*By Akadu N. Mensema Ph. D.; Post-Grad. Dipl.
“Kumasi, Jan. 11, GNA - A Kumasi Circuit Court has sentenced an 18-year-old
footballer to 240 months imprisonment in hard labor for defiling a 13-year-old
Junior High School (JHS) student” (Ghanaweb Jan 11, 2010).
“Cape Coast, Jan. 12, GNA - Three persons, an adult and two juveniles, who
allegedly gang-raped a 14 year old girl, were on Tuesday put before a circuit
court in Cape Coast on charges of defilement” (Ghanaweb Jan 12, 2010).
I. BROKEN PETALS
Female child
Blooming petal on a branch of life
Vulnerable petal
Innocent, trusting
Our daughters, sisters, mothers
A blooming petal
Female child
Yet to see the sun
Violently plucked, trampled
Before sunrise
Suffocated under the cult of patriarchy
With magisterial freights of the phallus
Torrential storms of phallus violence
Razor-sharp deflowering
Petals bloodied
Battered
Bruised
Bleeding, oozing
Weeping, mourning innocence stolen
Damaged by the hurricanes of patriarchy
And set on lonely psychosomatic flights
Along passages of depression, suicide
Petals
Future flowers
That would blossom into national trees
Ruined
Stunted
And yet we sit idle
As our petals fall before sunrise
And wither before sunset
II. CLASSLESS RAPIST SOCIETY
Always the brutish beastly rapists
Are framed, seen
As farmers
Drivers’ mate
The mason, carpenter
The unemployed, bumbling males
Marginalized males in society
But silenced rape victims
Have different biographies of rapists
Of violent powerful males
Lawyers, ministers
Priests/pastors, head/teachers
Respectable fathers, uncles, brothers
The big men, the rich and powerful
Worst
Than the stereotypical marginalized males
Conventional ghettoized male rapists
III. PROTECTING PETALS OF YOUTH
We all need cultural re/education
On rights, freedoms
On sacredness of sex
About the sanctity of the body, soul
Gender rights, female empowerment
So let us empower mothers
So let us empower daughters, sisters
So that they can humanize sons
To end the feminization of violence
Ghanaians let us get conscientized
And bury patriarchy
That cultivates phallus rights
Over our blooming petals
*Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema 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
[email protected]