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For The Critic

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For The Emigre

In his Précis d’histoire, the Rev. Père Kwakume records that Aja tribal refugees from Dahomey, who once populated the village, passed three ordinances: against loud talking, firing rifles, and dancing to tom-toms — and so the place came to be known as Badépé or Badékpa (‘enclosure of the quiet voices’) or simply Bé (‘the hiding place’).

In recent times the villagers have forbidden the introduction of electricity within their boundaries, or the building of roads towards it from the nearby capital of Lomé (over which they still claim spiritual authority). Access to the village is prohibited to all non-Aja ethnicities, and the wood is guarded against unauthorised entry by camouflaged female watchers, who communicate through ululation and the throwing of voices. This, in combination with strange groans and cries emanating from the forest (as well as the shrieks of actual birds), serves to deter all but the most courageous and/or desperate supplicants. But the native anthropologist Kpomassie (An African in Greenland, Paris 1981; transl. Kirkup) narrates that the inquisitive children from neighbouring towns are kept away by fear of meeting a sinister creature called, in the Min or Mina or Gen dialect/language, Aguê* (and also ‘Azizan’):

a fabulous creature of the bush who has only one eye in the middle of its forehead and only one arm; it has only one leg, on which, we are warned, it can hop around with the greatest of ease and speed, ceaselessly patrolling all the forest paths. Its foot is back to front — that is, with the heel turned forward, the toes backward — so that its footprints deceive. Whenever it meets an intruder it has only to look him straight in the eye to scramble his memory. Then the intruder can’t find his way back and wanders in circles until the medicine men come for him.

The only purported defence against this treatment is to strip off all one’s close and dance naked before the Aguê. This amuses it, and so it loses its grip. Nonetheless, Kpomassie writes, what is certain is that ‘there were people who had entered that sacred forest and never been seen again.’ To this day, Togo bears the unfortunate reputation of being the saddest country in the world.

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* a name curiously similar to Aglé, son of the hunter Djitri, founder of Lomé

— The Nelson Evening Mail, Wednesday, August 29 1906
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Globalisation is going into reverse.

The (great) auk became extinct because he forgot how to fly.

Your underpants contain cellulose.

In the medieval period, walking through a labyrinth or maze was seen as a mystical alternative to the laborious completion of a pilgrimage to, say, Jerusalem.

To get a full stop on a European keyboard, you need to use the Shift key.

There are no seal-hunters left in K’akartoq.

Five-card Charlie pays 5 to 1.

Jeff Bezos is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire.

The Bible is written over Herodotus, and the Koran over that.

Diamonds are easy to steal.

There is more genetic diversity within Africa than there is in the rest of the world put together.

The Marquis of C made sacks in Botany Bay.

None of us knows how long fear takes to decay.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, March 14 1907
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The persecution of Christians is now worse than at any time in history.

Toto’s ‘Africa’ is one of Myleene Klass’s all-time favourites.

The Hillsborough disaster is still in the news.

Simon Bolivar, a Venezuelan military and political leader, liberated Colombia.

The quern performs best when the grindstone has been pitted.

Not everything in life is a $20 jerk-job.

In the ten years of the ‘Cultural Revolution’, the Chinese population increased by 200 million.

Kevin Spacey has always been gay.

Quite a few forests have no trees to speak of.

Orlando is a thoroughly disconnected short novel by the famously unreadable and wildly overrated Virginia Woolf, whose long-suffering husband was a colonial civil servant in Ceylon.

The odds on a white Christmas have been slashed to 2/1.

Nobody ever sits in a badly-lit cellar holding the day’s newspaper for a camera without feeling fear.

Legoland Windsor is full.
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— The Nelson Evening Mail, January 6 1909

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James Ramsay MacDonald became Prime Minister of Great Britain three times.

Water is a better conductor of sound than air.

A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.

Maurice Ravel was responsible for the creation of Led Zeppelin.

Being a policeman ranks below farming, fishing, and being a binman in the UK’s list of most dangerous jobs.

The first actor to play Tinky Winky in Teletubbies was sacked for incorrectly interpreting the role.

Socrates outlawed the sale of black liquorice in a just society.

To be ‘hairy heeled’, meaning ill bred, comes from bloodstock breeding. A racehorse should not have too much hair about the fetlocks.

The Swiss Army has accidentally invaded Liechtenstein three times.

If you hear there’s a unicorn in a wood, don’t go there with a virgin.

American novelist Paul Auster has two books on his nightstand. He has finished both of them.

84% of people think that political correctness has gone mad.

Not all contemporary poets are from the North.

U. A. FANTHORPE was born in Kent.

BILLY COLLINS is the author of six books of poetry including… Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes.

IAN MCMILLAN is poet-in-residence for Barnsley FC.

TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER… suffered a serious stroke which left his speech impaired and his right side paralysed…. [He] continues to write, and play the piano – a number of pieces for the left hand having been composed specially for him.

OWEN SHEERS was born in Fiji.

VERNON SCANNELL was born in 1922. He studied for a year at Leeds University and served in the Gordon Highlanders in the Second World War in North Africa and the D-Day Normandy landings. He has had various jobs including teaching and a spell as a professional boxer.

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* Answering Back, ed. Carol Ann Duffy

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For theartsdesk

(I don’t read them the same way.)

It is a luxury (perhaps) for documentarians that you can still just about recap the whole story of post-imperial Africa as background for a film like this. To darn, in shoddy order, the ravell’d sleeve of Ghanaian independence (from Britain, as it goes), in the little over 50 years since Kwame Nkrumah’s ground-breaking election as Africa’s first black prime minister, Ghana has been through five military dictatorships and four republics, a record which makes revolutionary France look positively boring and which would embarrass many of Ghana’s continental neighbours if only they’d troubled themselves with the four republics.

The most notable figure in all this chequered history – perhaps more significant even than Nkrumah himself – is Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, who seized power from the senior brass in 1979, executed his predecessors in what he openly termed “housecleaning”, returned government to the people within months, then took it back in disgust two years later when he saw what they did with it. By the lights of African military dictators Rawlings ran a pretty decent show; and in 1992 (under international pressure, admittedly) he took the leash off Ghana’s democratic process and held legitimate elections – which he won. Twice. In 2000, at the end of his second term (a limit imposed by the constitution he himself had signed into law), Rawlings handed over power to John Kufuor’s New Patriotic Party – the first and only time Ghana had witnessed a peaceful transition from one ruling party to the next.

So, there’s your context, and that brings us pretty much up to date. The only remaining question being: would it ever happen again?

In an effort, perhaps, to let the tale of Ghanaian democracy tell itself, An African Election does not quite present this in so succinct a manner. Like all good political stories, Ghana’s has at least two and a half sides. Additionally, Merz is keen to frame the electoral process against the background of widely broadcast post-election violence in Kenya and Zimbabwe (to name just two…) and the recent discovery of oil in Ghanaian territorial waters, which those of a cynical bent would say raises the stakes when it comes to control of the national purse. But we’ll come back to that.

Although there were 15 candidates in total, this was essentially a two-horse race: for the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addo, former Minister of Justice and Minister of Foreign Affairs under Kufuor; for Rawlings’ party (the National Democratic Congress), Professor John Atta Mills, Rawlings’ former VP.

Thanks to the natural characters of the loud-mouths and braggarts who populate presidential politics, Merz has no trouble getting continued access to key players. Predictably enough, the policy wonks and journalists (all Ghanaian) bang on about “good governance” and “due process” and the like, while the politicians – who actually have to get elected – talk about “peace” and “the people”, “increased production”, “education for all”, “bringing technology to Ghana”, “going forward”, and you’re never quite sure when this is just code for “our turn at the trough, thanks”. (Call me contrary, but I’d love to see a documentary about people openly opposed to the democratic process.)

There’s plenty of talk about the “privileged few”, and mostly it’s coming from the mouths of foreign-educated politicians with cut-glass English accents. And why are they all speaking in English, anyway? Is it the anthropological warp of the cameras? Or the context of Ghana’s history? This was not clear.

And then there’s J.J. Still in rude health, and casting a substantial shadow, Ol’ Drawlin’ Rawlings is repeatedly captioned as “Campaigning for John Atta Mills”; but when the man being voted for is his former deputy, and when there are spontaneous crowds gathering round Rawlings’ 4×4 shouting “Jerry Jesus”, it doesn’t take much to infer that, in reality, he’s Mills’s boss. (Rawlings amiably calls him “Prof.”, but it doesn’t exactly sound like he’s down on one knee.)

In the end – after a hung first round, a second-round run-off, contested results, angry rhetoric, and yes, the army on the streets – the election was decided, thanks to the shepherding of the imperturbable election commissioner, Dr Afari-Gyan, by the constituents of the rather small and far-flung Tain District, who had, due to an administrative glitch, been unable to finish voting in the second round. Cue curious footage of villagers stepping over their goats to decide the nation’s future, and all’s well that ends with a new president who doesn’t have a rank for a first name.

This is a cheery narrative conclusion (certainly better than any of the alternatives), but it leaves the film looking dangerously like it has sexed up and oversold its main premises. First, that there might be a brutal post-election scrum over power and oil wealth (when it turns out that Ghanaian politics is, now anyway, after five consecutive “free and fair” elections, really very much like our own). Second, the persistent and ill-argued notion that Ghana is somehow Africa’s political barometer (hence the concern, if its democratic processes go up in smoke once again). In fact, the latter starts to look downright paradoxical if Ghana could have gone the way of Zimbabwe and yet didn’t because they have the more mature democratic system. In the circumstances, presenting it like it “might have” is, well… a bit shifty.

Nor was there discussion of why democracy has struggled across Africa as a whole (and no: the answer isn’t “the CIA”), or – a related topic – the oft-lamented love of the Big Man in African politics, an omission worsened by the fact that the film gives no information on how the presidential campaign locks in with, say, the election of parliament, underscoring the impression that African politics is all about the bloke at the top. This is fundamental to the Rawlings phenomenon, and although Merz gives Rawlings more than enough rope to hang himself, the footage of him is so extended (presumably because he was the most keen to talk) that it hints at a kind of journalistic Stockholm syndrome. Letting Rawlings’ ominous remark, from a dark corner, that “They must not push the country” go un-noted (he is not referring to politicians in general but to the opposition party) is perhaps Merz’s idea of showing not telling; but for my money there should have been more telling.

In short, there were too many politicos, and too much of their car-salesman’s bullshit, and we didn’t hear enough from the people whom they claim to represent. What should politicians do to make the country better? one farmer is asked in a rare vox pop [sic.]. Simple, he says: “If only they stopped to tell lies.” Well, fair enough; but putting a camera in front of them weeks before an election doesn’t seem the best way to wean them off the habit.

That said, the film does a good job of keeping the story moving, a tough one for documentaries when you already know what’s happened (if all you know is that Ghana didn’t implode), and the quietly emergent hero is – and I mean this sincerely – the democratic process itself. A peaceful handover of power from one elected party to another is a tragically rare occurrence in Africa, and this one ought to be celebrated.

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For – in abridged form – theartsdesk