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The Big Six provide enough food for thought, not only during the dry seasons, but at all times.
They might move you to tears as you reflect on Ghana’s past, but they might also put smiles on your face, even better if you wear a dimple !!!
The story of the Danquah-Nkrumah duo may have produced a bit of cacophony, but we want a world without these notables who choose to express their love of the country by crossing the sword.
This explains the slices of theater that I have sought to reproduce in my previous articles, recounting puzzles and dilemmas that the two statesmen have engendered.
But the theater is not over.
The third woman
On or about March 6, 1997, I finished my housework at Legon early enough to continue a theatrical production at Accra Arts Center on the High Street.
It was a special event to commemorate Ghana at 40. The NDC government had deemed it prudent to add theatrical performances to the program of events.
The advertisement was a play performed by Abibigromma, the famous national theater group.
The featured play was The Third Woman, written by a highly unlikely playwright: JB Danquah. In addition to fighting to bring about a nation state called Ghana, along with his various roles in the Gold Coast Legislature, Big Six, United Gold Coast Convention, etc., Joseph Boakye Danquah has also translated his erudition in African philosophy in theater.
The Third Woman was written in 1943. Directing this intricate play to celebrate Ghana at 40 required an experienced caste and theater group, and Abibigromma was fit for purpose.
The director of this 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 a prolonged standing ovation for the excellent performance of the National Theater Company, but especially for the third woman herself, played by the charismatic Irene Opare.
Oddly enough, one of the memorable results of the show was a personal discovery that I didn’t make from the show itself, but sitting next to me.
Dramatic discovery
Thirty minutes before the curtain rose, I had entered the performance hall looking for a front row seat and quickly scanned a seat.
I sat comfortably while waiting for the show to start.
The location was the Accra Arts Center auditorium, which was on its last legs as a brand new national theater was under construction.
Comfortably seated, I looked good to my right, and who was sitting next to me? A legendary lawyer often met only through hearings and whisperings; small lips, dark, sporting reds, and gazing thoughtfully on the vacant stage.
Oh mine! It was the legendary Tsatsu Tsikata! I can swear I almost collapsed, rubbing shoulders with the famous kid lawyer, then a lecturer at Legon. And was he also in the plays? Hmmmm.
I wondered if I could ever strike up a conversation with him.
I would probably start by chanting from the nose, “Sir, are you sure you are not a ghost’s dilemma?” I took a risk thinking a conversation would be a nightmare, but I was wrong.
We spoke warmly for 15 minutes without worried breaks. In the end, I brought home a bigger surprise package.
The man, Tsatsu Tsikata, spoke to me like a perfect Fante! Ewuradze! Apparently, Mfantsipim College, where he received his high school education, may have injected huge doses of the Fanti vaccine into young Tsatsu.
The whole incident happened in a hazy past, and Tsatsu can forgive me if it was a case of failed memory.
If I remember correctly, I would have to say that JB Danquah’s play, The Third Woman, managed to bring me face to face with living legend, Tsatsu Tsikata.
A dreaded nightmare had turned into a pleasant dream!
2006 conference
But the real confrontation came in 2006, when I proposed to speak on the podium of the J B. Danquah Memorial lecture series, instituted by the Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This is a platform where fellows give a three-day lecture, often meant to amplify the values and ideals espoused by JB Danquah.
An important aspect of the Danquah platform was the additional opportunity it provided to interact with the family of JB Danquah, who were special guests of the Academy each year.
Over the years, this has made me know her children and loved ones quite well, Hilda, Josephine, Iris Danquahs, etc. often happily seated in the front row.
One such event brought me face to face with the still smiling late JB Danquah-Adu at British Council Hall.
Years before, I had voraciously read JB’s classic book, The Akan Doctrine of God and others which reveal Danquah’s close intimacy with Indigenous traditions and practices, especially religion and language.
Danquah’s writings on indigenous institutions clearly overlapped with those of other Gold Coast scholars I had read, especially J. E Casely Hayford.
For three days in March 2006, I took a trip to the Academy and the general public, exploring the consolidation of democracy in Ghana through indigenous languages.
I sought to link my own interest in indigenous language and traditions with the deepening of constitutional democracy in Ghana.
How can language, literacy and education issues be used to deepen democratic governance? How can literacy or the lack of it impact freedom of expression and stakeholder participation in governance? How could the illiterate, often in the majority, survive their participation in the country’s national forums?
My main connections to the past in this meticulous engagement included veteran politician CK Tedam, who was then alive, and helped me with views from past national and local assemblies.
But I had also buried my head for weeks in the Parliamentary Hanzards spent in the well-equipped Library of Parliament. A Mr. Brown was in charge.
I then turned to the relationships of past and contemporary sages and politicians whose success in politics depended more on the wisdom of the streets than on literacy and the queen’s language.
The Verandah Boys of the CPP were helpful, as were the notable illiterate and semi-literate who had been elected to Ghana’s Constituent Assembly to draft the 1992 Constitution.
It was indeed historic, welcoming to the Danquah Memorial Lecture the connections of the famous Krobo Edusei of the CPP, Nkrumah Home Minister, an extremely formidable veranda boy with a modest Western education; and the relations of Akim Oda’s former district commissioner, the great Kwame Kwakye, who was jokingly said, had his own English dictionary.
Add to that in the auditorium, the Danquah family, Academy scholars, students from various academic institutions and a curious variety of people from far and near, and you would happily proclaim that a sufficiently diverse college has been formed so that the typical works of the Academy stand. .
Behind the podium was myself, along with Nana Dr. SKB Asante, President of the Academy who is also the Supreme Leader of Asokore Mampong, Ashanti, majestically seated on stage.
The very venerable Nana, lawyer by profession, was decorated in a royal fashion and skilfully presided over the debates.
With us in mind that day were Dr JB Danquah and Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, boss of the Verandah Boys.
At the end of the three-day lecture, I declared that I had been the 39th speaker in the JB Danquah lecture series.
Genesis of university education
While Danquah’s interest in Indigenous language and institutions was phenomenal, his impact on establishment and access to higher education was even more notable.
Man JB Danquah is to be commended 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 creation of a single university college for the whole of British West Africa, to be built in Ibadan, Nigeria.
The Gold Coast would not accept this. Led by scholar and politician JB Danquah and others, they informed the UK government that Gold Coast could financially support its own University College.
The colonial government then reconsidered its decision and agreed to create the University College of the Gold Coast, which would be affiliated with the University of London.
With a bachelor’s degree in 1925 from the University College of London up his sleeve, Danquah knew the enormous impact of higher education on the quality of public service and selflessly mobilized Gold Coast farmers to contribute to the start of the university.
He persuaded cocoa farmers to sacrifice part of their harvest, to raise seed funds for this purpose.
This explains the genesis of Ghana’s first university in 1948 with Nigeria’s first university, Ibadan, the same year.
The Akuafo Hall of the University College of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), was so named in 1956, to honor farmers for their foresight and initiative in funding the establishment of a university, which, seventy years later inspired the founding of several more. Across the country.
The mastermind behind the entire project was the dean of Gold Coast politics, J. B Danquah.
In 2008, the University of Ghana named the main avenue of the University as JB Danquah Avenue.
It is no wonder that the president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, grandnephew of JB Danquah seeks to evolve the educational project of her mentor, by exploring the offer of scholarships to the children of cocoa farmers entering university. .
I understand the Department of Education has been actively working out the details with other relevant agencies.
The monuments
In addition to commemorating Danquah with the prestigious Academy lectures, the imposing University of Ghana and the naming of streets, Ghana in 1968 issued special commemorative postage stamps to mark the International Year of Human Rights. , declared by the United Nations General Assembly.
J B. Danquah appeared on the stamps alongside Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr, the great black American civil rights leader assassinated in 1968, three years after Danquah’s agonizing death.
The two great men, Danquah and Martin Luther King had sacrificed their lives to defend human rights, one in Ghana, 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 would then blink and step back into a lifeless bronze.
This concludes my modest contribution to this year’s Heritage Month, with personal encounters with the Big Six.
Happy birthday everyone.
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