What Rawlings failed to teach Kufuor, Akufo-Addo, and others.

Are you aware Former President Jerry John Rawlings has been dead for just about 3years and the nation seems to have forgotten about him already?

For the 22 years that he was the leader and President of this country, there seems to be nothing that continues to remind us of him since his passing.

I am not saying he did nothing good. For the records,

1. It is not lost on me that he returned power to the people after seizing it the first and second times in 1979 and 1981 respectively.

He was even kind enough to pass on the leadership mantle of this country to another leader after he exhausted an extra eight-year tenure as a civilian president.

2. It is also not lost on me that he helped construct the NDC, a political party, which was useful when he couldn't remain a president in military uniform. This party is still available and enduring.

3. And how can I forget about the fact that it was Rawlings' contribution, private resources, that were used as seed money for the establishment of the University of Development Studies, the only public university, that served the many young people of the then three Northern regions of Ghana at the time.

That said, do these represent Jerry well enough to be termed as his legacy? Granted they are,

1. How enduring can these be for my son, who is still a boy, to behold when he comes of age? I am not even referring to generations after him.

2. How comprehensively do these tell the story of the life and times of the man who held the highest commands of our national security, political authority, and national resources in trust for the longest period yet in our history?

By legacy, I wish Rawlings had;

1. Written his story.

The most devout followers of Rawlings or even the very best of our historians still don't know the accurate life story of Rawlings. There is no book for this. At least none that he authored. There is scattered information here and there about his bloodline, ethnicity, family, growing up, the environment and socialisations that influenced his personality. I wish he truly told this story in his own words to settle the debate and to help my son and generations after him catch up on the facts they missed. Perhaps, we could have picked up a word or two about what goes into the making of a brand of leader like Rawlings.

Again the story of his political life has not been told by him. Why did he stage coups to become a leader? Why did he have to force power out of the hands of Former President Hilla Limann after handing it back to him?

Why did he feel it was his responsibility to fix the country if things were failing? Was he not afraid he had too little experience, learning and support to engage in the enterprise of administering a nation? What is the back story of his political appointments, government decisions, failings, and successes of the PNDC era? What does he feel is his greatest achievement and perhaps his regrets?

What are his responses to the legion of allegations and wild stories that have been circulating? For instance, Prof. Kwamena Ahwoi, in his book 'Working with Rawlings' alleged that the Former President at a cabinet meeting squeezed the testicles of his Vice President, Kow Nkensen Arkaah. Did he do that and what was the motivation?

As for what has become known as the excesses of the AFRC and PNDC eras they remain conversations for just a few.

What happened? Did he sanction the killings, smearing of pepper in the vagina of mothers, were people shot for owning two toilets or being indebted to a bank, etc? Did people do these at his blind side or were they necessary evils he sanctioned? How have these benefitted the nation?

A book on this would have been helpful. I live far away here in Ghana yet I know how Singapore moved from a third-world to a first-world country. I know that for 40 years, the PAP had no formidable opposition to its government and had put in place a law that allowed for the arrest and detention of political opponents ( tagged as communists) without trial. Why do I know this? Lee Kuan Yew the leader who oversaw these wrote them in his memoir. I can also talk about Nelson Mandela, my son too can and so would generations after him be able to do so too because he wrote ‘The Long Walk to Freedom’.

2. I wish he mentored others

It is also not known who JJ mentored to take over from him. It was certainly not Former President John Evans Attah Mills. Neither is it the NDC's Presidential hopeful for the 2024 Presidential Elections, John Mahama. These are people Rawlings went to length to demonstrate how anti-his ideas and ideals they were. He fought them publicly to the point of supporting leaders of other political parties against them. Maybe he mentored his wife or daughter to take over after him. Assuming he did, the records of the wife’s political party and those of Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings's experiment in parliament are there for even the disinterested observer to see.

And by mentorship, I do not suggest that he should have handed power to his favorite. No. Mentorship is much broader and more significant than that. I am talking about people he groomed with the skills that endeared him to Ghanaians or made him successful as a leader. Such that those mentored can be able to function as effectively as he did without his supervision and control. It is more of reproducing himself in others for the nation never to be deprived of his skills even while he is dead.

There is nobody who has shown to possess that. Not anybody in the NDC. Indeed, at the time of his passing, Rawlings had said that the current NDC, the party he founded, is not like anything close to the one he led. JJ lost his own political party while he was still alive.

Indeed, the greatest challenge facing the NDC today is what its future may look like after former President Mahama is done with them. That is even when we want to suggest that the current stock has anything resembling Rawlings's skills and training. It is a tragedy that Rawlings went to the grave with whatever he learned as a leader and never passed it on.

3. What is the ideology of Rawlings? I wish this was documented.

I had the rare opportunity of reading the first and second books of Prince Kofi Amoabeng, on ‘THE UT STORY’. In the second book, a small chapter is labeled as ‘Time’. Here Mr Amoabeng makes clear the founding ideology behind the most enduring indigenous Ghanaian Bank privately owned in the history of Banking in Ghana. The ideology states that the bank's success was simply offering loans to startups in the quickest possible time. Even though Mr Amoabeng and his business offered the most expensive loans in the market at the time, they kept getting more and more clients coming in for these loans because the International Banks and the National Banks were unwilling to offer loans expeditiously given all the conditions one has to satisfy to get the loan. The growth of UT Bank, which had international branches,and rose from a single-room desk business to a conglomerate, which had several other subsidiaries that kept winning national awards in turn, was built on how to offer loans at the quickest possible time hence the slogan 'a loan in 48hours.'

Is it about UT Bank I have come to talk about? Sure not. But just as Mr. Amoabeng cleverly articulates the ideology on which the many successes of his empire were founded, so that anybody can replicate this success following the same ideology, there is no record of a similar ideology noted down as what flourished the work of the late Rawlings' political enterprise. Indeed, it is very doubtful that anybody who lived in the time of Rawlings, and perhaps worked with him can replicate what he did. This is not to talk about the generation of my son and those who may come after him.

Kwame Nkrumah has been dead several years ago yet there are people today who know exactly what his ideology is. Why? He wrote about them. Indeed, some of the devotees of Nkrumah’s ideas are not even Ghanaians.

While Jerry was alive, we heard so much about probity and accountability. What do these twin words mean to him and in the context of the politics of Ghana? What do they look like practically?

What are the ideas on which he was inspired to commit the Nation to June 4? Are you not amazed that the celebration of the June 4, coup started dying when Rawlings was still alive? And when he died, it was buried with him. The NDC does not want it, not even his own family has gone ahead with these. Not to talk about the whole nation while Akufo Addo is president. And I doubt my son’s generation may need it either.

We heard so much about the cadres of the revolution, party persons who were students of the Rawlings's ideas. I must confess I have seen some grey-haired men who have used those slogans to gain political advantage during the times when the NDC ruled. But where are they now with the passing of Rawlings? Who in Ghana today is still the holder of the ethos and ethics of the PNDC revolution? Who, Mahama or Asiedu Nketia, maybe his wife or daughter? I don't know.

4. I wish Rawlings had built enduring institutions.

I am not unaware that Rawlings helped to construct the NDC. But Rawlings himself before his demise had denounced it. He said the current NDC did not represent anything he built while he led it.

While we must continue to applaud Rawlings for the state institutions, he left for Ghana: not least Parliament, the National Commission on Civic Education, the Electoral Commission, the Media, etc. what is the functional relevance of these institutions now in promoting the interest of the average Ghanaian, the person for whose welfare they were built?

I cite two examples to support this point.

1. There is little debate that Ghana's parliament is not for the people’s representatives. If this were the case we would not have had a hung parliament, had its leader from the opposition, yet experienced the most repressive economic tenure since 1983 in Ghana today. This parliament is extremely loyal to the business of the executive than the people who took it there. Aside from passing all ministers presented by the government, approving the budget of the government, and not intervening in the most serious issues of corruption in this country, it has been rendered helpless to properly scrutinize the government and hold it in check over its steward of the nation on behalf of the people they represent.

My point is that had Rawlings articulated his vision for a functional and efficient parliament, the nation could always go back to correct the deviation.

This scenario can be related to almost every existing state institution in Ghana today. Take the judiciary as another example.

Aside from the Anas scandal where judges in Ghana were bribed with goats and cooked meals to pervert justice, as recent as October 24, 2923, a recently retired Supreme Court Judge, Justice William Atuguba has faulted the Supreme Court in many of its judgments that did not look like justice.
But how do we correct this? Where is the manure from the man who built it?

I should not be misunderstood. I am not saying that aside from Rawlings being kind to establish these institutions, he should have been responsible for ensuring that at all points they remain functional even as he is dead. But had Rawlings written, and shared with us his ideas of a democratic institution, and the principles that ungirded them, despite the changing times, generations of tomorrow, like those of my son would have the opportunity to understand the Rawlings principles and go ahead to rescue state institutions that have become corrupted versions of what they should be.

Reading Kofi Annan's memoir ‘INTERVENTIONS’ one is left with little doubt about his achievement while he served as the General Secretary of the United Nations. But more than that he articulated in unambiguous terms his vision for the organisation and what the organisation must reform to be to address challenges the organisation did not foresee during its establishment.

For instance, the principle of non-interference is discussed. He blames the Rwandan genocide on this and makes the point that the sovereignty of nations cannot be respected when the UN has a duty to protect citizens of the world, including those whose own leaders, the very people put in place to protect them, become the source of threat to their lives.

5. Conclusion

It is pointless to keep adding to the above points to demonstrate the bitter mistakes Rawlings made. It is clear that:

1. He did not plan for the day when he was no longer going to be president.

2. He did not also plan for the day when all the people he worked with would be very old to keep being loyal to his principles.

3. The day when he would be dead and gone and would not have anything to remind Ghanaians of what he stood for

4. It is also clear that he did not plan to influence the generation of my son and those who would come after him.

I have more than 6 books Dr. Kwame Nkrumah personally wrote. I don't need anybody after 50 years since his passing to tell me who Nkrumah was, what his ideas were, what his vision was, what he accomplished and the challenges he encountered.

"In 2000, Kwame Nkrumah was voted African Man of the Millennium by a BBC World Service listeners poll."
At the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa, his statue is in great prominence. All these were done by a generation that did not see him.

It is important to understand that while these lapses by Rawlings and leaders like him hold grave consequences for Rawlings as a person, the nation is the greatest victim.
It has lost for good everything it invested in him by way of experience, exposure, learnings, encounters, character formation, state secrets and treasures, etc.
Imagine a father who had several properties and died without telling anybody in his family about them. Africa and Ghana in the 21st century should not be experiencing military interventions and economic pain despite their history and resources. But how could it avoid them, when it has nothing to learn from the past?

Africa can only be this poor despite its resources because its leaders don’t run a relay. No one passes the baton to the next leader. Every leader runs their race beginning from the beginning. We keep inventing the wheel when we can leverage the success of successive leaders. And how can that be when the leaders we have had, apart from Nkrumah made no effort to think and plan beyond their noses? They are so preoccupied with the business of the moment that they have no time to consider the future.

The greatest tragedy I am pointing out here is not what Rawlings could not do. In fact, it is worse to note that we still have leaders who are alive today, the likes of Kufour and perhaps the current President, Akufo-Addo, who might repeat the same mistakes Rawlings made. It is even worse to imagine these issues are not limited to politics. Leaders across sectors in the country, including industry, academia, religion, etc are just not doing anything beyond today to preserve the legacies they claimed to have built. They are not thinking about when they are no longer in power.
They are not mentoring anybody, they are not building institutions and neither are they documenting the story of their lives for my son's generation and those to come after them.
I felt I should bring this conversation up.

Benjamin Akyena Brantuo

Studied Political Science, Sociology and Public Relations. He is a Journalist, a Social Worker and an Author.

Reach him on [email protected]