By Anis Haffar


Familiar strands run through Edmund Burke, George Bernard Shaw, Aneurin Bevin, George Padmore, and Kwame Nkrumah. Certainly, this intellectual quintet belonged to a class of eloquent activists, and inspired writers. They have influenced many including Mr Kwaku Baprui Asante. The snatches of spirit - in the medley of Pan-African, socialist, and democratic undertones - showed in Mr Asante’s intellectual choices.

Indeed, any of the following titles - Observations on the Present State of the Nation (Burke), Too True to be Good (Bernard Shaw), In Place of Fear (Bevin), Birth Pains of Black Nationhood (Padmore), or Class Struggle (Nkrumah) - could be fitting sub-titles for Mr Asante’s book Voice from Afar: A Ghanaian Experience.

Among other urges, the author shared mostly Nkrumah’s sentiments for Africa’s economic and political freedom, and belief in the African. Said Mr Asante: “I never tire of recalling the faith Kwame Nkrumah had in Ghanaian doctors to build a medical school even though they had no previous experience of teaching in a medical school”. “You can do it,” Nkrumah assured Dr Charlie Easmon.

Mr Asante knew Nkrumah in the flesh. He served as the principal secretary of the African Affairs Secretariat from 1960 - 1966 at the Flagstaff House. A chapter, “Of ‘Hosannas’ and ‘Crucify Him’ ”, contain Mr Asante’s insights to Nkrumah about both the peace mission to Hanoi - which spelled Nkrumah’s doom - and President Lyndon Johnson’s promise about “cessation of bombings” in Vietnam.

Voice from Afar is a 192-page anthology of 52 selected articles published between 1994 and 2002, in Ghana’s Daily Graphic. Sporting a classy cover design by Amarkine Amartefio, the book captures Mr Asante’s sense of duty: that of putting an interpretative handle on Ghana’s fate and fortune for the understanding of his fellow countrymen, and women. The core of his work resonated similar challenges that stimulated the writings of the intellectual quintet in their periods.

Vice is needed if virtue is to stand a chance (so observed Machiavelli in 1513). To Mr Asante’s credit, his weekly columns contain faithful attempts to make the state safe. But in spite of its bold frankness, the book may find it hard to make men virtuous. Remember, saints and saucier prophets tried to redeem mankind, but to no avail. Recall Isaiah’s frustration: “Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils. Of what account is he?” Also, in Geneva (to taste a Bernard Shaw comedy) a Judge character was to declare: “I give you up as hopeless. Man is a failure as a political animal. The creative forces which produce him must produce something better”.

Yet the pockets of optimism deep in Mr Asante’s psyche are strong motivators. Besides, his conscience - elevated to a pedigree status via the esteemed influences - deserved release and use, lest they withered like raisins in the sun. The eighty four years of blessed living [Mr Asante was born March 26, 1924] and heroic exposure has given the man enviable weight. His taste of the fine life includes music, hockey, and the occasional European leisure drive from Bern to Vienna.

Mr Asante boasts of an eminent Achimota College Class of 1942 that sported Professor Silas Dodu - the first Professor and Dean of Ghana Medical School; Professors Albert Tackie and Addo Kufuor of KNUST; Victor Owusu – the great legal brain of the Okomfo Anokye Chambers; Joe Reindorf – a former Attorney General; R.R. Amponsah; and Dr A.A. Armar of the Methodist Church; Dr J.I.T. Glover; D.Q. Annoh of Ghana Railways; and Ambassador Richard Akwei.

As the American, Henry David Thoreau, put it, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live”. Mr Asante served as Ghana’s ambassador to Switzerland and Belgium, and high commissioner in London. He was secretary for Trade and Tourism in 1982, and for Education and Culture in 1988; and was involved in many OAU, Ecowas, Unctad, and Unido deliberations. In addition to receiving the Grand Medal (Order of the Volta), he was honoured by the University of Ghana with a doctorate in 1999.

Mr Asante’s own credentials, and the eminent company he kept separated him from youngish observers who obscured their very efforts by the habitual slumps into hasty closures. This is the author’s strength which, in turn, informed his book’s vigour.

Mr Asante’s moral resilience and literary gestures for the times cut through insular or ethnic interests. He speaks for one nation. “Here I stand,” he seemed to say: “I cannot do otherwise”. The shrewd comparisons, contrasts, and advice – sourced from vast and earned coffers - are most appropriate for the season. Like the ingenious great grand-daddy to “a young population”, when trifles flared up into anxieties, he elected a healthy restraint like a peacock, “we should not envy them”; but if push came to shove, he spawned reprisals like a hawk, “Tit for tat (for those) who show us no respect”. This double-edged uniqueness resonated through his book.

Interesting Topics

	Anis Haffar and KB Asante

The topics in the book are wieldy, but timely: the IMF/World Bank, the civil service, land sales, chieftaincy disputes, Ghana’s dwindling forests, population, energy, education, etc. And the themes – which many take for granted as staples for acceptable tradition - are cruel and dead difficult, yet uncompromising: illiteracy, filth, environmental destruction, self-disrespect, intellectual laziness, poverty! His revelations about passive dispositions (the maladies and the lack of confidence that feed inaction) are stated boldly. He offers impressive illustrative details.

Consider these “K. B. Asanteisms”: On work ethic: “Civil servants have learnt to do nothing unless directed because ‘if you do nothing, you do nothing wrong and you survive’ ”. On the IMF/World Bank: “The major economies ‘sin a little when it is in their interest to do so … We should not only listen to our benefactors but also observe what they do … our future lies (in) manufactures and not in more commodities’ ”.

On civic issues: “it is time for serious politics and not political promises that ‘would be bedtime infatuation or a lie’ ”. On self-knowledge [my favourite]: “If you compose your own obituary at 20, you have time to make sense of your life. Think about it”. On discipline: “we Ghanaians do not seem to like the discipline of working within rules, within a well-defined system. A minister or politician would rather like to engage, promote and sack officers as he pleases”.

On scruples: “Fufu was put in the middle of sacks of rubber. Years later beer bottles were broken by some foreign companies to cripple Accra Brewery”. On sharing: “Today we tend to hide the food and wipe our mouth when a visitor approaches while we are eating, because we do not have enough”.

The man in the author points to a lust for life: “Men know that women come in all sizes, shapes… The Ghanaian gentleman generally likes some flesh to cuddle”. [Please: Which man - tender or vile - will not stoop to the pillowy bosom?]. But often his inner self stands aghast at ugly obstacles that block progress and create horror: “We live in a world which does not look into the heart (but prefers) riotous living or yielding to desires and the base instincts … some old habits must die to make life better”.

These vignettes add to Mr Asante’s journalistic essence. The rhetorical playfulness and satiric intent merge, brilliantly, into therapy: they reveal one’s own pathos. The skills he displays are akin to those of the solipsist who knows that what he means is right, and better that how he says it ought not be wrong. He has held the field of journalism, and raised the ante for professionalism by supplying fertile mines for mature study. Embodying the answers to a forward-looking society, his concerns and methods require quality continuity, and resolve. Such outlooks bridge distances between hope and fulfillment: “What is important is to have a purpose in life”, he counsels.

As expected, his opinions crop up with ease - by way of the imperial “we” supported by the imperative “must” or “should”. His arguments stir user-friendly challenges for valuation and re-evaluation of the status quo. Quality experiences help. The choice reminiscences - and occasional swipes at the bold, old world – sway readers to the diplomatic and political theatres where he played parts.

Mr Asante’s ear for the entertaining story, and eye for the telltale detail score points. A number of committed readers welcome the no-nonsense, born-again kind of kinship with him. The downrightness and eagerness to solve problems have increased both his popularity and the clamour for his memoirs: “Some maintain that it is a duty I owe to posterity and the present generation”, he says: “I also hope that a second volume will follow shortly”.

The new volume will be welcome: For one thing, the persona in the narrative techniques (in the mediation between periods and people - or events and conduct - which are active devices in memoirs) radiates in his columns. His ideals and ardent analysis are testimonies. With the assurance of one who knows his own mind, with apologies to none, he stands a tall silhouette against the zone of Ghanaian journalism. The quintet’s intellectual influences have served him well.

In oratory, he echoes peculiar elements in Nkrumah, and the commitment of the historic Bevin (whom he met about 1951 in England when Bevin became minister of labour, and had already introduced the innovative National Health Service in Britain). At an Achimota College function at the State House (Accra, about a decade ago) where the former teachers and administrators were present, one could sense Mr Asante’s very bones (“fossils”, he termed them) rattle with zeal as he toasted his alma mater and its movers and shakers.

That small place in time revived a most perennial, national memory: the Osagyefo’s momentous (Ghana is free forever!) independence address in 1957. A similar feeling emerged recently with another speech by Mr Asante at the Teachers Hall, Accra, for the Foundation for Educational Research and Development (FERD) in the company of the distinguished educator, Mrs Comfort Engmann - founder of North Ridge Lyceum. My view of our subject is quite partial to those moments and passions.

Voice from Afar stands to gain with the addition of an index, which should be considered for the next volume to offer ready references to the vast array of people, places, and events cited. In the meantime, we await volume two with maximum respect.

Class sets of Mr Asante’s book will be lively as teaching texts in the social sciences at the secondary and tertiary levels. The book is obtainable at Methodist Book Depot, Accra. It justified its cedis worth for journalists, politicians, professors, chiefs, students, and plain folks.


Credit: Anis Haffar [Email: gateinstitute@yahoo.com]