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The 20th Century m'zuŋ u Scramble for Independent Africa

"Veni, Vidi, Vici ",Steti - ego adduxit inimici mei"

I was only 11 or perhaps 12 years of age. But having been a stranger where ever we
moved to, I had become more of an outside observer than most children of my age.

Ghana meant, and still means, the colour of the African women so pea-cockish in

their head-to-tail covering of the most colourful display of traditional cloth. My first
encounter with such women was as I waited in Accra's airport on my way to or back from

school in UK. Kwame Nkrumah arrived and unlike I had ever seen before the crowd of
African women went through that welcoming song and dance that we have all now

become used to.

I remember a lot about Africans. I remember Bwani the grown up man that my
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m'zuŋ u mother used to call a 'houseboy'. As a child, I never understood this, as he was
most definitely not a boy. He was a man with a wife living with him in the small building at

the back of our block of six apartments.
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I definitely remember the m'zuŋ u and their governments. It was impossible to
escape these. Everywhere you went you were confronted by this or that modern day 'white
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elephant' so generously donated by this or that great or small m'zuŋ u nation as they
scrambled to impose their influence on newly 'independent' Africa. These 'white elephants'

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are, for me, a symbol of how m'zuŋ u undermined any hope of African independence.
Forget the hope and pride of those African women and so many others that Kwame
Nkrumah would lead them to a promised land.

The Russians had 'given' a few Russian passenger aircraft to what was a fledging
Ghana Airways. At that time, no one would claim that Russian aircraft were state-of-the-art.

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And so typical of each generous m'zuŋ u country, the white elephant the Russians gave
was the most unwanted of their own aircraft. And so a newly independent African country,
with almost no aircraft servicing capacity, was faced with incredible servicing costs for

aircraft which it soon became clear the country could not afford to fly!
Hungary or some other East European country provided a small fleet of urban buses.

And wonderful as these may or may not have been, they were of a unique design needing

maintenance and spare parts that could only be obtained from Eastern Europe. And as you
will gather from reading some of the following paragraphs, Ghana in common with all

newly independent African states would soon have no foreign currency with which to buy