Spew-Garbage & the Art of Garbaged History of Rawlings

*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

According to Ekow Spio-Garbrah “President Jerry John Rawlings… Ghana’s

longest-serving head of state … tenure saw the preservation of peace in Ghana at

a time when most of West Africa was engulfed in crises… (Abridged from Ghanaweb,

January 29, 2011).”

The pen-thievery educated elites

Products of cocoa farmers’ sweat

Pen-wielding mercenaries

With subscriptions of lies

One sided stomach politicians

With forked-tongue speeches

Politicians in the pay of lies

In the pay of Castle houseflies

Killers of the eternal dream

Of Nkrumah’s eternal dream

Of pan-African renaissance

Of privileging our Blackness

Of pedestaling our Africanity

Oh! Nkrumah’s dreams deferred

Oh! Nkrumah’s dreams aborted

By our fetishization of crooks

By our worship of dictators

By our cult-ing of murderers

By our sanitization of thieves

By our adoration of arsonists

DOKITA WHO

Spews it all

Spews garbage

Spews to curry favor

Spews to win favor

Spewing before cultic JJ

Spewing before Konongo Mills

Spewing for a ministerial post

Spewing GARBAGED history

Spewing it all

That JJ brought peace

That JJ preserved peace

That JJ nurtured peace

JJ Rawlings

The seer of political hooliganism

The know-all sanctimonious goon

The vessel of acidic oppression

Those forced to drink cement-gari

Those abducted, slaughtered

Firing squads, murdering squads

Those impaled by kangaroo courts

JJ Rawlings never brought peace

Curfew never brought peace

Curfew aborted nightly choices

Curfew stalled ontological sleep

Curfew led to abductions

Of the would-be slain judges

Of the B. B. Bismarcks

JJ Rawlings never brought peace

Females lost their peace of mind

Females dishonored in the genitalia

Soldier-lamps in their genitalia

Oh! EYE KANEA (genitalia is open)

Oh! EYE HANN (pry into it all)

JJ Rawlings never brought peace

Shortage of petrol

Shortage of kerosene

Shortage of food

Our stomachs churned

Our minds lost peace

Ah! The Rawlings’ Chain

Chain of acidic hunger

Chain of abject poverty

Chain of utter destitution

JJ Rawlings never brought peace

Abduction of opponents

Demonization of opponents

Murdering of opponents

Broken-bottle hair-cuts

Seizure of properties

Baptism of nepotism

Avalanche of tribalism

JJ Rawlings never brought peace

Chieftaincy disputes

Asantes and Brongs

Konkombas and Nanumbas

Akuapem – Guans and Akans

Hmm! JJ’s divide and rule

1979 the watershed of chaos

Flowing in political gutters

Flowing in cadres’ veins

Flowing in politicians’ potbellies

The pen-thieves educated elites

Products of cocoa farmers’ sweat

Pen-wielding mercenaries

One sided stomach politicians

Politicians in the pay of lies

In the pay of Castle houseflies

Killers of the eternal dream

Of Nkrumah’s eternal dream

Of pan-African renaissance

Of privileging our Blackness

Of pedestaling our Africanity

Oh! Nkrumah’s dreams deferred

Oh! Nkrumah’s dreams aborted

By our fetishization of crooks

By our worship of dictators

By our cult-ing of thieves

*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