Krobo Edusei - An Appreciation
By Akwasi Kwarteng
"Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us... Rich men furnished with ability, living peaceably in their habitation…”Commonwealth Secretariat, London
The death of Krobo Edusei provides an occasion for an éloge - an address to commemorate the illustrious dead - about a man who, for well over fifteen years, hugged the centre of Ghana's political firmament by his flamboyance and sheer brilliance. Krobo's name inspired conflicting emotions in his fellow Ghanaians, emotions that were a mixture of intense affection and of extreme dislike, if not downright hatred.
For, he was at once a man of immense charm and humanity, but also very much an opportunist, and one who was cynical enough to realise, very early in his career, that power was not to be sought as an end in itself, but that once gained it should be used to the full to one's advantage and that of one's people. If in wielding power the wielder enriches himself materially this Should be expected and understood because it is not for altruism and the sheer love of it that one goes into politics but to serve one's fellow men and above all one's self..
His early appreciation of this basic instinct made him very single minded in his pursuit of power, even at a very high cost to himself and to his family. This single mindedness about power also resulted in his saying and doing things which were sometimes outwardly absurd but which had an inner coherence with his general attitude to politics and life; it is this that lends his career to be painted in the primary colours of virtue and vice.
His virtues, however, outweigh his faults. Otherwise why did he have such a large following in Ghana, larger than most of his politician contemporaries? Of course, sometimes his antics at political rallies smacked of the buffoonery - the "choo boie", "choo boie" was the rallying call which became anathema to his opponents but was nonetheless effective in rousing the converted. Krobo brought some comic relief and some lighthearted banter to the politics of the 1950s and 1960s.
Politics was rather too deadly serious at that time and had a solemnity about it far in excess of its importance in the lives of the ordinary Ghanaian. Those were the days when the 'political kingdom' was to be sought first and all other things were to be added unto it later. In those days there was a religious fervour about politics and political rallies of the CPP were opened with the Victory anthem.
It was to the credit of Krobo Eduesi and the likes of him that the sting was taken out of politics, and, even though for a time it seemed a civil war might result from such deadly seriousness this possibility did not become real, politics did not degenerate into a civil strife, save for the brief period when the conflict between the CPP and the opposition movement in Ashanti almost degenerated to that level.
That conflict in Ashanti was to test Krobo's loyalty to Nkrumah and the CPP and was to show that his commitment to the leader and the Party was total. It also showed how courageous and indomitable he was in the pursuit of the aims of the CPP, namely to achieve independence from colonial rule under a strong central government with a popular power base. Krobo brought to these aims a missionary zeal which was reminiscent of St. Paul in the latter's propagation of the Christian gospel. Both men were to render invaluable service to their respective causes.
That Ghana was held together as we have come to know it since independence, and not a congeries of regional and tribal units in a loose federation is due above all to the courage and loyal ty of Krobo Edusei: For, he only had to declare for the National Liberation Movement and there were considerable pressures on him to do so, including the murder of his sister and the NLM would have succeeded in its objective of a federal Ghana. It is for this, if for nothing else, that Krobo Edusei should die lapped by the waves of Ghana's gratitude.
Krobo Edusei always believed that no matter how acrimonious political debate became, a politician's humane instincts should never desert him. So it was that he would, as Minister of Interior, threaten his opponents with the much dreaded Preventive Detention Act but would not personally sign the Detention Order of any of his political opponents when they came to be detained.
He did revel in, and was obviously very proud of his role as Minister of Interior in the famous Amadu Baba and Othman Larden Lalemie deportation cases Northern and even prouder, being an avowed nationialist, and exulted in having been the Minister who kept Mr Christopher Shawcross out of Ghana when the latter went there to defend and plead the case of Mr Ian Colvin, the Daily Telegraph Correspondent who had also been deported, in the Ghanaian Courts.
Ghana, he said at the time, would not brook being insulted by anybody, least of all the former colonial power, and he did not have any hesitation nor indeed compunction in signing the deportation orders of Ian Colvin, who was filing some embarrassing reports on Ghana to his paper in London. Independence, to Krobo, did not only mean that the Ghanaian was in control of his affairs but also that he had a right to take the decisions that were not pleasing to the former Colonial Master.
Krobo's kindness, charm and affability and his singular sweetness of nature have been retailed all over Ghana in anecdotes about him, but the one story which epitomises these qualties is the one about Dr K. A. Busia's escape into exile from Ghana in 1959. The story is still apocryphal in the sense that it has not been publicly authenticated by anybody (including the principal characters, Dr Busia and Krobo, themselves during their lifetime). However, it has been common knowledge in Ghana that it was Krobo Edusei who warned Dr Busia of his imminent detention by the government in 1959 and suggested that Busia took refuge outside Ghana.
Indeed Krobo is said in the story to have provided a safe conduct out of Ghana for Dr Busia. He might have done this without prejudice to his loyalty to Nkrumah and the government, a loyalty which he had demonstrated in various ways in the past, including his defence of the CPP at the Jibowu Commission which enquired into the affairs of the Cocoa Purchasing Company in 1956, and of course his unshakeable allegiance to the CPP in the troubled years of the NLM.
Much has been made of Krobo Edusei's wealth and the famous gold embossed bed, but what is not mentioned is that the purchase of the bed had nothing to do with Krobo personally, since his wife was a formidable and rich trader in her own right as many Ghanaian women have been all through the ages and that the purchase might not have been with his prior knowledge. Be that as it may, Krobo roundly condemned the purchase "Gold Bed is not Socialism" and was very contrite about it all, although he bore no personal guilt for it. As for his 'Ashanti House' in Accra, another cause célèbre in his political career, it is an exaggeration even by the standards of the 1960s to say that it was an extraordinarily large house.
In any case, as events have subsequently shown, he was just pandering to the Ghanaian's love for ostentation and 'showmanship' where wealth is concerned. It is amazing, but not altogether unexpected, that his lifestyle should become the paradigm, the prime example, which later day Nouveau riches and parvenus in Ghana have emulated, as witnessed by the number of 'palaces' that sprang up in Accra and Kumasi, and elsewhere in Ghana, during the 1970's.
Krobo regarded ideology and ideological posturings as cant. Not that he understood all the jargon peddling that was common in Ghana during the CPP days, being no intellectual himself. He was a Socialist in the sense in which he understood the term personally and in Akan terms "Eat a bit and let me eat a bit too", as he used to interpret Socialism. A man of the people must needs be rich so that he can satisfy the aspirations of all the people around him and vicariously provide a mirror in which those with similar background and upbringing as his would find a reflection of themselves.
Krobo regarded ideology and ideological posturings as cant. Not that he understood all the jargon peddling that was common in Ghana during the CPP days, being no intellectual himself.
The late Geoffrey Bing, who was, for 10 years, first the Attorney General and later an Adviser to Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP Government, describes Krobo Edusei as a:
"genuine sans cullotte of the eighteenth-century mould, both in his working-class origin and in his opposition to socialism. A poor boy from Ashanti, he had existed on the verge of poverty as a debt collector of a provincial newspaper and as an itinerant peddler of anti-malarial drugs. He had been in 1947 one of the founders of the Ashanti Youth Organisation aimed at opposing the feudal power of the Ashanti Confederacy; and during Nii Bonne's boycott campaign he had set up his own courts to enforce it in opposition to the chiefs. His supporters were essential to the CPP if they were to obtain a footing in Ashanti. They were drawn from all those who did not belong to the class of 'Elders' or 'Royals' from whom the Ashanti chiefs and sub-chiefs were chosen and who had come to monopolise power under the system of Indirect Rule. Krobo Edusei believed in a golden age when the warrior bands and the young men in their Asafo companies had made and unmade chiefs of Ashanti. His ambition was to destroy the feudal system of the Gold Coast and to substitute a regime in which careers were open to all talents. . . . . he was a sincere egalitarian, and liberty, equality and fraternity summed up his political philosophy. But the equality he supported was an equality of opportunity and not income". *Krobo might have been opposed to socialism, but the above qualities would endear him, no less to most socialists. The point needs to be emphasised that he simply did not understand socialism in terms that the word is generally understood by intellectuals. If it was explained to him that it meant providing for the greatest number of people, he would cavil that then he was all for it and was a socialist himself; why, did he not have a large entourage and hangers on for whom he provided adequately? Was he not very well known for his generosity? Was he not fighting, day in and day out, to better the lives of the ordinary Ghanaians? And did he not know of the aspirations of the common man, having himself sprung from among such men?
In the language which he understood very well, and which he spoke very beautifully as how the Asante Twi should be spoken, Socialism meant essentially being your brother's keeper and nobody could accuse him of having failed in that regard; nor did socialism mean to him a denial of personal wealth. He used to pose the question, rhetorically no doubt, what he was to do with his wealth, having already acquired it. At the advent of socialism was he to throw his riches into the sea? To him the socialism that was preached by the Left of the CPP was an alien god and he would, as a nationalist, have no truck with it.
At a time after 1962 when the Left of the CPP was ascendant, it seemed Krobo was eclipsed politically, but he bounced back and became a very effective Minister of Agriculture. "Krobo for Crops" the Ghanaian papers jubilantly announced when he was appointed Minister. The fact is that all through his career he had acquired a reputation as a man of action and a man who stood by the courage of his convictions.
It is in taking decisions, standing firmly by them and seeing to their implementation that his genius lay and for which, among other things, Ghana will sorely miss him. In fact, after a succession of culpably dilatory governments, Ghana already misses his dynamism. Long after he had left the political scene and during his reincarnation, albeit in an attenuated form, as the 'father' of the PNP, years later, one heard Ghanaians say in conversation, with nostalgia "Ah, Krobo would have done it that way..."
Like the son of Shirach let us praise famous men. Krobo Edusei is one of Ghana's famous men, but on the occasion of his death it is not his fame that should attract us; it is his genius.
* Geoffrey Bing "Reap the Whirlwind".
London, MacGibbon & Kee, 1968.
