Before I read Dr. Victoria’s Hammah’s very intelligent reaction to the public backlash that greeted Yakubu Mohammed’s ‘cultural joke’ about his marriage proposal to a nine year old, I worried about the influences that may have suddenly blinded us to native thoughts and social truths that make us Ghanaians and Africans.
I also worried about cultural imports from elsewhere that underpin this colossal national hypocrisy, and whether we are motivated to look at harmless everyday Ghanaian gestures through the prism of globalisation, or some strange culturalization.
Ugly ahoofe
Usually, it should not make headlines when a Ghanaian man makes a marriage proposal to a Ghanaian woman at the first encounter, just as we have dished out expensive titles like ‘Ohemaa‘ to women who have not smelled royalty from a distance, or ‘Ahoofe’ to mock the ugly.
Prince, Duke and Earl, may be titles in England. In Koforidua, they are just names.
In our part of the Jordan, to say ‘I will marry you’ may be as harmless as saying let’s talk. We stand to propose, not kneel.
Suddenly, Ghana found it necessary to shake off these cultural niceties, to invoke our collective anger towards an MP who jokingly said to a little girl during a school excursion to Parliament: “You are beautiful. When you grow up, I will marry you”.
He also called her “my wife” while encouraging the girl and her colleagues to stop at nothing to achieve their dreams, including becoming a member of parliament.
On social media, Ghanaians who can tell apranpransa from a red cake suggested that the MP’s joke of a marriage proposal amounts to the sexualization of the nine year old, who needs protection and education, rather than adult conversations about marriage.
Child rights advocates have expressed grave concern about the MP’s gesture, and how it may affect the child’s psychology. Others took it a notch higher by distilling awful nuggets of paedophilia from the MP’s remarks.
A member of the opposition, the NPP flagbearer’s advisor on gender and social protection, Akosua Manu, has petitioned Parliament to sanction the Ahafo Ano south MP, contending that the remarks are inconsistent with the Children’s Act of 1998.
The MP has since apologised and plans to visit the girl’s family and her school.
Context and comfort
Here, I defer to Dr. Victoria Hammah, a former deputy minister for communications, herself a dyed-in-the-wool gender and child rights defender, who wrote: “I do not see anything inherently objectionable in the comments attributed to the Ahafo Ano South East MP. Within Ghana’s cultural context, such expressions are often used colloquially and should not automatically be construed as evidence of gender-based rights violations”.
She received some social media flak for her prognosis of the matter, while a well-placed female politician and a former beauty queen, charged: “all women should come together to speak against this, and not take partisan positions”. Another child rights advocate added: “even jokes have context”.
Let’s examine the peculiar context in our Ghanaian social life where it is either culturally inappropriate to propose marriage. Our culture has words and expressions of endearment or affection, which are only tolerable in Ghana, but may be criminal or foolish in other jurisdictions. To ask a married Ghanaian man “how is our wife” may make sense if the person asking is Ghanaian or Nigerian, but to my former caucasian roommate in Canada, it was very “strange and didn’t make sense”.
He had overheard me asking a Nigerian friend whose wedding we had both attended.
I offered some education: In our cultural context, your brother’s wife could ask for financial help in the absence of her husband, and you are culture-bound to assume the responsibility of a husband and pay up if the kids owe school fees.
Similarly, you play in loco parentis, even when the husband is alive and active, by correcting their kids when they go stray.
In the same way, our parents make a demand on how many grandchildren they expect; we don’t have the luxury of saying we don’t want any kids.
After the first child, neighbours ask for more. It is also not our custom to split the bill after a date.
Instead, girls ask for transport and takeaway.
No cousins here
If the MP had referred to the nine year old as ‘my daughter’, instead of ‘my wife,’ would it have been inappropriate in our context? My former Canadian roommate equally found it odd that I referred to my Nigerian friend’s kids as my kids.
Chinua Achebe warned that the man who leaves his house to join a community feast, has a lot of food in his house; he does so to promote community cohesion.
When a community raises a child, that child is ours. Many African languages have no word for ‘cousin’?
We offer a description to convey that relationship, because around here, your cousin is your brother or sister, and they need no invitation to your wedding and may ask for transport fare. In Canada, they need an invitation.
If Yakubu had limited his comments to only “you are beautiful”, would Akosua Manu have found it sanctionable?
Elsewhere, it may be sexist, abusive or even haram.
In the Muslim world, only a husband has the right to call a woman beautiful.
Ghanaian women mostly laugh away when we compliment their big ass. Elsewhere, you go to jail.
The Ghanaian health worker in the UK who was fined $1,921 for calling his colleague ‘auntie,’ may have confused endearment for respect.
In Oda, we taunt 55 year olds as ‘abrewa’ without consequence. We have jokingly called the friend next door our in-law, because our seven-year-old son and their five-year-old daughter are friends.
The MP’s marriage proposal sits within this context. Haaba!
By KWESI TAWIAH-BENJAMIN
Tissues Of The Issues
bigfrontiers@gmail.com
Ottawa, Canada
