than 50 years after we regained our national sovereignty and restored honour to ourselves as independent and free people in everything we do.
Moro is old now, but I do not think he has become senile to forget events during his playing days. I do not think Moro has forgotten about one of his contemporaries called Charles Kumi Gyamfi, who, while even as a player, coached the Black Stars to victory in the African Cup in Accra as far back as 1963. Mr C.K. Gyamfi repeated the feat two years later, when he managed the Black Stars to victory in the African Cup in far away Tunis in 1965.
Where were Dogo Moro and those still consumed by inferiority complex like him, when Coach Osam Duodu, a son of the land, led the Black Stars to lift the African Cup for the third time before our own eyes in Accra? Where were they, when Coach C.K. Gyamfi, for the third time, led an ill-prepared Black Stars to capture the African Cup for the fourth time in Tripoli, Libya, in 1982?
For those who are still not convinced, do we remind them that when Ghana became the first African country to win the FIFA Under-20 World Cup last year, it took the hands and expertise of Sellas Tetteh, a full-blooded Ghanaian, to lead the team to that feat. So what are they talking about?
Let no-one make the mistake. Almost all the foreign coaches brought here rather benefited from the prowess of our players most of whom reached peak forms under local coaches. All those coaches, after their so-called successes in Ghana, virtually found themselves unemployed after leaving our shores because they had nothing to offer their new employers. The latest of them, Milovan Rajevac, whose departure has created another debate in the country, is a miserable man in Saudi Arabia because the team which was inspired by the exploits of the Black Stars to offer him a mouth-watering package is doing very badly in their local league.
There is no Michael Essien, Kwadwo Asamoah-Gyan or Sulley Muntari to do the trick for him. He belongs to that class of coaches who could hardly transform raw talents into refined materials that could conquer the world. Look at how they have lined up seeking the job. Let them get the nod and they would treat us like trash, even the ‘illiterate ones’, who must employ interpreters on the football field.
As a people, Blacks in general and Ghanaians in particular have for far too long lived in the shadows of others. This has reflected in our poor showing in almost every facet of human life. Blacks are behind every other human race, not because God has not endowed us with wisdom and qualities that would lift us from poverty, ignorance, disease and squalor. We simply do not want to use our talents because of the scars of slavery and colonialism, which have blighted our intellect and ingenuity.
We may be hopeless as some people, including our own compatriots, may want us to believe, but we can train our footballers to achieve international laurels, something our coaches have proved on countless occasions. In any case, somebody needs to explain to me: What is about football that only whitemen can teach it, when Ghanaians and Africans in general are producing doctors, engineers, mathematicians and other high-profile professionals to solve some of the most complex problems in the world? The Ghana Football Association (GFA), we are being always reminded, virtually operates outside the laws of this country. But in this case, where our national pride and dignity as a people are at stake, the GFA must for once, listen to us.
Down with mental slavery. Down with the inferiority complex. We prefer to fight our own battle and lose than have a foreigner come here to ride on our shoulders to undeserved glory just like Mungo Park, David Livingston, Henry Stanley and others did to our grandparents who carried them on their back while they were busy discovering them. We need to erase that age-old perception that the Black man is incapable of managing his own destiny. We need local coaches now!!!
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