At my age, unequal to half of his [Rawlings] at the time of his death, I wouldn’t do better than be guided by my knowledge in human psychology and some admitted bias to tell you who he was, I can try.
Jeremiah [Jerry] John Rawlings, first of his name thanks to a Royal Air Force (RAF) clerical error during a training enlistment, was like many Ghanaians today – born and raised without a father. His mother, the late great-grandma Victoria Agbotui took seed of him out of a long happy affair with a sour ending with a Castle Douglas married chemist – James Ramsey John, a Scottish staff of United Africa Company (UAC) in The Gold Coast, now Ghana, between 1935 and 1947 (the year Jerry was born). Even though his father denied him and the affair to save his marriage, his [Rawlings] mother named him Jeremiah Rawlings, last name John, to maintain his identity. He maintained Rawlings as last name since the clerical error with the RAF, a name which has become iconic high enough to render John insignificant.
Seen as a bastard all his life, Jerry was said to be stubborn and rebellious as a child, through Achimota school and even as a cadre of the Ghana Armed Forces. I am not competent to pen a journal of a man’s life from whence my own was not preconceived. A hundred scores of columnists would tell his story differently, laced with a bias none would dare agree to thus, a conscious multidisciplinary approach is required to study such an important figure in the history of Ghana. When attempted, each chapter of his life – preconception, childhood, career, family, coup, leadership, private life and more would make best sellers with a not less than a thousand pages each. Such is one of the reservations I have of the man who did not tell his story when he was alive but thinking these wise words – “To write something worth reading, or to do something worth writing about”? Jerry chose the latter.
Many fingers are pointed at the man, the icon, for actions and inactions in the most difficult phase in the history of Ghana. Events of a time always determine the actions of men therein and it will be skewed for us to wake up today in an era of freedom and pretend to understand what happens in an aeon of coup and its albatross. In those onerous times Rawlings was himself, sentenced to death and was broken out. History would have been shaped and written differently if they succeeded in killing him. It was acceptable unfortunately in those cruel military regimes that anyone openly opposed to the era was treasonous and treated as such.
I can’t say I agree with whatever actions Rawlings took on other human lives (obviously not innocent ones) years before I was born, but a wise man once wrote that geniuses are not without fault. The basics of individuality might even present that two people in the same situation would act differently. Rawlings was a military officer trained and experienced in brutality and what ought to be done when required; just like an experienced surgeon impresses amputation when it’s the way out and yet patients often refuse it. The problem is the military mindset doesn’t negotiate. And it was and remains mean, get closer and you would reckon.
I would only fault regimes I have experienced. The least I have learned from the past is that Rawlings didn’t want to lead, he hated the abuse of power so he seized it, handed it over to a civilian government, seized it again when there were indications of wrong (I can’t justify), then he took us through hard times (most of which were mean), he built and cleaned with the people (a mark of true leadership), believed in Africa, understood and ushered in democracy, retired from the military, later handed over peacefully and continued to abhor impunity until his demise. The kind of impunity and abuse of power we see today would have been dealt with strongly if we were not in this trap called democracy where leaders knowingly and cunningly loot us of resources and justice. Everything indeed has a price.
Leaders emerge through turbulence and if we should be exposed to what every leader did or does behind the scenes, we would hate the domain of leadership and its accompanying hard decisions. Away from his flaws, I have nothing but admiration for Rawlings as biased as it may sound from a grandson. The late Martin Luther King Jnr was among all things an addict of many things openly untold but he was the icon of liberation for the black race. To understand anything at all, one ought to understand the times in which they prevailed. His [Rawlings], was a life lived through many generations of change, having to adapt and accustom to them were challenging yet he did that interestingly and we heard that in the words he spoke. We can’t understand much from limited experience, the legacy of Rawlings must be a project not limited to a few hours of rhetorics but long days of research, analysis and a scientific reportage of a life of resilience.
A saviour and an icon is gone to rest and memories of him and his bravery will forever shape our nation from strength to strength. He was called Junior Jesus for a reason.
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