Pulling from the brink…
What a week it has been! In the digital market square, it has been a giddy cocktail of salacious gossip on the post-death marital affairs of a celebrity, complete with high drama and some family law thrown in for good measure, together with the emotive matter of religious rights in mission schools, with quasi-experts on constitutional law waxing lyrical.
The cacophony literally drowned out the state funeral of former First Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings on Friday.
May she rest peacefully.
Lumba drama
The unfolding events following the death of music legend Daddy Lumba are quickly descending into a farce.
The drama of raw emotion and warring between family members, beamed into our homes via video cameras on court premises, is most unedifying and cringeworthy.
The interesting legal issues aside, this situation, which is affecting real lives, especially those of the children involved, is being seen as some form of second-rate recycled foreign soap opera.
Some self-styled members of “team this’ and “team that” seem to be rather emotionally invested in this matter, launching themselves into a melee that has nothing to do with them, lining up behind either of the two ladies involved and arguing themselves hoarse on social media platforms.
The court decision to allow both women to perform the widowhood rites seemed to have caused whoops of delight and tears of anguish in almost equal measure, depending on which ‘team’ one belongs, with the judge getting her share of the heat of opprobrium.
It even appears some wives are literally reading the riot act to their husbands in demanding to know on which side they stand.
For the sake of peace in the matrimonial home, wise husbands are either pretending not to follow the whole saga or are declaring fervent support for Madam Akosua Serwaa, whom Lumba married first.
I hope that, especially for the sake of the children, this sorry saga that threatens to taint the image of a great music legend will come to some finality pretty soon.
It should not be impossible for the warring factions to pull back and come together to give Lumba a befitting, dignified send-off.
Religious brouhaha
The ongoing legal tussle involving Wesley Girls High School and a Muslim girl over issues of Islamic prayers and fasting in the school seems to have generated quite some heat, with various churches and bodies weighing in with their perspectives.
At my Opoku Ware School, a Catholic mission school, Catholic mass on Sunday mornings is compulsory for all students.
A prayer area, complete with storage facilities and running water for ablutions, has been set aside in the school for Muslim students.
My understanding is that several mission schools have similar arrangements for their Muslim students.
Indeed, in the 1950s, the school’s first headmaster, Father Burgess, a Catholic priest, personally ensured that during the month of Ramadan, his Muslim students’ breakfast was ready by dawn and their lunch was set aside for them.
He also reportedly personally drove his Muslim students in the school truck to the mosque to pray.
As a general rule, I agree that the mission identity of a school is an integral part of its identity, particularly since the status of these schools are that they are were founded by the missions and are owned by them, but are government-assisted.
To the extent that every student who decides to enrol must attend religious services that highlight the school’s identity.
The issue appears to be the extent to which particular requirements of children belonging to faiths other than the one the school identifies with can and should be accommodated with respect to their constitutional right to practice their religious beliefs.
It is this balancing act that is drawing up a lot of debate and which the Supreme Court has been invited to settle.
My view is that if the particular request does not compromise the school’s academic work, disciplinary regime, and health and safety issues and is reasonable, then it should be possible for the school to find a way to accommodate it, possibly with its own terms and conditions.
What is reasonable will turn on its own specific facts and one scenario does not necessarily fit each school.
On the specific issue of a student undertaking Muslim prayers quietly beside his or her bed, I struggle to see how this impacts adversely on the school and I think it is possible to accommodate it without the heavens falling through.
If we can make reasonable room for health conditions in our schools, we should be able to do the same for religious practices.
There are important lessons on tolerance and diversity to be learned in our senior high schools by our children when the student population is heterogeneous in religious terms and reasonable accommodation is made for minority faiths; otherwise, you end up with dangerous religious silos.
Let’s pull back
Christianity and Islam have reasonably coexisted in this country and we have escaped the sharp divisions that have befallen other nations in the sub-region.
We must jealously guard it.
The emotionally driven sabre-rattling and sharp, caustic public commentary in the wake of this issue does, in my view, threaten to compromise this coexistence, which is why I am deeply uncomfortable that the courts have been invited into this highly sensitive matter.
Invariably, there will be a winner and a loser in court.
Whichever side wins will not bode well for the other, thereby inflaming passions that could spin into something else.
It will definitely not bring finality to the matter by any stretch of the imagination.
Au contraire, heels will dig in.
The courts are not always the solution to thorny, sensitive issues such as this, no matter what Article this or Article that of the Constitution says or does not say.
Perception is key, especially as the Supreme Court bench has Christian and Muslim judges as well as two alumnae from the school in question.
I sincerely wish that in this particular instance, the stakeholders involved will find a way to pull away from the court and find a middle ground somewhere.
It should be humanly possible.
Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng.
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