As we pay tributes to one of Ghana’s leading icons, I am overwhelmed with grief. We are teary at this period that we are mourning the untimely passing of an illustrious matriarch, even though she was only a month short of 77 years of life.
It is her physical existence that has petered out and not her ideals and spirit. Her legacy would endure forever owing to its centrality in the affairs of men.
People’s sensitivity to the shock announcement of her death on Thursday, October 23, 2025, overwhelmed the other items competing for attention. Even, the elderly who wobble in their feet and have been out of the picture for many years, emerged from obscurity to show presence at the residence of the Rawlings family to express their condolences.
The sound of the death knell was insipid for many, but then engaging, due to the personality the tragedy struck. Up until her untimely demise, she had been very much the same as the person we knew her many years ago – sprightly, colourful, sociable, and intelligent.
I had wished our mother, Her Excellency, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings was alive to witness the immense show of love for her. When an eerie silence hanged over her after the burial of her husband, President Jerry John Rawlings, in 2021, some thought she was finished and had become irrelevant. How sad that observation was. In Ghana, she was the person who was celebrated most after the world converged on Beijing in 2025 to review the gender affirmative action adopted 30 years ago.
Well, it is undeniable she rode on the back of her husband to prominence, but then, her own fame stemmed from niche she carved for herself as a fighter or strong advocator of women’s rights. Largely, that set her apart from preceding and succeeding generations.
Her legacy is unquestionably towering among the matriarchs, and that is probably the reason President John Dramani Mahama named Ghana’s leading monument, the Black Star Square, as the venue of her funeral. In my lifetime, only two Presidents were mourned at this square – her husband, former President Rawlings in 2021. Earlier in 2012, it had been the then sitting President John Evans Atta Mills. So toeing this path announces Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings as big.
Then came the political bombshell when the founder’s wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, decided to throw a hat in the ring concerning the NDC presidential primaries. Initially considered a neck and neck race, Prof. John Atta Mills won by a fairly large margin. Undaunted, the Konadu team documented evidence as proof of the alleged malpractices which undermined the integrity of the internal polls.
One of the allegations was that a regional executive of the party camped some delegates in his house in order to prevent access to them by the canvassing Konadu team. Consequently, she went backstage – to put it bluntly, she withdrew her membership of the party, not out of sour grapes but the arm-twists which characterized the process. In her own words, ‘I did not lose for the elections were not free and fair.’
In most of my tét a tét with Her Excellency Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, she explained her political drift to be the unflinching quest to uphold, protect, and promote the cardinal principles and values of the National Democratic Congress, NDC, as the new leaders who took control of the party blurred the lines with their own variants of the philosophies behind the party’s creation.
The former first couple of Ghana was avowedly addicted to the slogans – Probity, Accountability, and Integrity. The political dynamics, deeply affected by her involvement, they appeared to draw a peripeteia to her political ambitions. The NDC would be at crossroads – she at the receiving end of heavy criticisms, allegedly for inciting her husband to leave the NDC. Was this the actual picture? Listening to her, it became clear to me that such a countenance was borne out of misinterpretation. She told me, she formed the National Democratic Party, NDP, not to weaken the NDC but exploit the equal chance of capturing power to resolutely lead the fight against corruption.
In 2016, she became the presidential candidate of her party, its historicity being Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings as the first woman presidential candidate in Ghana. To have the pulse to vie for the coveted presidency of Ghana requires the combination of self-belief, natural wisdom and academic knowledge, vast experience in public service, international stature, and respectable levels of fluency in both the official and the most widely-spoken local language – English and Akan respectively. The language proficiency is for the ease of communication to the local populace and the international audiences always eager to hear directly from Ghanaian leaders.
Her political gravitas resided in the women empowerment mantra she carried along in post-1981 period. The 31st December Women’s Movement, the non-governmental organization she formed and led, was perhaps the most eloquent and efficient advocate for women, not only in Ghana but across the world. Her activism in the gender issues found resonance in the ideals of the 1995 Beijing UN Women’s Conference which strongly advocated and set agenda on women’s emancipation and gender mainstreaming in all actuations at local, national, and international levels.
Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, holding the torch of the campaign in Ghana, women never had it so good. After a long period of rigid female social roles, women were emboldened to take other options. No longer is the single, inflexible expectation that their grandmothers faced, that of home and hearth and helping husband. In their self-consciousness and self-actualization, we now see the modern woman choosing from diverse alternatives.
She is a career woman, creative homemaker, partner in her husband’s business or operator of a business of her own. Women now can choose the roles which best suit their inclinations. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings worked tirelessly to ensure both spouses are given equal treatment. All contributions and successful outcomes in politics and business, and at home, were just as much the woman’s achievement as their male counterparts. Examples on the positive trajectory that were previously hidden, found outlets in the media. The negative ones were loudly condemned.
These tie in perfectly with the well-acclaimed interstate succession law, PNDC law 111 passed in 1985. The military cum civilian administration led by President Rawlings used this law to correct injustices and to secure respectable entitlements for women spouses in the event of the death of their husbands.
Prior to this, customary laws and procedures which had guided the process left some spouses and children without or with only little inheritance where there were no wills. Socrates, one of the famed Greek philosophers, once said, ‘When a woman becomes a man’s equal, she becomes his superior.’ Isolated cases are incidental to the caveat of Socrates, yet the mission to achieve anything between protecting women, considered the weaker sex, against vulnerabilities and gender parity is a long march. For instance, in Ghana, we have been witnesses to heartless battery and mysterious killings of women.
The family unit which ought to be society’s strongest pillar is often brittle, due to the continued lopsidedness in employment intakes in favour of males. A society that is still tied to stereotypes, which restrained the full potentials and participation of females, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, backed by her 31st Women’s movement, conducted an orchestra that changed the primal settings.
It did give meaning to the dictum of Ghanaian educationist. Kwegyir Aggrey said, ‘If you educate a man, you educate an individual. If you educate a woman, you educate a nation.’
Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings took the fight to the oft-resistant stereotypes and conservative traditional enclaves, not forgetting tackling it from the scratch such as securing funds to build clinics, creches, and places of convenience in the markets to save time in accessing these facilities by nursing mothers who found themselves in the markets.
This has become a model and a benchmark, especially for nations and global associations which sent delegations to understudy Ghana’s system. The African Women Leaders Network is one example
In the past two years, I was much closer to Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings who often invited me to tell her life stories. She told me her husband was unhappy about ‘distortions’ to historical facts concerning the formation of NDC. She said, it was apparent this affected his health, maybe, to his demise.
She said, certain key decisions such as the invitation to the NDC fraternity of another icon, John Dramani Mahama (now the President of the Republic of Ghana) was made by President Rawlings and Dr Obed Asamoah who needed him to fill a political vacuum at the time.
Some who viewed her in binoculars that gave a different picture from her truest nature, ought to be told that the former First Lady was a big player behind-the-scenes and in unofficial activities during her most active years straddling President Rawlings’ tenure in office.
She was sometimes deployed as the unannounced emissary of government. She also became the arbiter of disputes and drained tensions in the families of senior government officials. She held the files on the private activities of ministers of state in the maiden NDC administration, and given her strategic position, she could well be taken for a repository of information on successive generations which plied the continuum of governance.
President Jerry John Rawlings and Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings exemplified admirable niches. The badge which won their hearts was truth. Based on the tangible and compelling evidence that was directly observed through their own eyes, they arrived at this judgement.
They will then treat you like any of their children. Most of the Kaftans I wear were sewed for me by Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings. In conversations on WhatsApp, she often expressed excitement or amazement with the word ‘Wow,’ but she had a unique and playful way of spelling this expression. When she articulates this word, she delights in stretching the vowels. Her version was ‘woooaaoow.’
In retirement, our dear departed mum drew my attention to the crisis in the Middle East, calling out the powerful actors in the imbroglio for failing to understand the dictum, ‘The powerful are gentle.’ Instead, in the Middle East, she saw the powerful fomenting trouble and turned that arena into a theatre of man’s inhumanity on man. She was indignant to social injustice, a re-echo of husband’s mantra. She shared with me, videos that promoted justice and the black identity, urging me to start a television programme on black heroes and heroines.
She sent us splitting our sides with laughter, ‘accusing’ me of giving President Rawlings all the credit when I forgetfully said he had trained their children so well. Her Excellency playfully charged on me with the question, ‘So when my husband as the longest-reigning Head of State and always held up in official corridors, who was tending to the children?’ Perhaps, that hackneyed phrase, ‘liberated woman,’ has been so overused that it doesn’t cause any sensation.
However, if it has any meaning, then surely, in its very best sense, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings is symbolic of it. She was a very experienced figure in public affairs and had remarkable talent. When she autographed on her own book, ‘It takes a woman’ and handed me a copy, it was her cursive handwriting that grabbed my attention before I launched into chapters of the book weeks later. She had an intelligent and self-assured husband who enjoyed successes of his own not to be threatened by hers. It would be difficult to improve on this combination.
Their shared values manifested once again when in December 2000, just days President Rawlings would handover power to President John Agyekum Kufuor, he asked me to amplify the points made in the speech given by Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings when the couple inaugurated the Government Hospital at Ho.
When I heard the rumours of her death, I did not believe it because we chatted regularly on the phone, at least twice or thrice every week. Four days to the ‘unholy news,’ I had woken up in bed at approximately 7:14 a.m and quickly sent her the message ‘May God protect you always’ to which she replied at 11:40 p.m ‘Amen and goodnight’ and with the emoji that represented a person filled with thoughts When the media appeared to authenticate her death, I messaged her ‘Hello mama.’ Uncharacteristically, she has not replied to my last message to her phone in the afternoon of 23 October, 2025. I am devastated because Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings connected so well with me.
I trusted she would be the last officer to stand for me in an atmosphere characterized by false allegations, insinuations, and harmful gossips to mar relations between people or to undermine to pave way for seekers. Just like her husband, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings would have none of that.
Not only Dr Zanetor, Yaa Asantewaa, Amina and Kimathi have lost a mother in Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings’ passing. Millions empathize with her gallant children, who now, must face the world without their parents. God be their Helper. Death is not the opposite of life. It is another phase of life where the ‘dead’ relates spiritually to their loved ones. When the English Poet, John Donne, was captured in Robert Frost’s Selective Poems as saying ‘Death be not proud,’ he was actually referring to the inevitable power of our spirits to survive and overcome the agents of human mortality. Well said John Donne.
I am sure if other presidential reporters between the 1980s and the 1990s take their turns, they may present completely different storylines but knit together by the common theme in the principles of Mr and Mrs Rawlings. Jones Kugblenu, Johnny Aryeetey, Justice Abban, Francis Sasu, Reuben Dela Quarshie, all of Ghana Television fame are dead and gone. Joe Bradford Nyinah, formerly of Daily Graphic has also kicked the bucket. Teye Kitcher, Alex Owusu Kwakye, Ebenezer Ampaabeng, David Ampofo, Clare Banoeng-Yakubo, Abena Konadu Agyeman, Gayheart Edem Mensah, Dave Agbenu, Daniel Owusu, and Divine Koblah to name but a few, are alive and kicking. By their explicit and implicit powers vested in me, I delivered this account, to underline the fact that journalists may well be considered as veritable historians.
I joined these veteran scribblers when I was a young boy and I remember just three or four years were left for the Rawlings administration to wind up. Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings was in the distance as a public cynosure at that time and intimate in the present. She was ever bubbly and lively. Certainly, something intrusive and sudden might have barged in on her to interrupt or permanently change the course,.
Mama Dayie.
By
Napoleon Ato Kittoe
Former GBC Presidential Correspondent
About the Author
