Comment - The Colour And Numbers Role - Valco Agreement
After 1976 and 1980, when African participation in the Olympic Games was bedevilled by political considerations, it was a pleasure to see so many African teams on display. Since no African nation has as yet made any appearance on the medals table, it is looking as though our contribution to the extravaganza seems to be providing colour - our traditional costumes on display during the opening ceremonies: the kentes, the agbadas, the Boubous - and numbers to make up the record 140 nation attendance. But it is early days yet and the boxing arena might yet produce some African medals and the track events have always produced African surprises.
Considering the facilities that are available to the African athletes for training in their homes, it might be said that it is even a wonder that some of them even manage the qualifying times in the first place to enable them to make the trips to any Olympic Games. While Zola Budd can afford to turn down million-dollar offers from shoe companies because she prefers to run barefoot, many African athletes cannot even afford training shoes nor a cup of milk daily.
It cannot be the best atmosphere for training towards athletic excellence when your country is in the midst of a famine and political upheavals are a weekly routine. Nor can it help very much when the threat of a boycott is dangled every day until the starter's gun for an event goes. For the arguments still rage in the newspaper columns of many West African countries about the merits and demerits of participation.
There are those who feel that the American inspired boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980 can only be properly avenged by a reciprocal boycott of the Los Angeles Games and those who believe that this was too good an opportunity for Africa's athletes to miss.
For there is no denying the fact that whatever political points were gained or lost in 1976 and 1980, African athletes were the losers at the end of the day, deprived as they are of training facilities and the necessary peace of mind, their inability to compete with the best has undoubtedly blunted their competitive edge.
It was a relief to see a country like Chad for example on the television sets of the world in terms other than a civil war and starving children and whether any medals are won or not, the athletes from many nations in our part of the world deserve the two week break from the reality of life in their own countries.
Julius Nyerere of Tanzania it was, who made the famous lament that while other countries were going to the moon, African nations were still more concerned with music and dancing than anything else.
For the presence of African nations to be felt beyond their colourful march pasts, the problem of political stability will have to be resolved to bring out the potential in the people.
A VALCO AGREEMENT
Almost from the start, it was the best thing and the worst thing that had ever happened to Ghana. The 1962 agreement between Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah, Edgar Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminium and Chemical, President John F. Kennedy, the World Bank and many others led to one of the biggest Third world country and industrialised world cooperation projects.With hindsight it is quite possible that there was a case of 'oversell' in Ghana, for the Volta River Project as it was called, came to represent all the hopes and aspirations of the country. Ghana's success and prosperity were supposed to hinge on the one project. Nkrumah could be forgiven for extracting as much political mileage out of it as possible considering the amount of difficulty he encountered trying to get the money to support his dreams.
Those early days nobody suggested that Ghana did not have anything but the best deal ever possible, and cheap electricity was to transform the country into an industrialised giant within the shortest possible time.
Even though it did not exactly turn completely sour, Ghana's expectations were hardly met and the inequalities in the agreement became more glaring and sooner than expected, VALCO became a classic symbol of multinational 'exploitation' of a third world country.
Quite a number of reputations were made by criticizing Valco and an editorial writer at a loss for something to say could always fall back on Valco with no danger of going wrong.
The Valco position was not helped by the fact that while the rest of the country has been deteriorating rapidly. became virtually the only flourishing oasis in a desert of decay.
With the signing of a new agreement it is important that this time around, the reality is not couched in unnecessarily grandiose language nor the false impression pushed that the PNDC had scored a victory over the ogre of Valco.
It is more in everybody's interest that Valco works than to score a win over a big multinational.
Possibly the lesson lies in the fact that inspite of the agreement and better deals, real or imagined, whether Valco starts working or not depends on rainfall and that is neither in the hands of the multinationals nor in the hands of the negotiators.
