[ 2014-01-07 ]

Jerry John Rawlings and the love of his life, Nana Konadu Agyemang

I abandoned Catholicism for Konadu’s love – JJ
The Rawlingses are arguably the most famous couple
in Ghana’s contemporary political history, but
the genesis of the love that has bound them
together as a married couple for the past decades,
has never been known to many Ghanaians until none
other than former President Jerry Rawlings himself
told the story on Monday.

It is a story that would see a young man convert
from Catholicism to become a Protestant just for
the sake of love.

Cast in the mould of the Shakespearian Romeo and
Juliet love story - minus the tragic end - the
love between the Rawlingses, as a couple, would
blossom on the strings of music.

Few know, or could have imagined, that the man who
would later – both as a Military Officer and a
Civilian - lead Ghana for close to two decades,
and who could shout his voice hoarse in a milieu
of intense charisma when delivering his polemics
and harangues, actually used that same voice, as a
young man, for the more subtle endeavours of
life.

At the age of 15, young Jerry Rawlings, who had
been brought up as a Catholic, ditched his
religion, ironically, for a religion that up till
now, has no love lost between it and Catholicism
– the Protestant Church – and all that was for
the love of a young “beautiful girl” that got
the lad smitten to bits with love and struck right
through the heart by cupid’s arrow.

He would confess this himself with a tinge of
nostalgia, decades later of course, when he
addressed students in his home region just
yesterday.

“…I was a catholic, she was a Protestant. But
because I wanted to be close enough to her, I left
my Catholic Church to go and join the protestant
Choir. But not too long after I’d joined the
Protestant choir, I don’t know what the young
lady [Nana Konadu Agyemang] and her friends did
wrong. They [were] kicked out by the music Teacher
so I was stuck in there and I was wondering what I
could also do to get kicked out”.
Rawlings said he had to slave for Konadu’s
love.

“I don’t know what it is like these days but
in those days, it took me close to five years to
be able to hold her hands, and long after I’d
joined the Air Force and became a Pilot Officer,
whenever I would try to visit, I had to remove my
cap and actually scrub her mother’s car before I
could say hello to her”, he recalled to cheers
from the young horde of students.

“…Anyways, that lady many years later, became
my wife”, and thus the story ends.

Happily ever after?

Source - Radio XYZ

... go Back