Oh My Sisters, How Did We Manage To Descend Back To The Stone Age?

My earliest experience of the pain of death was as an aspect of some widowhood rites I witnessed a little over half a century ago. I must have been three or four years old, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. It must be the sheer callousness of that spectacle that has imprinted the incident on my mind for all those years. Children were not allowed to see anything remotely related to death in those days, but the scene was right next door to my maternal grandfather’s house, which of necessity, we visited many times every day.

The deceased was a lorry driver who had two wives, and apparently the custom was that before he was buried, his wives had to pump a tyre with a hand pump, in those days. The two ladies had been clean shaven and in the heat of the morning tropical sun, with tears and sweat streaming, were taking turns to pump what at the time looked like a tractor tyre. And guess what, the people who were goading them on, in fact, subjecting the ladies to this physical and mental torture, were women!

I was later to learn that they had to go through this demeaning exercise because they were not Christians and neither was their late husband. In other words, it was “a pagan rite”. As I protested about a failed marriage proposal to a member of my family later in my teenage years, I was reminded of widowhood rites and I understood why my people were dead against any of my relations getting anywhere near a non-Christian man or woman. Fortunately, up till today, it has never happened in the family.

Every kind of physical, emotional and mental cruelty that has been perpetuated on women — female genital mutilation, puberty rites, banishment of witches, widowhood rites, you name it — has been designed by, enforced and supervised by women.

The case of the “Montie 3”
In the latest display of total disregard of the rights and feelings of women by the Sisterhood of Women, a section of Ghanaian society mostly women, including ministers of state, have mounted a campaign to force the hand of the President of the Republic to use his executive prerogative to free the three morons who made those disgusting threats against the person of the Chief Justice and other judges of the Supreme Court of Ghana. Sisters, how did we manage to descend so low back to the Stone Age?

I used to believe that because the acts of cruelty against women by women were mostly confined to the countryside, it was mostly the uneducated who engaged in these demeaning acts. How wrong I have been all along!

I have just received a video clip of a demonstration by a bunch of women in Accra, old and young, beating drums and gongs cursing the President for not using his executive powers to free the “Montie 3.” From the clip, I can visualise that some of the women in the group will be about the same age as the Chief Justice, some are young enough to be her daughters. Many of the people in the group looked well-educated to understand what is at stake.

Accra has most of the best primary and junior secondary schools in Ghana, from which young ladies attend some of the most prestigious schools and colleges in Africa. I am told that some of the female minsters that have supported the call for the release of the contemnors are actually trained lawyers, some of whom could have been judges themselves. So if highly educated women in national positions of responsibility can stoop that low, then the primitive rites that have become the new whip with which to bash the “dark continent” is not the preserve of ignorant ‘uneducated’ rural folks.

The nagging question has been: Would these women be calling for the release of those rogues if the threats had been made against their mothers, sisters, aunties or daughters? Is it for political expediency? In that case, are we not proving right those who claim that many women in the higher echelons of Ghanaian society do not attain those positions by merit? For why will any self-respecting woman call for the annulment of the just punishment of ignoramuses who make such debased threats against a fellow woman?

History as guide
Almost exactly thirty-seven years ago, a group of young soldiers, who reportedly could not pass prescribed promotion examinations, seized power in Ghana and subjected Ghanaian womanhood to the most humiliating barbarity which could only be compared to what the Nazis did to Jewish women in the concentration camps of World War II; what was termed “eye haann eye kanea.”

It did not end there. Three years later, without warning, Ghanaians woke up one fine morning to learn that four judges of the superior court of the land, including a nursing mother and one of the brightest female judges Ghana has ever produced, had been abducted from their homes and murdered in cold blood. Some Ghanaian mothers, cousins and sisters still grieve the loss of relations in those cowardly murders. It is those barbaric murders that these dim witted panellists and their wooden head host referred to, as they made their crude threats against the Chief Justice and judges of the land.

Even more frighteningly the political party to which the jailed panellists belong was the direct brainchild of the system that nurtured (some will say actually planned and executed) those gruesome murders. So why should the judges of the superior courts of Ghana not take such threats seriously?

In recent years, supporters of this same party have run their vehicles through crowds, while others have shot and killed innocent Ghanaians without so much as invitation by the police. The Ghana Police Service and the Attorney-General’s Department should have brought charges against the contemnors. Instead, it took the Supreme Court to bring charges against them. That shows the level of polarisation and the extent of impunity running through Ghanaian society today.

My lawyer friends tell me that those rascals should have been jailed for two to three years. In other words, they have been let off rather lightly. So why should anyone plead for their pardon?

Sisters, as mothers of the nation, we have a higher stake in the future of the country than these clueless cowards parading around as men. We do not have to lower ourselves to these depths. Let us, in this election year, show that the menfolk cannot continue to ride roughshod over us for ever.

I shall return with my beaded gourd, God willing.
Naana Ekua Eyaaba has an overarching interest in the development of the African continent and Black issues in general. Having travelled extensively through Africa, the Black communities of the East Coast of the United States as well as London and Leeds (United Kingdom), she enjoys reading, and writes when she is irritated, and edits when she is calm. You can email her at [email protected] , or read her blog at https://naanaekuaeyaaba.wordpress.com/.