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By Isaac Ato MENSAH
Accra – 11 March, 2019
With today’s publication we have hit a century of articles on this blog; we have been blogging thrice weekly since 26 July, 2018.
It had been tough deciding, among many options, what to publish as the 100th article.
The International Women’s Day came in as the winner, partly because the Catholic clergy’s cover up of abuses of women and the recent sentencing of some clergy by civil courts had also been on the shortlist.
Whilst the global community is fighting for women’s empowerment, our ghanaian leaders – BECAUSE THEY DO NOT READ – are dumbing down Ghana’s contribution to women’s emancipation – and it is annoying to follow the Ghanaian media’s coverage of the occasion.
On Wednesday, a US congresswoman, testified (alleged) before the US Congress that she was raped in the US armed forces whilst she was a fighter jet pilot.
But, our media and leaders could not showcase to the world Melody Dankwa, who was a WOMAN fighter jet pilot for at least 20 years.
Indeed in 1963, three women were enlisted into the Ghana Airforce, including Dankwa.
It is not at all surprising that Nkrumah was a visionary on this so-called women’s empowerment agenda, for, he was in Achimota School and was trained by Dr James Kwegir Aggrey.
Yes, ‘If you train a man, you train an individual, but if you train a woman, you train the entire FAMILY,’ said Aggrey – not the entire NATION.
Our lack of READING is toxic – and annoying.
‘Brussels Airlines operated an all female flight to Entebbe and Kigali today to commemorate the International Women’s Day after that of Accra last year,’ was a marketing promo on social media that really provoked the African in me and our choice of women as the theme for the hundredth article.
‘Ethiopian Airlines has already done that in an even more complete manner,’ I buzzed. ‘Maybe for article #100, I should write about women and their primacy of place.’
Our condolences to Ethiopian and to all nations and familes that lost dear ones in Sunday’s plane crash.
My mentor has every right to be annoyed too – OK, euphemism – upset.
Achimota School has known the primacy of women since 1927; Achimotans have been walking the talk for over NINETY YEARS!!!!!
Girls being educated with boys……pound for pound; In a boarding environment…..UNPRECEDENTED; Even AHEAD of Europe and everywhere else.
Africa as it was and ought to be.
Now we have vigilantes in the Osu Castle!!!!
Preparing for the opposition ‘Boot for Boot’.
For me as a Catholic – and a journalist – I cannot help but become incensed as to how my church had been giving women and children the boot.
In recent weeks, priest sex abuse cover ups and criminal convictions are being discussed globally, whilst the Ghanaian media have been quiet over it.
‘Jesus Christ, the founder of the Catholic church, didn’t often get angry. But once or twice he got absolutely furious, and it was always about the same thing: the religious elite, who in his day were the Pharisees.’
I have my confirmation that we are not serious as a people.
The church’s unique role in playing up one woman – the Blessed Virgin Mary – and playing down all other women through centuries of witch hunt and persecution cannot fail of being generally and severely felt throughout the realms.
From Australia to the Vatican to France to Ireland to the US, testimonies of cover ups of clerical abuses of women have been confirmed and admitted.
Oh Holy Mother Church, you ‘can be so right and so wrong at the same time,’ observes my mentor!
‘But there’s one thing we know for sure, and if I’d been a priest saying mass at a Catholic parish last weekend I would have based my sermon on it,’ wrote Joanna Moorhead, a Catholic, in theguardian.com on 26 February, 2019. ‘Jesus Christ, the founder of the Catholic church, didn’t often get angry. But once or twice he got absolutely furious, and it was always about the same thing: the religious elite, who in his day were the Pharisees.’
Moorhead’s article was titled Lay Catholics Who Stay Silent Are Complicit in the Church’s Failure on Abuse.
She added, ‘We, the Catholics who still have even a smidgen of faith in anything at the heart of this organisation, now have to be furious, too: we have to force change, and then we have to work out whether there is anything worth preserving in the whitewashed tomb that calls itself the Catholic church.’
Now let us replace Moorhead’s reference to ‘Catholic’ or ‘Catholics’ with Ghanaians or media practitioners or Brethren or Sistren or Officers or public servants or politricKcians.
No, let us use Moorhead’s collective term Pharisees and ask ourselves these questions.
Why am I the only Ghanaian who is angry about ghana? Or have the really angry ones already voted with their feet?
Why am I the only Brother or Sister who is angry about my Society or Organisation?
And of course the example of the Galilean Master; he ONLY got angry because of the hypocrites in the elite – the Pharisees.
Now that should be easy to transpose!
Yes, the Pharisees are the personification of IGNORANCE AND DISHONESTY.
‘They have no point of reference,’ says my mentor.
‘Woman, has no one condemned you?….. Woman thou art loosed!’
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