For several reasons the modern project of the Nation State was never properly rooted in African society. Of course there is that idea of the ‘imported system’ alien to the African way of life, but we wouldn’t want to embark on a mission proofing such a feeble statement. The answer would not only be uninteresting but also irrelevant now that also in the western part of the world, due to globalisation, the Nation State has mutated into something else entirely and a far stretch from the original concepts. You see two developments at the same time, when political and economic structures get bigger, local identities tend to get stronger. In Europe, we can fiend good examples in Spain. Catalunya and Bask Country are stronger than ever, since the national state has become part of the European union. The nation state and democracy are concepts that try to nail down a certain principle and way of doing things that are in fact changing all the time.

In the United States, in California, there are experiments with so called direct democracy. It means that a law, or certain bills, can be altered if enough signatures are collected. Of course there are organisations that specialize in this collecting of signatures and depending on the difficulty of the subject of the bill they calculate the fee. The word democracy is used as a display of authenticity, but it really is the question if this is what you call the rule of the public.

In the Netherlands we are also more or less finished with Nation building and politics has diverted its attention to more symbolic problems such as the ritual slaughtering of animals. Politics has become a type of ‘Wayang Koelit’, the Indonesian play of shadows produced by thin leather puppets and rhythmic music intended to keep the public in a dreamlike state. In the rhythmic music we recognize the media that reflects on the symbolic political issues and on each other giving the play of shadows weight and meaning.

Politics is also hijacked by big global corporations and institutes that have become too powerfull. They are not only big but have become carbon copies of each other out of fear to miss out on the last financial trends. The advice of consultancy firms like Mackenzie is swallowed as the evangelical truth of capitalism. When the magic has stopped working, everyone goes down into the black hole. We need to differentiate in our models and economic structures. We also need to localize, instead of globalise. If you realize the truth of this, it means that we can actually learn from African local economic systems.

The so called open air market has worked as an alternative model for the Nation State in supplying the material for identities. The marketplace is a neutral place to meet other people from different tribes and religious backgrounds and get involved in trading. In Kumasi Central market you have the market queens; ladies that have organised themselves in trader groups. They are the ones who fly all over the world to get the goods that keep them competitive. Through market gossip they find out where the best goods are to be found. They are involved also on a social level and go to church together. Another example in Kumasi is Suame magazine. The name of this neighbourhood means ‘help me carry this’ referring to the fact that this neighbourhood has been dedicated to mobility for more that eighty years. First it was a place where the British car drawn coaches were repaired, now its cars and trucks that are repaired and upgraded. In the following posts we will try to somehow unravel the way things are organised in Suame magazine, to see how an almost self sufficient system can be surprisingly adaptive towards the global economy.