On Lee Kuan Yew: I Am Surprised At Ama Ata Aidoo

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
March 23, 2015
E-mail: [email protected]

In the wake of the historic passing of the first postcolonial Prime Minister of Singapore, formerly a province of Malaysia, renowned Ghanaian poet, playwright and novelist Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo was widely reported to have lamentably observed that Mr. Lee Kuan Yew's death offered a "grim reminder of what Ghanaians missed out [in the February 1966 overthrow of] Kwame Nkrumah" (See "Yew's Death Grim Reminder of What Ghana Lost in Nkrumah - Ama Ata Aidoo" Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 3/23/15).

Now, this is rather hypocritically strange because in her landmark volume of short stories titled No Sweetness Here, the title or eponymous story makes the incisively critical statement that Nkrumah's ushering of Ghana into postcolonial self-governance had not redeemably accrued for Ghanaian citizens any significant or meaningful quality-of-life improvement. Published about the time of Nkrumah death in exile, in the early 1970s, No Sweetness Here has the protagonist, the gardener-cum-cook and butler of a government rest house somewhere in the northern part of country, presumably Tamale or Bolgatanga, bitterly lament that all the sugarcoated promises of dramatic economic improvement touted by the Ghanaian leader had turned out to be a "grim" hoax.

And Ama Ata Aidoo, it must be promptly emphasized, was not the only young Ghanaian literary artist who had found the Nkrumah-led Convention People's Party (CPP) to have left much to be desired. Prof. Ayi Kwei Armah had written his classic novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, which had equally trenchantly launched a caustic tirade against the sort of abjectly and irreparably rank corruption that characterized the Convention People's Party regime. Even the Show Boy's star pupil, Prof. Kofi Awoonor, would pen and publish his "scatological African classic" titled This Earth, My Brother, a striking take on Prof. Armah's novel, that would implictly and overtly celebrate Nkrumah's ouster as a godsend.

And, oh, another writer, who for personal reasons shall remain anonymous, had penned and published a rambling melodramatic novel titled The Kaba Girls (not the real title) in which Nkrumah's Independence-Declaration Address had been singled out for caustic castigation. And so it not clear precisely who Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo presumes to be hoodwinking when she lamentably compares Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to the encomium-obsessed "Osagyefo Kantamanto Doctor Professor Prime Minister President Francis Kofi Nwia Kwame Nkrumah." We must also quickly point out that almost all the writers referenced above were ardent Nkrumaists, or at least they have publicly claimed to be such at one time or another.

Besides, his obituary and sporadic gleanings from the media in the recent past, I have not done much research on the man to qualify me to make any authoritative statements about what Singaporean life was like under Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Nevertheless, it well appears to me that the recently deceased former Singaporean premier, however dictatorial he might have been as ruler, had not resorted to the sort of constitution-tinkering megalomania that characterized the better part of the Nkrumah-led Convention People's Party regime. Mr. Lee also does not appear to have recklessly and visionlessly wasted the capital resources of his tiny island nation megalomaniacally promoting Pan-Asianism at the expense of the socioeconomic well-being of his people.

Then also must be compared the economic policies of the two leaders and the balance sheet scholastically and objectively drawn. In brief, emoting wistfully and pointlessly over the death of Mr. Lee at the apparently enviably productive and mature age of 91 by vacuously comparing it to the hot-headed life and Machiavellian politics of Mr. Kwame Nkrumah does not serve any useful purpose. At best, it makes these latterday "hagiographers" of President Nkrumah seem obsequiously disingenuous and unpardonably laughable in the eyes of a discerning and mnemonically retentive global community.

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