Assembly Member of the Sawaba Electoral Area in the Ayawaso North Constituency, Abdul Hafiz says the tag placed on Zongo communities and Muslims as criminals and drug abusers should not be encouraged further.
He describes Zongo communities and their youth as loving and hospitable, a sharp contrast to these stereotypes.
“I will like to address this stereotype the Zongo youth suffer. Mostly when I go out and people say the youth of Mamobi are drug abusers and criminals, I put them in their place because this is a stereotype. There is no place like Mamobi or Nima in Accra, not even East Legon,” he told Happy98.9FM’s Don Kwabena Prah, host of the Epa Hoa Daben political talk show.
Making his point, he indicated that a stranger in need will be ignored by residents of East Legon but will be helped wholeheartedly by Zongo communities. “When your car breaks down in East Legon everyone will ignore you but in the Zongo community, no one will not leave your side until the car is fixed. “
He admitted crime exists in every part of the country with people dealing drugs and a whole lot, but argues per statistics available, Zongo communities are not hotspots of crime. “We know there are bad nuts amongst us but not everyone is a criminal.”
The passionate opinion leader dispelled the notion absenteeism on the part of parents produced criminals in Zongo communities. “There is a reason we don’t entertain orphanages in our communities. This is because we take care of one another. If the parents of a child dies now, the community comes together to care for them and fill the gap the parents left.”
A research conducted by Anthropologist Ann Cassiman, titled, ‘Creative knowledge – Life in the zongo’ she describes Zongo as the name for a type of settlement in Ghanaian towns populated mostly, but not only, by people who come from different parts of West Africa, who identify as Muslims and who speak Hausa.
“Zongos are densely populated and ethnically very heterogenous neighbourhoods”, Cassiman says. Most residents have roots in northern Ghana or neighbouring countries.
She observes that people who are unfamiliar with Zongos often consider them as “a breeding ground of problems. Also, in popular discourse Zongos are often negatively termed ‘slums’, or hubs of criminals or lazy people.”
