The Forgotten Deeds and Sacrifices of a True Patriot
The military confrontations between Ashanti and the Fante contributed to the growth of British influence on the Gold Coast, as the Fante states, concerned about Ashanti activities on the coast, signed the Bond of 1844 at Fomena-Adansi, that allowed the British to usurp judicial authority from African courts.
The Bond stated as follows:
“1. Whereas power and jurisdiction have been exercised for and on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, within diverse countries and places adjacent to Her Majesty’s forts and settlements on the Gold Coast; we, chiefs of countries and places so referred to, adjacent to the said forts and settlements, do hereby acknowledge that power and jurisdiction, and declare that the first objects of law are the protection of individuals and of property.
“2. Human sacrifices, and other barbarous customs, such as panyaring, are abominations, and contrary to law.
“3. Murders, robberies, and other crimes and offences, will be tried and enquired of before the Queen’s judicial officers and the chiefs of the districts, moulding the customs of the country to the general principles of British law.
While the British viewed this agreement as an undertaking to take part in the administration of justice and the enforcement of their laws in the local states, the local leaders saw it as a military and defense contract only.
Between 1874 and 1900, the British took administrative, judicial, financial and social measures as well as eroding the powers of the chiefs and traditional authority. This provoked anger and protests among the educated people.
In 1897, the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (ARPS) was formed by chiefs and the intelligentsia and led by Mensah-Sarbah, J.W. de Graft-Johnson, Chief J.D. Abraham and J.P. Brown.
The Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society’s (ARPS) main protest was to seek to prevent the wholesale expropriation of African lands by European entrepreneurs or officials. And to campaign against the exclusion of qualified Africans from the colonial administration. This was the true foundation of our road to independence.
Two years after the ARPS was founded on Saturday, December 18, 1895, Joseph Kwame Kyeretwei Boakye Danquah was born. He took to politics during his student days in the UK. After university, and by the late 1920s, he was a leader in uniting the intelligentsia and the chiefs, something which the British had hoped to rely on to achieve their divide-and-rule tactics. He also advocated the youths to unite and think and act together as one people for the good of the country.
By 1930, came the formation of other groups, which prepared the minds of the Gold Coasters to independent rule. Two of these were the Youth Conference and the West Africa Youth League.
The Gold Coast Youth Conference Movement was launched by J.B. Danquah in 1929. It had two principal objectives. The first was to unite the intelligentsia and the chiefs and the second was to inculcate into the youth the essentials of development and progress of the nation.
J.B. Danquah was among some Ghanaians who regularly went to England to protest on issues that the people were against. These included the Water Works Ordinance and Sedition Ordinance, in 1934.
In 1937, after the UAC and other expatriates fixed the price of cocoa without first consulting the farmers and rating it, unacceptably low, one John Ayew a friend of Tete-Ansah a prominent economist, from Saisi, Odumasi-Krobo, organised the last most significant demonstration of rural discontent before the Second World War. J.B. Danquah added his voice in support when he said, “the secret is, the farmers’ will and determination to fight against a principle, the principle of exploitation, the turning of a free peasant community of independent producers into a commodity of the labour market, these instruments in the hands of international capitalists who have come to take the farmers’ little for nothing.”
J.B. Danquah wanted to see good progress made within the local communities and went to fight for this. In 1944, during the centenary celebration of the Bond of 1844, Danquah and his Youth Conference organised series of lectures nationwide. In these lectures the youth were asked to prepare themselves to take-over the country. J.B. Danquah called for a new Bond of 1944, where there will be a federation of the Colony, Asante, Northern Territories and the British Togoland regions.
The idea of establishing a United States of Africa was brought up by the West Africa Students’ Union (WASU) which was founded in London in 1925 by Dr. Bankole-Bright and Ladipo Solanke. It was an amalgamation of the Union for Students of African Descent (ASAD), the Gold Coast Students’ Union and the Nigerian Progress Union.
WASU was seen, as a step towards creating a ‘United States of West Africa,’ which would lead eventually to a United Africa and also stand in the forefront of the struggle for freedom. Its first officers were W. Davidson Carro of Gambia, President; J.B. Danquah of the Gold Coast (Ghana), Vice President; Ladipo Solanke of Nigeria, and J. Akanni Doherty of Nigeria as Treasurer and Financial Secretary.
The aims of WASU were to foster the spirit of national consciousness and racial pride among Africans and persons of African origin and to prove to the whites that Africa has a history and culture of its own.
We have heard these words and ambitions somewhere during the struggle for total liberation of Africa, especially about the call for Africa to unite as one state. Certainly, it was from Dr Kwame Nkrumah, who was a young teenager of sixteen years in 1925 when WASU was formed. Did he get inspiration from WASU, which he joined in the 40’s?
WASU remained active in London throughout the 1930s and 1940s and served as the rallying-point for nationalist students from West Africa during the period.
By now readers have come to realise that Dr. J.B. Danquah had become someone who sought to unite his people in the Gold Coast and also believed that for the Blackman to be successful in all things and be recognised as such, West Africa and later the whole of Africa were to unite.
The end of the Second World War seemed to be an entrenchment of colonialism in Africa for at least another fifty years. But that was not to be. Once the war ended, the Gold Coast was full of hopes and expectations which remained unrealised in the immediate post war period. While the economic and social activities of the Colonial Government, after the war, antagonised the commercial class, their political activities also alienated the intelligentsia.
In light of all these postwar frustrations, it became obvious that a new political movement different from the existing but inactive ARPS and the Youth Conference was inevitable. Indeed, a number of new political cells began soon after the war. One was the National League of the Gold Coast formed by Edward Akufo-Addo.
A similar cell was also formed in Sekondi in 1947 by George Grant and J.B. Danquah. On hearing of the activities of the National League, George Grant sent J.B. Danquah to Akufo-Addo to see to a merger. Out of this came the United Gold Coast Convention.
The UGCC was inaugurated at Saltpond on August 4, 1947. Its aim was to ensure ‘that by all legitimate and constitutional means, the direction and control of government should pass into the hands of the people and chiefs in the shortest possible time.’
The founding members of the UGCC were George (Paa) Grant, Chairman; J.B. Danquah, founder of the Youth Conference, as Vice Chairman; R.S. Blay, as Vice Chairman; R.A. Awoonor-Williams, Treasurer and Edward Akufo-Addo, J.W. de Graft Johnson, Obetsebi Lamptey, Kobina Kessie, E.A.W. Ofori Atta and John Tsiboe among some others as members.
It is very obvious that the works of J.B. Danquah inspired others like Kwame Nkrumah who was invited to join the UGCC, later.
Dr. J.B. Danquah believed strongly that sovereignty resided in the chiefs and people of the Gold Coast, and one of his objectives was to unite chiefs and peoples of this country. He also supported moves to include locals in administration of the colony.
He was instrumental in rousing the consciousness of the people of the Gold Coast to the issue of securing self-government, from British imperial domination, in the shortest possible time.
This idea was in fact accepted by the Watson Commission in 1948, when it indicated that the probationary period needed to enable the Gold Coast to reach full self-government was ten years.
The CPP’s slogan of ‘self-government now,’ was not achieved until nine years after the Watson Commission report, making no significant difference between that and the UGCC’s ‘self-government in the shortest possible time.’
Dr. J.B. Danquah did a lot for Ghana as recorded above. And yet many pro-socialists, especially from the Nkrumaist group and the NDC, are bent on using any means possible to eliminate his name from our history.
He was wrongfully accused of making efforts to overthrow the Nkrumah regime. Disturbed by restrictions placed upon Ghanaians by a Ghanaian government led by Kwame Nkrumah, he petitioned the president. Such restrictions included throwing people to jail without trial on even mere allegations.
Nkrumah completed what the British Colonialists started by eroding chiefs of their authority, jurisdiction over land and mineral resources. He had the authority to decide who becomes chief and who does not.
For writing a petition to Nkrumah, J.B. Danquah was jailed twice. During his second time in jail, he passed on to the life hereafter, on February 4, 1965 at aged 69. Nkrumah was 56, then.
Whatever J.B. Danquah did wrong that makes pro-socialists hate him is incomprehensible. May his gentle soul continue to rest in the bosom of the Lord God, his Maker.
(Ref: Ghana: Evolution and Change by Adu-Boahen; The Danquah-Busia Tradition in the Politics of Ghana by Kantinka K. Donkoh Fordwor and The Man J.B Danquah by Joe Appiah, among a few).
Hon. Daniel Dugan.
