JJ's new blood at 60, I lift my toast

Don't read meanings into this write-up! This commentary is not meant to open healed wounds. It is not one to make emotions run riot. It is not one to direct slingshots at a man who led Ghana into modern democracy. It is also never meant to fan the embers of ethnicity.

Thank God, the ex-president is 60. Hurray! My mentor had this to say... Sixty is quite a weighty number. In a country where the average life expectancy is 51, it is an enormous weight for any man to shoulder. He who is 60 is old enough to remember human history in seasons of war and peace, and of Ghanaian history in seasons of colonialism and independence no matter how faint the stories might run in his brains. He who is 60 can tell tales of our growth from a peaceful, non-tribal, enthusiastic nation, into a nation without innocence, divided and divisible into tribes, clans and conclaves of febrile religious and ideological persuasion. He who is 60 has traversed the valleys and peaks of life, in seasons of birth and death, and in moments of renewal and denudation.

He has played roles in our community as a servant and master, as suitor and husband, father and grandfather or as an ageing, greying compatriot giving out a daughter in marriage, or receiving a son-in-law into the fold; one man with branches touching the branches of other lives, in a multifarious series of games. Life is an extended game played in time and space. Time wounds. Time heals. Time redeems. The man of sixty has earned the keys to the secrets of the wisdom of time. Sixty, then, is quite a load. Each year, a load of age weighs down upon us. The clock ticks. A date is struck off. A calendar is discarded, and life, oh this cruel life, forces upon us fresh meanings.

Compulsory retirement starts at 60; it is time for sober reflection. One to scan through all the failures and milestones touched in life. IT IS TIME TO SHELVE THE RANTINGS. It is time to shame editors who cannot make sales of their newspapers without your comments. It is the time to let us, young ones look up to you as the true statesman. It is time to apologise to the families of the Generals and Judges killed. Apologies must be directed to the masses who were victims of atrocities whether directly or indirectly, either living or dead.

So inquisitive but yet a stranger in town, I visited an historian reputed to be armed with political tales, to brief me on the triumphs and failures of the former president, Jerry John Rawlings. And he had this to say: ‘forget that man with seared conscience! Ever since he strangled the organs of government in 1979, he has never looked back. He did well by bringing together two estranged friends, but it was to be at the execution stakes. They were summarily dispatched on the allegation of corruption.

"The sum of JJ's famed bravado; economic aluta was a crumbling economy. Under his government, the polity was so fractured that political cabals took center-stage. Corruption also became so official that family members harangued honest civil servants. I hear the daughter of one of the late generals subpoenaed him sometime ago to appear before an American court. I even hear the relatives of his former second-in-command, Arkansen have all defected the DFP".

He also recounted how the ghosts of the generals once went berserk and JJ had to camp pastors, fetish priests and imams to trade spiritual blows in order to exorcise the unwanted spouses. He decants "the atmosphere in Ghana during that repressive regime was so gloomy that migratory birds avoided landing in the country to re-fuel". He also told me how the ex-president helped himself to the national coffers to fund his wife's 31st December Women Congress".

This brought to mind Mobutu Sese Seko. This tyrant acclaimed to be the 3rd most corrupt man ever, stashed some much money to the France that he became richer than his country (Zaire, now DR Congo). He forgot that all was vanity. He later died in an unmarked grave.

I was about thanking the historian when he played some proceedings from the National Reconciliation Commission. I watched and saw how a man died just after mentioning the name of the ex-president. I perhaps saw one of his close allies fly in from Norway to testify against him. I also watched how Kwaku Baako recounted gory tales in the hands of the men in green khaki.

"Little wonder, the Crusading Guide’s press house was smeared with excreta". The historian told me in a low voice and advised I kept the story of how Sergeant Amadeka and his cohorts stormed the Republic Of Togo to overthrow the government of the late Enyadema.

I asked the taleteller what he felt about Prof. Atta Mills. He saw the academia as a great personality. He advised it were better the law professor rent some spin doctors to sex up his manifesto or consider emerging wooden spoonist.

I belched loudly when he finished his story. As a stranger, I am still in a fix whether to take the story as a fact or fiction. I may be a stranger but I admire your charisma and the never-deterred stance of voicing on national issues. But be as it may, I can perceive your bombs now detonating in the wind missing targets by miles.

The Akan proverb tells me a messenger is not to be blamed when the going get bad. Julius Caesar did not listen to his eunuch and was left to struggle it out with shame. I am sorry if I stepped overboard.

Bernard AfreH Manu,
nobunegga@yahoo.com K.N.U.S.T

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