The learners of Upstart newspaper met and interviewed the former Ghanaian President, John Kufuor, last week. Kufuor was attending the Highway Africa conference held at Rhodes.
The learners of Upstart newspaper met and interviewed the former Ghanaian President, John Kufuor, last week. Kufuor was attending the Highway Africa conference held at Rhodes.
Coming across as a gentle and patient man, Kufuor took some time to chat to the bright future journalists of Grahamstown.
The Upstart crew were joined by some learners from North West Province who were in town to participate in the National Schools Festival.
Kufuor said he viewed journalism as a critical element of nation-building as support and advocacy from the media is always needed.
He added that the conference would provide him and Ghanaian journalists the opportunity to interact with other journalists and university professionals.
A learner asked him about which aspect during his presidency of 2001 to 2009 gave him sleepless nights. With a clear sense of humour he said, laughing, “If I was at fault in one thing, I wouldn’t tell you of it!”
He said that there were many issues that gave him sleepless nights during his presidency such as unemployment, lack of opportunities for the youth, young people involved in bad company, drugs and teenage pregnancies.
On youth development in his country he said, good governance depends on the proper development of young people, which is what the Ghanaian government is trying to do, particularly providing quality education.
He was impressed by a question on how to become a president from a female learner. “Oh wow, so you want to become South Africa’s first female President?” he asked.
He advised the learners to take mathematics seriously. Other crucial subjects are history, politics and economics.
“I used these subjects. Politics is not theory: you must get to know your country in and out and know your people,” he said.
On a serious note, Kufuor spoke about the Millennium Development Goals that were driven by United Nations and adopted by world leaders in 2000 at the United Nations Millennium Summit.
The summit’s final declaration was signed by 189 countries, where the international community committed to a specific agenda for reducing global poverty and set to be achieved by 2015.
The agenda listed eight time-bound factors that have been commonly accepted as a framework for measuring development progress.
Kufuor mentioned that one of these goals is achieving basic education for all. “A person that is not educated is truly handicapped,” he said.
The learners also took the opportunity to find out about Kufuor as a person, enquiring about his social activities and of course the World Cup.
“Do you play golf?” a learner asked. Kufuor said with a smile, “You would agree that I deserve a holiday after being a President of Ghana for eight years.”
He said he cannot completely retire, however. “Africa is handicapped in many ways: it is affected by diseases, poverty, there are so many things.
So if anybody has anything to contribute to help Africa, lift yourself up to help Africa from these challenges, whether young, old or retired like myself.
Make yourself available.” He saw the World Cup as an opportunity for co-operation between African countries and views Africa as truly part of the global village.
“So when Ghana did perform as it did, and with the support of the rest of Africa, Ghana was thankful and proud.”
He said that he considers the last minute goal that the referee disallowed as a real goal to him. So what were Kufuor’s plans if Ghana won the World Cup?
“I was planning on going to the finals in South Africa and start the celebrations from here and all the way up to Africa, as well as demanding a bottle of champagne from [President Jacob] Zuma,” he joked.
