Brenda O. Akoto & Sulemana Braimah
25 June 2004
Kumasi — CHRAJ culturally not useful. Says Director Of Culture
THE PROBLEM of indiscipline, which is currently ranked high among the social vices that have bedeviled this nation, would persist if institutions like the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) are not done away with.
This was the view of the Director of the Center for National Culture, Mr. F. S. Adjei when The Chronicle sought his view in an interview on how the current battle against indiscipline could be tackled from the cultural perspective.The functions of CHRAJ, he said, were contributory factors to the nation's inability to win the battle against indiscipline.
Explaining his stand, Adjei said Ghana, as a nation, had lost focus and was importing foreign cultures on a wholesale basis, while the country's culture that ensured a high sense of discipline since time immemorial, was being thrown off board gradually.
He pointed out that the setting up of institutions such as the CHRAJ and Child Rights International, were not in the interest of the nation as their functions were just a mere importation of foreign cultures and traditions which, when fully embraced, would see to the extinction of the nation's rich culture which was synonymous to discipline.
According to him, people in society these days had the fear of being subjected to various forms of human rights-violation charges whenever they decided to resort to culturally approved ways of punishing people, especially children, by way of correcting them.
"We had our own ways of ensuring discipline in our homes and institutions but now we are told that all such ways of ensuring discipline in society had become outmoded and all sorts of human rights issues are being raised here and there, on how children, women and students should be treated. We should therefore not be surprised if indiscipline is on the ascendancy," he said.
Other institutions, which, in the opinion of the cultural director, should share in the blame of the current high spate of indiscipline, were the religious and democratic institutions.
The director's view was that, religious institutions had been too quick in condemning some of the traditional institutions of Ghana as pagan and misrepresenting such institutions, which had hitherto been effective as disciplinary institutions, as colonial, outmoded and good only for the coloquial (colo) man.
He pointed out also that the adoption of the foreign version of democracy, coupled with its tenets that appeared to affirm the freedom of the individual, was being grossly misunderstood by Ghanaians to mean that every one had the right to do whatever one liked whether such actions were right or otherwise.
The traditional authority system practiced in the palaces of traditional rulers has therefore been suggested for adoption at the national level since, according to the director, it is the only kind of democracy that embodied practices that were consistent and compatible with the kind of discipline the nation required.
Director Adjei warned that if steps were not taken to abandon institutions like the CHRAJ for the adoption of the old and traditional institutions and norms, the menace of HIV/AIDS, students' riots, gender violence, armed robbery and other social vices that are currently confronting the nation would rather escalate in the near future, instead of their effective control.
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