While Many in Africa Call To End Violence Against Children Some Ghanaians Want Caning Back!

Thursday, 12 September 2024

By: TB Obwoge

Ghana where I lived for 2-years was not a place I felt safe, it was also a place where I met some of the most politest children I've ever seen. I lived in Kenya and the United States before, but Ghanaian children were some of the most respectful.

Sadly they were also fearful of adults, many were raised to not even ask questions if they didn't know something. Calling them "small boy" or "small girl", was common place, in a country with English as the official language they seem to think grown men and women, were also boys & girls. Therefore this redundant term was created to separate the children from the adults. Can you see how confusing this country is to understand?

I have sent children to the store before, especially when I lived in Santa Maria, Hill Top, as area of Ghana's Greater Accra capital city. I would send a the eager 13-year old who was home due to the pandemic to fetch me some eggs.

One day the price of the eggs jumped drastically, this was often done whenever a Ghanaian seller wanted to do so. This was also way before the cost of living increase felt around the world started. When the teen returned with less eggs, he explained that the price was different.

When I asked why he said he didn't know, I asked him what had he asked of the woman who owns the store, he quickly looked shocked saying, "I can't ask questions, I'm just a small boy!"

He went onto explain how that was rude and he would have been hit by the shop owner, this is when I started learning of how children were treated in Ghana. Sadly the lessons got worse, as I started seeing infants with broken limbs and people think it was acceptable to smack, beat or hit babies under 12-months old. Even over that age is ridiculous & brutal to me.

Just a week ago a 17-year old Ghanaian student was stabbed to death, he was in school, when a fight broke out between him and another student. The Wakanda that Black Americans have been flocking to live in has been showing itself more & more each day. 

There are 4 violent conflict areas in Ghana, one Medium writer wrote about it before, many years ago, I wish I read it before moving to Ghana myself. That conflict has been decades long. However in 2019 it flared once again over another chieftaincy issue, since 2019 to 2024 some 225 people in Ghana have died as a result.

There are about 6 to 7 areas of Ghana with curfews, Bawku being that long standing conflict that he never gave a name to. Then there is Sampa, Bolgatanga which is the regional capital of Bawky and Wa, Ghana. I spent so much time in Wa, Ghana. 

My ex being stationed with the Wa, area of the Ghana Army, means that after his fallout, (finishing of training), he would be moved around that area of Ghana to get to know the place. That allowed me to not only get to know several areas of Ghana but to visit and spend time there. 

I loved Tumu and Wa was a bit bigger than Tumu but still much the same. These are areas of Ghana where people claim other foreigners from Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo and Benin can hide out. Even though it is much easier for them to hide out right in Accra or Kumasi, with the larger populations. 

Sadly in countries like Ghana children are not allowed to say much, you can tell that many of their parents beat them without explaining why they're beating them. I've written about this before, however in a Facebook Ghana expat group, one of the biggest complaints about living in Ghana is communication.

This is a video of Ghanaian adults fighting over equipment sent to pave the roads, I have no idea why citizens would be coming to collect massive items sent by the government to pave local roads. None-the-less there is a viral video of them fighting each other, the day after the 17-year old was stabbed to death and the adults were proclaiming they should beat the children at school again.

As many countries in Africa are calling for not only an end to corporal punishment but child abuse of children in all forms. Sexual violence as well as severe beatings, while many Ghanaians are proclaiming that child's rights and human rights are for only white people. 

Here are some of the statistics on abuse of African children. 

Pan-African Symposium on Violence Prevention

11–13 May 2022

Why an African Partnership to End Violence Against Children?

Despite progress and improvements in legal and policy frameworks to address violence against children, Africa has some of the highest rates of violence against children:

Every second a child reaches out to child helpline services to report abuse and violence.

Over 60 % of children experience physical punishment from family members and caregivers in many countries in Africa.

1 in 4 children experience sexual violence.

Each year 3 million girls are at risk of genital cutting in Africa.

15 million girls are married every year, with 40% of girls in sub-Saharan Africa married before their 18th birthday.

4 out of 10 boys in residential care institutions suffer physical violence, while 2 in 10 experience sexual violence of one or another form.

Violent and degrading punishment of children has been documented in care settings and in penal institutions in many countries.

Child trafficking is increasing: Sub-Saharan Africa reports the highest share of child trafficking in the world, and girls and boys are more or less equally detected.

Source: EndViolenceAgainstChildren.Org

In this article below from a Nigerian newspaper, there is some research that beating children isn't an "African concept", it explains using data from South Africa on the subject of beating children. They call this a colonial import (much like homophobia), no, they didn't include homophobia as being an import.

ANALYSIS: Hitting children is not an African Tradition

Cape Town — After South Africa’s Constitutional Court last month upheld a high court ruling that corporal punishment at home is unconstitutional, many parents protested that they were raised that way – it’s African culture, after all. But is it an African tradition to spank or beat children? And does it produce responsible adults?

“No!” says the data. Physical discipline is not rooted in African culture but in colonialism. Studies show that hitting children contributes to domestic and community violence and can even reduce children’s intellectual capacity.

The problem is global, and its harmful effects are multi-generational.

“When children are exposed to violence in the home, there’s a high possibility for a boy when he grows up, to become a perpetrator and for a girl when she grows up, to become a victim”, said Isabel Magaya, a researcher at the Centre for Child Law at the University of Pretoria.

Spanking is a colonial import

“The beating of children was brought to this continent through missionaries and missionary schools, said Sonia Vohito of the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, and the custom became entrenched across the continent. Pre-colonial means of discipline should be remembered and applied, she said. “We need to get back to traditional practices of how children were raised”, teaching values through storytelling and illustration.

Carol Bower of the Quaker Peace Centre agrees. The Centre’s Peace Hub in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township engages youth and parents around issues of family and community violence. “From all the records that we can find, physical discipline of children was not in African culture before slavery,” she said. “The missionaries, the colonisers and the slave traders are what brought corporal punishment to Africa.”

Source: PremiumTimesNigeria.Com

Africans really also need to deal with their own unhealed childhood traumas and abuse. This taking it out on their children is leading to a cycle that many are unwilling to break, this is the same in Black American families as well.

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©️TB Obwoge 2024 All Rights Reserved