Rawlings Couldn't Burn Kufour's Jubilee House: Ghana is Free Again

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

Accra, April 28, GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama has given the assurance


that both he and the President would move into the Jubilee House as soon as


arrangements were complete (Ghanaweb, April 28, 2010).





Our Golden Jubilee House


Our Presidential Palace


The House that JJ couldn’t burn


JJ’s “fire” couldn’t burn it


Golden Jubilee House


Anchored in Flagstaff House


Nkrumah’s eternal home


Golden Jubilee House


One of our best projects


Oh! Kufour did it


Our postcolonial coming of age


After Akosombo Dam


After Tema industrial city


After Job 600


After Bank of Ghana


After Supreme Court


After 1000s of school


After 100s of health centers


Oh Kwame Nkrumah

The sage & visionary


The Father of infrastructure





Our Golden Jubilee House


Our Palace


Oh! Kufour’s handiwork


Jubilee House


The NDC called it all


A poultry farm


A useless project


A toilet house


A “corrupt” project


The NDC protested


Screamed, shouted


It was their poultry farm


The majestic house


That Rawlings never built


Couldn’t built


In 20 years of rule


The house JJ couldn’t “fire”


Couldn’t burn down


Jubilee never burnt down


So Mills can have it now

Atta Mills is free now


Set free by JJ Rawlings


Fire-man who burns all


He who burns houses


But keep cars, dogs


But couldn’t burn Jubilee


Atta Mills is free


Set free and free as air


And Ghana is free


Free from ATLANTIC slavery


Free from mental slavery


In a slave castle of gloom


From the castle of doom


Where our forebears died


Where freedom died


Where tyranny was born





Atta Mills is free now


Atta Mills is free to move


Set free by JJ Rawlings


Set free and free as air


And Ghana is free


Free from JJ’s horrors


The Castle of suffering

Broken-bottle-hair cuts


Cement-gari parties


Organized beatings


Blade-addled scarifications


Humiliations in nakedness


The Castle


Where coward Ghanaians


Allowed JJ to flourish


Where elitist socialist thrived


Stole money


Praised JJ as they stole


The thievery elites


Stole in a sordid place


Where Arkaah’s soul died


Where Arkaah was ganged upon


Ganged upon by who born dogs





Atta Mills is free now


Atta Mills is free to move


Set free by JJ Rawlings


Set free and free as air


Set free to praise Kufour


The architect of Jubilee House


The house that wouldn’t burn

Burn from JJ’s divisiveness


Ghana is free


Free from slavery


Free from mental slavery


Free from old hurts


Disappointments


Benightedness


Ghana is free


Free from the Castle


Dungeons of blood


Of Mental enslavement


Golden Jubilee the House


That JJ couldn’t burn


So Mills will use Jubilee


A metaphor of our politics


Politics of divisiveness





*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral


historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with


her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her


pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical”


poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com