Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings,
the first daughter of the late former President Jerry John Rawlings says, “My
dad had quite a wicked sense of humour. He just loved to pull pranks on
people.”
In a video she recorded on Father’s Day, the Klottey
Korle MP explained that growing up, they only saw their father mostly on
weekends or sometime within the week because they did not stay in the Osu
Castle with him.
She said one of the early memories she had of her
late father is that he taught her how to fly the aircraft.
She disclosed that one day her
father decided it was time for her to fly alone.
Earlier, her dad who was in the cockpit with her
acted like he had passed out and told her to land the plane pretending he was
not there.
“I was very offended at the time because I thought it
was bad luck to say things like that. But he ignored me until I landed the
plane, and as soon as we landed, he asked me to stop while we were still on the
runway,” Zanetor recalled.
“He got out of the plane and told me to go. I
hesitated [but] he said ‘You’re ready so go’. So, I took off whilst praying,
just as I had taken off my mother arrived and asked ‘Where is Zane?’ and my dad
pointed up to the sky without saying a word…thank God I landed safely,” Zanetor
further recalled.
She added that her father also taught her how to ride a horse
and a bicycle.
Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings
recalled how her late dad was able to let his cats, dogs, birds and peacocks
among other pets live in harmony in his village.
“This is the most phenomenal thing…The animals just
get along really well,” she said.
She added that anytime they were returning to Accra
from a long journey and they find elderly women standing by the roadside, JJ
Rawlings will stop and give them a ride in his vehicle or that of the escort
vehicle.
“It was an important thing to
see because he was never too big to help anybody and he never looked at anybody
as being below him or too small to be given his attention or to help,” Dr.
Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings said.
Jerry John Rawlings died on Thursday, November 12 at
the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital after a short illness. He was 73 years old.
Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings who issued a statement on
Thursday announcing her father’s death wrote: “The family requests privacy at
this difficult moment. Details of funeral arrangements will be announced in due
course.”
Jerry John Rawlings was born on 22 June 1947. As a
military and later a civilian leader, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings (Rtd.) ruled
the country from 31 December 1981 to 7 January 2001; he was a leader of the
ruling Armed Forces Revolutionary Council for a few months in 1979.
Rawlings led the Provisional National Defence Council
(PNDC) junta from 1981 until 1993, when he handed over power to himself after
democratic elections, won through a progressive alliance with Nkrumahist
parties led by Kow Nkensen Arkaah who became his Vice President.
He then served a second civilian term from 7 January
1997 until 7 January 2001.
After the two-term constitutional limit, Rawlings endorsed
for the 2000 presidential election, then Vice-President Professor John Atta
Mills as his preferred presidential candidate for the National Democratic
Congress (NDC).
But Atta-Mills lost to J.A. Kufuor of the New
Patriotic Party (NPP).
Rawlings will be remembered across Africa as the
African Union envoy to Somalia during heavy fighting in the horn of Africa.
The former president also sent Ghanaian peacekeeping
soldiers to Liberia during the civil war of the 1990s and settled Liberia
refugees in Ghana. In the 1980s, he sent a ship to bring home Ghanaians who
were being sacked from Nigeria.
J.J. Rawlings left behind his wife Nana Konadu
Agyeman-Rawlings; three daughters, Zanetor, Yaa Asantewaa and Amina; and a son
Kimathi.
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