A Feast on Solecism – Rejoining the Arch-Murderer’s Apologists

I don't quite know which group of Ghanaians the impudent errand boys and girls of Monsieur Jeremiah John [Agyeman] Rawlings presume to be fooling, but recently one of them, a fanatic of the clinical basket case sort, had the temerity to describe the impenitent Butcher-of-Dzelukope as Ghana's “Founding Father of Fourth-Republican Democracy,” conveniently ignoring the fact that the P/NDC actually retarded Ghanaian democracy for a protracted two decades (for SMC II, needless to say, was preparing to hand over power to a civilian government in July 1979 when the Butcher struck with his pseudo-revolution).

I promptly snorted with the abject contempt that such fatuous characterization deserved. I also lividly recalled that moment of the virtual one-party parliamentary regime, during which the humanoid who masterminded the savage assassination of the three Ghanaian supreme court judges had the troglodytic temerity to gloat before his House of genuflecting lackeys – or party yes-men and women – that he was no believer in the kind of constitutional democracy that Fourth-Republican Ghana is intrinsically about. And his reason: the deliberate process of collective, discursive consensus that a democratic culture entails, flagrantly contradicts his fervid penchant for dictatorial self-righteousness.

And so when one of Mr. Rawlings' gofers recently accused yours truly of being an “unrepentant ingrate,” I had to “shamble” into my bathroom sink to puke for nearly a half-hour. Naturally, I also began to rack my mind in order to recall all the innumerable favors accorded me by Chief Dzelukope in order to find justification in the vitriolic insult volleyed at me by someone whose English – or is it French? – middle name is sandwiched between his typical and rather pedestrian Akan names. And on the latter score, I readily apologize to all well-meaning Ghanaians who sport similar names.

In any case, about the only “favors” that I could readily think of having been accorded by Monsieur Rawlings were, of course, the forcible withdrawal of our fifty-dollar notes (“Kawukudi-style or at gunpoint) without compensation, and the brutal abduction and savage assassination of the three Ghanaian supreme court judges and the retired Army officer. Then also, the summary execution of the nine military officers by firing squad, after being hurriedly sentenced to death by a kangaroo court for corruption and moral decadence (can you believe that?) Then also, I recalled the brutal beating of my own eldest maternal uncle and World War II veteran, the Rev. Lt.-Col. H. H. Sintim-Aboagye, and then immediately wished that I owned a bazooka or some such handy weapon in order to teach that godforsaken “writer” with a Western-European middle name what it really means for anybody to make “past mistakes” with the lives and property of diligent and patriotic Ghanaians as Mr. Rawlings did. Even more significantly, I intended to teach that pathological criminal's accomplice the unmistakable firepower of “shambling gaits.”

You see, pathological panjandrums and clinical popinjays have a peculiar way of sounding morally pontifical about the patently indefensible. And so such heinous crime against humanity as the officially sanctioned assassination of the supreme court justices comes to be cavalierly chalked to “some past mistakes.” In essence, this is what Chief Dzelukope's factotum had to say about the same crime for which former Liberian president Charles Taylor is facing a life sentence at the Hague: “I refuse to be annoyed by his reckless[,] puerile swipes and indeed; [sic] it goes to underscore the fact that he needs my sympathy. I have also stopped imagining [that?] anyone outside a mental home, could labour so hard to sell the lame point about the need to continue hate [sic] the ex-president for some past mistakes.”

In other words, according to this butcher's gofer, Ghanaian lives are legitimate cannon fodder for the likes of the self-righteous Mr. Rawlings. Wow! And should any deep-thinking Ghanaian, therefore, be flabbergasted to learn that Mr. English Middle Name was actually not brought forth by a Ghanaian mother, with human blood in her veins, but rather hacked out of a tree?

Then I went on to further read the following: “Horrible to say, he [Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe] is a lecturer and [who?] imparts some knowledge into innocent heads [I readily bet that my students are far and away smarter than Mr. Rawlings' lickspittle]. It is the first time I am witnessing a scene, where a PhD holder tries to rationalize his duplicity. Still struggling to overcome the lassitude that has plagued him for some years now.”

Ooh-ooh! And you know what the foregoing reminded me of, dear reader? It reminded me of Flt.-Lt. Rawlings “rationalizing his duplicity” in the wake of his personally sanctioned order for the brutal assassination of the three all-Akan supreme court judges in a simulcast! You see, incurable nincompoops like Mr. English Middle Name actually believe that they can systematically intimidate Ghanaians into pretending that the assassination of the judges, as well as the nine – actually ten, when one reckons the brutal murder of the great Ghanaian patriot Maj.-Gen. Odartey-Wellington – senior Army officers, three of whom had actually served as heads-of-state, really never happened, and that, indeed, those of us believers in condign and retributive justice are, somehow, hallucinating. And this is why Chief Dzelukope's lickspittle prefers to describe yours truly as a “debauchee.” And since it takes one to know another, perhaps, Mr. English Middle Name will, in due course, have to explain precisely what he means by the foregoing characterization to the well-meaning Ghanaian people.

You see, when the Rev. T. H. Sintim (1896-1982) is your grandfather and Professors Bamfo-Kwarkye and Twum-Barima are your relatives, as well as Maj.-Gen. Okine (of Akyem-Asafo) and Dr. J. B. Danquah is your great-granduncle, Messrs. Rawlings and Atta-Mills have absolutely no substance in postcolonial Ghanaian politics. And so were he not afflicted with crass arrogance, how else could Mr. English Middle Name presume to exhort yours truly “to locate your own place in history”? Is this Rawlings-bootlicker the sole providentially anointed distributor of destiny? What chutzpah! And to think that this mess of clinical cretinism could hold himself with the bestial dignity of even a yeti (pronounced “jeti,”) is rather refreshing.

By all means, Monsieur Bootlicker, rest assured that we intend to hold the feet of impenitent criminals like you and Mr. Rawlings to the proverbial fire till kingdom come!

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He has been a Ford Foundation undergraduate scholar and is listed in the “Who's Who in America” for 2008-9. E-mail: [email protected].