Mr. Pratt, Nkrumah "Wept" Tears Of Joy!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
Feb. 7, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

We must state, emphatically, that we know for a fact that like the rapturous champagne jubilation that is widely reported to have greeted the Mafia-style execution of the three Akan-descended Accra High Court justices on the night of June 30, 1982, by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings and Capt. Kojo Tsikata, the brutal prison assassination of the man globally celebrated as the Dean/Doyen of Gold Coast and Modern Ghanaian Politics was greeted with indescribable joy at the Flagstaff House. Otherwise, why would President Kwame Nkrumah have ordered the funeral and burial services, at Kyebi, of his former magnanimous political mentor (See Joe Appiah's Joe Appiah: The Autobiography of an African Patriot) to take place within the fleeting temporal span of 6 hours or 240 minutes?

Mr. Kwesi Pratt, the brash and brazen street-brawling editor of the so-called Insight newspaper and a front-row rabidly partisan member of the rump-Convention People's Party, also claims that President Nkrumah had "a healthy relationship" with "Dr. Danquah's wife" (See "Nkrumah 'Wept' Over Danquah's Death - Pratt" Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/7/15). I am also interested to learn from Mr. Pratt about his claim of this "very special relationship [that existed] between J. B. Danquah's wife and Nkrumah," which the Insight newspaper editor claims "are well-documented."

When he talks about J. B. Danquah's wife, as is characteristic of all the brass-knuckled Cii-Pii-Pii-ites, Mr. Pratt may well be referring to Mrs. Mabel Dove-Danquah, the half-Sierra Leonean Ghanaian journalist. The unpleasant fact of the matter is that at the time of his death, at 69 years old, on Feb. 4, 1965, Danquah's legally wedded wife with whom he was sharing his bed and residence was Mrs. Elizabeth Danquah, a Cape Coast-born Fante of noble birth. Recently, it has come to light that Dr. Danquah's former protege and aide-de-camp of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) days, may well have been amorously linked with Mrs. Dove-Danquah. But that is not the thrust of this present article.

What is more significant to observe is that President Nkrumah's response to Mrs. Dove-Danquah's earnestly written pleas and appeals for the release of her former husband - the couple had been long divorced at the time - disturbingly exhibits the most poignantly visceral tinge of hatred that his former protege harbored and nurtured against Dr. Danquah. And so if it is, indeed, true that the same man who callously and unconscionably ordered his slow and systematic execution at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison had "bitterly wept" upon learning about the auspicious fulfillment of his edict, then, of course, the most credible and logical interpretation of such "weeping" could not be other than President's Nkrumah's profusely, and profoundly, shedding cathartic crocodile tears of uncontrollable joy or exhilaration. Nkrumah may even have felt religiously entitled to this much of "godly riddance."

Now, regarding the letter that Mrs. Mabel Dove-Danquah had written to President Nkrumah, earnestly pleading for the release of her arbitrarily incarcerated former husband, a copy of which was reprinted in Prof. L. H. Ofosu-Appiah's biographical classic The Life And Times of J. B. Danquah, Nkrumah had sharply retorted that were Mrs. Dove-Danquah a seasoned politician of the Ghanaian leader's stature and renown, she would not have made such a politically and morally reprehensible request.

Perhaps Mr. Pratt and his fanatical posse of Nkrumacrats may do themselves great good by availing themselves of the apocalyptic contents of the Report of the Asafu-Adjei Commission's Inquest into the Death of Dr. J. B. Danquah at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison, in order to fully appreciate how President Nkrumah studiously solicited the well-paid services of some Eastern-European and Neo-Nazi doctors of "Mengelesian" bent to deftly and systematically administer the lethal injections that may very well have hastened the demise of Ghana's foremost constitutional lawyer of his generation.

In his book, Autobiography of an African Patriot, Mr. Joe Appiah covers ample territory vis-a-vis the inveterate animosity that Mr. Kwame Nkrumah had for Dr. Danquah. Mr. Pratt and his rag-tag associates of latter-day faux-communists and socialists (take your pick) may also do well to avail themselves of Mr. Appiah's quite formidable tome.

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