Meet the great Ghanaian nationalist, John Mensah Sarbah

John Mensah Sarbah CMG (3 June 1864 – 27 November 1910) was a lawyer and political leader in the Gold Coast (now Ghana).

John Mensah Sarbah was born on Friday, 3 June 1864, in Anomabu, in the Fante Confederacy in the Gold Coast.

He was the eldest son of John Sarbah (1834–1892), a merchant of Anomabu and Cape Coast and a member of the Legislative Council of the Gold Coast, and his wife Sarah.

Mensah Sarbah was educated at the Cape Coast Wesleyan School (later renamed – by Mensah Sarbah himself – as Mfantsipim School) and then at Queen’s College in Taunton, Somerset, England, matriculating in 1884.

He subsequently entered Lincoln’s Inn in London to train as a barrister, and was called to the English bar in 1887 – the first African from his country to qualify in this way.

In 1897, along with J. W. de Graft-Johnson, J. W. Sey, J. P. Brown and J. E. Casely Hayford, Mensah Sarbah co-founded the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society, which became the main political organisation that led organised and sustained opposition against the colonial government, laying the foundation for Ghanaian independence.

Mensah Sarbah was appointed a member of the Legislative Council in 1901, and was re-appointed in 1906.

In the first birthday honours of King George V, Mensah Sarbah was recognised with the award of a CMG in 1910, a few months before his sudden death at the age of 46, on Sunday, 27 November 1910.

In 1904 he married Marion Wood from Accra and they had three children.

John Mensah Sarbah was dedicated to the promotion of secondary education and was responsible for various initiatives, including the founding of a Dutton scholarship at Queen’s College, Taunton, in memory of his younger brother, Joseph Dutton Sarbah, who had died there in 1892.

He argued against the obnoxious Lands Bill of 1897 which would have placed all public Lands in the Colony under the Colonial Government. It was never passed after legal argument and petitions to Queen Victoria. He waived his retainer for that case saying “I seek no reward in serving the land of my birth”.

He wrote a treatise on The Fanti Customary Laws in 1897 and the Fanti National Constitution in 1906.

He founded two newspapers, The Gold Coast People and Gold Coast Weekly, and became an authority on the traditions of the Fante people.

In 1903, Sarbah and William Edward Sam promoted an enterprise called the Fanti Public Schools Limited which eventually became the present Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast – designing the school’s crest and motto “Dwen hwe kwan – think ahead of time” and Sarbah also helped establish the Fanti National Education Fund, which aimed to improve educational facilities in the country and awarded scholarships.

He founded a scholarship scheme called the Dutton Sarbah Scholarship at Mfantsipim School and helped pay the salaries of the staff when the school encountered financial difficulties.

In 1963, a residence hall of the University of Ghana was named Mensah Sarbah Hall in his honour for his services to education, with a statue of John Mensah Sarbah is in front of it. Members of the hall are known as Vikings as a reference to him who is a true Viking for his country.

Sarbah-Picot House at Mfantsipim School is named after him.