NO ONE BE LIKE YOU!!!

Those were simply magical moments in Morning Star School nestled as it was in one of Ghana's prime-if not most prime- neighbourhoods in the capital Accra: Cantonments. The notable Ghanaian scholar Prof. Ato Quayson(my mentor and friend) informs us that that area stretching from the Osu,Oxford Street(of which he is the foremost chronicler and interpreter in contemporary times) right up to Cantonments was the pristine no-go area of imperial power in the Gold Coast(his latest book on this is a must read for those interested in Ghana’s urban history) . Ghana’s new elites spatially and symbolically took over that expanse of territory according to Quayson . In a sense then it is just as well that one of Ghana’s most premier elite private prep schools will find a home in that setting.

Those magical moments were popular in the sociological sense of the word. It was all about the so-called sport of the masses: football. The Morning Star of my era in the 1980s was simply mad about it. It was all about the intense competition, the magical talents, the fame(no fortune of course) and the feisty admiration of nubile ladies. Inter-class football competitions captured the attention of all. Our founder Mrs. Esme Siriboe(lie in peace always) was prescient enough to leave this fairly large, sandy field right in the middle of the school. Today’s prep schools seem all covered with concrete and I bristle at my son’s failure to taste some sand while at play. This field took on a unique make-up during these tourneys: improvised goal posts made of wood and strings popped up and the perimeters and soccer pitch markings traced out with some powdery substance. Ceremony attended the start of each match. The teams will troop onto the field led by their various captains(it was a privilege to captain a team; one was chosen democratically by one’s classmates; I was captain for the seven years I played in that competition) to the uproarious cheer of a raucous crowd; there was the tossing of the coin and the lucky side will choose their preferred side of the field and then the referee’s whistle will start proceedings.

It was in this unforgettable milieu of our childhood that Ebenezer Saka Amoako’s inimitable character will leave its stamp on us all. I was his classmate from class one to class seven. Once in a crucial inter-classes match he left the goal-post(in the heat of proceedings) he was tending because we were excoriating him for some bad judgments. He was always his own man very early. It probably was all in his genes. He was one of the sons of one of Ghana’s prominent entrepreneurs (until Rawlings’ inferno that left Ghana at the very best half cooked and scalded and all but incinerated the business sector) back in the day: Amoako Leather Works. He grew tall very early and cut a strapping, well built and handsome figure in our class. Uniquely his temper was not sharp and I hardly saw him in those childhood scrapes in the most obscure corners of the compound beyond the teachers’ gaze where Don King pretenders ruled.

Academic work seemed to be a formality to be endured. He seemed destined for business. He became a business man as usual doing his thing beyond the sometimes stultifying demands of routine and form. Here was a free spirit whose laughter raspy and throaty and full still fills my ears and staunches the pain as I write this eulogy to the first of the 1986 year group of Morning Star to have gone to sleep. We were very close and we had our moments. He will make those clandestine runs to the waakye(a very tasteful rice and beans West African dish)seller we had been forbidden to go near and for good reason. The kindly waakye seller's location was out of the school’s gates and heaved with cars and potential evils of all sorts. When electronic watches became all the rage Saka turned himself into the one to hire watches from. He always had some funny term or phrase on offer all stamped with his idiosyncracies. One was: "whatz happ’nin." He would say this with an exaggerated American twang and in rapid fire bursts. Saka was just simply fun loving. Once our teachers were having a meeting and asked us the seniors to keep some order in the classrooms. I was with him when we went to Mrs. Abdulai’s class. The class 2 pupils sat there at the mercy of our superintendence. Saka moved to the front of the class and straight to the blackboard. I knew there was going to be drama. He took a piece of chalk almost solemnly but what followed was just the opposite: he asked the poor pupils to find the square root of their posterior orifice! If it were today he might have found himself before the bar of child abuse. That was Saka at his mischievous best.

We left school. All of us in search of our dreams. I used to see him in East Legon, Accra. I was almost always in a moving vehicle. The last time we met was in a tro-tro some fifteen years ago. We barely caught up on each other’s lives when he jumped off. We re-connected on Facebook. We were just about re-connecting. Saka jumped off again. Eternally!!!!!! No one be like you Saka!!! You left us pain but just reliving the past brings joy. Thanks for your friendship. You are sorely missed.     

LET THE LIGHTS FLASH!!!!!!!

Oil painting of John Mensah Sarbah, Esq

A changed and changing world has long been upon us. One is here forced to remember Heraclitus. He of the Ionian school it was who famously and almost incomprehensibly quipped that one cannot step in the same river twice. The Akans of Ghana will say that "mmre dani(to wit the times change)." And on this matter of change light has proved a peculiarly formidable and ubiquitous expression. It is at the lower spectrum of light (with wave lengths of 10 raised to the power -8 downwards) that this whole cyber reality becomes profound. At the visible and invisible levels light has made communication both instantaneous, real time and even irritating.

The Ghanaian Supreme Court in a historic case was attempting to shield itself from the glare of light both literal and metaphorical in the age of light(the cyberage). But really who can? The metaphorical case for letting in the cameras has been made already. The Supreme Court of Ghana is the people's court; owned by the citizens of this our Republic. Today it is not a complicated undertaking to beam sound and images  live to our tv, phone and pc screens. It is just as well the Supreme Court saw reason and seized that rare historical moment. It risked to my mind eternal historical opprobrium if it had been indelicately obstinate about this; a far more politically charged and even volatile Kenya had allowed the cameras in and not imploded. This shame would have been Ghana's shame as well; the lode star of this great continent would have lost its way.

 I had visited the Supreme Court once in my early twenties. There was no case in session. It was a visit driven by curiosity and a love of my country. I just wanted to see where all of those major cases which have tended to affect the very minutiae of our existence were heard and argued. Even in its quiet repose then shorn of any activity it had an overwhelming aura about it; a certain almost arrogant serenity that was at once infectious and repulsive. Here one remembers the intellectually razor sharp J.B. Danquah and his nephew Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who is a very interested petitioner in the case at hand, And before them the pioneering role played by the incomparable John Mensah Sarbah(1854-1910)(the first Ghanaian barrister) for Ghanaian thought, independence, legal profession and jurisprudence. It must not be forgotten ever that it was the law in the hands of Sarbah and his enlightened logic which prevented the infamous Lands Bill of 1897 from becoming law. This invidious bill had sought by a clever artifice  to  vest under section 3 "all waste-land and all forest-land in the colony" " in the Crown for the use of the Government of the colony." Sarbah's response is worth quoting in full here:

I am specially instructed to say that this Lands Bill is an elaborate and expanded form of the Crown Lands Bill of 1894. That Bill refers only to what is termed waste land and forest land whereas this Bill refers to the whole land of this country, depriving the aborigines of their right in the soil of their land.(Azu-Crabbe,1971) 

Sarbah had saved the Gold Coast and Ghana that great land question that other African countries are still grappling with today.  

Again I cannot resist to quote the Gold Coast Leader on Sarbah in Azu-Crabbe(1971: 2)

As a lawyer of more than twenty years's standing, we know of no widows, or indigent and impotent folk whom he ever entrapped with ingenuity, cleverness and artfulness. He had no sordid commerce with the technicalities of the law or the sophisms of Pettifoggers. He has broken no hearts,wrecked no homes, nor raised himself upon the debris of lost reputations and crashed ambitions. He is no bland and subtle schemer, ready and eager to play upon the folly and ignorance of the unsophisticated bucolics and innocent clientele. He has forged his way ahead and built up a lucrative practice through honesty, sincerity and assiduity in the discharge of his responsibilities and obligations.(kindly note the delicacy of the diction in 1910 Gold Coast and cf with Ghana's papers today)

And so I saw like millions of my compatriots the innards of the Supreme Court. For most of our compatriots it was the first time on the historic 17th of April, 2013. At stake is the presidency and the legitimacy of the one holding today the instruments of ultimate state power. In times past in this our Republic bands of  power thieves will conspire at night and steal power in the morning. We all cowered because this stolen power was propped by the shiny, treacherous bayoneted tips of guns. Today "stolen" power could be challenged in a civilized, solemn, cerebral way shorn of the barbarity of weapons.

 The matte wooden panels reflected the lights in the court room on April the seventeenth. Some of the key lawyers in the full glare of these lights in this case had gone to the school that Sarbah had helped to found with his own money: Mfantsipim. Messrs Tsikata and Addison are products of Sarbah's selfless and exemplary patriotism to the country of his birth. The motto of the school Dwin Hwe Kan(Think and look ahead)  was the progeny of his mind. He might have been talking to the supreme court judges a century later who will decide the case and all of us bona fide citizens of this our most beloved Republic. We wait.