God’s Business: Artivist Responses to Ghana’s National Cathedral Project
/A couple of months before the National Cathedral fundraiser, on 2nd December 2018, celebrated Ghanaian artist Bright Ackwerh posted a satirical cartoon on his Facebook page that circulated widely. In this piece entitled “KOTIDROL,” fire and smoke are detected in the background representing the protests and voices of dissent against the Cathedral project. President Akufo-Addo (in the middle) is depicted, child-like, desperately clutching a miniature-figure of the Cathedral in case it is taken away from him. Architect David Adjaye (on the right) is pictured casually looking on with his hands folded behind his back and Archbishop Duncan-Williams (left) is perspiring from the heat while clutching the Bible in his left hand. This cartoon has gained much public attention and online viewers are asked to form their own critique of the Cathedral; to think about the alignment of charismatic-Pentecostal politics, the building of the National Cathedral, and the President’s pet project.
Photo Credit: KOTIDROL by Bright Ackwerh
In Ghana, satirical art and music are powerful forces that circumvent national institutions and traditional media agencies. They encourage Ghanaians to participate in a conversation about national politics and to understand the world differently. In my last post, I asked why a secular country like Ghana would choose to build a National Cathedral and compared Ghana’s “Fourth Republic” to a Pentecostal Republic. This modern re-imagining of Ghana as a “Christian country” is not new. Yet this has long-term consequences for its religious minorities and also speaks of a how national history is being remade through the Bible. What is new is the way in which Christianity is being publicly articulated as Ghana’s national identity through the President’s commitment to the building of the Cathedral as a “priority amongst priorities”. What connects all these different pieces of the puzzle together is a neocolonial and neoliberal approach to nation building that few in Ghana have been critical of – it is to these few that I now turn.
The artists I focus on below not only draw attention to the Pentecostal character of Ghana’s secular identity, but also point to the neocolonial and neoliberal politics of Ghana’s recent infrastructural projects, including the National Cathedral. These Ghanaian citizens do not necessarily consider themselves “activists” like members of Occupy Ghana or CitizenGhana Movement, but they sometimes use the term “artivist” to describe themselves, i.e. artists who are sometimes activists or whose work informs activism. One characteristic of the artivist is that rather than necessarily expecting politics to change for the better, they remain cynical about political change even as they work toward making a difference and hope that their country will change for the better.
Ghana’s Artivists
One such Ghanaian artivist is prize-winning visual artist Bright Ackwerh. Endowed with a formidable intellectual and creative capacity for thinking across political contexts, Bright’s politics shifted in 2015 when government subsidies to his Master of Arts program were withdrawn and when the dumsor (electricity) crisis made his everyday life and his ability to work incredibly difficult. “Creating a conversation” is what Bright wanted to do when he made his first satirical piece “Ode to the FOKN Bois” (c. 2015). Influenced by the music generated by Ghana’s hip hop scene, Bright discovered the music of the FOKN Bois and was inspired by their use of satire to foster debates about important issues related to their political environment. He wanted to draw more attention to their work since music like theirs – considered non-mainstream – often gets little airplay. In that painting, Wanlov the Kubolor and M3nsa of the FOKN Bois are molesting a geographical map of Ghana with Kwame Nkrumah applauding and smiling in the background while other artists from Ghana’s music scene (Manifest, D-Black, Black Rasta) are looking on with disapproval.
Photo Credit: Ode to FOKN Bois by Bright Ackwerh
Since then, Bright’s satirical work, which forces one to reflect on how power operates in Ghana, has played an instrumental role in the disruption of the taken for granted nature of politics as usual in the country. For his satirical piece “Kotidral,” Bright wrote on his Facebook page: "Ah, Nana paa, bra b3 ma y3n adwuma ne hospital ne school a wose woo b3 si Cathedral because wo p3 S3 y3n k)ti as)re." This translates into: “Ah, Nana, come and give us jobs, and hospitals and schools. You said you want to build a Cathedral.” However, a play of words is also involved in its re-interpretation. Written in Twi the word “k)ti” means “penis” and has been used in several Ghanaian songs to refer to “go and erect (a Church)” since colloquially it also means “I have an erection.” In this piece Bright is also saying to Akufo-Addo: “You want to build a church because you have an erection” – perhaps suggesting that the real reason behind the Cathedral might be his personal desire or lust for power rather than the nation’s best interests.
“Ghana is burning yet the first thing the President wishes to do is protect his Cathedral project” Bright said to me. He told me that he had a lot of respect for David Adjaye and his work. “I expected him (Adjaye) as an artist to tell them the project was not needed but, alas, he just wants to do the job, take his money and run.” David Adjaye has called the National Cathedral a place where “religion, democracy and local tradition are seamlessly and symbolically intertwined”. It is certainly true that Christianity has become a “local tradition” for a majority of Ghanaians. Yet there is not one Christianity and it is not the only local tradition. Archbishop Duncan-Williams, according to Bright, has become like a “national pastor” and in the cartoon he is seen encouraging the President with a passage from the Bible, suggesting that Nana Akufo-Addo continue the Cathedral project amidst protests. Apart from Bright, other artivists have questioned the real reasons for the Cathedral project and raised the problem of how Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity has influenced national politics and also been involved with Ghana’s recent banking crisis.
The Cathedral of Doom
Spoken word artist Kwame Write has described his piece “Cathedral” as a “social commentary piece on a religious structure unveiled by the President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo and designed by architect David Adjaye, despite the fact that Ghana is constitutionally secular”. In his spoken word piece Kwame builds off this poem written by Ghana's most celebrated contemporary poet Kofi Awoonor (1935-2013) and entitled “The Cathedral”:
On this dirty patch
A tree once stood
shedding incense on the infant corn:
its boughs stretched across a heaven
brightened by the last fires of a tribe.
They sent surveyors and builders
Who cut that tree
Planting in its place
A huge senseless cathedral of doom
These words from Awoonor’s poem suggest a thriving and nourishing spiritual connection to the land that was diminished by the colonial architects of modern Ghana – who metaphorically erected a Cathedral where the tree once stood. The words from Awoonor’s “The Cathedral” have been incorporated into a spoken word rap by Ghanaian artist Kwame Write, featuring Wanlov the Kubolor (from the FOKN Bois). This rap draws our attention to two things: (1) the building of the National Cathedral threatens the “secular” character of Ghana, and it sidelines other religious traditions, including African traditional practices, and (2) there are continuities with the neo-colonial and neoliberal forms of appropriation that seemingly want to profit from Ghana and that appear corrupt. In reference to Awonoor’s relevance to his piece, Kwame responded: “Though Awoonor wrote his poem The Cathedral decades ago, it speaks to the present dilemma perfectly, such that it reflects the historic nature of exploitation. It’s…our duty to constantly be observant and be a voice because ‘how loud be your silence, how quiet be your sirens, how poetic your licence?’” Describing his poetic piece as “protest music,” Kwame teamed up with Wanlov the Kubolor because his “work also tackles forces misdirecting us from consecrating non-dependence as an African entity.” Here are some of the lines to “Cathedral”:
KWAME:
Where the tree once stood
Be where resource removed
Architects dem get self interest mek dem keep dema tools
If Muslims dey enter the church dem fit leave dema shoes?
Cleared historic sites
Heritage indeed valued?
Neo-colonialists exams dem dey leave us clues
Athlete’s foot, corruption baton, rust relay
Prophets name themselves, baptize in cash we pay
Protestants protest, pick property, plunge for place
Otabil’s cheese, church mice, the rats, the race
8 billion reasons to jail for fail in collapsed banks
…
Awoonor predict de cathedral
Adjaye realized design
If the church be inclusive mek e come with a shrine
Make communion drip with voodoo vow, libate with wine
Roofless parts, seal/ceil am with wonna histories and bind
…
Crucial dem dey ask make we clap, still the trash
Democracy not on the map
Charismatic cats, charisma mathematics
Calculate the facts Character of collective crooks
Collaborate and grab
Almost every street get church
Check the basic stats
…
WANLOV:
snub yor traditional religions and boro moni from those practicing theirs
china Buddhist India hindu Japan shinto
ma guy take the holy water home to dilute yor vimto
our real god is moni so we just dey use jesus do wana juju
till am laid to rest like banton buju
auditorium reverb amplifying weezing breaths of pot bellied bishops
jesus hated business in the temple yet church is just a very big shop
stop jacking off in the cathedral
otse tufle (your father’s dick)
amen
This spoken word piece emphasizes how the intertwinement of neoliberal capitalism and Protestant (especially charismatic) Christianity is reflected in the building of the National Cathedral. As Kwame told me: “Cathedral captures the kind of society we are etching as a people where the dominant religion becomes the institutional and symbolic template for organising (in a country that is) supposed to be secular”. In Ghana “Christian sects claim to be the moral watchdogs on one hand while hiding in plain sight the obsession for grabbing public space for humongous non-inclusive platforms.” Kwame went on to ask me: “Does it not smack of duplicity when detailed sections of the proposed Cathedral including a community hub and gallery are more all-embracing than other sections?”
In a line from his spoken word piece “Charismatic cats, charisma mathematics”, Kwame is referring to the celebrated charismatic pastor Reverend Mensa Otabil, who, in 2018, was accused of being complicit in the failure of Capital Bank. Otabil, when accused of complicity in its collapse, denied knowing anything about how these banks were run and claimed not to be good at “mathematics”. During his church Sunday sermon, which was recorded and shared on YouTube, Otabil said that he owed his congregation an “explanation”. His response was “God is Good, God is Good, God is Good” (he said it as “three statements”). For some Ghanaians, Otabil’s statements violated the basic structures of accountability and good leadership, especially since he was someone famous for criticizing corruption in the country. Rather than an apology, Otabil performed a public non-apology that recasted himself as a victim of circumstances not of his own making, thereby reminding the audience that he was accountable only to God.
Just days after Otabil’s infamous sermon, FOKN Bois' second member M3nsa released a song entitled “God is Good”, which is sung in pidgin. Some of the words include:
Jesus be the only one who dey for you
Bring money come make I pray for you
I’m blessed with keys, go open ways for you
Pledge your salary make I double your pay for you
…
Say it 3 times, and chale, all is good.
All is Good.
God is Good, God is Good, God is Good.
…
You cannot question what God has asked me to do
Cos if you do, you go turn into salt
You cannot invest your money in me and when you
Make no returns, you take me to court
Don’t speak to me about conscience, Nonsense!
Do you know I’m a man of God?
It is not surprising that Pentecostal and financial infrastructures overlap in Ghana: Otabil is also a businessman who has a successful church, a private Christian Bible College, and believes in supporting African entrepreneurship. Many Pentecostal churches have large investments in Ghanaian banks and many Pentecostals are co-owners of Ghanaian banks. But what was surprising for many Ghanaians in the Otabil story was his response to the possibility that he may have known of the questionable financial transactions and going on in Capital Bank. If “anti/corruption” and “accountability” have become common tropes in post-colonial Africa, historically, anti-colonial protests and boycotts of colonially controlled goods have had other registers, such as calling the colonial capitalist and members of the ruling class a “teef”. Ghanaian artists like the ones whose works are featured here share the assumption that members of the ruling class who are deceiving Ghanaians need to be dressed down and called “teefs” when necessary.
Soon after the news of the bank scandal and Otabil’s involvement came out, Wanlov released a song entitled “Julor Kwakwe (Annointed Teef)” (see cover image by Bright Ackwerh below). In the song, he repeatedly sings “Otabil is a teef” to a dance beat in which he loops words from a sermon Otabil gave: “You lie to them, they believe it. You know the born-again Christians are the easiest to deceive? Foolish born-again Christians”. By calling Otabil a “teef”, Wanlov was unmasking Otabil and revealing the source of his secret power (i.e. illicit wealth and Christianity). Wanlov was pointing out that Otabil was worthy of being shamed and punished for his (in-)actions in the Capital Bank crisis, even if his position and authority protected him from legal prosecution. According to Wanlov’s song, a “teef” takes without giving anything back in return and they lie that they had taken anything (or done anything wrong) in the first place. By calling Otabil a “teef”, Wanlov is drawing on an anti-colonial sensibility that does not recognize “corruption” as a legitimate idiom and that aims to shame the accused. The image of Africa as a provider of resources for the rest of the world continues to inform how investors and Ghana’s elite negotiate its neoliberal economy. It also informs a predatory capitalism that has little regard for biodiversity and the spirituality of nature. According to Wanlov “our deities or ancestors’ ways of worship is just as or more advanced” and “respecting nature was an important part of the traditional philosophy that had been lost.”
Photo Credit: Pays the Lord, Hallelujah, by Bright Ackwerh
Artists like Bright, Kwame, Wanlov and M3nsa use their art to criticize the corruption of Pentecostal-charismatic big men and to point to the hypocrisy of corruption in Ghana, including the logic that frames corruption as an immoral problem when it involves the poor and the economically downtrodden, but expects compassion and understanding when it involves Christian leaders and politicians. According to Bright, Christian leaders like Duncan-Williams and Mensa Otabil “represent some of the religious sensibilities of a large number of people in the country…they represent a certain fixed point that a lot of people look up to…(and) they have attained a certain untouchable status…. So, when I capture their characters in my work it is sometimes cynically and poking at those ideas.” These artists and musicians share a satirical vision of postcolonial Ghana that pertains to their inability to see the optimism and hope offered by a model of democracy and Christian futurity. The artists featured in this post provide a criticism and counter-narrative to the idea that Ghana has overcome the inequalities of a colonial past and it no longer serves the interests of a local elite and neocolonial powers. Instead, what we find in such forms of satirical artistic productions are usually “expressions of sarcasm, outrage and challenge” that aim both at critiquing post-colonial politics and at expressing that “the poor have dignity and moral worth” (Barber, A History of African Popular Culture, 2018, 12). These Ghanaian artivists criticize the ways in which a Pentecostal Christian and neoliberal moral economy converge and confront the indeterminacy of the present in which neocolonial and neoliberal values are unstable and ambiguous. As Bright said to me: “By trying to understand the world differently, perhaps we can change our experience of it?”