The Veep’s Beat: From Market Fires to Monarchy
Photograph of Professor Opoku-Agyemang and Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II
My dear readers, let us be absolutely clear — politics is not, as some gloomy Abena’s would have you believe, a dreary procession of dusty committees and PowerPoint slides. No! It is a rambunctious, harum-scarum, gloriously exhausting enterprise — a bit like being on a runaway trotro with dodgy brakes, careering down the Kwame Nkrumah Circle flyover. And nowhere was this more evident than in the Vice President’s barnstorming day about the Republic.
First stop: the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection — the very nerve centre of tenderness, where the state must somehow juggle the interests of newborn babes, silver-haired sages, and everyone in between. Received with what can only be described as a welcome warmer than a Kumasi kelewele pan, the Veep strode in like Asaase Yaa at the threshold of the earth’s bounty, her words firm as the soil beneath our feet.
And lo! Fate decreed that this very day was both the launch of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the International Day of Older Persons — a double whammy that would make even the most seasoned minister reach for the Adderall. Did she flinch? Did she cower? Not a tittle. With Nkrumahist cadence she declared that breasts, like all vital national assets, must be checked early and often, that survivors are not to be stigmatized but saluted. Then she pivoted to the nation’s grandmothers and grandfathers — “walking encyclopaedias,” as she called them — urging society to show them reverence rather than shuffle them off like old shoes.
Onward she marched to the theme of inclusion for the differently abled, reminding us that civilisation is not measured by GDP alone but by how we treat those who struggle to climb the metaphorical stairs of life.
And then, as if propelled by some divine rickshaw, she barrelled into Kumasi — entourage in tow, a phalanx of hon. this and hon. that — to do battle with the state of Ghana’s markets. Now, markets, dear reader, are not merely rickety sheds of tomato and tilapia. They are the beating ventricles of the nation’s economic heart — the great public squares where gossip, goods, and occasionally goats are exchanged with equal ferocity.
At Mamponteng, before a market site abandoned since 2012, she thundered that politics must centre on development, not dithering. At Krofuom she urged contractors to build stalls with enough elbow room to avoid the current sardine-like crush — not just commerce but comfort, not just profit but porosity (plenty of exits for emergencies). And at Suame, site of a recent inferno, she did what any leader worth their pepper soup must do: offered condolences, promised reconstruction, and pledged that traders would not be left stranded in the ashes.
And just when you thought the day could not possibly squeeze in another ounce of symbolism, she hied off to the Manhyia Palace, there to greet His Majesty the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II. With dignified solemnity she conveyed condolences for the passing of the Asantehemaa, Nana Konadu Yiadom III — a moment that reminded all assembled that governance, for all its spreadsheets and statutes, must still bow before the ancient thrones of tradition.
And one can only conclude that if politics is indeed, as someone once muttered, the art of the possible — then this was politics as the art of the impossible, attempted with gusto, grit, and more than a little Ghanaian gallantry.
Authored by V. L. K. Djokoto