Special Feature The World


As the controversy about his death rages on, the mystique about Osama bin Laden will keep growing, and it is on the cards that he will become more dangerous dead than when he was alive. Tapes of his speeches; his books and pamphlets – these will gain renewed currency throughout the world, writes Cameron Duodu.


Has Osama hung a rope around America’s neck?


W


hat is in a name? asked William Shakespeare in his play, Romeo and Juliet. Then, answering his own question, Shakespeare came


up with one of those lines of insight whose simplicity makes us think it is banal or ob- vious: until we ask ourselves, why didn’t we think of it before we read it in Shakespeare? Shakespeare’s answer was this: “Tat


which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” In my country, Ghana, many people


have tongues that are as cutting as that of any character created by Shakespeare. So, in a country like that, what do you


think happened when “9/11” flung out a name like “Osama bin Laden” into the frame of everyone’s discourse? Osama was immediately changed to Osaman (the word means ghost) in Ghana. Tis was because he effortlessly melted away from the face of the earth after destroying the World Trade Centre in New York. If he wasn’t a ghost, why was it that de-


spite all the hi-tech equipment deployed by the Americans in their endeavour to capture him – satellites that can collect and sift every electronic signal transmitted on the earth, and were also reputed to be able to photograph sharply, every single face in a crowd of one million people (!!); plus pi- lotless aircraft known as “drones”, that can


80 | June 2011 New African


kill when commanded to do so from 5,000 miles away – Osama had still managed to vanish completely without trace? Now, I am one of those who saw, live


on television, the second plane that flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. I had missed the first plane and was listening to the commentary on how that had been flown into the tower when the second plane arrived and flew straight into the building, leaving a trail of flames and smoke behind it. It was the most terrifying thing I have


ever seen in my life. As a frequent voyager, I could see myself innocently travelling on board an aircraft which someone, who didn’t know anything about me, had hi- jacked for such a purpose. I could see myself unwillingly wrenched away from this world – and my dear ones – without so much as being able to say goodbye to anyone. Ter- rible feeling. Oh yes – tears just started rolling down


my cheeks. How could any human be- ing do such a wicked thing? Innocent peo- ple on the planes… innocent people going about their business in the buildings… innocent people walking in the vicinity of the Twin Towers in New York, to go and grab a quick breakfast in an eaterie, as I had done myself, on countless occasions... all killed for nothing. As the day wore on, I was reminded of the atrocities that had pre-


Two days after Bin Laden was killed, Obama attended a commemoration ceremony at Ground Zero


ceded 9/11, particularly the bombing of the American embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi in 1998. What had puzzled me about those atrocities was that most of the 300 or so people who were killed were from that class of people whom Swahili speakers call wananchi (ordinary citizens) who nor- mally have to walk everywhere. Tey are usually contrasted with the wabenzi (peo- ple, some of them officials, of the Mercedes Benz class) who enjoy the good things of life, purchased for them – usually – with the taxes extorted from the wananchi. In Ghana, the wananchi would be the


equivalent of the “AD 1-1” people – be- cause their “car registration numbers” are comprised of “one footstep after the other” (imagine the sound of one, one...). In other words, their “vehicles” do not exist: they walk. Such people always have business


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