By Fadi Dabbousi
The negative documentary on Ghana’s cocoa by Aljazeera exposed their emptiness and selfishness. Aljazeera must know that all the countries that support the international buyers, put together, produce 95% of the carbon footprint while the African and other tropical countries produce just 5%. Similarly the tropical countries produce 95% of the global oxygen levels while others produce 5% only. In all this, the equation translates in favour of the northern hemisphere countries while it has a disastrous consequence on the countries of the tropics! It is the same with the southern hemisphere, but in this instance, the Dracula of the cocoa industry are in the Northern, hence my stay above the equator!
Who has been sending heavy fuel-burning machines out to space thus damaging the ozone layer? You guessed right; the countries of the cocoa-manipulating syndicate! Who suffers? Of course, it is the people of the tropics, that cocoa farmers feel the pinch mostly due to the relentless wickedness of the destructive countries. Western manipulators of the cocoa industry claim that in Africa, with specific reference to Ghana, we have damaged the forest cover to grow cocoa, making it an issue to throw the dust into the eyes of consumers. That is so untrue because cocoa trees are short and are grown in off reserves that are earmarked for agriculture while the forest reserves are not defiled. What is so insidious about this whole affair is that in Europe, for example, hundreds and thousands of hectares of temperate forests are cleared to make way for ranches that have dotted the European landscape in their multitudes. If that is not mass deforestation, then I am at a loss as to what it is.
The tea industry has seen massive deforestation in Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, and other places, not to mention child slavery, as referred to by the cohorts of evil, yet because they control the tea industry in its entirety and have kept the out-growers in absolute poverty, they are quiet on all the concerns similar to those they have raised about Ghanaian and Ivorian cocoa. The heavy foreign investors in agriculture in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and other similar countries in the Orients have forever connived with authorities to wreak havoc on the virgin tropical forests, killing and displacing indigenous people, yet because the respective governments are playing ball with the aggressor investors, child slavery is no longer child slavery and deforestation is no longer deforestation. This hypocrisy and ugly face of racism cum neo-colonialism is more bamboozling than can be said about apartheid and the original forms of colonisation.
The West, including most developed countries in the Northern Hemisphere, rattle the English axiom, “what is good for the goose is good for the gander”, as if it is a phrase from their religious books applicable only when the tide favours them. It would seem to me that in Africa, we should have to rewrite the King’s English to favour us, too, which mockery may just as well be!
Is the use of monkeys in the coconut industry, specifically, to pluck coconuts, not of concern to the West? Where are the animal rights activists who accuse African and Asian exotic animal consumers of inhumanity? Have they gone dead silent in order not to be exposed as people with bestial tendencies especially since HIV was suspected to have erupted due to the bestial behaviour of Western scientists? I want to believe that Aljazeera Network does not know that African countries remain shackled by independence decrees in which emancipated countries have had to pay royalties to their former colonial masters, and many continue to pay until today! Is that not inhuman and detrimental to the poor Africans? Does Eva Atiboka know that? Why doesn’t Aljazeera make exposés to shame those superpower countries that continue to feast on the sweat and blood of the Africans?
Let me inform Eva and Aljazeera that the card they pulled in this cocoa war was the wrong one. It took a swipe at their credibility since they seem to have, already, suggested the end result of this campaign against Ghana cocoa. Why was China cocoa sold in Belgium for USD 7,200 (seven thousand two hundred US Dollars) per Metric Tonne, while Ghana cocoa fetched USD 2600 (two thousand six hundred US Dollars) when our cocoa is superior to the former’s? What do you call that? Why is China pampered while we are slammed with a sledgehammer? China has realised the lucrative nature of the cocoa business and has decided to raze down her sub-tropical forests to create massive lands to plant cocoa trees at a time when the EU is making such a fuss about deforestation. This is the topic that they choose to beat the faculty of scientists and human rights advocates with to hide the shame of their hypocrisy, making it seem as if we, here in Ghana, are the child-unfriendly monsters. It is like some form of perpetual hypnosis akin to pulling the wool over your eyes, thinking that you will become warm while your bottom is exposed to the elements, both humans and nature’s! This intentional application of turning a blind eye to China and an open one to us is as pure an act of racism more pungent than apartheid and slavery!
All the same, let me thank Aljazeera for this negative documentary that has ricocheted in their face. For us, here in Ghana, it serves as a wake-up call to resist the oppressors’ rule while the dignity of the brave Ghanaian farmer remains intact!
You see, with the ascent to the Presidency of His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and with the subsequent appointment of Honourable Joseph Boahen Aidoo as the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod), a unification of purpose was achieved by the syndication of Ghana and Ivory Coast cocoa to a joint committee from both countries thus placing power in the hands of these sister countries to emancipate the cocoa industry and alleviate the suffering of cocoa farmers by increasing their income to unprecedented levels, thereby, taking away from the profits of the international buyers and producers of cocoa products!
Having achieved that, the noose was tightened around the necks of both West-African countries. The unwillingness of the West to make peace with Africa, with specific reference to Ghana, depicts in no small way how much they despise the success of any African irrespective of colour, race, or creed. Theirs is always assumed to be superior while anything African, is inferior!
