Stop the Sophistry – DWM!

The sophistic attempt by the leaders of the so-called 31st December Women's Movement (DWM) to dissociate and distance the dubious activities of the Agyeman-Rawlings-led, pseudo-non-governmental organization from the sanguinary Provisional National Democratic Congress (P/NDC) will not work. Indeed, this very attempt seems so farcical and clinically idiotic as to make one wonder just who the Rawlingses and their lickspittles and hangers-on are trying to hoodwink. There is an Akan dictum that strikingly captures this DWM gimmickry which goes thusly: “Tell me, did the village-clown take refuge under the shade of my backyard when the mob was driving him out of town?”

For starters, just how did the “founders” of the so-called 31st December Women's Movement come by such name, and for what purpose?
And, also, it is rather insulting for Ms. Ekua Bentsiwa Sam, a Konadu-Rawlings minion and the Central Regional Coordinator of this neo-Communist organization, to assert that the DWM was formed “to bring all women under one fold with the view to promoting and protecting their welfare,” almost as if no such women-oriented organizations existed in the country prior to 1982, when the so-called 31st December Women's Movement was founded (Ghanaweb.com 5/24/07).

The next question then becomes: Just by what process did the DWM undergo in arriving at the patently and untenably undemocratic decision of naming Mrs. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings as the Movement's Chairwoman and Life-President? And by the latter, of course, we are talking about the professional credentials that made the former pseudo-civilian First Lady exclusively qualify for her positions in perpetuity over all else?

And also if, as Ms. Ekua Bentsiwa Sam, of the Cape Coast branch of the organization claims, the “movement” was not founded “to engage in any form of confrontation with any group of people or organization,” then why name it the 31st December Women's Movement, instead of the New Greenpeace Movement, for example? Then also, historically speaking, what is the relevance of 31st December 1981, but the criminally undemocratic ouster of a democratically elected government by a violent political demagogue and his rag-tag posse of opportunistic Night Riders?

In essence, if we are to take Ms. Ekua Bentsiwa Sam's explanation for the foundational history of the DWM for anything, then it also has to stand to reason to believe that responsible and well-meaning Ghanaians routinely name their children after the leaders of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, for example? In other words, hard as the leaders of the DWM may try to whitewash an alligator in order to rename it a lizard, we all know except, of course, the Rawlingses and their lackeys, that an alligator is no mean or ordinary lizard.

Indeed, one must be doing something quite weirdly interesting if Mr. Rawlings has to rise up to one's defense, as the former AFRC chairman has been doing for his wife and the DWM in recent days.

And, indeed, Ms. Ekua Bentsiwa Sam, of Cape Coast, may have a point in observing rather self-righteously that “the Movement established daycare centers, clinics and also ensured that women took their rightful positions in society,” even as the P/NDC's notorious Cash-and-Carry healthcare policy virtually ensured that poor mothers and their children would never be healthy enough to either enroll these children in those daycare centers or have their children attend such daycare centers. How about the perennial closure of our universities during most of the P/NDC's tenure? “Day-caring” without sound and viable academic prospects? And to imagine that a University of Ghana professor who assisted Mr. Rawlings to thoroughly bankrupt our tertiary educational institutions would be running for President of Ghana is nothing short of the outright disgusting!

As for Ms. Sam's assertion that the DWM also “trained [Ghanaian] women in vocations like batik, tie and dye and soap production[,] as well as cassava processing…and oil extraction, to enable them earn incomes to support themselves,” we can only riposte that such cynical assertion is not only unpardonably blasphemous, but also that it is unreservedly revolting to the inviolable sensibilities of our ever-diligent rural Ghanaian womenfolk, to even fathom that it would take Nana Konadu, Ekua Bentsiwa and their glass-encased likes to train Ghanaian women in vocations in which they have engaged themselves for centuries!

It was also quite interesting, if also unimpeachably edifying, to learn that the Cape Coast branch of the DWM, at long last, would see reason, where Life-President Konadu-Rawlings only saw “diversion,” to invite Mr. Isaac Sam, deputy regional director of the National Commission on Civic Education, to enlighten the Cape Coast branch membership of the DWM on the impending re-denomination of the Cedi. Maybe Nana Konadu would also have seen reason in the impending currency re-denomination, had she and her husband had their icons, or pictorial images, imprinted on one of the Cedi notes.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].