September 15, 2020//-A graduate student with thorough knowledge of all three countries has made a bold claim that Ghana is doing far better than Rwanda and South Africa when you consider them holistically.
Mary has a Rwandese mother and a Ghanaian father, was born in Italy, has spent considerable time in Ghana and Rwanda, and attended university in South Africa where she picked up her Mechanical Engineering degree.
To the question, “what about all the glitz of Kigali that everyone raves about,” Mary responded that there is a very heavy cost to Rwandese. First Rwandese are the most censored people on the continent. “Soldiers are everywhere even if they are not in uniform,” she said.
“Rwandese are not a happy people, but they will say otherwise to the media for fear of being punished,” Mary insisted. President Paul Kagame is known to physically assault those who oppose him including his ministers – and he doesn’t mind doing so in public.”
Mary is quick, however, to highlight certain positives about her country. The cleanliness and orderliness in the public space is commendable. And petty corruption in the civil service is non-existent. “But embezzlement of public funds is rampant,” she revealed.
The bottom line is that Rwanda is being built to please visitors especially European visitors, but the ordinary Rwandese still lives no differently than a North Korean.
Land is being sold at a rapid pace to Europeans with Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair owning hectares of land in Rwanda. And Mary believes in the final analysis nothing is being done to counter the eventual foreign takeover of Rwanda if we do not empower our people as is being done in Ghana.
On South Africa Mary painted an even more dire situation beginning with it leader President Cyril Ramaphosa. Asked if it is true that South Africans view Ramaphosa as the “Trump of Africa,” Mary sharply responded, “he’s worse.”
“First of all, South Africans call him a “coconut” – black on the outside, white on the inside, and he has no care for the black people of South Africa,” Mary continued. Ramaphosa went from Union Leader to a net worth of almost half a billion USD in just over 20 years.
Almost three decades after Apartheid was outlawed and Nelson Mandela, along with Mbeki, the Zuma, and now Ramaphosa have all led the country as black presidents, even the country’s Central Bank is privately owned by – you guessed it – whites.
What is worse is that none of these black presidents with the exception of Jacob Zuma, fought the white establishments on behalf of the black Africans. And Zuma paid for it by being forced to resign. His sin was to try and institute Black Economic Empowerment policy that mandated all companies to have 40% of its management occupied by Blacks.
“The Zongos of Ghana are far better in living standards than the South African townships,” Mary revealed. With roughly 8% of the South African population (which is white) owning roughly 70% of the land, and the remainder mainly government-owned, South African blacks are among the poorest in Africa.
But on Ghana, Mary believes the country is on the right path balancing incremental growth and development with human resource capacity building. Ghana’s democracy and free speech by her citizens are attributes that others would cherish but cannot have, according to Mary.
Mary doesn’t see lands owned by non-blacks in Ghana; she sees investments in education as critical to future development. And infrastructural developments are comparatively impressive. In short Ghana is developing holistically rather than having some segment developed while other segments are lagging.
Asked to pick the best leader among Kagama, Nana Addo, and Ramaphosa, Mary simply laughed and said it’s not even close, ad that she wouldn’t choose Ramaphosa and Kagama to lead any country.
DNT News
