Another ‘Ides of March’ passes – March 15, 2025
Feedback from my recent article “There is no art to find the mind’s construction in the face” has been interesting.
Indeed, one from my pharmacist big-sister read “this article has rekindled my love for Literature quotes, especially Shakespeare – ‘Is this a dagger that I see before me, with its handle towards my hand?
Come, let me clutch you.” She followed it up with more quotes!
When I asked how she knew so many Shakespearean quotes, she told me that though she was a science student at “O-Level” in 1971, she also studied English Literature.
Her love for Shakespeare has never waned.
Similarly, a colleague, another science graduate, rattled out Macbeth’s words on hearing of his wife Lady Macbeth’s death:
“She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word. For tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays are but lighted fools, the way to dusty death.
Out, out brief candle! Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!”
With the passing quietly of March 15, 2025, another Shakespearean quote welled up in my mind, taking me back to my March 2021 article titled, “Beware the ides of March,” which read as follows:
As I autographed a copy of my book Retirement Musings for the young Major, I asked for a confirmation of the date.
“Today is March 15, 2021, Sir,” he said. “Wow! Beware the ides of March!”
I exclaimed instinctively, leaving the Major in wonderment about what I meant!
Julius Caesar is a Shakespearean tragedy we loved quoting from in school.
It was based on the life of the Roman General/Statesman Julius Caesar. Some of the quotes were:
• “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones….” by Mark Anthony in his eulogy of Caesar.
• “Et tu Brute?” (And you too, Brutus?) by Caesar after his closest friend Brutus stabbed him.
• “Beware the ides of March” by a soothsayer/Caesar’s wife.
• “Rubicon crossed.” “The die is cast” (alea iacta est) by Caesar daring the Roman Senate.
Ides of March
Monday, March 15, 2021, was “the Ides of March” in the Roman calendar. It was the day in 44 BC when Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times to death by a group of senators led by his bosom-friend Brutus.
Roman history states that a soothsayer earlier warned him not to go out on the Ides of March, March 15, 44 BC, a warning reinforced by his wife.
“Beware the Ides of March” subsequently became synonymous with being warned, but displaying pig-headed obstinacy going against advice and paying with one’s life, as happened to Caesar.
Starting his military career as a teenager, Caesar rose to become a general.
Considered a threat by Pompey, the “Head of State,”/equivalent of the Roman Republic, Caesar was sent out of the Republic to Gaul in Northern Italy to fight.
Rome and Gaul were separated by the shallow River Rubicon.
After Caesar completed his Gaullic campaigns, Pompey ordered him to demobilise his army before returning to Rome. Caesar refused and subsequently crossed the Rubicon, declaring “alea iacta est” (the die is cast), his final act of throwing down the gauntlet at Pompey!
During the week, TV news showed pictures of the island separating the two sides of the Accra-Tema Motorway, being illegally and dangerously crisscrossed.
It also reminded me of my stay in Uganda over 12 years ago, where I served as the Senior Military Adviser to the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General, President Chissano of Mozambique.
Reacting to daily screaming newspaper headlines of murders, I asked a colleague why the murders. His answer was simple,
“When laws fail to be applied because of political influences, indiscipline and impunity take over.”
He also lamented the concentration of power in one hand.
That sounded familiar!
When the 1992 Constitution was promulgated, analysts opined that, like the Ugandan case, our Constitution was designed for one person. Otherwise, how could virtually all power be concentrated in the President?
In 2012, President Mills created a Constitution Review Committee headed by the venerable Professor of Law, Dr Fiadjoe.
A flaw which many Ghanaians hoped would be corrected early was the requirement for a majority of ministers to come from Parliament.
A question that arose was, how could new MPs who were made ministers combine the two jobs effectively, being simultaneously legislators and executors/implementers?
Meanwhile, Ghana still awaits the implementation of the Fiadjoe Report!
Conclusion
On Thursday, March 18, 2021, Ghana’s foremost playwright, Ebo Whyte, in his bi-weekly radio-presentation, submitted that, despite the semblance of development, Ghana is sliding backwards.
“Indiscipline shows at all levels of Ghanaian society!”
Uncle Ebo stated that we have lost our sense of shame and moral compass.
For example, young girls bragging about their affairs with big men evoke no shame.
oung men insult adults old enough to be their fathers/grandfathers in the name of politics.
Road traffic indiscipline resulting in carnage on our roads appears to have gained acceptability as normal.
Disgraceful open defecation is part of us!
No country has succeeded by brandishing indiscipline/impunity the way we are! Singapore/Rwanda did not!
On Friday, March 19, 2021, the World Bank lamented Ghana’s “premature de-industrialisation!”
For an import-substituting country, which under President Nkrumah before the 1966 coup produced car tyres, jute-bags, glass, matches/machetes, canned fruits/vegetables and had Ghana Airways and Black Star Shipping Line, our current manufacturing input of only four per cent contribution to GDP is sad!
Ghana! “Beware the Ides of March!” We are on a slippery slope.
Unlike Julius Caesar, listen to good advice from Ghanaians, irrespective of political persuasion. Ghana belongs to all Ghanaians.
Comments
With over 6000 schools under trees, open defecation, bad roads making the 250 km Accra-Kumasi journey take six hours, galamsey devastating the environment with rivers becoming sludges of lead, mercury and cyanide, it is shocking that, a selfish misplaced priority should suggest the building of a bigger chamber and a hospital for
MPs, while many Ghanaians wallow in poverty. As the South African writer Alan Paton titled his book we read in Form 2 in 1966 in secondary school, “cry the beloved country!”
Why do we give credence to apartheid South Africa President Pik Botha’s insulting description of us in Michael Meredith’s “The Fate of Africa,” running with begging bowls to the IMF/others, only to waste on self-aggrandisement?
Leadership, lead with Integrity! Fellow Ghanaians, wake up!
The writer is a former CEO, African Peace Support Trainers Association, Nairobi, Kenya/Council Chairman, Family Health University, Accra.
E-mail: dkfrimpong@yahoo.com
