Rawlings Was Neither Born nor Raised in Anlo State

Warts and all, as it were, the stark factual reality cannot be gainsaid that the late Chairman Jerry John Rawlings was a bona fide Ghanaian statesman who was publicly proud to be envisaged as being representative of the Revolutionary and Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana than being specifically or exclusively identified with any ethnic group in the country. Which is why it comes as decidedly frivolous for the members of the Anlo Traditional Council to be railing against what they term as the “turning of the funeral ceremony of the late former President Rawlings into Akan Culture” or funerary affair (See “Blame Victor Gbeho for Not Being Involved in Rawlings’ Funeral Arrangement – Anlo Traditional Council Told” Modernghana.com 1/27/21).

The parenthetical caption of the news story under discussion is a bit confusing. It is quite obvious that what the anonymous “Reporter” meant was that Mr. Victor Gbeho needs to take at least some of the heat or blame for the apparent lack of involvement or inclusion of invested Anlo traditional leaders and rulers in the celebration of the life and funeral of Ghana’s longest-ruling military strongman and democratically elected leader. The verifiable and veritable fact of the matter is that the state funeral and burial of Chairman Rawlings was neither an Akan nor an Ewe affair, notwithstanding the inescapable fact that as the country’s most dominant culture, elements of Akan culture were inevitably, naturally or more likely to predominate the funerary celebration of the life of the man whose presence, rulership and policies impacted more Ghanaians of Akan descent than any other ethnic group, either positively or negatively or a combination of the both.

The fact also stands that Mr. Rawlings spent most of his life among the people of the Akan-dominated Greater-Accra Metropolitan Area and Region than he did among his Anlo maternal relatives. He also worked hand-in-glove with many more Akans than Anlo-Ewes. I also, predictably, find it rather morbidly parochial that the leaders and members of the Anlo Traditional Council would be more pathologically fixated on the late Flt-Lt. Rawlings’ Anlo subethnic affiliation and/or identity than the fact of the deceased’s having descended from the Greater Ewe Cultural or Geopolitical Enclave or Region in general, at least partially, that is, if one also takes account of his Scottish paternity. Maybe it was this kind of patently unsavory aspect of the divisive behavior of the Anlo-Ewe leaders that Mr. Gbeho, the veteran octogenarian diplomat of remarkable international renown and repute, and himself a bona fide Anlo-Ewe, had studiously tried to avoid. We must also highlight the fact that Mr. Rawlings’ own wife and official conjugal partner of some 43 years, Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, self-identifies as a bona fide Akan, although there is also some evidence of Mr. Rawlings’ widow’s having some Ga-Adangbe maternal moorings or ethnicity.

Not surprisingly, many of the same Anlo leaders and traditional rulers quick to upbraid the Akufo-Addo Administration for supposedly having sidelined them from the celebration of the life of Chairman Rawlings, are not very well known to be equally quick to own up to having been major and active participants of the wanton atrocities perpetrated against Ghana’s Akan majority populace by the Rawlings-led and Anlo-Ewe-dominated juntas of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) and the Rawlings-founded and seminally led civic political establishment of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Indeed, it was not for absolutely nothing that, that immortalized anonymous English philosopher or sage pointedly observed that “Failure is an orphan, but success has legion fathers,” and to the latter epiphanic observation one may further lucidly add, “Success has many mothers, too!”

In the final analysis, as was globally witnessed, it was Mr. Rawlings’ old archnemesis, the “Giant Dwarf of Kyebi and Okyeman,” and “The Little Man from Kyebi,” as one Mahama lickspittle had the temerity to gibe recently, who was exceptionally blessed by Divine Providence, it well appeared, with the rare lifetime privilege of laying the remains of our dead former President to rest. A little man with a big brain and a generous, compassionate and civilized heart from the Great Hills of Atiwa-Atweredu doing noble things and dignifying the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana in ways that have not been seen or known for generations.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

January 28, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]