|
Dark Tourism
in Ghana: The Joseph Project
By
Jean
Y.T. Lukaz
Part I
A new area of tourism studies that is struggling to gain
recognition partly because of the guilt that comes with
it and partly because of a phobia of a reparation
revolutionary movement that may spring up. Dark Tourism,
a fascination with visiting sites associated with death,
destruction and doom, has recently appeared on the
tourism degree curriculum as an infant formula, yet much
of the industry remains indifferent and uninformed.
Simply put, dark tourism is about the commodification of
grief with the revenues accruing to the perpetrators,
collaborators, arbiters and the victims.
The Cape Coast & Elmina Castles, the Slave Markets, and
the Slave Cemeteries in Ghana, Auschwitz, Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, the mass graves in Burundi, Bosnia
Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Ground Zero in
the USA all highlight the growing demand for what is
termed ‘dark tourism’ and the need to carefully manage
this new market.
Apart from the old relics of these dark periods of
history, some of the perpetrators as well as the
middlemen and the victims have all found ingenious ways
of carving their history into monuments and
celebrations, a process I have defined as
monumentalisation (this topic will be treated in detail
on its own). Germany, Belgium, Ghana and some others
still have the original sites preserved as a tourist
attraction, ones that many pleasure seeking tourists
refuse to recognise on their itineraries. Sex tourism, a
more titillating alternative, is a preferred choice.
The minds of the perpetrators, like a haunted house, are
now the haunted as the once-haunted-ghosts of all the
lost souls keep coming back. Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and
Punishment’ is on the roll-out. The constant reminders
are thwarting the branding efforts of those countries
involved as most of them try futile reconciliation
through aid, debt relief and visa lotteries. Others
offer opportunities to seemingly raise the importance of
the victims by offering them a place in their senate or
recognise them as DOM-TOMs.
Germany suffered this big blow when in July 2003,
Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi made a well-publicized
antic at a meeting of the European Parliament: “I know
that in Italy, there is a man producing a film on Nazi
concentration camps- I shall put you forward for the
part of guard,” sneered the unflappable prime minister,
rebuking German MEP Martin Schulz, who had been
harassing him on the issue of alleged scandals. The very
images Germans have toiled for years to dispel keep
coming back to haunt them.
Our own President John Agyekum Kuffour was offered the
priviledge of opening the new Wilberforce Institute for
the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (Wise), the
brainchild of Hull University, an act that has met a lot
of criticism. It sounded more of a ‘celebrity
endorsement’ of the evils of slavery to the emotionally
charged. However, as a postgraduate alumnus of the
Politics Dept & Law School of the University of Hull,
and having consequently lived in the City of Hull for a
couple of years, the erstwhile Wilberforce Museum offers
more of a history of slavery in terms of slavery
advocacy than our own at home.
And if we are really bent on putting together all the
linkages in the slavery network with Ghana as a
departure point, then it was worthwhile being at the
ceremony. Remember, besides all this rhetoric dark
tourism is one of national business and Ghana (just like
Britain) needs those tourism revenues that are going to
accrue from the Joseph Project, a niche tourism strategy
that draws on the emotional, inspirational and
historical dimensions of Black-African-Diasporean
heritage. Rita Marley and others have already found a
home in Ghana and have come to terms with this reality.
Credit or debit, greedy African Families, African
Warriors, Arab Slave Raiders and Enterprising Europeans
all have their hands tainted with the blood of all that
lost their lives before, during the journey and at their
destinations. And until we come to terms with the roles
that each group played in starting or ending this evil,
we shall keep begging the question while those that are
seeking reconciliation remain unforgiven.
Leverage Branding?
Observers are worried about the two-way-street-role of
Britain in the commercial slave trade and in its
abolition. The actual problem is, Britain has succeeded
in leveraging its role both as a partaker and arbiter to
brand the country and in particular, the City of Hull,
using the very subject under review here. Britain has
used the Wise Institute to relaunch the branding efforts
of the City of Hull as a tourist attraction, one that
generates a lot of sterling for the government.
The Wise Institute is expected to form the centrepiece
of the Hull City’s celebrations in 2007 to mark the
bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. The
City Council has intimated that Wise will be one of the
most prestigious educational establishments in Britain.
Presently, Hull still bears the legacy of the slave
trade as a major buyer of Ghana’s cocoa that was some
time back unloaded from ships by the very slaves from
Ghana and elsewhere. I was surprised when at a cocoa
processing factory in Hull I chanced upon Ghana-branded
cocoa jute sacks in 2001. As we shall find out soon it
is not just Britain that is using a grim past as brand
leverage.
Germany in the year 2005 commissioned a maze of
architectural coffins as a new monument on the
holocaust, something everyone would rather expect Israel
and Poland to do. Russia in 1997 also commissioned a
holocaust and concentration camp monument at the Victory
Square in memory of victims. Maybe we should be more
worried about the AK-47 Military Museum in Russia, an
indirect partaker in the present dark tourism in
sub-Saharan Africa. Not even Russia has leveraged fully
the popularity of the no-frills death machine as much as
the countries that have endured its use and abuse.
Ambush Branding?
Countries that have fallen victim to and suffered at the
hands of the AK-47 have all done some ambush branding
seeing the leverage it could give them, oblivious to the
macabre role of the AK-47 apparatus belli in shaping the
history of 20th-21st century conflict. The AK-47 is
included in the flag of Mozambique and coat of arms
(formerly also in Burkina Faso coat of arms), appears on
stamps in Burkina Faso, murals on the falls road in
Belfast and the logo of Hezbollah and features
prominently in rap lyrics and TV news footage. Numerous
computer and video games feature AK-47s. Toy makers and
the airsoft industry make millions of replica AK-47’s.
The Kalashnikov, which was to Soviet Communism what Coca
Cola was to American economic imperialism, was shipped
in millions to revolutionaries and People’s Armies
around the world – 4.5 kilos of dictatorship of the
proletariat, from Russia with love.
Apathy or lack of knowledge on country branding issues,
it has taken foreigners to write our histories and to
develop travel guides to our own countries that we know
better. Similarly, it took the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) and World Tourism
Organisation (WTO) to develop and brand slavery as
tourism niche across the USA and the Caribbean for
Africa. It has taken same to regenerate all surviving
relics of the slave trade. This international project
was dubbed ‘The Slave Route Project’ and has come to the
point where the Minister for Tourism and Diasporean
Relations (MOTDR), the Hon. Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, has
branded the Ghana edition (a twisted version in the form
of a pilgrimage) as ‘The Joseph Project’, one that has
met my ardent critique as having been given too much
attention.
Call it ambush branding if you care. But the Joseph
Project has come to stay. It is a niche that does not
generate much revenue for Ghana compared to the amount
of resources being dedicated to it but the Joseph
Project has got the kind of power needed to get all the
attention in the world for branding Ghana as a tourism
destination, especially if done with all the linkages to
the perpetrators, collaborators and arbiters such as
Britain et al. In fact, the history and impact of
slavery would be incomplete without the accounts of
those mentioned above.
Ghana is the only country in the world with the biggest
number of accounted legacies and relics of the slave
trade (with originally about 80 forts and castles) and
over 50 annual cultural festivals, major and minor. It
is quite a pity that lack of a national branding
strategy has undermined this potential. Gambia and
Senegal have collaboratively sold the slavery niche
better as ‘Roots Tourism’ (even with just on slave
fort), with reference to the TV drama series ‘Roots’.
Part II
Slavery has been with mankind since biblical times. The
quest for conquest and domination is an inherent nature
of man since God declared it at the beginning of
creation. Push factors have been the need for arable
land for farming, mineral wealth, wildlife, access to
water bodies for commercial purposes and fishing.
Slavery in all forms leaves memories and memorabilia for
both the masters and the enslaved. Such keepsakes have
usually been destroyed or left to crumble on their own
or taken over by some non-enterprising individual. Those
that have been conscious of their history have preserved
and documented all the relics of their past as a story
that needs to be retold over and over to those yet to be
born and to foreigners who dare to know more about them.
The transatlantic slavery that depleted Africa of her
human resources, the strong, healthy and well-built,
left many scars as it was not the usual ones that
resulted from tribal wars but rather that of an unequal
conqueror. The Europeans kept fighting each other over
the scramble for African slaves until the coastlines
were completely chartered by commercial slave trading.
Forts, castles and temporary sheds were built to house
conquered and purchased slaves till their onward
shipment across the oceans.
Upon their arrival, slaves were taken through all the
orientation and matriculation after their sale and life
began abroad!
With the abolition of slavery, slave forts, slave
castles and slave pens were all vacated never to be
occupied again by another grim period in the history of
any people. Other sites that were also used as slave
markets, slave bathing bays, dungeons, and caves that
were inhabited by escaped slaves have been a source of
rich history to both the conquerors, the once-conquered
and the Africans in the Diaspora that are seeking
earnestly to know their past.
Europeans and Americans that were also involved in
slavery have managed to preserve some of the relics of
this period which they have kept in museums as an
attraction. African-Americans also located their past in
the same land and have commissioned other monuments to
commemorate this period.
In doing all the above as a way of preserving history,
Africans, Europeans, Americans, African-Americans and
African-Caribbeans have all positioned themselves
differently in portraying their roles in the
transatlantic slavery.
Africans have tried to conceal the compromising part
they played in the raiding and selling of their own as
they highlight the evil of the Arabs, Europeans and
Americans. Most of the forts have crumbled; some have
been used as penitentiaries as in Ghana, to further
instill the concept of slavery and incarceration, others
are now brothels and being used as Bed and Breakfast
lodges. No new monuments have been added since to
express our own side of the story, only theirs. And the
saga continues . . .
The Europeans et al have done their best to show their
goodwill and struggle in the lead up to the Abolition of
the transatlantic slave trade. They have not thought
about preserving and displaying the slave ships, slave
auction markets and slave execution centers (they do not
want grim reminders of this commercial past). To add
insult to injury, they have written our history for us,
even the ones they never knew before their commercial
intervention.
In the US, racial segregation and the confederation flag
are modern relics of the history of slavery and
domination. It has taken African-Americans searching for
their past to establish cultural institutions for the
preservation of their enslavement, such as the National
Underground Railroad Freedom Center (NURFC) in
Cincinnati. Racially-sponsored history books lying about
African institutions before and after slave conquest are
the order of the day. Even in modern times a lot more is
still being done to exaggerate all the grim stories
pervading the African continent, ostensibly to conceal
the truth, happy side and the organised socio-cultural
institutions of the African.
Slavery, Dark tourism, Colonialism and the
Commodification of Grief have all given three different
dimensions to one story of the African. The Africans are
presenting themselves as Passive Victims of Slavery with
all the relics they have been able to preserve, the
British, representing the Europeans, are presenting
themselves as anti Slavery Advocates through the works
of Wilberforce at the new Wilberforce Institute for the
Study of Slavery and Emancipation (Wise) in Hull, and
the Americans are simply Perpetrators in Denial, leaving
the African-American victims to recollect their own past
while rebuffing all attempts at reparations. So who
really did it?
Positioning places by the good, the bad and the ugly in
the macabre history of the transatlantic slavery by the
Victims, Perpetrators, Advocates and Arbiters as tourist
attractions is their own prerogative including how they
choose to present it. Each of the categories of people
deserves to tell their story in a way that befits and
brands them in a positive light. In fact, every smart
people will use the slavery attractions, monuments and
relics to position and brand their countries, cities and
communities to the world, not necessarily to remind all
concerned of their grief or acrimony as many activists
are advocating.
Dark tourism for any country tells the story from the
perspective of the host however biased. With the onset
of the bicentenary of the Abolition of Transatlantic
Slavery, all the stakeholders mentioned above are
putting their act together to highlight their ‘good’
roles vis-à-vis the associated branded ‘evils’. Whatever
this may mean to all involved: emancipation,
reconciliation, reparation, homecoming or pilgrimage,
there is nothing new under the sun.
Part III
The story of Joseph, the basis of Ghana’s branding of
the slave route project, ‘The Joseph Project’ or
‘Project Joseph’, can be summarised as follows: Joseph
having been sold into slavery by his siblings out of
envy or jealousy, his persecution and imprisonment, his
rise to power and the return of his siblings to his
stead begging or looking for bread, his forgiveness and
reconciliation. Let’s remember that Joseph never went to
his siblings, the latter rather went to him, when he had
been appointed ruler and was wealthy, unknowingly, as
they needed food for their basic survival.
The Mockumentary
So come 2007, Africans in the Diaspora will be coming to
a prosperous land (Ghana) to look for food for their
basic survival, will unknowingly meet Joseph (Ghanaians)
who they sold into slavery and is now well-to-do and a
ruler in Ghana, and reconcile with him after Joseph
forgives them for their misdeed…What a mockery!!! This
is just a paraphrase of by Mike Green’s New Visions
Commentary titled “Who Should Pay for Reparations? Black
Americans . . . Obviously”! Is this supposed to be a
celebration of a return to their roots or a case of a
mistaken identity? Africans in the Diaspora by this
‘Joseph Project’ may need to go through an identity
parade in order to help determine who the real Joseph
is: Africans in Africa or Africans in the Diaspora?
Another feat in the series of misadventures by the
Ministry of Tourism and Diasporan (Joseph) Relations of
Ghana, a self-styled branding strategy that was born in
a post-binging-romantic-night-dream has gone completely
wrong; and like the child that objected to his teacher
accusing him of ‘one person making so many mistakes’ as
he was helped out by his Dad and therefore making it
‘two people making so many mistakes’, how many people
will be accused this time?
A real mockatainment is awaiting Ghanaians and Africans
in general in 2007 for the celebration of the legendary
and demystified Kunta Kinte’s return to the Gambia,
through Ghana. The contra story emerges: Joseph’s
siblings have been desperately trying to reach their
wealthy brother in the Diaspora where they can get
substance for their survival and prosperity. Joseph has
on the other hand been also trying diligently to seek
reparations from the merchants that bought and or
brought him into slavery and the merchants have been
trying effortlessly at ridiculing the call for
reparations even after deciding to pay so much to the
Jews, who, incidentally, happen to pass for the real
Josephs both physically and historically. Will the real
Joseph please stand up!
According to the Joseph Project strategy of the Ministry
of Tourism and Joseph Relations of Ghana “There are
‘Josephs’ alive today and new ones still being born, so
it is our intention to form a nominating committee of
Africans in the homeland and in the Diaspora who will
select those men and women who will qualify to become a
‘Joseph’. These will then be enrobed and featured in the
‘African Excellence Experience’”. Joseph has now been
formally codified into a policy misdeed. Period.
A lot of effort and resources has been put into the
mispublicity of ‘Joseph’ and the African Diaspora. A
case of misbranding, all Ghanaians stand to lose from
this feat that wrongly projects an otherwise brilliant
idea but wrongly branded by the Ministry of Tourism and
its implementing arm, the Ghana Tourist Board (GTB).
Slavery Pilgrimage: Pandora’s Box
The trip to Ghana or the homecoming or the pilgrimage of
Africans in the Diaspora to the various slave routes
their ancestors were taken through may sound like a
celebration when viewed from the perspective of the
promoters of dark tourism, death tourism, grief tourism
or thanotourism.
In fact, it is a trip to the cemetery (since none of the
original partakers is alive) to open Pandora’s box and
awaken dormant emotions be they anger, love or hatred.
But does dark tourism really bring any healing to the
victims and their lineage, especially in this situation
where the case for reparations, a better attempt at
reconciliation and healing, has become a source of
mockery?- The U.S. government’s first reparations plan
to compensate African-Americans for the legacy of
slavery was 40 acres and a mule apiece — that was Gen.
William Sherman’s promise to former slaves shortly after
the Civil War ended in 1865. His order set aside land on
the Georgia and South Carolina coasts for the settlement
of thousands of newly freed families.
But the promise was quickly recanted and the land was
taken back, with no other plans for reparations-
Forgiveness, reconciliation and healing emanate from a
consensus by all that were involved in the transatlantic
slave trade and maybe open hearings and discussions at a
Slavery Reconciliation Commission may be a better
alternative and help in the healing process rather than
a packaged tour on a dark tourism adventure along the
trail.
Reconciliation and Reintegration
Most Africans have moaned about African-Americans and
other Africans in the Diaspora accusing them of their
involvement in the slave trade and for ‘selling them
into slavery’. The Africans that have been at the
receiving end of such accusations wonder why there is so
much bother about homecoming and all the attention given
to Africans in the Diaspora when they hate ‘us’. It is
even worse for those African work-a-holics that take up
menial jobs in Black populated cities such as New York
and Chicago. What is wrong here is that both sides of
the African are living in denial: Africans back home are
yet to accept the role they played in the transatlantic
slave trade and Africans in the Diaspora are probably
lost on the one-way street of reparations and
reconciliation and are yet to join the dual carriage
involving Africans back home in Africa.
Back home, Africans in the Diaspora are rather regarded
as Whites due to attitudes of superiority when in their
comfort zones in the Diaspora. Africans back home are
beginning to see through the homecoming rhetoric as
packed with hypocrisy. A lot of media attention is given
to such ‘homecoming’ scenes and a typical question that
follows after their mantra ‘We have come home’ is ‘How
long have you come home to stay?’- not more than a
holiday packed with fun and spending sprees. Most manage
to acquire local names and go through mock rites of
passage ceremonies as a form of initiation.
The reality is, in Ghana for example, local people feel
that Africans in the Diaspora are economically better
off and may do well to swap places with them if they
really believe in homecoming and are unhappy about their
situation in ‘racist societies where they do not feel
fully accepted. This brings into focus an African
perspective of an otherwise ‘positive’ impact of the
slave trade. It is often a truism to say that modern day
transatlantic slave trade is voluntary and free
‘flights’ into slavery will only take seconds to fill
up— just monitor the daily number of and risky nature of
illegal immigration by Africans into the Diaspora.
At recent seminars and other programs in Ghana, Africans
in the Diaspora on holiday in Ghana have bemoaned how
they are referred to as ‘Obroni’ (Whiteman/woman). Which
of the two kinds of Africans is living in denial? If we
are really considering emancipation, healing,
reconciliation and reintegration, then we should be
looking the lives of W. E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore,
Africans in the Diaspora who resettled in Ghana and
actually got involved with the local people instead of a
cursory visit packed with mixed emotions.
Part IV: Which Death?
At the dawn of the 21st Century, dark tourism reached a
zenith as Americans woke up on the 11th of September
2001 in a movie in the making, ‘Al Qaeda’s Wrath’. Ghana
has had her share of dark moments not only that of the
transatlantic slave trade but the numerous political and
criminal vengeances unleashed on Ghanaians pre- and
post-independence.
Ghana’s tourism does not recognise these domestic issues
that have formed a dark cloud around the country and has
not included them in the list of tourist attractions in
the country. Memories of this dark past are on an issue
when political elections are looming and are soon
forgotten thereafter. Dark tourism in Ghana must also
take into consideration the veil succumbed by Ghanaians
and perpetrated by Ghanaians and others.
Ceremonial moments in Ghana’s dark tourism include sites
of the 28th February Crossroads shooting, student murder
at Opoku Ware School by Presidential Cortege, Murder of
Former Heads of State, Murder of the Judges, Tomb of the
Fallen Soldier (WWII Memorial), the Military cemetery
sites of Soldiers MIA, Kume Preko shootings, the Taifa
Murders, the Potrase junction, etc.
Monuments must be erected in all the above-mentioned
sites first as memorials and then as tourist
attractions. These are occasions in the history of Ghana
that must never be forgotten or deliberately kept away
from posterity. These will recount the bloodshed that
has occurred on our soils and serve as moments for
forgiveness and reconciliation.
Sometimes there is a deliberate attempt at not
recognising certain periods of defeat and unpleasant
history such as the sacking of Kumasi by the British,
one that has never been commemorated. Others that have
never seen ceremony are the place of Yaa Asantewa’s
defeat and capture, the place of Prempeh II’s capture,
the famine of 1983, the dates and sites of the various
coups d’etats such as 31st December, etc…
The central problem is if dark tourism is about death
and destruction then which death and which destruction
qualify to be celebrated? Is it death and destruction in
combat, uprising, terrorism, natural disasters,
genocide, or ethnocide?
* * * *
*
*CEO Bronzzetti, A Tourism & Places Branding
Consultancy, and Lecturer in Tourism at the Career
Development Institute (CDI), Labone. Contact:
okayme@excite.com
* * * *
*
* * * *
*
* * * *
*
posted 30 September 2006 |
