K.B. Asante
“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the continent, a part of the maine. If a clod bee washed away by the sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a promontorie were as well as if Mannor of thy friends or of thine own were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
John Donne: Meditation 17
SO THOSE OF US WITH THE RAVENOUS APPETITE for reading will not be cogitating upon ‘Voice From’ afar Again? How sad; how mournful; how forlorn, how doleful; how lugugrious!
One may not be an Nkrumaist, but one cannot help admiring KB for the energy he exuded in extolling Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and his policies. He felt convinced about the successes of Nkrumah’s policies, and was articulate in extolling the idea that Ghana was founded by Nkrumah. It would be, for him, a ‘silly idea’ for anyone to challenge that stance. He was not ‘shy’ to insist that it was the ‘uniqueness’ of Nkrumah that made him the ‘sole’ founder of Ghana. He had the vibrant and perspicacious support of people like Kweku Baako and Kwesi Pratt who had declared themselves die hard Nkrumaist (of course, one would ask: where are the Danquahists, Busiaists, Kufuorists…?)
I admired KB for his contributions to the newspapers, especially Daily Graphic, on the use of English in Ghana. I would sometimes pick a cue from a question posed by K.B. to fashion my own writing on English in the Daily Graphic (1998 to 2010). He was quick to point at the wrong pronounciation of ‘campus’ (WRONG: Kampoos) (CORRECT:Kaemp?s).
Perhaps if he had sighted the spelling of ‘strength’ on the board of Unity Hall, KNUST, Kumasi(JCR 2015 – 2016), he would quickly have pointed out that ‘strenght’ is a wrong spelling, that distorted the message of the African Unity for which the Hall was named, that is, ‘Unity is Strength’. K.B. did not believe Ghana was polarised. He felt that “….debates and arguments can be useful and bring us together if we deal with issues and are not bent on justifying dessicated party positions.”
KB’s distinctive use of the English Language left one wondering whether he was a language scholar- or even an expert of the English Language. No, he was not a language scholar- he was rather a Mathematics and Science (Physics) Scholar.
Born as Kwaku Asante to a Kwahu father and an Otublohum mother (Ga) in Accra on March 26, 1924, Kwaku Baprui Asante schooled at Adabraka Junior Boys’ School from where he enrolled at Achimota School. He completed his first degree in Mathematics and Physics in 1952 at the Durham University, and returned to Ghana in 1953, to teach at Achimota School. In 1955, he left the school to join the Foreign Service, at first being posted to London after Ghana’s independence on 6th March, 1957, to assist in moulding the Gold Coast Office into a High Commission. He later had a stint in Israel where he opened the Ghana Embassy in Tel Aviv.
Returning to Ghana in 1960, KB was to team up with George Padmore to pursue President Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist Policies. He became a close confidant of Nkrumah as his personal secretary. He was at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when Diallo Telli, the OAU Secretary- General intoned to him that there had been a military take over in Ghana on 24th February, 1966. He could hardly believe the story, because he felt the Nkrumah regime was impregnable, having solid structures within the army and outside of it to curb any military insurrection. There were, for example Colonel Zanlerigu, the Commander of the Presidential Guard, and General Bawa, Commander of the Army-both killed during the putsch. Meanwhile, the majority of Ghanaians were out on the streets celebrating the fall of Nkrumah whose dictatorial one-party regime had sent opposition elements into jail, especially at Nsawam- and J.B. Danquah, the ‘Doyen of Gold Coast Politics’ had died miserably in Nsawam Prison in 1965 and buried incognito somewhere in the bush – cast away ‘like a dog’
In 1967, the National Liberation Council (NLC) appointed KB Ghana’s Ambassador to the United Nations, and later Austria, working there until 1972. He became the President of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He was later shifted to the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) where he chaired the body that prepared many of the UNIDO conventions.
With the 13th January, 1972 coup d’etat of Kutu Acheampong, KB came to work at the Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and later became a Senior Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Trade. With the lifting of the ban in politics, KB teamed up with others to form the Social Democratic Front. The party presented Ibrahim Mahama as its Presidential Candidate in the 1979 elections. Ibrahim won 3% of the votes, and the party won 3 of the 140 seats in the National Assembly during the Third Republic (1979-1981). The life of SDF as well as all the other political parties were scotched in the uprising of the Army led by J.J. Rawlings .
Well was it said by Julius Caesar: “Cowards die many times before ther deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I have yet heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come”. Rawlings did not mince words when he called KB “a true statesman, a gentleman, a historian, a public spirited person, a patriot and a genuine Nkrumaist”, K.B. was all these put together. Perhaps one would add these attributes: fearless, undaunting, outspoken…..
KB had served his nation dutifully. At age 93, he leaves this earth with a fulfillment, and as noted by Abraham Lincoln, “And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years,” Now KB is no more. Hmm. Fare thee well.
Africanus Owusu-Ansah
africanusoa@gmail.com