By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Following the recent installation of Togbui Sri III, paramount chief of the Anlo traditional state, Ghana’s former strongman, Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, paid a courtesy call on the Anlo chieftain during which the founding patriarch of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) was reported to have counseled the imperative need for politicians to cultivate respect for the people as a surefire means of forging a successful leadership career (See “Respect is Key to Successful Leadership – JJ Speaks at [sic] Anlo State” Peacefmonline.com 3/5/11).

Anybody who is passably familiar with Mr. Rawlings’ reign-of-terror in Ghana, which apocalyptic event lasted some 19 protracted years, knows that Dzelukope Jeremiah’s stranglehold on the otherwise placid political culture of our country had just about everything to do with anything, except respect for the ordinary citizen! If Ghanaians docilely suffered his tyranny for some two decades, it was primarily because we fully “respected” Mr. Rawlings’ willingness to use firepower to have his way, be it summary judicial liquidation and nullification or death by firing squad, as well as getting shot on sight for curfew violation.

And yet there he was, as the African Union’s representative to the failed state of Somalia, cynically and unconscionably claiming that, indeed, his political longevity in Ghana inhered primarily in the fact of him staunchly upholding the principles of “truth, justice, freedom and respect,” which supposedly induced “civility” in Ghanaian society.
Needless to say, those of us who are old enough to remember a then scrawny and seemingly malnourished Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings vehemently denying, in a simulcast, that he had anything to do with the brutal assassination, Mafia execution style, of the three Akan-descended Supreme Court judges, are fully convinced that were unalloyed truth to hit him upside the head, the Anlo dope-fiend would scarcely recognize exactly what hit him.
It was also quite amusing to hear a traditionally invested Togbui Avaklasu Rawlings I, gushing treacherously about his old friend and mentor in Tripoli as follows: “See what is happening across the Middle-East. Some leaders protected themselves with security agencies, but today they [the latter] are fighting on behalf of the people.”
Maybe somebody ought to remind the career political adventurer and mutineer that he is simply a lucky man born and brought up in a staid and placid and civilized Akan-dominated society, not that he is any fundamentally different from Arabo-African dictators and tyrants like Messrs. Mubarak and Gaddhafy!
To be certain, ever since the popular revolts started in North Africa and the Middle-East, I have been waiting for exactly this kind of opportunity to expose Mr. Rawlings for the lucky hypocrite that he veritably is.
And for those who may not readily recall, about five years ago, during the historic pan-African conference which was held in Accra, Ghana, and hosted by the Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Rawlings’ own wife and partner-in-crime, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, was widely quoted in the Ghanaian media to be rapturously gloating over having personally cooked for and slavishly served the Monster-of-Tripoli.
And today, of all wonders of wonders, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings would have the Ghanaian electorate shunt aside President John Evans Atta-Mills and cede her the coercive powers of our Fourth-Republican democratic dispensation! Isn’t it rather a damn shame and a pity that Mr. Rawlings has not dispatched his Gaddhafy-maid-servant of a wife to Tripoli to take care of the black gold-gilt kitchen of the besieged Colonel? And just who instigated those blockheaded Ghanaian chiefs to knight the Monster-of-Tripoli their “King-of-Kings”?!
Mr. Rawlings also seems to have conveniently forgotten that by 1983, shortly after having illegally ousted the democratically elected President Hilla Limann and his People’s National Party (PNP), the most significant textbook of Dzelukope Jeremiah’s so-called 31st December Revolution was Mr. Gaddhafy’s “Green Book,” a largely rambling and scandalously incoherent multivolume pamphlet on nation-building.
If, indeed, he harbors any remarkable “respect” for us, his former political hostages, such “respect,” needless to say, scarcely reaches beyond Anloland. And to be certain, Mr. Rawlings has gone on record as disdainfully describing the Fante as a bunch of lazy and dirty rat-pack who ought to be tutored in hygienic existence. Likewise, Mr. Rawlings has caustically carped Asante-descended Ghanaians as a vindictive species of humanity inordinately bent on viciously ballooning their population so as to deliberately, systematically and seriously undermine his political stranglehold.
Anyway, in his meeting with the Anlo supreme chieftain, Togbui Avaklasu-Rawlings appeared to shadow-box some self-minted non-Ewe Ghanaian foes. On the latter score, he aspersed as follows: “Togbui, I am grateful to God that our trials and tribulations are over and today we can rest and say in comfort that our spirituality is intact and restored. Is it our love for freedom, our love for justice, which is a problem to some? No, God says no. They will try but will never succeed.”
Precisely who has/have been a stumbling block to Anlo freedom in a multi-ethnic Ghana is not made clear by both the speaker and the reporter. What is crystal clear, however, is the fact that Mr. Rawlings seems to believe that Anlo-Ewe freedom is, perforce, dependent on the systematic domination of non-Ewe Ghanaians by the former. And, of course, we fairly well know who these non-Ewe Ghanaians are!
“Our [Anlo-Ewe] trials and tribulations are over” indeed! And why not? After all, haven’t we had self-hating Akans like Messrs. Arkaah, Atta-Mills, Obeng, Nunoo-Mensah, the Ahwois and a host of other lost souls willfully collaborate with Togbui Avaklasu to summarily liquidate their own kinsmen and women?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and author of “The Obama Serenades” (Lulu.com, 2011) and “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net.
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