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The big six provide enough material to think about, not just in the dry seasons, but at all times.
They could make you cry as you reflect on Ghana’s past, but they could also put smiles on your face, even better if you fight a dimple !!!
The history of the Danquah-Nkrumah duo may have produced a bit of cacophony, but imagine a world without such notable characters who choose to express their love for the country by crossing swords.
This explains the portions of the theater that I have tried to reproduce in my previous posts, recounting puzzles and dilemmas that the two statesmen generated.
But the theater is not over.
The third woman
On or around March 6, 1997, I finished my housework at Legon early enough to pursue a stage production at the Accra Arts Center on High Street.
It was a special event to commemorate Ghana in 40 years. The NDC government considered it prudent to add theatrical performances to the event program.
A play was announced to be performed by Abibigromma, the renowned National Theater group.
The main play was The Third Woman, written by a highly unlikely playwright: JB Danquah. In addition to fighting for the birth of a nation-state called Ghana, as well as his various roles in the Gold Coast Legislative Assembly, the Big Six, the United Gold Coast Convention, etc., Joseph Boakye Danquah also translated his scholarship into philosophy African to the theater.
The Third Woman was written in 1943. Putting that complex play on stage to celebrate Ghana @ 40 required an experienced caste and theater group, and Abibigromma was fit for purpose.
The director of that production was the late Allen Tamakloe, whom I used to call my brother-in-law.
The play, as it unfolded, was an engaging marathon and ended with an extensive standing ovation for the excellent performance of the National Theater Company, but particularly for Third Woman herself, played by the charismatic Irene Opare.
Interestingly, one of the memorable results of the show was a personal discovery that I made not from the show itself, but sitting next to me.
Dramatic discovery
Thirty minutes before the curtain rose, I walked into the performance hall looking for a front row seat and quickly found a spot.
I sat comfortably waiting for the show to start.
The location was the auditorium of the Accra Arts Center, which was in its last stages, because a new national theater was being built.
Comfortably seated I looked well to my right, and who was sitting next to me? A legendary lawyer was often known only through rumors and whispers; sporty dark dark red lips and looking pensively at the empty stage.
Oh my! It was the legendary Tsatsu Tsikata! I can swear I almost fell apart, rubbing shoulders with the renowned boy genius of justice, then Legon’s professor. And did you also like plays? Hmmmm.
I wondered if I could ever start a conversation with him.
He would probably start by intoning through his nose, “Sir, are you sure it’s not a ghost’s dilemma?” I took a chance thinking that chatting would be a nightmare, but I was wrong.
We spoke cordially for 15 minutes without awkward interruptions. In the end, I took home a bigger surprise package.
The knight, Tsatsu Tsikata, had spoken to me in perfect Fante! Ewuradze! Apparently Mfantsipim College, where he did his secondary education, may have injected considerable doses of the Fanti vaccine into young Tsatsu.
The whole incident happened in a hazy past, and Tsatsu can forgive me if this is a case of failed memory.
If my memories are correct, I should say that JB Danquah’s play The Third Woman managed to bring me face to face with the living legend, Tsatsu Tsikata.
A dreaded nightmare had turned into a pleasant dream!
Conference 2006
But the real showdown came in 2006, when I volunteered to speak on the platform for the J B. Danquah commemorative lecture series, instituted by the Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This is a platform where fellows give a three-day lecture, which is often expected to amplify the values and ideals championed by JB Danquah.
A significant aspect of the Danquah platform was the additional opportunity it provided to interact with JB Danquah’s family, who were the special guests of the Academy each year.
Over the years this has gotten me to know her children and relatives quite well, Hilda, Josephine, Iris Danquahs, etc., often sitting happily in the front row.
One such event brought me face to face with the late JB Danquah-Adu, always smiling, at the British Council Hall.
Years before, he had voraciously read JB’s classic book, The Akan God Doctrine, and others that reveal Danquah’s close intimacy with indigenous traditions and practices, particularly religion and language.
Danquah’s writings on indigenous institutions clearly overlap with other Gold Coast scholars he had read, notably J. E Casely Hayford.
Over a three-day period in March 2006, I took the Academy and the general public on a trip, exploring the consolidation of Ghana’s democracy through indigenous languages.
I tried to link my own interest in indigenous language and traditions with Ghana’s growing constitutional democracy.
How can issues of language, literacy and education be used to deepen democratic governance? How can literacy, or its absence, affect freedom of expression and stakeholder participation in governance? How could the illiterate, often the majority, survive participation in the country’s national forums?
My key links to the past in this meticulous engagement included veteran politician CK Tedam, who was then alive, and he helped me with perspectives from past national and local assemblies.
But I had also buried my head for weeks in past Parliamentary Hanzards in the well-resourced Library of Parliament. A Mr. Brown was in charge.
Then I approached the relationships of past and contemporary wise men and politicians whose success in politics was based more on street wisdom than on literacy and the language of the queen.
The Verandah Boys of the CPP were helpful, as were the notable illiterate and semi-literate who had been elected to the Ghana Constituent Assembly to draft the 1992 Constitution.
Indeed, it was historic, hosting at the Danquah memorial conference, relatives of the celebrated Krobo Edusei of the CPP, the Nkrumah Minister of the Interior, a formidable gallery boy with a modest Western upbringing; and the relatives of the former Akim Oda District Commissioner, the great Kwame Kwakye, who was jokingly said, had their own dictionary of English.
Add to these in the auditorium, the Danquah family, Academy fellows, students from various academic institutions, and a curious assortment of people from far and near, and you will happily proclaim that a sufficiently diverse quorum has been formed for them to be held. typical Academy procedures. .
Behind the podium was my good self, with Nana Dr. SKB Asante, President of the Academy, who is also the Supreme Head of Asokore Mampong, Ashanti, sitting majestically on stage.
The very venerable Nana, a lawyer by profession, was regally adorned and ably presided over the proceedings.
With us in spirit that day were Dr. JB Danquah and Dr. Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, patron of the Verandah Boys.
At the end of the three-day conference, he was recorded to have been the 39th speaker in the JB Danquah lecture series.
Genesis of university education
If Danquah’s interest in indigenous language and institutions was phenomenal, his impact on establishing and accessing higher education was even more remarkable.
The man JB Danquah is to be congratulated for accelerating Ghana’s access to university education. His initiative led to the establishment of the University College of the Gold Coast, now the University of Ghana.
In the mid-1940s, the colonial government decided that it would support the establishment of a single university college for all of British West Africa, to be built in Ibadan, Nigeria.
Gold Coast would not accept it. Led by academic and politician JB Danquah and others, they advised the British government that Gold Coast could financially support its own University College.
Subsequently, the colonial government reviewed its decision and agreed to establish the University College of the Gold Coast, which would be affiliated with the University of London.
With a 1925 bachelor’s degree from the University College of London up his sleeve, Danquah knew the tremendous impact of higher education on the quality of public service and selflessly mobilized Gold Coast farmers to help start the University.
He persuaded cocoa farmers to sacrifice a portion of their harvest to raise funds for seeds for that purpose.
That explains the genesis of the main University of Ghana in 1948 along with the main University of Nigeria, Ibadan, in the same year.
The Akuafo Hall of the University College of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), was named in 1956, to honor farmers for their foresight and initiative in financing the start of a university, which seventy years later, has inspired the founding of several other across the country.
The mastermind behind the entire project was Gold Coast’s dean of politics, J. B Danquah.
In 2008, the University of Ghana named the University’s main avenue, JB Danquah Avenue.
Not surprisingly, the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, J. B Danquah’s great-nephew, seeks to enhance his mentor’s educational project by exploring the scholarship offer for children of cocoa farmers entering college.
I understand that the Ministry of Education has been actively completing the details with other relevant agencies.
Monuments
In addition to commemorating Danquah with prestigious academy lectures, a towering Ghana University, and street names, Ghana released special commemorative postage stamps in 1968 to mark the International Year for Human Rights, declared by the UN General Assembly.
The stamps featured J B. Danquah alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the great African-American civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1968, three years after Danquah’s agonizing death.
The two great men, Danquah and Martin Luther King, had sacrificed their lives in defense of human rights, one in Ghana and the other in the United States.
Martin Luther King, nine years earlier, had attended Ghana’s Independence Day ceremony in March 1957, with his wife Coretta.
JB Danquah from then on would blink and recede to a lifeless bronze.
This concludes my modest contribution to this year’s Heritage Month, with Personal Encounters with the Big Six.
Happy anniversary everyone.
