Written by Anluma Ocran
The nature of my present job requires me to visit homestays and familiarise myself with each host family with whom our exchange participants will be staying during their visits to Ghana. Although participants will be on an educational trip, there is a cultural immersion component which is further facilitated by lodging with local families and being integrated into their daily activities. College students in particular have minimal restrictions in their movements and can partake in nighttime entertainment activities, unlike their high school counterparts.
One of the first homes I visited had the matriarch of the house bemoaning the behaviour of a former participant who had allegedly falsely accused her son of making unwanted advances towards her. According to the lady, it was all just an innocent misunderstanding but the reaction from the student impacted her son so terribly that he cried for days on end. Now, I personally have a strict personal policy to believe all victims and also, pfft, having grown up around Ghanaian teenage boys for years, I know firsthand what they are capable of that a mother may not be willing to accept and acknowledge of their son; moreso a Ghanaian mother.
Aside from that one-off account of an alleged false accusation, almost every other homestay included commentary suggesting that the lifestyle of past female participants was too outgoing. Late-night parties, returning drunk, and smoking weed were standard complaints we received. What struck me as concerning, though, were repeated reports of these teen girls falling for men they met at parties and events who hang around them for the duration of their stay. These men apparently introduce them to all the happening places as their sponsors for the duration of their stay in Accra. However, once the exchange programme ends and the students return to the US, these men then go ahead and solicit funds from the girls, which they feel obliged to send to them.
These reports had my alarm bells ringing and I couldn’t help but perceive these men for the predators they are. Apparently most of them met the girls at events often visited by the diaspora and foreigners looking for a good time. They then take advantage of the fact that they are new to the city and unaware of how to navigate so the men come off as someone to guide and help them have a good time. Unbeknownst to the students of the ulterior motives yet to be realised for these opportunists.
Coincidentally, the news of Joshua Kojo Anane Boateng (AKA SoAfrican)’s arrest following joint investigations between Ghana’s CID and Interpol broke just before my visits came to an end. Social media was in an immediate uproar with two distinct conversations on the case: one of surprise that a man who is seemingly popular within the entertainment scene would commit such acts and the other being unsurprised by the accusations meted out against him.
For those surprised, their delivery and implications were deeply problematic. They expressed this act was beneath him as an affluent person who could have access to the numerous less privileged women of Accra. The class divide in Ghana is so harsh that poor women must be deserving of potential abuse of power to satiate a man’s ego.
I also wonder what their primary-through-university experiences had been because if they had been anything like mine and almost every other girl I know, then it would absolutely not be surprising. Having schooled in two cities in Ghana from primary through high school, I find it hard not to conclude that this is business as usual for the boys.
SoAfrican, like myself, is in his thirties. If you remember much from your school days as a thirty- or forty-something-year-old in Ghana, you’ll recall the days of teenage boys hunkered together in the corner of a classroom, reviewing the pages of P&P together like it was a daily ritual they could not live without. Boys would spread salacious rumours of their female classmates, knowing very well they were all untruths.
Some argue this sort of behaviour is an attempt at garnering the recognition and respect of fellow boys. Which I find odd because, as much as I understand that humans, as we are, are all wired in some way or other to seek the acknowledgement of peers, I believe we have to dig deeper and question why, in the case of boys and men, it appears the only viable option they have to this approach is to dehumanise and abuse their female colleagues simply because we are anatomically different.
I had an unpleasant experience of a colleague lying about having been intimate with me to the boys in his dormitory after we had been paired to usher at a speech and prize-giving day. The only thing that worked in my favour was my male classmates knew how no-nonsense I was and immediately informed me of the rumour, which I confronted him on and got nipped in the bud. Most girls were not as lucky as I had been, with their reputations being smeared for the pleasure of boys. Throw in when smartphones started gaining popularity and the ugliness took a turn for the worst. Boys would profess their love and plead incessantly for nudes, which they would then forward to their group chats for bragging rights on having successfully gotten a girl to cheapen herself for him. Not a single one of their colleagues calls out this behaviour; instead, they wait till there is a disagreement or animosity of sorts to then use it as a jab against the other.
There is a level of disingenuousness from the surprised camp that honestly annoys me. Similar to what Burna Boy and Shatta Wale did online a few years ago, accusing each other of being rapists when their relationship turned sour and then went back about their business. Mind you, prior to their spat and outing of each other, their victims who reported earlier were dismissed. Thus, if there is anything surprising about this case, it is not the fact that a well-to-do man was found out to be a pervert, but that he even got apprehended at all in this here Ghana is rather shocking to me, pleasantly so!
I hope the members of the telegram group SoAfrican orchestrated will also be apprehended because they’re just as culpable in enacting and encouraging this behaviour. Women are not learning and unlearning grounds for your desires. Women and girls’ bodies and lives do not have to pay the price for whatever insecurities and fears boys have so why do we keep paying for it?
I’m going to need men to collectively introspect and figure out why abuse of power is seen as a rite of passage for young boys to grow into and defend come hell or high water. Where does it even start from? What other conversations from men are being had with boys to educate them and help them unlearn toxic machismo behaviours without turning it into false juxtapositions of how feminists simply hate men for wanting them to be better?
SoAfrican is not an outlier and this did not happen in isolation. From the older men who wantonly lust after women and girls in public to the boy moms (his social media actually shows he is, welp) who pretend their ‘sonshines’ can do no wrong, to the boys-boys cliques who egg on each other like denigrating women is a badge of honour, to the grandparents who advise letting reports of assault and behaviour go in the name of family; there are always enablers.
Sexual harassment and abuse in all its variants have been with us and definitely not giving it the attention it deserves has brought us here. This case should be a reckoning for us, like how the Pelicot case turned out in France but it made the news cycle for just about two weeks. Quite African of us, eh?
