One Heck of a Great Ghanaian!

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

I have not had the glorious occasion to write in celebration of Mr. Reginald Reynolds Amponsah who died recently in the Ghanaian capital of Accra at the advanced age of 89, if memory serves me right. Ironically, though, I have been acutely aware of Mr. Amponsah’s enviable contributions to Ghana’s struggle for liberation from British colonial rule. Interestingly, R. R. Amponsah’s death was reported in the Ghanaian media just about the same time that I was in fervid preparation for a trip to London with my wife and two little boys, namely, Nana Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe III, and Papa Osofo Yaw Sintim-Aboagye (Akosah).

I have known about this great son of Ghana and what he has meant for the socioeconomic, cultural and political development of our beloved country since childhood, just about the very time that the synergistic collaboration of both the Ghana Armed Forces, led by then-Col. Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, and the Ghana Police Service, chaperoned by Mr. J. W. K. Harlley, auspiciously brought down the at once despotic, ineffably corrupt, autocratic and morally stultifying regime of the so-called Convention People’s Party (CPP). But at the tender age of about four, five or even six, there is only a piddling little that one can make sense of; still, it ought to be acknowledged that even toddlers and children understand and often appreciate far, far more than we, as parents and guardians, are willing to credit them for.

Anyway, for quite a while, growing up as a child and an elementary school boy at both the University of Ghana’s Staff-Village Primary School and the Akyem-Asiakwa Presbyterian Primary School, between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, about the only prominent “Amponsah name” that I knew about was, of course, that of Mr. R. R. Amponsah. It would take me many more years of researching and writing my own version of Ghanaian history to “unravel” exactly what the “twin-initials” of “R. R.” prefixed to Mr. Amponsah’s name meant. The initials, of course, stood for “Reginald Reynolds.”

Surprisingly, the Ghana News Agency (GNA) reporter/correspondent who reported ex-President J. A. Kufuor’s eulogy at Mr. Amponsah’s memorial and burial service, had curiously decided that the initials “R. R.” of the deceased’s name stood for “Robert Reginald.” As of this writing (9/7/09), I have not bothered to “google” the entry “R. R. Amponsah” to clarify what I strongly believe to be an egregious misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the twin-initials of the late chairman of the now-opposition New Patriotic Party’s Council of Elders. And, in all likelihood, I may never google Mr. Amponsah’s name in order to unquestionably establish exactly what the “R. R.” stood for; in fact, I could almost wager my very noggins that the “R” of the twin-initials which the GNA correspondent misrepresented as “Robert” is, indeed, “Reynolds.”

The heck with it; what does it matter. It makes no difference, whatsoever, whether one of Mr. Amponsah’s twin-initials of “R. R.” stands for “Robert” or “Reynolds,” a cynical reader may be tempted to sneer. The man is still dead, and absolutely no amount of nominal accuracy is going to bring him back to life. Maybe not; still even as Mr. William Shakespeare would have readily owned, even from inside his 300-year-old grave in Stratford-on-Avon, “There is the rub.” In other words, it makes a heck of a difference whether one of the twin-initials of Mr. R. R. Amponsah’s name was, indeed, “Robert” or “Reynolds,” for the writing of good historical narratives depends inextricably on “truth” and “accuracy,” which is what good journalism is also about.

Anyway, the first of the teeming tributes that I read about Mr. Amponsah was composed and published by an equally astute, accomplished and illustrious Ghanaian citizen and native. It was published on Ghanaweb.com barely a couple of days after Mr. Amponsah’s passing. The author of the fittingly glowing tribute was the erudite Dr. Kwame Donkoh Fordwor, former president of the African Development Bank (ADB) and subsequently Finance and Economic Planning minister during the Acheampong junta.

What enthused me most about Dr. Fordwor’s tribute to Mr. Amponsah regarded the poignantly intimate and personal dimension which the author brought to bear on the same. Ironically, however, Dr. Fordwor’s tribute so powerfully disarmed me that I promptly decided not to advertise my relative and considerable ignorance on the subject by letting the distinguished tribute payer have the final word on the indisputably admirable, albeit controversial (at least to the Jihad-minded Nkrumaists), and heroic life of Mr. R. R. Amponsah.

The following undoubtedly, and even predictably, may come off to many an Nkrumah fanatic and ardent critic of this writer as “déjà-vu.” And it is the fact that while his name, relative to that of the African Show Boy, is virtually unknown, still, in terms of his stature vis-à-vis the salutary development of modern African democracy, Mr. Amponsah stands head-and-shoulders over and above deposed-President Kwame Nkrumah, the man who, not quite long ago, was overwhelmingly voted “Africa’s Man of the Twentieth Century.” For as Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah, the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and modern Ghanaian politics once poignantly put it, “Real development is about human freedom and the systematic induction of unfettered creativity within strong and productive institutional structures, not the mere and erratic putting up of otiose architectural structures as well as other physical monuments for the sake of showing off.”

It is, incontrovertibly, within the context of the foregoing observations that Mr. Amponsah’s heroic achievements must be envisaged.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of 20 books, including “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Atumpan Publications/Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: [email protected]. ###