Africans Want To Advance, Mr. Rawlings – Part 2

Unlike Chairman Rawlings, President Mugabe may really have a substantive and/or formidable legacy that needs protecting or preserving, but it is also quite clear that much of what remains of such legacy may have been significantly dissipated by wanton corruption and atrocities perpetrated by the government of the Mugabe-led Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (or ZANU-PF). For instance, to consolidate his stranglehold on power and to significantly vitiate the democratic cultural tenets enshrined in the Constitution that took the former Rhodesia to its independence or black-majority rule in 1980, then-Prime Minister Mugabe embarked on what has been generally characterized as a genocidal purge that became known in Mr. Mugabe’s Shona ethnic-majority language as “Gukurahundi,” which translates as “The early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains (See ConorGaffey’s “How Robert Mugabe Went from Zimbabwe’s National Hero to Economic Tyrant” Newsweek 11/15/17).

Under Gukurahundi, which was carried out largely in the Matabeleland western provinces of the country, the ethnic stronghold of Mr. Joshua Nkomo, Mr. Mugabe’s onetime political ally and later bitter rival, we are told that up to 20,000 people, mostly defenseless civilians, were killed. Interestingly, the man credited with the savage act of ethnic cleansing is Mr. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Vice-President whose recent dismissal from the Mugabe government prompted the military intervention that ousted the 93-year-old “democratic” dictator from power. Mr. Mnangagwa was then Minister of National Security. This aspect of Mr. Mugabe’s legacy, of course, is strikingly akin to the well-calculated ethnic cleansing that occurred in Ghana during the 3-month period that the Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) ruled the country with an iron-fist, following the apocalyptic overthrow of the FWK Akuffo-led Supreme Military Council (SMC-II).

And so, of course, again, between December 31, 1981 and January 1992, when Chairman Rawlings effectively dominated Ghana’s political terrain as a de facto military dictator, his systematic minoritizing of the country’s Akan ethnic-majority populace may be aptly compared to Mr. Mugabe’s Gukurahundi. Significantly must also be observed, at least in passing, that Mr. Rawlings’ “Ehuru a Ebedwo” revolution – actually to the latter assurance by largely the Asante market women of Kumasi, the Asante regional capital, Chairman Rawlings had retorted that “EdwoaYebekaNohye Bio” – was more “neatly” and deftly orchestrated than the Zimbabwean version. “Ehuru a Ebedwo,” an Akan linguistic expression, roughly translates as, “However long a pot of water boils on fire, it will eventually simmer down and become cold, again, like its original condition.”

The massacres that took place under the tenure of Chairman Rawlings (See Mike Adjei’s Death and Pain in Rawlings’ Ghana) was on a relatively smaller scale, perhaps a half-dozen thousands, but their impact was as far-reaching as the Gukurahundi genocide. I don’t expect Chairman Rawlings to reckon the Matabeleland Massacres as part of Mr. Mugabe’s proud legacy of “African Dignity,” any more than I expect the fast-aging former Ghanaian strongman to reckon his “EdwoaYebekaNohye” pogroms as acts to be celebrated, although it clearly appears that Chairman Rawlings actually relishes the seasonal celebration of these proverbial Dark Days in Ghana’s postcolonial history. For both the so-called June 4^th Revolution and the December 31^stRevolution are annually and self-righteously marked with “pride” (read “arrogance”), pomp and pageantry.

On the preceding count, Mr. Mugabe appears to be the more responsible of these two leaders. At least Mr. Mugabe is wise and sincere enough to characterize the Gukurahundi Massacres as “a moment of madness” during which both partisans of ZANU-PF and ZAPU-PF (or Zimbabwe African People’s Union – Patriotic Front), or rival supporters of Messrs. Mugabe and Nkomo, respectively, butchered their former allies turned bitterest of enemies. Indeed, attempts have equally been made by apologists of the Rawlings-Tsikata Diarchy or the infamous Trokosi Nationalists to excuse the AFRC-era purges as a direct retribution for the purportedly brutal assassination of Lieutenant-General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, the former army lieutenant-colonel who valiantly led the putsch against the Nkrumah-led Convention People’s Party (CPP) on February 24, 1966. It is also unmistakably clear that the primitive culture of white-minority ruled erstwhile Rhodesia, globally known as “Apartheid,” significantly contributed to the equally barbaric African Nationalism of Mugabe.

The racist land-reform policies embarked upon by the deposed Zimbabwean leader, on the patently unenlightened mantra that “The white man is not indigenous to Africa,” an exercise which the Aryan West apparently deemed to be far more important than the internecine “indigenous African massacres,” or Gukurahundi, may very well have hugely contributed to the sustained political fortunes of former President Mugabe. African pride, indeed, Mr. Rawlings.

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