By Ben BRAKO
More than six decades after Ghana declared its independence, a deeper struggle continues beneath the surface—quieter than political elections, more corrosive than economic hardship.
It is a moral and cultural disconnect: a fracture between the European-styled elite who control the levers of power and the traditional communities who embody the soul of the nation.
This disconnect is not a coincidence, it is a legacy.
Colonial structures, local elites
When colonial administrators ceded formal control in 1957, the institutions they left behind remained largely untouched.
Their language, dress codes, modes of governance, educational paradigms, and social hierarchies persisted—but with Ghanaian faces at the helm. In effect, the colonial blueprint was inherited, not dismantled. Governance became a performance of Western aesthetics rather than an expression of Ghanaian values.
Over time, an educated class emerged. Ghanaians molded by foreign curricula, absorbed into bureaucratic machinery that rewarded alienation from their own heritage. They took over the symbolic and functional roles of the colonial class: fluent in English, dressed in European fashions, and often disengaged from the lived realities of traditional communities.
This ruling class did not merely replace colonial officials. They emulated them.
Education: Disconnect by design
This cultural severance begins early. Ghana’s educational system, built on colonial foundations, actively discourages traditional knowledge. Students are taught to idolize lawyers, engineers, and doctors—not because of their service, but because of their status. Indigenous languages are marginalized. Folklore and oral history are dismissed. Traditional crafts and trades are treated as fallback options for the unsuccessful.
The result is a curriculum of estrangement: schooling becomes a pipeline toward assimilation. A farmer’s child is taught that true success lies in abandoning the land and speaking fluent English in an air-conditioned office. Aspirations shift from rooted service to social escape.
A governance theatre of mimicry
This disconnection plays out theatrically in the public sphere. Legal professionals don white wigs. Parliamentarians wear three-piece suits in the tropical heat. Ceremonial language is English, even at durbars meant to honor tradition. Clergy preach in Western attire. Media anchors, even in local programming, project sophistication through borrowed style and speech.
Public rituals have become costume parades of imported identity.
Traditional clothing, language, and customs are permitted—but only in controlled doses, during designated cultural festivals. They do not define governance. They decorate it.
Corruption: The moral cost of disconnection
At the heart of this cultural estrangement lies a more insidious consequence: the erosion of moral accountability. Ghana’s institutions are now shaped by a race toward material success, not communal service. Integrity—once held sacred in traditional society—has been replaced by a survival ethic shaped by class anxiety.
Corruption flourishes. But not all corruption is equal.
Among the elite, it is greed: a compulsion to perform wealth and power, often through misuse of public resources. Among rank-and-file workers, teachers, clerks, nurses—it is desperation: a quiet struggle to make ends meet on wages that cannot sustain families.
Both are symptoms of a broken value chain. But only one stems from systemic neglect. The other, from systemic entitlement.
Gold without guards: A moral snapshot from Ghana’s past
There was a time when Ghana’s values spoke louder than laws. When the first British colonial officer visited Manhyia Palace in Kumasi, he was shocked to find gold bars and treasures lying in plain view—entirely unguarded. Alarmed, he asked how such wealth was protected. The Asante hosts responded plainly: “No one would think of stealing them.”
This was not mythology. It was a functioning moral ecosystem.
Across the regions, front doors were left open. Theft was unthinkable—not because of law enforcement, but because of tradition, spiritual accountability, and social cohesion.
Today, that world feels remote.
Reconnection: The Path Forward
Ghana cannot return to the past. But it can reclaim its soul.
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- We must redesign our education system—not to prepare children to mimic, but to lead with dignity in their own skin.
- We must pay fair wages—not just to reduce poverty, but to restore integrity.
- We must elevate indigenous languages, governance models, and spirituality—not for nostalgia, but for relevance.
- We must strip prestige from imported costumes and restore it to meaningful community service.
Progress does not require cultural abandonment. True independence does not wear a wig.
Ghana must stop mimicking others to measure its worth. The path forward lies not in forgetting our traditions—but in building from them. Only then can our institutions reflect our values. Only then can we reconcile the nation’s body with its soul.
Let us come home.
