I read about it awhile back; perhaps two or three months ago. And so I was a little puzzled to read, once more, about the Owusu-Agyeman family donating, gratis, a quite decent building to be used as a club house by the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) in a quite decent neighborhood.
And while, in reality, the timing of any decent gift could hardly be impeached, for a decent gift is still a decent gift, regardless of whether it is presented in the morning, noontime or evening, or even at a quarter-past-midnight, Mr. Hackman Owusu-Agyeman’s decent gift still raises at least one interesting question: that of timing, particularly being that the giver is also one of the principal contenders for the presidential nomination of the NPP.
In sum, whether the giver temporally intended it or not, coming so close to the Party’s December 2007 delegates convention, during which occasion the NPP flag-bearer for Election 2008 would be selected, the inescapable feeling of deliberate political prejudice, however subtle or even virtually non-existent, cannot be lightly overruled. Still, we must hasten to add, it was his to give and Mr. Owusu-Agyeman appears to have been convinced that this was the best time to give it.
And here, it also goes without saying that the timing also makes it quite impossible for one not to think of the other great, historic gift in the literature of the Ancient World. And here, of course, the allusion is to the Trojan gift horse.
In sum, in his apparent magnanimity, Mr. Owusu-Agyeman presented his gift of a “club house,” and his fellow political kinsfolk heartily accepted it; at least that was the official report published in the mainstream Ghanaian media.
But here again, the Trojan nexus can hardly be dismissed; for like its ancient Grecian counterpart, the great and magnificent gift came just a couple of weeks before a great war. And in both instances, the givers were principal players in a war, and the apocalyptic consequences of the war, in the case of the Grecian one, continue to seriously engage the sedulous attention of great literary critics, teachers and historians.
In any case, what is quite encouraging about Mr. Owusu-Agyeman’s club-house gift is the doubtless fact that it may yet encourage other Party stalwarts to reach out to the organization in a similar fashion. And there can hardly be said to be anything wrong with such kindly and durable gesture. Indeed, yours truly wishes that he could do the same thing for the greatest political institution in postcolonial Ghanaian history. Alas, like a head-lolling vagabond, he does not even own a hovel of his own; and so like the rest of the wretched of the earth, he can only look wistfully on from the safe and comfortable distance of admiration.
And now, it also dawns on me that the very location of the Owusu-Agyeman Club House – or whatever it is called – in the Ridge section of Accra, could not have been more suitable. For, after all, isn’t it the same neighborhood that democracy’s most notorious nemesis and founder-leader of the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC), Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah “Cement-Bag” Rawlings lives? And so wouldn’t it be quite a good idea for Mr. da-Rocha and his ideological kinsfolk, once awhile, to invite Mr. Probity and Accountability for an early evening tea and a good lecture on living and letting others live as well?
On second thoughts, inviting Togbui Agbotui may, after all, not be such a good idea. What if this sworn, inveterate enemy of democratic culture, upon invitation, cases up the place and promptly orders Mr. Victor Smith to organize a platoon of commandoes to reduce this promising Platonic shrine to the irreparable rubbles of a June 4th nuclear winter? Eh, shouldn’t I have known far better than even presume to fathom such a patently and unpardonably fatuous unilateral gesture of reconciliation? And then whom would I have been able to turn around to blame?
Anyway, I personally do not know Mr. Hackman Owusu-Agyeman. Not that much, I readily own. For I met the man once from the theatrical and impersonal distance of a college auditorium, at Hunter College of the City University of New York, to be exact, shortly after President John Agyekum-Kufuor mounted Mr. Kofi Antubam’s high chair. The man was then Ghana’s minister of foreign affairs. He did not impress me much, not because he did not address the standing-room-only audience in either French or Spanish, neither of which yours truly speaks, anyway, besides a few scattered words and phrases casually picked out of high school and undergraduate textbooks.
No Mr. Hackman Owusu-Agyeman did not impress me in the least because at a multiethnic and multicultural gathering of Ghanaian nationals, as well as some interested non-Ghanaian African and non-African listeners, the man proceeded to address his audience in Asante-Twi. And not only was his delivery not of the noble and standard “Manhyia” kind, it seemed to trivialize the entire heroic enterprise of the NPP’s sound electoral trouncing of the terror-mongering NDC. The gist of his entire five-to-seven-minute talk was on how Mr. Owusu-Agyeman, who is on a first-name basis with the President Kufuor, got called one day by the latter as follows: “Akwasi-ee! What I told you a short while ago is now coming to pass. We are in! We have won the lotto!”
To be certain, yours truly was so mortified that he called his now-late father by phone that very night and plaintively asked the old man whether he knew of the new Ghanaian foreign minister, a seemingly boyish and exuberant guy by the name of Hackman Owusu-Agyeman. (First of all, yours truly found the first name of “Hackman” to be rather quaint, even after it was explained to him that the dude likely was named for some notable European colonial official).
Anyway, my then-terminally ill father chuckled and then snorted, in spite of his excruciating pain. Then he mildly snapped: “Ho, is this what Ghana is coming to?” Then, almost as if realizing that he had misspoken, the old man quickly rallied and added: “Of course, I know him from Commonwealth Hall at Legon in the sixties.” And then, he nonchalantly said something about “Opia,” the great Ghanaian genius actor of our indigenous theatrical stage. To be certain, I had not quite expected the old man to wax so blunt and uncharacteristically uncharitably, as those who knew him would readily testify to his great facility and finesse with both Akan and the English languages.
Then again, I shrugged and muttered to myself, “The man is in the throes of death and has himself affirmed that much.” And what is more, he no longer seemed to be afraid of the proverbial grim reaper, having already called most of his intimate relatives and friends to inform them about the same.
The old man also did not seem to be zestful about life either; and besides, who could begrudge a dying man of his right to speak his mind, express himself as frankly and plainly as he felt justified the query? In any case, when all is said and done, the Owusu-Agyeman Club House may yet be soon followed by other such generous gestures in the regions and localities. For though Accra remains the political hub of our beloved Ghana, the cultural belly of our country lies somewhere between Abokobi and Paga.
For now, however, I can only fathom our NPP club houses (once they have mushroomed all over the country) being filled with the memorable publications and papers of our founding fathers, as well as the best global writings – or literature – on democratic governance and human rights.
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