‘Touch not my anointed!’
It is yet another season in the electoral cycle, and there have been no disappointments, with the usual suspects rolling out as if on autocue.
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It is the season of health walks, with supporters of the two major political parties, in particular, thronging the streets, flexing their political muscles and vying to outdo each other, as if to intimidate the other party and put the fear of God in their ‘footsoldiers’.
On the campaign trail and with cameras in tow, vote-seeking politicians step up to pound fufu, braid hair, stir steaming banku sitting on coal pots with the dexterity of professionals and dance all over the place – sometimes out of step, but never mind.
With great fanfare, they play ’oware’ and cards, eat ‘waakye’ with their hands and drink sachet water with voters, all in a bid to show off their common touch credentials, cheered on by party faithful clad in their T-shirts and excitedly screaming “Honourable! Honourable!!”
I am yet to see a candidate, especially a man, playing ‘ampe’ with voters, but in this republic, nothing is impossible. If it can rake in a few extra votes, I am sure many campaigning politicians will not mind.
Prophecy galore
Of course, no contemporary Ghanaian election is complete without differing electoral prophecies from the galaxy of prophets that adorn our political firmament, and it is what I find most amusing -and perhaps unique- about our elections, one other being the peace industry that seems to go into rather excitable overdrive in this season with songs, radio jingles and marches, as if we are on the precipe of drawing cudgels and machetes to club or hack each other to death over elections.
It appears that for whatever reason, the Almighty, for reasons only he can tell, decided to take particular interest in Ghanaian elections and speak to us through his prophets.
To top up, he apparently speaks to us through his prophets every year on New Year’s Eve to warn us of deaths and other grave things we should expect in the ensuing year.
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Some quick online research I conducted revealed that Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon and some other countries also have flourishing electoral prophecy industries. God must truly love Africa.
As for the Western countries, it appears he has abandoned them and left them at the mercy of opinion polls to tell which way their elections are likely to go. Maybe their sins are many.
Even then, apparently, God reveals American election outcomes, for instance, to African prophets but refuses to share them with American prophets, perhaps because they are not authentic enough. Never mind that most of the polls in these countries tend to speak with one voice and are almost always accurate in their predictions.
Trouble
The trouble with our electoral prophecies is that God appears to make two different revelations to our array of prophets. The smaller parties and independent candidates are completely frozen out in the scheme of things, so whichever way their prophecies go, you can be sure of their binary nature – that it is either the New Patriotic Party (NPP) or the National Democratic Congress (NDC) that will carry the day.
The consequence of these contradictory prophecies purporting to come from one God is that it creates confusion in the mind as to what God has truly said, thereby conflicting with 1 Corinthians 14:44 (‘For God is not a God of confusion but of peace’).
Ultimately, therefore, many simply line up behind the prophet who speaks to their hope and expectation that a particular party and/or presidential candidate will win, and then run to town excitedly with the ‘good’ news, with the other side scoffing and calling a particular prophet fake just because he did not project their expectation.
The postulation usually is that a particular prophet’s prophetic services have been procured by a particular political party for a psychological boost to its electoral fortunes.
Interestingly, some prophets have been labelled ‘NPP prophets’ and others, ‘NDC prophets’, with a few supposed neutrals thrown in.
In all of this, the biblical injunction of Psalm 105:15 (“Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm”) rings in many people’s ears and they simply shrug and keep their thoughts to themselves.
Inevitably, when the results emerge, some prophets get some sniggering and egg on their faces when it goes pear-shaped for them, whilst others attain celebrity status for their ‘bona fide’ prophecy.
Social context
In a country where Bible-thumping Christianity has a stronghold and where various prophecies are regularly sought in people’s personal lives, it is unsurprising that the prophecy industry, complete with flourishing holy water and holy oil sector, would spill into wider issues such as elections.
On the contrary, in a Western country, a prophet would be laughed at and scorned across the political divide if he dared make an election prophecy in favour of a particular party and claimed it was from God.
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Even the party the prophecy is in favour of would be embarrassed to associate with the prophet and hang on to his prophecy. In recent times, however, opinion polls seem to be picking up here, but they suffer credibility challenges.
Personally, I prefer to smile and walk away from all electoral prophecies - even the pro-NPP ones that align with my political interests – not because of Psalm 105:15, but because I simply find them rather amusingly absurd.
Well, I am no prophet, so I suppose I will stick to a simple prediction instead of the NPP winning the election.
Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng,
Head, Communications & Public Affairs Unit,
Ministry of Energy.
E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com
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