TRIBUTE TO MADAM NANA KONADU AGYEMAN-RAWLINGS, JERRY RAWLINGS’ ALTER EGO
TRIBUTE TO MADAM NANA KONADU AGYEMAN-RAWLINGS, JERRY RAWLINGS’ ALTER EGO.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
The passing of Madam Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings (Madam or Madam Rawlings) on 23 October was as unexpected, and heart wrenching as it was most shocking. There was no indication of illness or medical distress. Ghana lost her first and only true heroine of the 4 June and 31 December Revolutions, and under the Fourth Republican Constitution. Many a First Lady has come and gone since 31 December 1981, but none will measure up to her legacy of achievement and compassion for the ordinary Ghanaian, and in particular women and children with emphasis on the deprived rural communities.
Madam was truly a woman’s woman who married the love of her life, Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings, stood by him in thick and thin, in happiness and distress. Madam Agyeman-Rawlings made her husband’s cause her cause and paid the price of anguish and distress anytime he got into trouble or was attacked by enemies, adversaries, or traitors within his circle of friends. She had the woman’s knack for ferreting out hypocrites and insincere opportunists. She protected her husband like no woman I have ever known in my life. Her commitment to her husband and her family irked many cadres and friends of her husband who thought she stood in their way. She was a rare species of total commitment to family and her country.
Madam Rawlings supplemented her dear husband’s government’s policies with active advocacy for women and children’s rights, and the practical provision of facilities to cushion the poverty of ordinary women and children. It was her passion to mobilize and ensure social justice for the woman and man in the street to complement the revolutionary agenda of equality and social justice that led to the establishment of the 31 December Movement of which so much has been chronicled even by those who were not participants in or witnesses to the events. I saw her passion to empower women in rural communities to generate income and feed their families particularly malnourished children from my vantage position as a cadre from February 1982, and later a minister of state in her husband’s regimes from February 1983 to 7 January 2001. She ensured that women cadres of the revolution were offered training and skills to serve their communities and the nation to supplement the efforts of their families.
Madam Rawlings’ role in the transition to Constitutional rule has gone untold and underestimated. Without her the participation of women in the political process would not have increased in the leaps and bound we saw in this country for the first time during that era. When the transition to Constitutional rule brought internal divisions as to whether operatives and supporters of the 31 December Revolution were going to participate in the unfolding constitutional process after the writing of the 1992 Constitution or hand over to an established political party or parties, she had the knack to smell internal conspiracy to denude her husband’s place in the transition to constitutional rule.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) needs to remain forever indebted to her for mobilizing the late Mr. Justice D. F. Annan, the late Mr. J. H. Owusu Acheampong, and Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama, now the Chairman of the Council of Elders of the NDC, for the meetings at the Blue Gate (National Security Secretariat) between March and May 1992 where eventually there was an agreement to establish a political party for those cadres and supporters of the PNDC who could not join the CPP inclined National Convention Party which the late Captain Kojo Tsikata was gestating as a PNDC Member and National Security Advisor. Madam suggested the name National Democratic Party (NDP) for the new political party which was modified by substituting the word “Congress” for “Party” which was registered as the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The Umbrella as a symbol and the colours of the NDC were designed or commissioned and approved by her before they were adopted by the NDC with little modifications. Nobody can deny her the place of the Mother of the NDC. I was the Chairman of the House Committee of the Consultative Assembly, 1991 and Deputy Attorney-General leading the PNDC cadres in the Consultative Assembly who participated in these events and bear witness to her role and commitment to the founding of the NDC.
Madam’s tireless mobilization of citizens for continuity was a critical factor in the success of the NDC in the 1992, 1996, and 2008 elections. Madam was misunderstood by the regular members of the NDC when true to character she insisted that the undertaking given by the late Professor Mills that he was doing only one term as President due to ill health must be kept and contested the NDC primaries on 11 July 2011 in Sunyani in the then Brong Ahafo Region. When the visibly sick President Mills changed his mind, to my knowledge as a result of pressure from his puppet masters, Madam would not give way.
Madam Rawlings’ ideology has aways been National Democracy; so, she formed the National Democratic Party (NDP) which she had suggested in 1992. Other founding members of the NDC formed political parties such as the Democratic Freedom Party, lost elections, and were enticed back to the NDC. The Paradox was and is still that her dear husband who remains the founder of the NDC stayed with the NDC without any attempt being made by the NDC to reconcile with her during his lifetime and thereafter.
On the first anniversary of the remembrance of our dear late Chairman and President Rawlings, on 12 November 2021, I pleaded, inter alia, that:
“May [it] “touch the hearts of those who have inherited his mantle to reach out to every cadre and member who had associated with him during his lifetime and to bring unity amongst all his accolades. This cannot materialize without seeking to reconcile with his dear wife without whom the social democratic tradition he epitomizes would have died in 1992 in the transition to Constitutional governance. ....His dear wife, needs to be engaged notwithstanding the needless fall outs from Sunyani in July 2011 and after, whatever the cost.”
After Madam’s demise I heard attempts had been afoot to reconcile with her this year. I hope to God this is true and not the usual Ghanaian opportunism of wanting to cash in on the everlasting silence of the dead. I also hope that this is not the politics of using the name of the dead we once hated for convenient political mobilization towards electoral ends. That Madam Rawlings’ departed to meet her husband without witnessing the rehabilitation of her husband as the founder and leader of the NDC after his almost two decades of leading Ghana to enable her bear witness to him when they meet in the home of the ancestors is an indictment on the NDC.
I have borne the passing of former President Jerry Rawlings from 12 November 2020 and that of Group Captain Richard Forjoe from January 2022 traumatically and depressingly. I had not visited or spoken to Madam Rawlings for quiet sometime even though I still defended her place in the NDC. When I received Madam Rawlings’ message a few months ago from the first daughter asking me why I was sending her messages about how to handle the memory of her dear husband instead of coming to discuss them with her, I did not understand that I was being summoned to see her before it was too late, as it did on 23 October 2025.
Madam Rawlings, the heroic First Lady of Ghana and President of the 31 December Women’s Movement in her lifetime always put Ghana First in actions and deeds. Her passing has elicited an outpouring of praises from least expected sources with a decision to honour her with a state funeral. May Madam Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings’ passing be the beginning of real reconciliation and remorse for the mistreatments of the past.
Ghana’s heroine First Lady, the Mother of the 4 June, and 31 December Revolutions, ND , and NDP has fought a good fight and finished the race both as a Roman Catholic and a patriotic Ghanaian.
May Madam Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings Rest in Peace!
Martin A. B. K. Amidu.