Maybe Some Free SHS Will Do For K. Pratt Jnr.! (1)
Kwabena Amikaketo sat in his favourite chair on his balcony, viewing the setting sun which was making way for the shadows to grow longer and soon cover his part of the world like some dark blanket.
The evening was very chilled and this was the African winter with temperatures hovering around 25ºC. In some places this would be high summer and people would have gone out and about, half naked.
This was Africa and with this temperature people sought warmth in insulated attires. Such was life.
Kwabena was trying to remember the title of a story he read in that collection of Yoruba stories by Bakare Gbadamosi and Ulli Beier, entitled “Not Even God Is Ripe Enough.”
He must remember the title of the story about a very rich man who had a son and many slaves. In the story this young boy started pressuring his father to count all his slaves from the first to the last.
The old man did all he could to ignore his son, however the boy persisted. Then one day, the old man, wearing a sad face gathered all his slaves in the presence of his son and started to count them. He counted his son first.
Apparently, the first slave he bought was his son who was an infant boy and an orphan and rejected by society. From there, his business expanded and so did his wealth. He bought lots of slaves to work his fields and do other businesses for him.
Kwabena needed to know the title of that beautiful story because it would fit in the issue, he was going to contemplate on, in his lamentations that evening.
Lately, a well-known senior journalist, Mr. Kwesi Pratt Jnr., was all about the place degrading Dr. J.B. Danquah, S.G. Antor and in fact, the United Party (UP) Tradition while at the same time elevating Dr. Kwame Nkrumah to heights which he never attained.To Kwabena, Kwesi was like that young boy who, because of pride, arrogance and ignorance compelled his father to come out with the truth, which he found, did not favour him. Truth is truth and it is unbiased.
Before Kwabena would contemplate about Nkrumah, he would love to advise Kwasi Pratt Jnr., to take advantage of the Free SHS policy and attend school again and take a course in history and English.
It was necessary for him to learn more of history so that he would stop spewing out lies about historical events. A course in English would also make him understand who a secessionist is.
Kwabena did not understand why Kwesi could be concocting untruths about S. G. Antor. At the time Mr. Antor formed his political party, Togoland Congress Party, his homeland, the Trans Volta Togoland, was not part of the Gold Coast even though it was administered from it by the British.
Many of those in the south of that region, who were the Ewedome Ewes, were seriously agitating to re-join their tribesmen in French Togoland. The TCP, held that opinion and used it to campaign.
The last elections which should have paved way for independence of the Gold Coast was to have been the 1954 Elections.
However, two major events put that plan off. One was the agitation of Ashanti province for a federal form of government and its subsequent formation of the National Liberation Movement (NLM), which was dominated by disgruntled CPP members who defected.
The other was the strong desire of the Ewedome people to re-unite with the Ewes in French Togoland.
The Colonial administration decided to run another election but that would be after the May 1956 Plebiscite. When it took place, the majority voted for union with Ghana on Independence Day.
Granted that most of the Ewedome Ewes were so disappointed, it is on record that S.G. Antor accepted the verdict of the people of Trans-Volta Togoland and led his party again into the 1956 Elections.
Commonsense should have informed Kwasi Pratt Jnr. that if the 1956 campaign message by the TCP was still, to rally Ewedome Ewes to re-unite with their brothers and sisters in Togo, that party would have gone against the law and would have been disbanded and its leadership, jailed.
This did not happen and TCP went on to win one seat, with S. G. Antor, retaining the Kpandu North seat, he won in 1954.
In 1957, the TCP merged with five other political parties to form the United Party (UP) and so, should it be surprising for Dr. K.A.Busia to appoint S.G. Antor, as an ambassador under his administration?
Kwabena was even more surprised at those in the studio whom Kwesi was talking to. Even though they looked intelligent, the fact that they swallowed the lies coming from Kwesi, without challenging him, made them decorated ignoramus.
- G. Antor could not have been a secessionist. Even though his initial desirewas to get all Ewes united in one state, this noble idea could not come into reality when the results of the 1956 Plebiscite came out. And so, law abiding as he was, S.G. Antor changed his standand supported the status quo. What Kwesi Pratt Jnr., wanted to propagate about S.G. Antor would be like saying that since the Ashanti region was the only region which rejected Jerry John Rawlings at the November 1992 polls, it meant Ashanti region rejected union with Ghana and had decided to secede. How?“Oh, common sense, how come you are sometimes, so uncommon?”
Kwabena shook his head as he still contemplated all that Kwesi Pratt Jnr., said on the 4 minutes 21 seconds video clip. He claimed that the UP Tradition joined with S.G. Antor’s group to reject the union of Trans Volta Togoland with Ghana.
As much as he had no historical evidenceto back that claim, he was also emphatic to state that Nkrumah made it possible for the 1956 Plebiscite to favour unification.
Is Kwesi aware that the Western Togoland secessionists have been accusing Nkrumah of making sure that the Plebiscite was rigged to favour union with Ghana?
Is Kwesi aware that with what he said, he had confirmed that the real enemy of the Ewedome Ewes, who wanted an independent state, was Kwame Nkrumah and all who associate themselves with him and his ideology?
With this coming out from a staunch Nkrumaist, maybe it is about time that the Ewedome Ewes, reconsider their relationship with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and all socialist parties. Kwabena hoped that Togbe Afedi would considerably take this statement from Kwesi, seriously.
And did Kwesi actually say that by 1966, Nkrumah started implementing the vision of a united Africa by being inconfederation with Mali and Guinea, before he was overthrown? This, Kwesi said was a huge step towards African Unity.
And did he actually say that by the time he was overthrown, Nkrumah signed an agreement with Patrice Lumumba of Congo, unifying Ghana and Congo, as one?
What a minute, Kwabena said to himself. That Ghana/Mali/Guinea also known as the Union of African States (UAS) was a major step towards Africa Unity? How?
At a meeting in Accra, which took place from April 27 to 29, 1961, Presidents Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Modibo Keita of Mali signed a charter formally establishing a tripartite Union of African States.
The drafting of the charter evolved out of a decision announced by the three government leaders at Conakry, Guinea, on December 24, 1960, envisioning common diplomatic representation and the creation of committees to draw up arrangements for harmonising economic and monetary policies.
The UAS has not been of great importance in the development of Pan-Africanism and it was declared as no longer in existence by Touré in 1963. So, this thing that Kwesi was talking about never lived to see 1966, so what could it have done to see the vision of a United Africa becoming a reality?
And if the Ghana/Mali/Guinea union did not live to see 1966, what did Kwesi mean by saying by the time Nkrumah was overthrown, that union was in existence?
At any rate, if Kwesi did not know, and this confirms the call on him to humbly access Free SHS, the breaking down of the founding of a United Africa could be largely blamed on Nkrumah and his colleague heads of state of the seven-member Casablanca Group.
While the twenty-seven free African nations sat at table to begin negotiations to unite and become one nation, twenty of them, all belonging to the Monrovia Group wanted a free-market economy or pro-capitalist form of governance.
The minority, the Casablanca Group made up of Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Egypt, had wanted a command economy or pro-socialist form of governance.
There was a deadlock, but if the minority, led by Ghana, had accepted the views of the majority, Africa would have been a union of states, by now.
It was really unbelievable to Kwabena that Kwesi could sit on national television and propagate lies about Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba signing an agreement unifying Ghana and Congo. When did that agreement take place when Patrice Lumumba was prime minister of Congo for less than a year, in the year 1960?
At that time, there was political turmoil in Congo instigated by the sharp differences between Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and so it was impossible for the former to have signed such an international agreement.In a short write-up, “Congo:
The Hand of Kwame,” published on Monday October 10, 1960,nothing indicated any of such agreement, except for Kwame Nkrumah doing everything possible to foment more trouble in Congo, through Ghana’s charge d’affaires, Nathaniel A. Welbeck. Lumumba was assassinated in 1961. If there was ever such unification, why did Ghana not send troops to fight in Congo, since after all it was also part of Ghana?
Kwabena Amikaketo heard his beloved daughter, Echelle coming to usher him to bed. He promised to be back, tomorrow and expose Nkrumah for what he was and to make Kwesi Pratt Jnr., know that he knew nothing about the history of this God blessed homeland of theirs, called Ghana.
Echelle held his hands and walked him into his warm bedroom. He must find the title of that story in ‘Not Only God Is Ripe Enough To Catch A Woman In Love,’ he surely must, as he said himself to sleep.
Hon. Daniel Dugan
