JH Mensah
Joseph Henry Mensah, known to most people simply as JH Mensah, was always more of a character than a person. Yet he was human: a conglomeration of a human specimen. He spoke truth to power, provided a voice for generations of yesterday, today and tomorrow and, on relevant occasions, delivered personal, sometimes embarrassing truths about living in our fast evolving culture that only a Chinua Achebe could penetrate. The man was different in an indifferent world. He was the architect who doubled up as a brick layer; a consultant-physician who was the nurse at the Out-Patients Department; the engineer who was the dirty-sleeved mechanic; the professor emeritus who was the basic-school pupil teacher; the industrialist-subsistence farmer; the trawler owner-canoe fisherman; the manager-player; the one-man symphony-orchestra.
Mr. Mahama, my middle school Form Three teacher, a Dagomba, was always ecstatic whenever JH Mensah’s name came to be mentioned in any discussion. That was way back in 1969, he described JH in palliative language. The little mind of a 12-year-old village boy was at the time not programmed to absorb the phantasmagoria of the electioneering campaigns of those days. Yet the name registered firmly, especially when my teacher spoke about the Seven-Year Development Plan which President Nkrumah had introduced to launch Ghana into the orbit of the industrialised world. Mr Mahama was most emphatic that the plan was the handwork of the enigmatic JH Mensah.
In 1978, Agyemang, Bremang-born, senior to me by age but my junior at the elementary school, became the personal driver of JH Mensah and he (Agyemang) so much eulogised him that a person listening to the young driver would conclude that he was unveiling an extra-terrestrial being.
My first physical encounter with JH Mensah was in 1992 after his return from exile to link up with the newly born New Patriotic Party (NPP). He had visited the Ashanti regional headquarters of the party. He encouraged us to work hard.
In 1996, when the NPP for the first time participated in the parliamentary elections of the Fourth Republic, the party won 61 seats. Assembling the MPs-elect, the then chairman of the party, Peter Ala Adjetey, declared that the party had chosen JH Mensah as the leader of the parliamentary group to be deputised by Mrs Gladys Asmah, and assisted by S.K Boafo and I.C. Quaye as Chief Whip and Deputy Whip respectively.
Mr. JH Mensah as the opposition leader indeed led the caucus of the Minority. He was extremely brilliant; he had monumental energy and unparalleled integrity, not a philistine politician. He was a generalist who knew not a little but very much about every subject matter: economics, finance, law, science and technology, agriculture, education, health, environment, music and the arts. That was why he was such an astute and consummate debater in Parliament. In his use of the Queen’s language, he displayed balance, symmetry and smoothness. He had absolute mastery. Listening to him was always a joy. He could sustain the attention of all for very long periods not only because of the facts and figures he churned out and his attention to details but also because of the poise and counterpoise and the ease with which he welded several scenes and acts together into a detachable yet a complete whole. In his winding up for his side on the 1999 Message on the State of the Nation, JH Mensah spoke for two hours and the MPs listened with strained ears. Not a word should be allowed to fall to the ground!!
In Parliament, JH Mensah offered gratuitous lessons in iambic pentameter whilst other contenders struggled with simple prose. Whenever he delivered submissions on the President’s State of the Nation Address or the budget he was surgical and the applauses that followed were not contrived but well earned from the Majors, Colonels, Brigadiers and Generals that led.
January 1997 was a melodramatic month as JH Mensah led the national resistance movement to confront three anachronisms: the diktat of the President to have himself sworn into office where ever he (the President) declared. JH’s position was that the President “must be sworn in Parliament, before Parliament”. JH Owusu Acheampong the Majority Leader counter argued that Parliament could sit under a mango tree at Damango. OwusuAcheampong “won” the day but it was only when the Speaker, Justice Daniel Francis Annan, had pronounced that Parliament “would move to convene at the Black Star Square”. That was on January 7, 1997. Technically, JH Mensah had won the debate.
In January 1997, H.E. Jerry John Rawlings had declared that his ministers from 1993-1996 were simply to continue in office and crossover to join the second stanza of Rawlings hymnal. JH Mensah led his army to resist this attempt to subvert the Constitution as he insisted that there cannot be any such qualification as “holdover ministers”, and that all persons that President Rawlings wanted to have as ministers in his second term should submit themselves to the new Parliament to be vetted. After some haranguing, the matter went to court. The Supreme Court ruled that prior approval of such nominees was required from Parliament.
Item number 3: the first State of the Nation Address by H.E President Rawlings in the Second Parliament. The penultimate day, Parliament had been festooned in colours of NDC. The Minority Leader registered his pointed objection and insisted that the Parliament is the national assembly of the Republic and not an appendage of a particular party and strongly registered that if the NDC colours were not pulled down, the NPP and the other minority parties were not going to be part of the President’s address. The day of reckoning came and the decorative ribbons and balloons in NDC colours had been pulled down overnight. Such was the strength of character and resilience of the slightly-built man from Sunyani.
Passing by his office one day, I observed a frustrated man, murmuring to himself. He had assigned a responsibility to one of the members in leadership and that one had disappointed. Upon enquiry, he told me of his request. I submitted a write-up to him on that subject matter the following morning. Reading it, he crossed out several words and sentences. I rewrote the five-page document. Fewer, but all the same, many cancellations again! I did a third edition and he congratulated me. That marked the genesis of my close association with the venerable personality. A second, a third and other referrals to me followed. Fewer cancellations followed.
One day, I submitted proposals which I had titled “Caucus Rules”, having observed some mannerisms from some colleague MPs whenever we attended caucus meetings as well as the conduct of some honourable members who were given to show-boating, not real substance. The leader, after perusing it, asked me to confer with the caucus spokesperson on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. That is how come the NPP’s Caucus Rules came to be written and adopted.
JH Mensah, the Parliamentary Leader, was a workaholic. On many occasions, he worked overnight. At about 9pm on such occasions he would request me to go home to have some rest and come early morning. I would be back at 7am; he would still be sitting, back bent, with coffee, biscuit and some wine and still writing. “You are back”, he would intone, adding “find yourself somewhere to sit; I would try to be back at 9.30am!” His brown eyes betrayed his lack of proper rest but he did not take too much care about his health. Parliament and, later his work at the Ministry occupied him. Clearly, however, there was not much joy for him after he left Parliament and office and that, paradoxically, fast cascaded his health downhill. The enigmatic figure was stumbling!
I observed and studied the man called JH Mensah and the lessons learnt have served me well in my various roles in leadership of the party, especially as Minority Leader for eight years and now as Majority Leader.
Two regrets I have. If molecular scientific morphism and morphogenesis had advanced sufficiently enough, perhaps we could have cloned a JH Mensah as some of the doctors who attended to him used to gossip. Second, JH Mensah would neither put pen to paper to write his autobiography nor have his biography done in spite of several promptings. I did so not less than three different times.
William Shakespeare wrote in ‘Julius Caesar’: “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred with the bones…” On this occasion, revered Leader, I would disagree with Shakespeare and write, “Thou quintessential character, the good that men do lives after them; the evil that unrepentant critics claim you did should be interred with your bones”.
Joseph Henry Mensah I am eternally grateful. Adieu Joseph Henry Mensah, a character of unbeknown intelligence, commitment, bravery, energy, endurance, humility, simplicity and boundless integrity. May you eternally endure in the firmament of Ghanaian social, economic and political history. Fare thee well!
Tribute By Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu (Majority Leader)