I-CAN-GHANA

“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Introduction to Gutter Football
Young and aspiring footballers in Ghana often play an interesting version of the game called “Gutter-to-Gutter”. The ‘goal posts’ are literally two gutters (often wet, slimy, smelly and filthy) on either side of a road, potholed or otherwise. The aim is to play the ball into the gutter goals. Once in a while when a car approaches, the game gets suspended only to resume when the car has driven past, sometimes leaving a mixture of dust and smoke behind it. The most important item in this game is the ball, the “sock ball”. To the unlearned and untutored in matters concerning gutter-to-gutter football, the sock ball is made from a disused sock. It is filled with pieces of cloth and plastic, carefully and tightly rolled into a globe. As you might have guessed, in the course of the game, and depending on how many times the socks ball enters the gutter goal, it becomes wet, dirty, smelly and soggy. But the game continues nonetheless. At the end of the game, usually at nightfall, the players go to take a shower, argue the score (who scored most), have dinner and retire to bed. Everyone forgets about the sock ball that they have been kicking. It is left in the gutter and to the vagaries of the night time gutter tide or the night weather, or it is left on the road for passing cars to flatten out. Tomorrow, there will be another game, and a new sock ball for that game. Sock balls are a dime a dozen. No one really cares about what happened to yesterday’s sock ball. Discarded and unwanted.

This imagery is strong in my mind as I consider the way our politicians are treating the Ghanaian school pupil or student, just as the disused sock balls in a never-ending gutter-to-gutter game. Politicians are actually kicking our pupils and students around as they tinker with our education system on the basis of empty political grandstanding and party manifestos. That is truly sad. We the people of this nation should not allow this to happen.

The purpose of this piece is to call for an end to this silly game, particularly in the face of the vow by the NDC government to revert to the previous 3-year system, based in part on the fact that it had pledged to do this in its manifesto. This piece is also to question the rationale behind the 4-year system, and to advocate new thinking that is based on the peculiar needs of each child.

2008 NDC Manifesto: Card Stacking on Professor Anamuah-Mensah
The 2008 manifesto of the ruling NDC provides as follows:

“Before the NDC assumed office in 1992 there was a total of 210 public sector Senior Secondary Schools. Under the NDC administration, public sector Senior Secondary Schools rose to an unprecedented high of 474 in 2001, an impressive increase and all within a period of 8 years. The NPP has been able to establish only nineteen (19) Senior Secondary Schools between 2001 and 2008. This shortfall is creating intense pressure on existing SSS facilities.

An NDC government shall address the deficiencies and weaknesses in a bold and comprehensive manner. In this regard an NDC government shall:

Revert the current SHS duration of four (4) years to three (3) years consistent with the recommendation of the Report of the Anamuah-Mensah Committee…”

The first thing you might ask yourself when you read the above quote is: “where is the link between the number of SSS’ built by the parties and reverting to a 3-year programme?” Further, you might note that the NDC pledge was to revert the duration to three years was expressed to be “consistent” with recommendations of the Anamuah-Mensah Committee. But what did that committee say and under what circumstances did the committee make the alleged recommendation?

A Daily Graphic news item which was also carried by Myjoyonline.com on 27th May 2009, said as follows:

“Prof Anamuah-Mensah said the com¬mittee, after looking at the two options of a three-year and a four-year duration for the SHS, settled on the three-year duration, with a caveat that infrastructure and resources would be devoted to the educa¬tional sector, particularly from the kindergarten, the primary to the junior high school (JHS) levels.

These levels formed the foundation for the secondary and tertiary levels of education and the committee thought that a “good foundation would ensure the sterling performance of students at those higher levels of education,” he noted.

He said for him when the government accepted the report but made the duration four years, he thought that was because the infrastructural development and resources needed for the effective implementation of the three-year programme were not available.

However, he said currently figures showed that a criterion reference test, that is, the test to rate the literacy and numeracy of pupils in primary school, showed that only 10 per cent of them gained mastery over those skills.

Moreover, a large number of people who should have been absorbed into primary schools could not, while a large majority of pupils completed the basic level of education with no requisite skills for higher education or professional training, he noted.

Prof Anamuah-Mensah said education was the most important structure of any governance system, the basis for all other structures and so if it was toyed with, the results would affect the whole structure of the country.”

This is very interesting. The Anamuah-Mensah Committee did not recommend the blanket, wholesale, unmitigated and unqualified reversal to 3 years, as the NDC manifesto claims. In the words of the learned professor, his committee’s recommendation that the nation maintains a 3-year SHS system was based on a “caveat” (i.e. a warning, caution, qualification or stipulation) that adequate infrastructure and resources would be devoted to kindergarten, primary and JHS levels, which would provide sufficient grounding for a 3-year programme at the SHS. In other words, unless the conditions precedent existed, there was no justification for the 3-year program. The learned professor then said that he believes that the NPP opted for the 4-year programme because the infrastructure and resources required to justify the 3-year programme did not exist. Then he makes reference to a ‘criterion reference test’ that showed that only 10% of pupils gained mastery over literacy and numeracy skills in primary schools. That showed that the conditions precedent for the 3-year programme were non-existent.

What flows from the above is that anyone who is arguing for ‘reverting’ to the 3-year programme should first be required to satisfy Ghanaians that the conditions laid down by the Anamuah-Mensah Committee as prerequisites for the 3-year programme, exist. If those conditions do not exist, which I think is obvious, then we have no basis to revert to the 3-year programme. Clearly the provision in the NDC manifesto was card-stacking, i.e. presenting just part of the story; we probably should not trust or believe in party manifestoes. But as this interview with Professor Anamuah-Mensah shows, he himself did not believe (as at May 2009) that we were ready for the three-year programme. Indeed from his analysis, we probably can conclude that only 10% of pupils are ready for the 3-year programme.

Legal Issue
Be that as it may, the current cabinet decision to revert to the 3-year programme can at best be described as a recommendation or proposal. It is not a fait accompli or done deal. This is because the current 4-year system is backed by law. Section 1(3) of the Education Act, 2008 (Act 778), provides as follows:

The second cycle level of education shall consist of four years of senior high school education, vocational, business and agricultural education, or appropriate apprenticeship training of not less than one year. [Emphasis added]

The current Minister for Education has admitted, and rightly in my view, that it is only an amendment of this provision that will provide a legal basis for the reverting to the 3-year programme. This means that an amendment bill will have to be drawn up by the Attorney-General’s Department, and submitted to cabinet. Then the draft bill has to be sent to Parliament for its consideration. As we all know, Parliament is currently in recess and will only resume in October 2009. The effect is that unless Parliament is recalled from recess to consider a draft amendment bill, the decision to revert to the 3-year programme cannot take effect before the 2009 academic calendar begins to run, unless Parliament is going to pass a retroactive amendment of Act 778. Then that will open a can of worms.

That is why I am concerned about news reports that although Parliament has not convened to consider a possible amendment of the Act, steps are already being taken to implement a change back to 3 years. If that is true, then it has to be pointed out to the government that this is an illegality which will not stand up in court. No one, not even the government, should take it for granted that Parliament will do as the government pleases, and so once the government decides, that decision can be implemented, in the hope that Parliament will pliantly rubber stamp the government’s decision. Parliament has come under severe and brutal attack in recent months over the circumstances surrounding the approval or determination of what is now popularly known as “Ex Gratia”. I have confidence that MPs require no reminder that they owe us a duty to inquire and debate this matter thoroughly.

In other words, absent the required amendment of Act 778, any implementation of, or preparatory steps to, the 3-year programme amounts to a blatant breach of the law.

In Parliament and Outside Parliament: Enter Mr. Tettey-Enyo
But what is Act 778, and what were the circumstances surrounding its passage into law?

The draft education bill which became Act 778, came up for First Reading in Parliament on 10th November 2008. It was presented by the then Honourable Majority Leader, NPP’s Mr. Osei-Aidooh, on behalf of the then Honourable Minister for Education, Youth and Sports, Professor Dominic Fobih. The Bill was then referred to the Committees on Finance and Education, which were to “look at the document and advise whether it [was] one of an urgent nature.”

Just 4 days later, the Bill came up for Second Reading. This time the Honourable Minister for Education, Youth and Sports, Professor Dominic Fobih was present in Parliament. In moving the motion for the Second Reading of the Bill, he stated that since 1961 when the original Education Act was passed, there had been no other law enforcing all the changes and transformation that had taken place in education. He said that although the 1987 education reforms had effected significant changes to the structure and content of education, it was not backed by law. He conceded that the 2007 reforms introduced by his government did not also have legal support and said that “there is therefore a need for legal backing to support all these changes.”

When the Honourable Minister had moved the motion and the question was proposed, MPP’s Mr Balado Manu (Honourable MP and Chairman of the Committee that took only 3 days to consider the Bill) supported the motion and indeed became the chief shepherd of the Bill as it went through Parliament through Second Reading, Third Reading, Consideration, Second Consideration and Passage, within 4 hours! In his speech in support of the motion, he highlighted the then proposed change of the 3-year secondary education to 4 years. He said that “the second cycle education consists of four years of senior high school education, technical, vocational and business and agricultural programmes of education.” In concluding, Mr Manu stated that the Committee had recommended that Parliament passes the Education Bill subject only to additional clauses and amendments that the Committee had proposed. It is instructive to note that none of the proposed amendments related to the proposed 4-year term for secondary education.

When Mr Manu was done, Mr Tettey-Enyo, the ranking member of the then opposition NDC (and now Minister of Education) rose, in his words, “to contribute to the motion on the floor and to say that the Education Bill is long overdue.” He revealed that the drafting of the Bill had taken almost 10 years to complete and “so it is very necessary that hon. Members of this august House to realise the importance of this Bill.” Mr. Tettey-Enyo then dwelt on what he called “the merits of the Bill as the hon. Chairman of your Committee has already enumerated.” Mr. Tettey-Enyo was effusive in his praise for the Bill and concluded his contribution as follows:

We want to make the system creditable and well planned and well managed to be able to attract the support that we require to bring up our educational system to the levels that we are desiring for the country. With these few words, Mr. Speaker, I call upon hon. Members of his House to support the passage of this important Bill into law. [Emphasis added]

Dear reader, let us get this right. As noted above, the said Mr. Tettey-Enyo is the current Minister of Education. On 14th November 2008, as the minority’s ranking member of the Education Committee, he had every opportunity to voice his opposition and that of his party to the then proposed increase in the duration of senior secondary education from 3 years to 4 years. That fact of the 4-year duration had been highlighted in the contribution of NPP’s Mr. Manu, the chairman of the Committee. But all Mr Tettey-Enyo did was to praise the Bill, saying that it was “long overdue”, and then encouraging MPs to “support the passage of this important Bill into law.”

However, in a little over two months later, the same Mr. Tettey-Enyo, this time as minister-designate for education, was reported in a Daily Graphic story that was posted on Myjoyonline.com on 26th January 2009 to have “dropped the hint” that one of the first things that the NDC government would do in the educational sector is to abolish the 4-year term of the SHS and revert to the 3-year programme, in fulfilment of a promise in its manifesto. According to him, the 4-year programme had been announced by the NPP administration when it had not put in place the needed infrastructure, syllabi and textbooks to make it work. Although he conceded that the change would require an amendment to the existing law and he is quoted to have said that “what is important is the duration of the system and the new government will go strictly by its manifesto and reverse the decision of the NPP government.”

He is further reported to have said the change in the duration from three years to four years was a political decision taken by the NPP, since the Anamoah-Mensah Committee which the NPP had put in place endorsed the three-year duration. “It was, therefore, surprising that the NPP government came out with a White Paper to introduce the four-year secondary system,” he is reported to have said.

Clearly, when Mr. Tettey-Enyo was speaking in support of the Education Bill on 14th November 2008, after his Committee had had only 3 days to consider the provisions of the Bill, he presumably knew of the contents of the manifesto of his party, which had been launched just about a month before then. He also presumably knew what the Anamuah-Mensah Committee had recommended, and the conditions contained in those recommendations. He claimed in January 2009 that the NPP had opted for the 4-year scheme in a move that he found “surprising”. Yet he did not state or voice any opposition to the 4-year programme in Parliament. He actually supported the Bill in its entirety! Now he was saying that there was no infrastructure, syllabi and textbooks to support the 4-year programme. Why didn’t Mr. Tettey-Enyo bring these matters out in Parliament, and lead the minority caucus to vote against the Bill? If he was truly surprised that the NPP government introduced the 4-year system by a “white paper”, why was he so silent on this matter on the floor of Parliament?

These are questions that beg for answers from Mr. Tettey-Enyo. If he is going to be the one to steer the proposed amendment bill through Parliament, he is well advised to consider these questions and prepare answers. Right now, he sounds like the character that John Stuart Mill speaks about in the quotation that started this writing.

Mr. J. H. Mensah’s Timely Warnings
If any MP deserved the title “hero” in the deliberations in Parliament on 14th November, that would be NPP’s Mr J. H. Mensah, and to an extent, the harassed NDC’s Mr Inusah Fuseini. I will deal with Mr Fuseini’s unfolding drama and harassment later in this writing. But Mr Mensah did not mince words or pull any punches. He started by describing to Mr Tettey-Enyo’s assertions in support of the Bill, that it should be passed because it had taken 10 years to bring the Bill to Parliament, as “regrettable,” adding that “this is too important a matter to have been brought to this House at the tail end [and] in the middle of a parliamentary and presidential election.” Mr. Mensah was to get even more excoriating when he said as follows:

“I am afraid that the Parliament today cannot do justice to this matter as it deserves to be dealt with. I hope that our successors in the next Parliament – unfortunately I would not be here – would go back to this matter and consider it in great detail because we have said that the production of an efficient and well-educated human capital asset is at the basis of all our national development strategies, and a number of things have not been dealt with sufficiently.”

Mr Mensah was not done. In the face of some considerable heckling by NPP’s Mr Manu on the issue of adequately resourcing education, he said:

“Mr. Speaker, those words are ten for a penny that they should be resourced. Who is to decide? It is this Parliament. What have we decided? After being here for 12 years, I am making a confession mea culpa that we are guilty that is all. We have not addressed the matter. In this report that they have said they should be adequately resources, what does “They should be adequately resourced” mean?”

Mr Mensah was interrupted by NDC’s Mr. Twumasi-Appiah who was ruled out of order when he wanted Mr. Mensah to repeat his mea culpa confession.

When Mr Mensah was allowed to continue, he referred to a publication from GETFund which showed that in 2007, while the number enrolled in the JSS was approximately 255,000, only half of this number made it to the first senior secondary year. He said, “in other words, we are throwing unto the streets a half of all the graduates from our JSS, not knowing what we are doing with them.”

Mr Mensah was interrupted again by Mr Manu who was also ruled out of order. But his concluding words were biting:

“Mr. Speaker, I am obeying your instruction to call a halt but I am just leaving this message to the House and to the nation that we have toyed around enough with this matter and that we should get serious, confront the serious facts, the difficult facts and make a real effort to make the educational reform a reality instead of a declaration.”

He sat down to “Hear! Hear!”

Lee Ocran’s Contribution
The next significant contributor was NDC’s Mr. Lee Ocran. Let me point out that Mr. Ocran was also the chairman of the NDC’s manifesto committee and was also presumably as well-versed in its contents and declared intention to reverse the 4-year system as Mr. Tettey-Enyo. But hear him:

“Mr. Speaker, the Bill is good, the intention is very good but I think we must have a serious look at it so that where there are deficiencies we fix them.”

He then elaborated on how to correct what he considered as “deficiencies” thus:

“Let us be able to provide the facilities that would make teaching and learning possible. Books, libraries, these days we have computer laboratories and so on, so that when the child comes out from school, he is not that kind of child who cannot pronounce or who cannot slip through one sentence. It is not good, then he better not have been to school.”

Mr Ocran concluded his contribution with the following words:

“Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity and I hope that those who would be involved in the implementation of this Bill will try to fix things properly so that we have the best coming out of our educational system.”

As noted above, one would have expected Mr. Ocran (now ambassador-designate), from his privileged position as chairman of NDC’s manifesto committee, to have at least voiced his party’s opposition to the 4-year programme in the bill. But he rose in Parliament, did nothing of the sort, but praise the bill as “good, the intention is very good.” Although he spoke of deficiencies, which he highlighted, he never mentioned the 4-year programme. Mr. Ocran therefore leaves us with a number of questions, including, whether he really had read the Bill or NDC’s manifesto?

It is worthy of note that NDC’s Mr. Twumasi-Appiah also spoke in support of the motion, which was eventually carried when the question was put. The Bill was then immediately taken to the Consideration Stage by Parliament waiving Standing Order 128(1) that required that at least 48 hours should lapse between the Second Reading and the Consideration Stage.

Inusah Fuseini, the Rookie MP
I think that NDC’s Mr Fuseini was a freshman/rookie/greenhorn MP in 2008. With the wisdom of hindsight, he deserves a hero’s mention because he was really the only MP who said anything that remotely sounded like an opposition to the Bill’s provisions on the duration of schooling. But I find that he allowed himself to be too easily pushed off his arguments by NPP’s Mr. Manu and others. His argument was only presented half-heartedly and, as is worthy of note, did not exactly reflect the NDC’s manifesto position on the matter.

Mr. Fuseini’s first bite was to say that the provision in clause 1 of the Bill (now section 1 of Act 778), which provided for 2 years of kindergarten was “too mandatory” and would prevent the people running kindergartens from promoting or ‘demoting’ children, as the case may be. He advocated a “flexible rendition that allows kindergarten education to be at least two years.” But Mr Fuseini had apparently bitten more than he could chew. The NPP’s Mrs. Akosua Osei-Opare called his suggestion “inappropriate for this purpose,” arguing that there was the need to set a standard, even if some people would be jumped. Prof. Fobih supported Mrs Osei-Opare saying that it was necessary to set indices for determining credentials and that whatever acceleration might occur “we still have the national structure clearly defined and this is what we mean in this Bill.”

But Mr. J. H. Mensah did not appear to be too convinced by the arguments of his colleagues from the NPP. He rose to say that if the word “year” was causing a problem, the words “grade” or “level” may be considered. The NDC’s Mr Twumasi-Appiah also spoke in support of Mr. Fuseini and merely sought to explain further, what Mr Fusieni had said.

However the NPP’s Mr. Manu countered that “That is the norm: out of the norm there can be special cases that cannot be taken into making a law.” When Mr Fuseini rose to speak again, the First Deputy Speaker, who was in the chair, said the freshman MP was “pushing us back” and that if the latter “felt strongly about it” he should consider bringing it up at the Second Consideration stage. The House (both sides) then spent considerable time debating other aspects of the Bill and approving other amendments.

Mr. Fuseini tried very hard to hold his ground. Just when the question had been put and the motion for the reading had been carried, he drew the First Deputy Speaker’s attention to his arguments. With this, Mr. Fuseini moved for the matter to be taken to a Second Consideration. He was seconded by Mr. Tettey-Enyo, who however remained loudly silent during this stage of the debate. Mr Fusieni’s first amendment proposal was to insert the words “not less than two years” into the provision of the Bill on the duration of kindergarten was roundly defeated. But he soldiered on and introduced his second amendment proposal, which was that the words “four years” should be deleted and replaced with the words “not less than three years.” He referred to the Anamuah-Mensah Report, and argued that adopting those words would “offer us an opportunity in future, without necessarily amending the provisions of clause 1(3) to revert to the three years when we are satisfied that the amenities and facilities exist that will allow the course to run in three years.”

Mr Fuseini added that this would reduce the time and expense that might be incurred in future if the matter had to be brought back to the floor of Parliament for an amendment. He urged Parliament to use “the opportunity to make it flexible enough to be able to adjust to the programme in future.”

But this was met with a forceful rebuttal by NPP’s Mr. Manu who wondered what calculations Mr. Fuseini had done “to arrive at the three years that he is talking about? Has he foreseen or does he foresee a situation where conditions in this country would be so much improved, that secondary education can be done in two years? Why is he settling on three years?” Mr Manu added that what existed was three years but that there was research showed that this was not helping student “to progress in the educational ladder.” Mr. Manu found Mr Fuseini’s proposed amendment “unacceptable and… should be treated with the contempt that it deserves.”

NDC’s Mr Ocran rose only to offer a weak defence of Mr. Fuseini. He claimed that “’not less than three years’ means it can be four, five, six and seven depending on the situation.” But this was significant. The chairman of NDC’s Manifesto Committee, which considered the 4-year duration as a near abomination, was willing to consider an amendment, which in his view, could extend the duration to seven years! Mr Ocran ended by saying that “I do not see the need for long English and talk about it.”

NPP’s Mr. Felix Owusu-Adjapong then rose and forcefully argued that there was no need to gamble with “certain things” and that when it comes to education, “we need to be very certain as to what we are trying to do… If in fact, at a certain level of the development of this country, there will be need for us to amend this clause, we will go through the proper procedure. This is not a clause we want to leave with administrators who may be operating this at their whims and caprices; it is a thing we need to be sure of.” He added that MPs “should not abdicate [their] rights to look at things which really are fundamental to the development of this country.” He then asked Mr. Fuseini to “possibly withdraw and we make progress.”

The Hansard does not record whether Mr. Fuseini withdrew his proposed amendment. The document strangely claims that the “question [was] put and amendment agreed to.” However MPs who were present on that day have confirmed to me that the amendment was actually defeated. Then, after a few comments by Mr. Mensah and Prof. Fobih, the Bill was read the third time and passed. President Kufuor only assented to it on 6th January 2009.

I have taken the trouble to walk us through the parliamentary debates because it shows, graphically, what happened in Parliament, leading to the passage of Act 778. Parliament passed this Act with much speed, a situation that Mr. J. H. Mensah was clearly unhappy with. It was as if the Act had to be passed anyway because soon after that, Parliament adjourned to 16th December 2008. It is also critical to note that none of the NDC MPs who spoke on the matter directly opposed the 4-year programme. What Mr. Fuseini tried to do was not in consonance with the NDC Manifesto. All he wanted was “flexibility” that would allow a reversion to the 3-year programme without resorting to parliament. But as explained by Mr. Ocran, Mr. Fuseini’s defeated amendment would have meant that the duration could actually go up to seven years!

My View
From the foregoing, it is obvious that the NDC Manifesto contains an inaccurate representation of the Anamuah-Mensah recommendations. It is obvious to everyone who wants to assess this matter that the conditions that the Anamuah-Mensah Committee said should exist to ground the 3-year programme do not exist. The result is that many Ghanaians, worried by the gutter-to-gutter mentality that is being exhibited by our politicians on the matter of education, are seeking to protect their children in many ways. As I write, many who can afford it, are sending their children to high school in South Africa, the latest education Mecca for the well-to-do in Ghana. Others have simply removed their children off the national JHS/SHS programme and are paying ‘an arm and a leg’ for their wards to write the International O’Level and A’Level, that are being offered by many private schools in Ghana. Others, whose children have remained on the national programme, ensure that the children go to the best primary schools and JHS’, which is a near-certain guarantee that the wards will end up in the Mfantsipims and Wesley Girs’, and subsequently the Universities.

Dear reader, the gutter-to-gutter that the politicians are playing with the future of our children means that we are creating or deepening the concept of a class society, where those who have will use their resources to protect their children from the gutter-to-gutter, and those who do not have (and who constitute the vast majority of us), are left at the mercy of the politicians, just like the sock ball I described earlier in this writing.

I have heard parents whose children are wring the IGSCE say that even if their wards have to do university education in Ghana, the A’Level guarantees that they will enter the University of Ghana at Level 200 and not waste a year at Level 100. That is sad. And from Professor Anamuah-Mensah’s Daily Graphic interview, we are not ready for the 3-year programme.

But are we ready for the 4-year programme? Is that really the answer to the issue confronting senior secondary education in Ghana? If indeed some students can complete the SHS course and pass the relevant exams within 3 years, what is the justification for holding them back and compelling them to spend an extra year in the SHS?

I am of the firm belief that the progress of a student in school should depend on the student’s own ability and not the lack of ability of another student; this is what the mandatory 4-year programme appears to me to suggest. By passing law that requires a mandatory school duration, we are seeking to impose a kibbutz-like, one-size-fits-all education scheme that is bound to fail. Indeed, as the current wording of Act 778 stands, it would be illegal for a school to put a brilliant student on a fast track or even cause a student to be repeated in class on account of poor performance. Section 1(3) says “The second cycle level of education shall consist of four years of senior high school.” It does not permit any equivocation or change. It does not reserve any right in the schools to do otherwise. Thus a strict application of this provision would mean that a parent can head to court for an order that the decision by a school that that parent’s child should repeat a year (even on account of proven poor performance) is illegal. It is my respectful view that any statute that casts the duration of any educational system in stone, as section 1(2) & (3) of act 778 seeks to do, is at least retrogressive and at worst not in tune with modern educational methods.

A similar argument applies to the mandatory 3-year programme that the NDC is proposing now. If it is indeed the case that majority of the student cannot complete the syllabi successfully, so as to make them well-grounded for university education, why are we rushing to revert to this programme?

Dear reader, the answer to the current problem does not lie in a debate over three years as against four years. That is gutter-to-gutter politics! The answer should lie in determining what is in the best interest of each student, based on his/her ability. We aim at law that puts this up at the key matter for consideration. It should be possible for a school’s authorities, a student’s parents and the student himself/herself to sit, discuss and implement what is in the best interest of that student. It might be that the student will be able to complete the course in, say, two years. However, this tripartite group might be able to agree that with respect to the student’s social development, he/she may not be ready for life in the university, and might have to spend an extra year or more in school, just to “grow up”. This tripartite does not need the strictures and long-arm interventions of MPs and the law to determine and impose what is in the best interest of the child.

This is system is not new. It is in play in many of the private schools in Ghana. And it is working well. We do not need to re-invent the wheel. By all means let us provide the standard duration for every level of education in Ghana. But let the statute provide express wording that vests considerable discretion in the actual implementing parties so that they can adjust this as they deem fit, on a case-by-case basis. I foresee that majority of students will go through the normal duration. But the law must recognise special circumstances that will require change on the basis of either proven ability or the proven inability of the student.

That is why we should not rush to implement the 3-year system. This is because I fully expect that in the upcoming debate, our MPs will note and remember that the issue is not one of political jousting over who has a better idea, or who is tinkering with whose original idea, or who needs to implement a campaign promise based on a misreading of the Anamuah-Mensah recommendation. That is pointless political arrogance and self-importance that we do not need. Our children do not need to be reduced to the level of the sock ball that is kicked around by one Parliament, and is discarded by the next Parliament because there is a new game up. This is not a Gutter-to-Gutter game. This involves the very lives of our children, our future. We require sober minds that are willing, prepared and able to work through this and to bring out what is best for our country and its future.

Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Fuseini was really up to something. He probably did not articulate his position very well and allowed himself to be bullied off his message. Maybe he needed more time to construct his thoughts and that the rather supersonic speed with which the Act was passed deprived him of this opportunity. We need to revisit and resolve this matter to the best of our abilities, at least for the time being. If sometime in the future, we need to address this again, we must and we will. But we surely do not need the partisan pallour that this is taking. This is something that requires serious multi-partisan and non-partisan effort. Let it not be said that the only times that we see multi-partisanship in our Parliament is when the matter at stake has to do with their terms and conditions of service. Sorry, I had to go there.

We have another chance to bite at this grape; not cherry. I pray that we take a good bite at a ripe grape, so that it cannot be said that “the fathers ate the sour grapes, and the children’s teeth were set on edge.”

Yours in the service of God and Country,

Kojo Anan

And So What?
So how did all this end, and where does it lead us to or leave us? Is this just some intellectual babble? Did we just talk and end the matter there? I was resolved not to let all of the gems gathered in the discussion go to waste. So I made use of a facility on Facebook by which one can introduce people into ‘friendships.’ I was privileged to be Facebook ‘friends’ with a government deputy minister with direct responsibility for branding Ghana. I therefore introduced these ‘friends’ to each other and to this Deputy Minister, in the hope that some of the things we shared can move from the ‘talk’ stage to the ‘walk’ stage. Then we would have made some progress.

But as I was thinking about progress, then my beloved Cape Coast hit the headlines, this time on account of a political struggle over the control of public toilets. Let us be clear on one thing. Public toilets are very important in Ghana. Indeed, in many places, they constitute significant land marks. And just before anyone thinks that I am being merely cynical or flippant, I will want to refer to at least five local government regulations, which expressly mention certain public toilets as boundaries of some Town/Area Council Zones: LI 1421 (West Akyem), LI 1427 (Yilo Krobo), LI 1453 (West Dagomba), LI 1488 (Atebubu) and LI 1614 (Kumasi). Further, revenue from public toilet facilities is so critical to local government authorities that it has been legislated in our statute books. The Local Government Act, Schedule 6, titled “Revenue of Local Government Bodies”, Item 10 (viii), mentions “Toilet Receipts” as one of the statutory sources of revenue.

To my mind, public toilets should not be the first reference point for any citizen of this country who seeks to ‘answer nature’s call.’ But that is the case in many communities in Ghana, simply because in the 21st century, there are homes and workplaces in Ghana that do not have toilet facilities, and so many people have to use public toilet facilities all the time. But Ghana’s Building Regulations demand that every house must have toilet facilities. Under Part XIV of the Regulations, every house must have a water closet, where water is available, or an earth closet or chemical closet, where there is no water. The law also provides detailed specifications for installing and maintaining these in homes. With respect to offices, the Labour Act imposes a burden on all employers to ensure that employees have access to “separate, sufficient and suitable toilet and washing facilities and adequate facilities for the storage, changing, drying and cleansing from contamination of clothing for male and female workers.” The Factories, Offices and Shops Act also require that “adequate and suitable sanitary conveniences conveniently accessible to persons employed shall be provided, maintained and kept clean in every factory, office and shop, and effective provision shall be made for their lighting and ventilation.”

It is therefore illegal to build a home or run a factory, office of shop without toilet facilities. We must enforce these laws. The non-enforcement of these laws means that many people depend on public facilities as the first port of response when ‘nature calls.’ This is what has created a huge business and statutory source of income for local government authorities, who, ironically, are required to enforce the Building Regulations. Local government bodies, as we are learning, farm out the actual running of these facilities to various people, and the contractors are selected on the basis of their political party affiliations. Thus with every change of government we will have crises on our hands when the winning parties’ foot soldiers begin to demand a change in control over such facilities, so that they also can ‘enjoy’ the “toilet receipts.” This is the source of the problem, and we simply have to de-emphasise the importance of public toilet facilities by enforcing the laws.

The public toilet story from Cape Coast is not new or isolated. Each forcible take over or quarrel makes its way into the news. Ashiaman public toilets were taken over with force and threats of violence. I heard one public toilet ‘contractor’ screaming on Peace FM that she had placed an injunction on the ‘tsiafi’. Oh… Ghana! And the Cape Coast version of the story is on the internet (myjoyonline.com) for all to see. A prospective tourist who does a Google search on ‘Cape Coast’ probably seeking to visit the Cape Coast Castle, will see that the most topical issue to arise from the beloved city, since Obama left, is over who controls public toilets. In Accra, cows and goats and sheep still roam a road as major as the Graphic Road on an almost daily basis, competing with vehicles for space. The Obama-by-night road refurbishments are still in place and holding out against the rains. (Hey, did Obama take the rains away with him?) The polished and refurbished hospital and King’s Palace are still there for all to see.

My love for Ghana has not diminished. Obama was a high. The toilet fights are a low. Today, I am somewhere in between highs and lows on this sometimes creaking roller-coaster called Ghana. I am still incurably romantic to believe that I can be part of turning this wheel on which we turn, even if T.S. Eliot will call me “a fool fixed in his folly.”

Maybe Obama left Ghana with the smell of fresh paint in his nostrils, and with our rains. Maybe not. But we still have a nation to build and market, a nation that lives in many centuries at the same time. That is our beloved Ghana. But whilst at it, let’s simply enforce the law – one house, at least one toilet. Cage the cows and goats. That would be a great start. Simple.

Yours in the service of God and Country,
Kojo Anan

The Visit
When I heard that Obama would be visiting Ghana, I was over the moon. This was THE cool man, coming to THE cool country and visiting THE cool city. I hurried home from a trip to his country, just to be here and feel his presence. To me, the trip was all that I expected it to be, except in one material particular. Obama denied us the opportunity to pull the biggest crowd that he would ever have seen in his life, when post-9/11 security concerns did not permit a Clinton-style outdoor event. I am told that in 1998, Clinton pulled about 500,000 people to the Black Star Square (which by the way, received a significant poetic mention by no mean a person than Maya Angelou, and at no mean event than Michael Jackson’s funeral service). Obama could have pulled 10 times that crowd, easily, to confound the noise that was made when he pulled 700,000 in Oregon and 200,000 in Germany, during the campaign. Somehow the Sadam Hussein/Osama bin Laden combi denied both Obama and Ghanaians such a history-making and record-shattering event.

Those security concerns meant that majority of Ghanaians, including my humble self, could only watch Obama on home TVs. Having only to watch him on TV, Obama could have been anywhere in the world. But we knew that he was HERE, for three main reasons. First, traffic movement in Accra was restricted on account of blocked roads, making it wiser to stay at home and expect that there would be no power cuts. Second, we had witnessed roads being fixed at midnight with floodlights, and a hospital and a King’s palace were refurbished and repainted with great speed. I hear, and it is probably not true, that a world leader once said: “all Third World countries have the same smell – the smell of fresh paint.”

The third reason (and how could we ever forget that he was in Ghana?) was the pathetically poor picture and sound quality that GTV and MetroTV conspired to inflict on us. There was absolutely no excuse for that shambolic performance. Those TV stations humiliated Ghana, and it was painful watching major networks like CNN, BBC and Sky, carrying the awful live pool feed with a disclaimer: that the poor quality was from the “source”. It hurts to think that people were paid to transmit that picture and sound quality, which did not even sync. I am convinced that even my mobile phone could have done a better job. Being as smart as they are, those more serious news networks did their own filming and immediately threw whatever they recorded from our feed into the trash bin, so that their playbacks of the event were crystal clear.

I will not go too much into what Obama had to say to us. Let’s just say that only a black man could have said that to Africa. Neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush (nor any American President before them) summoned enough guts (or maybe even cojones) to say what Obama said to us, to us in our face. And, if this had been John McCain, we would have jumped up and down on his bare back and screamed “don’t you dare patronize us.” Why? Those past American Presidents might look like each other on dollar notes, but they don’t have enough melanin! But this was one of our own, a son of the African soil with African blood running through his veins, telling us the painful home truth, from his heart, and his famous Teleprompters, that we are responsible for our own fate. Oh, and some even felt that he delivered the speech ex tempore. That is Barack Obama. And whilst at it, can someone buy Teleprompters for our Presidents, for now and the future? Teleprompters are cool, just like Cape Coast.

Then Obama went to Cape Coast, where he was given a tour of the Cape Coast Castle by Comedian-Turned-MP-Turned-Castle-Tour-Guide, Fritz Baffour. Obama was also interviewed by Anderson Cooper for CNN and Adam Boulton for Sky News. It was great seeing Cape Coast’s name on TV when the most important person on earth, Obama, was being interviewed. My Fante-ness was in full flow. I felt warm and cold at the same time. This was it – Obama was marketing Cape Coast (and Ghana) for us, for free. Every news organisation on earth, worth its salt (even FoxNews and Wall Street Journal, even if reluctantly), was focusing on us. I went into a romantic overdrive. My head was a tad reluctant to get involved, but my heart was busy telling my head to “stay at home and stop interfering,” as Edward Monkton would have put it. This was our opportunity to milk the event and sustain the attention on Ghana, particularly our tourism potential. I thought that it was time to brand Ghana the way Malaysia is ‘Truly Asia’ and India is ‘!ncredible’. “Get on CNN the way Angola is marketing CAN 2010!” I screamed.

Barack Obama
I am also one of those Ghanaians who believe that the Obama visit to Ghana has given us a rare opportunity to market this country. The mix of Cape Coast and Obama is unbeatable. On the eve of the Obama visit, Bono the musician said wrote in the New York Times that Ghana is the ‘Birthplace of Cool”. He was right generally; but wrong on specifics. “Cape Coast IS the Birthplace of Cool.” You see, I like Barack Hussein Obama, the most unlikely American president with the most ‘un-American name’ possible and who does not look like the rest of the Presidents on the dollar notes. This man makes it cool to be black, and has even stopped using the rather ridiculously anglicized version of his name “Barry,” which he bore when he played basketball in High School. If he had been from Cape Coast, he still would be “Barry”. Just check out the name my Fante dad gave to me…, and I say this with a smile. Good beads don’t bling… I like that.

I first read about Obama when he became the first black President of the Harvard Law Review. I knew then that this guy was in for big and great things, and probably would become the first black President of the United States. Years later when I watched clips of his ‘audacity of hope’ speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, I was moved to tears. I downloaded that speech from the internet, memorized substantial portions of it, unashamedly plagiarized other portions for my own speeches and writings to the unsuspecting public, and, of course, did not acknowledge my source! What is worse, I smuggled portions of the speech into those of a couple of Ghanaian CEOs who asked me to read over and edit some of their speeches. Guilty as charged. Copying Obama is cool. Cape Coast defines cool… whatever you do to Cape Coast, expect retaliation.

When Obama announced his candidacy for President, I had some doubts as to whether he could make it. It seemed a very long journey. For a while, and although I have no vote in the United States, I put my emotional ‘weight’ behind John Edwards. My friend and classmate, Kofi Dom, could not believe that I was backing Edwards when I was the first person he knew, who owned and had read all of Obama’s two books. My other friend, mate and self-proclaimed ‘son in law’ Abieku Neizer-Ashun in faraway Washington State also felt a tad betrayed because he had bought and brought to me, Obama’s ‘Audacity of Hope’. But my initial lack of confidence in Obama winning the race to the White House was a lack of confidence in my own mind, thus: how on earth would a predominantly white America, vote for a black person as President? After all, it was in North America that I discovered that I was black. For all of the one year that I lived and schooled there, their dogs would sometimes barked at me. I must have looked strange to the canines. When OJ Simpson was engaging in that live, slow car chase with the LAPD in the aftermath of his wife’s murder, drunk Caucasian boys and girls made silly noises and pointed at me, and two other black school mates (one from Barbados and the other from Tanzania), as we made our way to and from the eat-all-you-can-for-four-dollars Chinese food eatery, Buffet Uncle Tong, in downtown Kingston, Ontario.

So I thought I had sufficient basis to mask and cushion what I considered the impending, obvious disappointment of an Obama loss by supporting Edwards. But the watershed and defining moment was when Obama won the Iowa caucuses, because on that night, I swung my voteless, meaningless support behind him. If any black man could win a caucus in the almost lily-white land of corn, beans and steel, otherwise known as Iowa, that person was going to be the next President of America. I stayed up on every primary night to watch him whip Hillary Clinton silly, and then make that beeline for the White House, trampling on a hapless John McCain and a clueless, winking Sarah Palin in the process. I reckon McCain is still wondering what hit him. Palin has never recovered – she just announced a confused resignation as Governor of Alaska. To McCain’s credit, he pulled the highest number of votes for any losing candidate in American electoral history, I hear. But he was up, not against a person; he was up against a movement. Obama’s time had come, and history could not afford to wait for Obama a day longer.

I wept on the dawn when Obama was declared President. I was ashamed that in some way, I had allowed some of the not-too-pleasant aspects of my rather short stay in school in North America to define who I was and what I had become. But my resolve, after watching him deliver that speech in Chicago, was that the mere fact that God gave me more melanin than others, hence my darker skin colour, was no longer an excuse to carry a chip on my shoulder that was the size of Africa – with Madagascar added on for good measure. Not that I have ever sought to make that an excuse, but deep in the recesses of my mind, I still felt quite looked down upon and sometimes patronised by some Caucasians, even friends… sometimes. Often, when you are almost the only black face in a class, meeting, course, seminar or conference, you either shut up and hope to leave unnoticed or feel you have to work or think twice as hard to earn your place. To date, when I enter some shops in some countries, I still feel the eyes of the security personnel trained on me, with some actually following me to ensure that I don’t nick a pen from the shop. I appreciate that maybe some of this is more of my own perception than reality, but that was how I felt. But with Obama’s victory, I would be ashamed of myself to ever feel that way again. The Thousand could not defeat the Thirty… that is the spirit of Cape Coast.

Cry A Beloved City

Being a Ghanaian and living in Ghana has its own dynamics and is often like a roller-coaster ride – one minute you are up, the next minute you are down, and the very next minute, you are somewhere in between up and down. Often, I feel like the schizophrenic ghost in Ama Ata Aidoo’s Dilemma of a Ghost, wondering whether I should go to Cape Coast or Elmina. When President Barack Obama’s trip planners were faced with this choice, they chose Cape Coast, much to the angst of the good people of Edina: the land where in 1471, the Portuguese Don Diego d’Azambuja met wise King Kwamena Ansah, and learnt about the sea’s impossible dream of living in the houses of men. Things happen in Ghana that literally send your mind to the Elmina-Cape Coast junction and make you wonder whether we can turn this wheel on which we turn.

There was this sinking feeling when Joy FM carried the news item from Cape Coast of a threatened brawl between the Metropolitan Chief Executive some members of the local NDC over the control of public toilets. Public toilets? In the 21st Century? As the story has it, in many parts of Ghana, the immediately past NPP government gave control over public toilets to its ‘people’. Thus, come the change of government, members of the NDC in those parts of the country believe that it is their time to also assume control of such toilets and the ‘riches’ that are derived from the desire to ‘answer nature’s call.’ Has anyone listened to the latest political satire of a song by the always irreverent Hiplife artist called A-Plus, where he belts out the question: ‘dem tsi-efi yi, whana ne tse-ifi aa…?”

THIS is the country and the very proud city of Cape Coast that Barack Obama just visited!

I like to say that this is the country of “beautiful nonsense” and that I will never exchange my Ghanaian passport for any other. If anyone tries to take away my Ghanaian-ness, we will be headed to court for a brutal fight, and I assure you, there will be blood all over the floor – not mine. And it will take quite a bit…, quite a bit…, ok, really a whole lot, to get me to live permanently outside Ghana.

I am also one of those ‘local mixed breed’ and ‘proudly, ethnically impure’ Ghanaians, who claim lineage to quite a few tribes in Ghana. Of all the tribes that I have blood connections with, I think that I am most in love with my Akyem and Fante sides. The Akyem is from Achiase, from where my mother (when all the other tribal connections are discounted) hails, where my late father was born and grew up, the home of the Jungle Warfare School, the only city with a railway junction in Ghana, known and dearly called ‘Russia’ by ‘Achiaseans’ in the diaspora, which includes even those residing in Accra. My claim to being associated with Fante-ness is because my late father really came from and is buried in the beautiful, serene beach city of Biriwa. But there are other reasons why I love my Fante links. I lived and schooled in Fanteland, and somehow, there is something about being associated with Fante that never leaves you. And, the Fante language is the smoothest language on earth. For instance, almost every language I know of has a monosyllable for the word ‘Yes’. But not Fante – we have the dual-syllabic ‘ee-nyo’.

I like to think that I have roots in Cape Coast, the capital of the Central Region, and easily Ghana’s education capital. I did one term of primary education at ‘Master Sam’, where we sang the same song at each Friday worship service: Captain of Israel’s Host and Guide. The two verses of that Methodist hymn are literally etched in my brain! Then I spent seven years of secondary school at the only School on earth, Mfantsipim, the birth place of secondary education in Ghana. How do you say Dwen Hwe Kan in English? Impossible! Yes, yes, there are other institutions of learning scattered all over God’s earth, but there is only one School! Although I have spent more years living and working in Accra, my Ga has never been as good as my Fante. Cape Coast holds many good memories for me, as it was the city in which I really grew up. The city whose biggest football clubs are called DWARFS and VIPERS. It was in Cape Coast that I first heard the phrase “ahwen pa nkasa” to wit “good beads don’t bling.” But it was in the same city that I heard the proud statement:

Oguaa akoto, akoto dwrodwroba aa ogu won tu ano
Aduasa nye apem koo ee, aa apem antum won
Eyee Oguaa den na Oguaa aanye wo bi?

(*Tomorrow, I will post Part II of this writing, to introduce Barack Obama into this mix.*)

I presented a paper as the Guest Lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Journalism Sam Arthur Memorial Lecture on 25th April 2006. It focused on what I termed, “Journalistic Pitfalls and Minefields in the Post-Criminal Libel Era.” The main theme was that agenda-setting by journalists and the constitutional protection given to journalists and the media come with a price. Journalists must therefore know what these potential pitfalls and minefields are. These are my notes from that lecture.

STATUTORY OFFENCES
 Threats of libel or slander
 Extorting property from another person by means of threats
 Failure to register a newspaper or publication: a maximum of 12 months imprisonment and/or a fine
 Failure to publish a rejoinder: a fine
 Failure to comply with the laid down broadcasting standards: a penalty including a pecuniary penalty determined by the National Media Commission

CONTEMPT OF COURT
Criminal Contempt
Words or acts that obstruct or tend to obstruct or interfere with the due administration of justice. It is in the nature of public injury and seeks to protect the public interest.

Contempt in facie curiae
Contempt in the face of the Court, i.e. any word spoken or act done in or in the precinct of the court, which obstructs or interferes with the due administration of justice or is calculated to do so, for example:
 assaults in court
 insults to the court
 interruption of court proceedings
 recording, filming, photographing or sketching in court without the court’s permission.

Contempt outside the Court
Words spoken/published, or acts done outside the court, intended or likely to interfere with/obstruct the fair administration of justice, for example:
 publications intended or likely to prejudice the fair trial or conduct of proceedings
 publications which prejudge issues in pending proceedings
 publications which scandalize or otherwise lower the authority of the court
 acts that interfere with or obstruct persons having duties to discharge in a court
 acts in abuse of the processes of the court.

Civil Contempt
Disobedience to a judgment, order or other process of the court, for example:
 refusal or neglect to do an act required by a judgment order of the court generally or within a time specified
 disobedience of a judgment or order requiring a person to abstain from doing a specified act
 breach of an undertaking given to the court

CIVIL DEFAMATION
 Publication of words that tend to lower a person in the estimation of right thinking members of the society
 Note the relevant defences:
      o Justification: You must be able to justify the precise imputation complained of, and the onus to justify the imputation complained of is on you
      o Fair Comment: (a) that each and every statement of fact in the words complained of are true; and (b) that the comment on the facts so proved was bona fide and fair on a matter of public interest
      o Qualified Privilege: You have a legal, social or moral interest and duty to make or publish the matter complained of (without malice), to the person to whom it is made, and that the person to whom it is made, has a corresponding interest or duty to receive it.
 Damages: Societal/Judicial response to the quality of stories? New reach of media (radio and TV reviews, internet, etc.)?

PRODUCT ADVERTISING
News media to ensure that claims made on behalf of a product can be substantiated
Food
 False, misleading or deceptive adverts regarding the character, nature, value, additives, substance, quality, composition, merit or safety of food
 Advertising food in breach of prescribed standards
 Advertising salt that is not fortified with potassium iodate
 Advertise infant formula, any other product marketed as being suitable for feeding infants up to six months of age, follow-up formula, feeding bottles, teats and pacifiers
Beverages
 Alcohol ads are not to:
      o be targeted at children, be played during or in close proximity to children’s programmes or feature children or role models
      o imply success upon consumption, or therapeutic, stimulating, sedative or tranquilizing qualities
      o infer improved performance or preference for high alcohol content, or link consumption to driving or aphrodisiac effects
      o suggest that it is acceptable, helps resolve personal problems, is essential attributes of masculinity of femininity
      o portray favourable aggressiveness or promote anti-social behaviour
      o show alcohol consumption whilst working
Drugs
 False, misleading or deceptive ads regarding a drug’s character, constitution, value, potency, quality, composition, merits or safety
 Advertising drugs in breach of prescribed standards
 Ads of drugs to treat, prevent or cure the following: STD’s and other genito-urinary diseases, AIDS or diseases connected with the human reproductive functions, Amenorrhoea, Arterio-Sclerosis, Bladder Stones, Blindness, Cancer, Deafness, Diabetes, Diphtheria, Dropsy. Epilepsy or fits, Erysipelas, Gallstones, Goitre, Heart disease, Hernia or rupture, Kidney stones, Leprosy, Locomotortazy, Lupus, Nephritis or Bright’s disease, Paralysis, Pleurisy, Pneumonia, Poliomyelitis, Scarlet fever, Septicaemia, Smallpox, Tetanus or lock-jaw, Trachoma, Tuberculosis or consumption.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS
 Individual journalists should join the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and be prepared to submit to the powers of the Ethics and Disciplinary Council
 There should be corporate membership of GJA for news media organisations
 Constitutionally protected rights of the media are not absolute (national security, public order and public morality considerations)
 Lack of Adequate Training in legal issues
 Bravery/Investigative Journalism/Sheer Foolhardiness
 Issues of privacy and what constitutes “fair game”

I was intrigued by a campaign for the ‘legalization’ of prostitution in Ghana, particularly when that was coming from the Ghana Aids Commission. I wrote this piece which got published in the Daily Graphic. Please read on:

This campaign pre-supposes that prostitution is illegal, because calling for ‘legalization’ of a thing assumes that the thing is unlawful in the first place. My contention, however, is that prostitution, as defined in our statute books, is not an offence. Accordingly calls for its ‘legalization’ have no bases in the law. Simply, there is nothing to legalize, as far as prostitution as an act is concerned. What the law does is to criminalize certain acts that accompany or are related, supplementary or incidental to the actual act of prostitution. I would not want to believe that what the “Legalize Prostitution” campaigners are asking, is for those related offences to be legalized. I beg to differ. It would appear that the campaigners have not averted their minds to the real impact of their argument in the face of the law. The purpose of this piece to highlight what the law actually says because a debate or campaign that fails to take into consideration the actual state of the law is, respectfully, uninformed and amiss.

Definition
The Criminal Code defines the term “prostitution” to include:

“… the offering by a person of his body commonly for acts of lewdness for payment although there is no act or offer of an act of ordinary sexual connexion.”

The use of the word “include” could mean that the definition is not absolute and all encompassing. It could also mean that the meaning of the word is so well known, accepted and notorious that all that is required is to expand its scope to cover possible gray areas. Whichever way one looks at it, the above definition contains three key ingredients as follows:

(1) Offer by a person of his/her body: The definition is not limited by gender. By this ingredient the person must present or tender his/her body to another person for the purposes stated in the definition. Accordingly, if there is no such offer of a person’s body by that person, the act will not fall within the legal definition.

(2) Acts of lewdness: The definition covers “lewdness” whether or not it involves, results in or leads to actual sexual acts. Although the Criminal Code does not define the word “lewdness,” that word is generally accepted to be synonymous with other terms such as gross indecency, licentiousness, immoral or degenerate conduct, and lustful and lecherous acts.

(3) Payment: In a restricted legal sense a payment is the performance of a duty, promise or obligation, or the discharge of a debt or liability by delivering money or something else, where the money or other thing is accepted as extinguishing or reducing the debt or obligation. In effect the “acts of lewdness” must create a debt or obligation in favour of the person who offered his/her body (the “prostitute”). Payment then occurs where the prostitute accepts anything as imbursement or compensation for the said use of his/her body.

Nowhere in the Criminal Code is prostitution, as defined above, made a crime. It is on this basis that I consider the “Legalize Prostitution” campaign as stillborn and fundamentally and incurably flawed. However, Chapter 7 of the Code, which is aptly headed “Offences Against Public Morals”, criminalizes certain acts that are closely related to prostitution, and it is a discussion of these that I now turn.

Exposing Children to Prostitution
The first related crime is committed by a person who has the custody, charge or care of a child under the age of 16, and allows or permits that child to reside in or frequent a brothel. A brothel, according to the Code, is any premises or room used for prostitution purposes. There is persuasive authority to the effect that a prostitute who lives with his/her child in premises that he/she uses for prostitution is guilty of this crime. This provision, seeks to protect children from exposure to prostitution. The question to ask of the ‘Legalize Prostitution’ campaigners is this: “Is this what you want to be legalized?” Surely, the campaigners are not saying that the law should be amended to permit children to live in or visit brothels.

‘Pimping’
The second related crime is committed by a person who either (i) “knowingly” lives on the earnings of prostitution, or (ii) for the purposes of gain, exercises control, direction or influence over the movements of a prostitute in a manner that aids, abets or compels prostitution. This covers what is generally referred to as “pimping”. It is arguable that the prostitute also commits this offence because he/she lives on the earnings of prostitution. However, a full reading of the law shows that that provision only applies to a person, other than the prostitute, who knowingly lives on such earnings. The Code shows this by empowering District Magistrates to issue search and arrest warrants where there is evidence on oath that any person residing in or frequenting a brothel “is living wholly or in part on the earnings of any prostitute.” Further, a person who (i) lives with a prostitute, (ii) is habitually in the company of a prostitute or (iii) exercises any control over a prostitute, is deemed to be “knowingly” living on the earnings of prostitution, unless he is able to satisfy the court to the contrary. There is persuasive authority to the effect that a person who allows a prostitute to have the use of his room at specified times at a charge is guilty of this crime.

Pimps are known to be people who control prostitutes and subject them to all forms of maltreatment, thereby keeping the prostitutes in subjection and under their influence. Often this is against the will of the prostitutes themselves, some of whom would gladly leave the ‘profession’ but for the morbid fear that they have of such criminals. I am yet to hear of a pimp who would be so depraved that he will allow his/her child to become a prostitute. The question to ask of the ‘Legalize Prostitution’ campaigners is this: “Is this what you want to be legalized?” Surely, the campaigners cannot be arguing that we should amend the law and unleashing such criminals on society.

Soliciting or Importuning
The third related crime is committed by a person who publicly, persistently solicits or importunes to obtain clients for a prostitute or for any other immoral purpose. Soliciting connotes begging and pleading for clientele, whilst importuning denotes a more aggressive pestering and harassment of prospective patrons. In one decided case, a person who stood at street corners, made faces and smiled at people, made suggestive gestures with the mouth, and paid several visits to public toilets, was held to be guilty of this offence even if he did not speak with or touch anyone; and even the absence of evidence that his acts had any impact on anyone was not considered a sufficient defence.

I am not certain if any of the ‘Legalize Prostitution’ campaigners has been solicited or importuned by a prostitute, which can be a most revolting experience. If this is removed from our statute books as an offence, it will expose all of us to blatant, shameless and barefaced approaches and harassment by prostitutes who are ‘marketing their wares’. The question to ask of the ‘Legalize Prostitution’ campaigners is this: “Is this what you want to be legalized?” The campaigners will have to show us what society will stand to gain if by freeing up prostitutes to bang on our cars (pun unintended) and accost law-abiding people on the streets.

Keeping Brothels
The fourth related crime is committed by a person who keeps a brothel. A person is guilty of this crime if he/she (i) keeps, manages or assists in managing a brothel, (ii) as a tenant, knowingly permits premises to be used as a brothel or for habitual prostitution, or (iii) as a landlord, rents out premises with the knowledge that it will be used as a brothel. The question to ask of the ‘Legalize Prostitution’ campaigners is this: “Is this what you want to be legalized?” The campaigners have to show how the establishment up huge brothels in Ghana, and probably advertising the services provided in our newspapers and on radio and television will help the society.

Other ‘Related’ Crimes
The other crimes provided for under Chapter 7 of the Criminal Code are not directly related to prostitution. These are:

1. Publicly and wilfully committing grossly indecent acts (such as having sex in a public place);
2. Compelling a person to undergo immoral or indecent widowhood rites;
3. Publishing or selling books, objects or matters of an obscene nature (such as pornography);
4. Making indecent inscriptions at any public place; and
5. Advertising material relating to venereal diseases, sexual infirmity and aphrodisiacs without the authority of the Minister of Health.

Conclusion
In conclusion, prostitution is said to exist when (i) a person offers his/her body, (ii) for lewd acts, and (iii) for payment. The act of prostitution per se is not an offence, but certain specified related acts are criminal. Since prostitution itself is not an offence, it stands to reason that it cannot be legalized, and calls for its legalization are respectfully, uninformed. What the law says is that although prostitution is not an offence, it is an offence to (i) publicly solicit for clients, (ii) expose children to brothels, (iii) work as a pimp, and/or (iv) keep brothels. These are the acts that are criminalized by our law, ought to remains prohibited by our law, and I would not want to believe that this is what the campaign is really about.

Originally written on 27 May 2009

Is it really the case that Ghana law bans the use of vehicles with tinted glasses? I heard and followed the recent announcements by the Ghana Police Service that sought to remind all motorists of a ‘1974’ legislation that purportedly outlawed the use of tinted glasses in cars.

According to a Daily Graphic article posted on Myjoyonline.com on 30th April 2009, the Kumasi MTTU, over one weekend, arrested and prosecuted car owners who had tinted glasses. 41 drivers were prosecuted and convicted for flouting road traffic regulations. The drivers reportedly pleaded guilty to charges of using tinted glasses against road traffic regulations, were convicted on their own pleas and fined between GH¢240 and GH¢300. The report stated that a total of GH¢7,590.00 was realised from the fines and the convicts were warned to respect road traffic regulations or receive severer fines in future.

Explaining why the exercise was carried out, the acting Ashanti Regional Police Commander of the MTTU, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Abraham Bansah, is reported to have said that police investigations had revealed that the use of tinted glasses was one of the major causes of fatal road traffic accidents in Ghana. He tinted windscreens and windows impaired visibility anytime there was a rainfall, which created serious danger for the driver and other road users, and sometimes led to fatal accidents and the death of innocent passengers and pedestrians. ASP Bansah also said investigations had revealed that vehicles with tinted glasses had been used to commit armed robbery, abduction, and drug-related crimes, such as transporting stolen and smuggled goods. He lamented that by their nature, it was very difficult to see the occupants of such vehicles when they were committing crimes, and therefore made it easy for them to abscond. He said under the cover of darkness, some of those vehicles were also used to promote immoral activities, stressing that active sex took place in some of these vehicles, hence the action to weed them out from the system to enhance sanity on the road and the environment. ASP Bansah warned that since the MTTU would not hesitate to arrest and prosecute those who used tinted glasses, it was better for owners of such vehicles to remove them before they were arrested.

A Ghanaian Times report posted on Myjoyonline.com on 3rd April 2009 also reported that the MTTU would begin an exercise after the Easter holidays, to arrest and prosecute commercial drivers and private drivers whose vehicles had tinted windscreens. The report quoted one ACP Daniel Julius Avorga, the National MTTU Commander, who said police have evidence that some people use such vehicles to transport Indian hemp and narcotic drugs and for other “nefarious activities such as illicit sex and stealing”. ACP Avorga advised drivers with tint films on their glasses to remove them before the exercise starts and noted that an earlier exercise to check the use of tinted glasses on vehicles in 1974 was abandoned years later, when the police were withdrawn from the roads. He said, however, that vehicles whose window screens were already tinted by the manufacturers, would not be affected by the exercise.

I find it very hard to criticise the police. They do a very difficult and impossible job. When they succeed, they get little plaudits. When they fail, we all jump on their backs and call them names. So, when I read the above stories, (by the way I don’t have tinted glasses on my car), I wanted to read the law that proscribed the use of tinted glasses on cars. I wondered why the law would make an exception with respect to glasses that are already tinted by the manufacturer. Really, if the tint was in and of itself an offence, why would the fact of the tint having been applied by the manufacturer amount to a defence in court or constitute some other extenuating or explanatory circumstance. I wondered if any law in Ghana would dare provide that having tinted glasses was an offence except where the manufacturer did the tinting. I wondered how on earth the police would prove that one tint was done locally and the other by the manufacturer.

That set me thinking some more and so I hit the books. I must confess that after weeks of research, I have not been able to find the law that expressly bans tinted windows. I put that down to, probably, my own inability to find the law. But reading the above-cited news stories, the closest I have come to discovering applicable law on this matter is sub-regulation 33(3) of the Road Traffic Regulations, 1974 (LI 953). That sub-regulation provides that glass fitted on cars should be maintained in such a condition that it does not obscure the driver’s vision. It also provided that all forward facing glass should be manufactured and treated to substantially prevent shattering and flying of splinters if the glass is struck or broken. The sub-regulation provides specifically as follows:

“All glass fitted to motor vehicles shall be maintained in such condition that it does not obscure the vision of the driver while the vehicle is being driven on the road; and all forward facing glass, with the exception of lamp glasses, shall be so composed, manufactured or treated as substantially to prevent shattering and flying of sharp splinters of the glass when struck or broken.”

As I have said, I have not found the statute that specifically mentions the word “tint”, if that statute exists. However, if sub-regulation 33(3) this is the legal provision that the police action and trial and convictions and fines are based on then we have a problem.

What the sub-regulation says is that glass fitted on cars should be maintained so that it does not “obscure the vision of the driver.” In other words the glass must be maintained so that it does not make something difficult to see, e.g. in blocking out, masking or veiling. Thus, unless and until the prosecution in each case is able to establish that having tinted windows blocks out, masks, veils or otherwise interfere with the vision of a driver, I fail to see how any tinting of glass at all would amount to a crime or some breach of the law as it stands. What about the percentage of tinting? What tinting does, in the main, is to provide shade in the car. But a driver can get the same shade from wearing dark glasses as he drives. If any shading would amount to “obscuring the vision of the driver” then we should arrest drivers who wear sun glasses when they drive.

One would note from the above Graphic and Times stories that the police are arresting people not only because having tinted glasses amounts to “obscuring the vision of the driver”. They are arresting people because many offences allegedly take place in vehicles that have tinted glasses. In other words, the police would prefer to be able to have an unobstructed view into vehicles. I agree. So let’s legislate so that all vehicles in Ghana will install glass boots, simple.

To the extent that the arrests, prosecutions, convictions and fines of drivers have been based on regulation 33(3), I respectfully think they are all wrong. It is trite that crime must be specifically defined and that there is no room for assumptions and ambiguity as to what action constitutes a crime. If we want to make having tinted glass an offence, the law should state so expressly, clearly and unambiguously. If regulation 33(3) constitutes the legal basis for what has been happening (and I hope I am wrong), then my respectful view is that it amounts to an unnecessary and unconstitutional extension of the wording of the statute. The only statute that should lead to the conviction of a person for having tinted windows is one that expressly states that it is an offence to have tinted glasses, and not regulation 33(3) as it is presently written.

But, as I have said, that ‘tinting statute’ might exist. Maybe I just have been unable to find it. But I have tried. I have checked. The words “tint” or “tinted” do not appear anywhere in Ghana’s law database.