The Danquah-Busia tradition: History, meaning, recent mutilation

Joseph Boakye Danquah and Kofi Abrefa Busia had their names tagged to the United Party and now New Patriotic Party tradition because of their political and economic beliefs. It is as simple as that. These 2 ferocious and formidable defenders of liberty and democracy set out their beliefs in numerous speeches and writings about the direction of the UP tradition.

They were guided by economic liberty, the right to own your property free of government interference, and political liberty - the belief that there are certain inalienable rights the individual has. Thus the state does not grant us our rights. The state exists to protect these rights.

They were true champions of that great civil society institution - the multitude of traditional rulers who stand between the state and its citizens; who remind the state that there is a parallel legitimate institution that has existed for centuries before Ghana was created by the colonial authorities in the 1900s.

It is these broad ideas that provide the umbrella for all those who today are gathered around the New Patriotic Party. It was only in 2017 that an attachment turned up and which has mutilated the Danquah-Busia appellation. Suddenly the firm principles of the past have been buried and now Danquah-Busia is being re-cast as an ethnic-geographic coalition that has produced an agreement to rotate the leadership between 3 persons Danquah, Busia, and SD Dombo.

The case for the Dombo attachment is that he was party leader of the Northern Peoples Party and surrendered this leadership to Busia when his Party joined the National Liberation Movement to form the United Party. But if leadership was a criterion then we should detach the Danquah name as he was never the leader of what has now become the Danquah-Busia tradition.

In 1947 when the giants of the nationalist struggle met in Saltpond to form the United Gold Coast Convention the crucible of the Danquah-Busia tradition, Danquah was elected second vice chairman with Pa Grant as the Chairman and Robert Blay as the first vice Chairman. Danquah was the presidential candidate of the UP in 1960 but then so too was Victor Owusu in 1979 and Prof Adu-Boahen in 1992.

Victor Owusu and Adu-Boahen paid their dues, fighting for the restoration of constitutional rule at the risk of their freedoms and yet their names have never been added to the Danquah-Busia label.

It is divisive to therefore base Danquah-Busia on Ashanti and Akyem just so we can accommodate latecomers to the formidable elephant tradition. Where these wonderful Dombo-tagged latecomers were at the time the NPP was being formed is a question I have posed but has still not been answered. We look for them in the list of founders and we cannot see them.

They were never in the NPP Young Executives Forum. We never heard them on radio or television espousing the tradition in the days of the dreaded criminal libel. They never gave a talk to the party faithful, and they never attended an NPP delegate’s conference standing in the hot sun to fellowship and make common cause with the glorious host of members.

They are yet to tell us if they contributed 1 cedi to the campaign to kick start Prof Adu Boahen’s gallant efforts to win power. Did they ever make a donation to a single NPP parliamentary candidate as we struggled to buy petrol to travel across the country in 1999 when the going was tough? I am still waiting for the answer from those behind the Dombo fiction.

This reinvention of Danquah-Busia is dynamite that is being placed at the heart of the NPP and the sooner the party explains Danquah-Busia to all, the better. SD Dombo was a diehard member of the party but he never set out any concepts that we know of.

He was happy to embrace the Danquah-Busia philosophy and make his contribution to the struggle just like Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, Oheneba Kow Richardson, Adam Amandi, RA Awoonor-Williams and the host of men who fought to build and sustain the great Danquah-Busia tradition.

My call to the party members is to rid the virus of tribalism and geography that has been injected into the party.

All members of the NPP are Danquah-Busia.