When tragedy becomes theatre – Nana K. Sarpong writes

By Nana K. Sarpong, a journalist and social commentator

The crash that stopped the bus

The day was ordinary until our bus slowed near a crash on the Accra-Cape Coast road. Fire Service officers were cutting through mangled metal to rescue survivors. One stood in the middle of the highway, directing the slow crawl of traffic. Then I saw it: a man lying still by the roadside, zipped inside a black body bag. They were gone.

What struck me most wasn’t the wreckage. It was what people were doing around it. Several stood with their phones out, recording. Some posed. Others narrated as if they were breaking news for TikTok. The tragedy had become theatre.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Questions chased themselves through my mind. Who was the person? Were they a breadwinner? Has the family been told? What would their loved ones feel if the first image they saw of the tragedy was someone’s viral video?

It wasn’t the first time I had seen this. At Weija in Accra, I once witnessed another accident. A father and his young daughter had crashed their motorcycle into an oncoming car. As they lay on the ground, bleeding and dazed, people ran forward. But not to help. They ran to record. A few men dragged the motorcycle off the road, but no one touched the victims until I shouted at them to stop filming and help.

Losing our communal heart

Growing up in Ghana, I saw a culture that treasured empathy and communal care. Families often leaned toward the extended, not the isolated. A neighbour’s child was your child. A stranger’s problem was everyone’s burden.

“Prayɛ, sɛ woyi baako a na ebu; wokabomu a emmu.”
Literally: When you remove one broomstick it breaks, but together they are strong.

Yet that strength is weakening. In the age of smartphones, we are becoming spectators instead of participants in one another’s pain. We no longer rush to fetch water or lift the wounded; we rush to upload proof that we were there.

Social media has turned tragedy into content. Our first instinct now is not compassion but curiosity, not “how can I help?” but “how many views will this get?” In this transformation, we are losing something profoundly Ghanaian: our humanity anchored in empathy.

This isn’t just my observation. In Gomoa Mampong, a survivor of a crash lamented that many who could’ve helped were instead on their phones filming. In Bolgatanga, soldiers seized phones from people recording a fatal motorbike accident. Even medical professionals have begun calling for a return of compassion — to offer first aid instead of aiming for likes.

And this is not only a Ghanaian problem. In Florida, U.S.A., a group of teenagers filmed as 31-year-old Jamel Dunn drowned in a pond. They laughed, mocked, and later posted the video online never calling for help. The world watched in shock, yet the same behaviour keeps repeating everywhere, from Accra to Atlanta. The tools have changed, but the question remains: when did we stop seeing pain as human?

Wisdom from the ancestors

“Etua wo yɔnko ho a, etua dua mu.”
Literally: When it is in your neighbour’s body, it is also in the tree.

It means that what harms another today could harm you tomorrow. When we fail to feel the pain of others, we unknowingly prepare the world to be just as cold to us when our own crisis comes.

In the old days, people would gather to rescue, carry, and comfort. Even strangers acted as kin. Today, we gather to record. The phone, created as a tool of communication, has become a wall between us and the cries we should answer.

We can’t keep living like detached observers of our own communities. When a road crash, a fire, or a fight breaks out and we reach for our phones instead of our hearts, we betray something our ancestors taught us:

“Baanu so a emmia.”
Literally: When two carry a load, it doesn’t hurt. Togetherness lightens pain.

Our moral fabric is fraying not because technology exists, but because we have stopped balancing progress with conscience. A video can go viral, but compassion never trends.

The next time we’re tempted to film a tragedy, we must remember: someone’s mother, brother, or child is in that lens — and one day, it could be ours.

“Ɔbanyansafoɔ yɛbu no bɛ, yɛnka no asɛm.”
Literally: The wise is spoken to in proverbs, not plain words.

So here’s the wisdom beneath the words: put down the phone and pick up your humanity. No recording will save a life, but your hands might.