This year marks the 50th anniversary of Ghana's independence from Great Britain on 6th March 1957. That occasion was the first in Africa and sparked the wild fire of independence movements across the continent, giving inspiration and hope to many oppressed people around the world. Celebrating this event is laudable and I differ from those who have opined that Ghana has nothing to celebrate. Nonetheless, amidst the nationalist hysteria that many Ghanaians exhibited last Tuesday, I found myself asking if that was what the anniversary of our independence should be really about. The question is especially pertinent considering the state of our nation and the seeming lack of a cohesive national vision for the future. I submit that what needed to happen on 6th March 2007 was a profound national reflection on the state of our nation and Africa as a whole and not only the $20 million jubilation and free lip service we saw. Ghanaians missed a fine opportunity to reflect -- through a thousand public forums and dialogue -- on the way forward for their nation and to draw lessons from the past.

To celebrate the end of oppression is one thing, but to be blindly whipped into an empty nationalist frenzy is another. I was disheartened by the overwhelming emphasis the planning committee placed on 'celebration' rather than reflection. It is ironic, that the very nation we celebrate was, in many ways, not of our own creation or desire as 'Ghanaians' but a western imposition and a direct consequence of the 1884 partition of Africa. European men, driven by ambition and satiated with paternalism, drew state boundaries across ethnic and linguistic lines, following lines of geographic convenience such as rivers and mountain ranges to make civilizing mandates of happily settled populations. Even the concept of nationalism, if we take the prominent theorist Ernest Gellner[1] at his word, is an emanation of modern industrialization and thus alien to the pre-agrarian and agrarian societies under which Africa falls. So to what extent do we own the nationalism we blindly celebrated on March 6 and for what reason must we obstinately insist on being distinct from our kinsmen on the continent? Why are we Ghanaian and what does Ghana mean anyway?

As I watched jubilant Ghanaians wrapped in the red, yellow, green national colors and waving the black star flag, I recalled Marx's characterization of nationalism as a "false consciousness" and wondered to what extent Ghanaian' daily actions are guided by their professed nationalism. Clearly, after 50 years of self-rule, there is a chasm between our professed love of nation and our actions -- this is true of politicians and the masses alike, even though most would like to blame politicians for the relatively miserable state of our nation. I say "relatively miserable" because it strikes me that we should be further ahead after 50 years of self rule.

Of course, while we celebrate, who cares about the origins of our nation-state, of nationalism or of how our borders came to be? Who cares about the symbolism of the flag or the ideas it represents? Who cares whether after 50 years we have a national budget that can only balance with donor assistance? Who cares about the fact that majority of citizens are illiterate and cannot sing the first verse of the so-called "national" anthem? Maybe we should all care, especially now as we also celebrate. For the most part, we are stuck with these and other legacies of our colonial encounter to deal with. The political turmoil that plagued the first two decades of our post-independence national life, the agro structured economy (rather than industrial or knowledge based) that largely kept our nation in poverty and the ethnic tensions and distrust that exists even today are all traceable in whole or in part to British Imperialism. Given the massive progress made in the past decade, especially considering what we were then left to build upon, Ghana could finally truly be of age through collective reflection and national dialogue about our nation to finally put the ghosts of the past behind us.

Yet, sometimes we are content to just sit back and flatter ourselves about our relative success in the West African sub-region. We must not sing and chant and dance on the same streets that have been superficially sanitized and raided of beggars to keep up appearances and protect the sensibilities of foreign dignitaries. We must not dance. Not yet! At 50, we should be thinking hard and reflecting deeply; fashioning a new Ghana for our children to celebrate in the next fifty years when Ghana turns 100. We should reflect on how to be truly independent. We should understand that independence and nationalism are only superficial and never truly our own unless we infuse them with the substance of our reflections, our dreams and plans for the future and an enlightened understanding of our shared past. Celebration alone is not enough.

[1] Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-1662-0