The True Measure of an Emulative Statesman

It was all to be expected that Mayor Zohran “The Shining Star” Kwame Mamdani would promptly step up to the proverbial plate and do precisely what great and emulative leaders do on such morally and emotionally harrowing occasions. We are here, of course, talking about the unspeakably barbaric and the inexcusably savage murder of 15-year-old Javits Frimpong, the Ghanaian-born academically diligent and studious young man who was, reportedly, on his way to school right here in Yours Truly’s Bronx Borough, New York City, residential abode when he was literally executed, Mafia-style, by some as yet unidentified gunmen suspected to be fellow teens on Thursday, October 29, 2026.

The name of Master Javits Frimpong’s school is Dream Yard Preparatory School, which resonates with the sort of a prosperous future that the dastardly slain young man’s father, Mr. Thomas Frimpong, a New York City cabdriver, envisaged for the son whom he literally worked around the clock to secure the requisite legal documents to have him join the Elder Mr. Frimpong right here in “God’s Own” United States of America a little over a year ago.

Now, we know that the as yet unidentified young Master Javits Frimpong were some of his fellow teenagers because officers from the New York Police Department (NYPD) have been able to review some street-mounted surveillance cameras that allegedly captured the assailants of the victim smack in this coldly calculated act that is widely suspected to have been the result of a failed attempt by some neighborhood thugs to recruit Javits Frimpong into their group and camp, or some sort of initiatory rites by some newly recruited members of the as yet unidentified group of hardened criminals.

But the NYPD has yet to forensically ascertain and positively identify the gun-toting young killer thugs because they were decked in facial masks, which means that the victim likely had been premeditatively targeted for this grisly gangster-style rubout. But what really inspired the present writeup, as many Ghanaians back home are wont to call it, was the predictable genius and the morally inimitable and visionary decision by Mayor Mamdani to prevail on a rabidly racist and a diehard Neo-Nazi President Donald John “Make America Great Again” Trump to promptly step up to the metaphorical plate, in American Baseball Speak, and act in the manner of great, genius and politically progressive leaders in the mold of a Social Democratic 35-year-old Mr. Mamdani himself.

And like the media limelight-hogging, trash-talking pretender that he has always been known to be - Mayor Mamdani has not hesitated to let the 80-year-old half-Bavarian grisly bear know that President Trump is an unabashedly fascist rabble-rousing and flagwaving racist of a morally irredeemable breed - “The Donald,” as he has since long been known by an ego-massaging New York City tabloid media community, was not likely to let this prime opportunity to garishly preen himself by displaying the sort of theatrically staged compassion that the Queens Borough, New York, born self-styled Real-Estate Developer is infamously known to only display almost exclusively to people of his own race and tribe, for the most part, to slip by.

Especially, with just a couple of days to go before a fiercely contested Congressional Mid-Term Elections all across the country. Among the Twi-speaking Akan-majority population of Ghana, there is a sagacious old dictum that runs as follows: “You may revoltingly hate the guts of a duiker [or the antelope], but you ought to be gracious enough to make an inescapable exception of the graceful gait of this veritable and meanspirited beast of prey.” Which simply and quite practically reasonably means that even the Great Almighty Satan, the very worst of the Biblically Celestial Host, is not known to be immitigably evil and sinister through and through.

Which is also why even those of us who hate the guts of this half-Scottish street urchin with unspeakable vengeance have to unreservedly concur with the fact that on this otherwise most highly unlikely occasion, at least Crazy-Old Uncle Trump acquitted himself far more creditably than had been expected of the throat-sagging pachyderm. On the present count, we are also obligated to reach out and categorically and profoundly salute with unstinted gratitude the giant and the luminary likes of Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson and Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark and, of course, New York State’s Attorney-General Letitia “Trisha” James for promptly stepping up well beyond the proverbial call of duty to both heart-rendingly commiserate with the disconsolately aggrieved Mr. Thomas Frimpong and the rest of the entire Frimpong and the Adu-Gyamfi Family and Clan, both at home, in Ghana, and abroad, in the Diaspora, in their official capacities as politically unimpeachable democratically elected law-enforcement agents and as mothers and guardians of New York City and New York State’s most vulnerable.

Then, of course, as usual, Ghana’s clinically unhinged Foreign Affairs, 46-year-old Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, went hopping from one media station to another raucously and vacuously promising to ensure that the criminal suspects in the brutal murder of Master Javits Frimpong were promptly brought to justice in order to bring the direly needed closure to the Frimpong Family and the citizens of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Ghana at large. And then, we had the self-proclaimed “Dead Goat” President John “Payola-Inebriated” Dramani Mahama equally obtusely, recklessly and needlessly promising to foot the bill for the roundtrip flight of the mother of the late Master Javis Frimpong, namely, Dris Adu-Gyamfi, to New York City to oversee the funeral service and the burial of her beloved son.

You see, it would have been far more politically and strategically savvy if Messrs. Okudzeto-Ablakwa and Dramani Mahama had humbly and solemnly petitioned or appealed to the US Ambassador in Ghana, Rolf Olson, whom we learn have been acting as Chargè d’Affaires of the United States’ Embassy in Accra, Ghana, since as relatively long ago as May 29, 2025, since the departure of Substantive US Ambassador to Ghana Virginia E. Palmer, a former President Joseph Robinette Biden appointee, on May 28, 2025. Now, that goes to show you the level of diplomatic priority that the MAGA Government of President Donald John “ Trump accords “Shithole Countries” like Ghana.

At any rate, you see, rather than so nitwittedly grandstanding and flagrantly and, one may just as well add, idiotically attempting to dangerously interfere in the internal sovereign affairs of the World’s Most Powerful Constitutional Democracy, Mr. Ablakwa would be far better off prevailing on his boss and Ghana’s Ballot-Snatching President Mahama to save whatever money he has earmarked for the travel expenses of Ms. Doris Adu-Gyamfi and, instead, deposit such money into a Contingency Fund for the direly needed protection of the scores of Galamsey-Enslaved Children and Teens in Ghana who are being swallowed, left and right, daily by the Galamsey mine pits instead of being wisely and progressively afforded the prime and the seminal opportunity to attend academically and professionally viable schools like the one attended by the tragically slain Master Javis Frimpong. Scarcely two months ago, this author buried a 19-year-old grandnephew who had accidentally fallen into a mine pit in the Kyebi Municipality of Ghana’s Eastern Region. That is how unspeakably incompetent that Mahame regime has become.

In sum, the ragtag Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has to first learn to crawl out of its newt-infested criminally legalized Galamsey Mine Pits; then it can cavalierly presume to lecture the Washington, DC-based MAGA Government on the politics of justice and fair play.

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
E-mail: [email protected]