A tribute to Comrade Samuel ‘Gasconi’ Sotamah

Not gold, but only men can make a nation great and strong. Men who for truth and honour’s sake, stand fast and suffer long. Brave men, who work while others sleep. Who dares while others shy? They build a nation’s pillars deep and lift them to the sky …….. Ralph Wald Emerson

It is with much pain that I write to pay this solemn tribute to my late cousin and ex-staff of the then South Tongu District Secretariat of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs).

Gas, precisely on September 30, 2022, you messaged me that ‘Professor’ Lakle Adigler had informed you of the sudden demise of Comrade Ted Gbodo of Mepe. I then gave you an assignment with regard to Ted’s death only to be informed a day later (October 1, 2022) of your own demise. Hopefully, you and Ted would cross paths en route to Avlime.

Gas, around 1983, you decided to offer your services to the PNDC’s Revolution by training as a member of the Civil Defence Organization (what became better known as Militia), and soon thereafter, we had you moved to the District Secretariat of the then Interim National Coordinating Committee of PDCs/WDCs, later Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs), where we thought your services were better needed. For years, you worked in the Projects Department but also helped in the Arbitration and Complaints Department.

The Arbitration and Complaints Department witnessed the largest volume of work in view of the fact that the Revolution sought to redeem the downtrodden, who for years had suffered untold injustices as tenants who were regularly harassed by their landlords/ladies;

as poor farmers who were exploited by their shareholder landowners; as workers in both the public and private sectors whose bosses did many untold things to them including so-called ‘punishment transfers’ and the refusal to pay SSNIT contributions;

and as ordinary people whose cattle were lost due to the thievish behavior of some cattle kraal owners with regards to animals put in their care, among many others. I often deployed some other staff to assist the Department in instances where the workload was overburdening.

One of the reasons we brought you to the CDRs Secretariat was your ability to do public education and you were not found wanting during our several and regular public education activities during the era of the CDRs. You and the other cadres eloquently and forcefully represented the Secretariat on numerous public outings.

And so, when the PNDC decided to return the country to multi-party democracy, you and the other cadres were ready for the new dispensation although we all knew that as proverbial ‘leopards,’ we could not easily change our skins from Revolutionaries to party operatives.

Nevertheless, our preparations under the Revolution made us already-cut materials for the revolutionary democratic party that the late Flt. Lt. J.J. Rawlings had envisaged. The ‘Jeremiah’ had envisaged a party without traitors; a party with principled cadres and others who share in the dreams of May 15 and June 4, 1979, and December 31, 1981; and a party made up of people who were ready to expose opportunists and pretenders, among others.

Gas, you, and the other cadres at the District, Zonal, and lower levels of the CDRs were deeply involved in the processes for the establishment of the National Democratic Congress in the South Tongu Constituency. In the search for our first parliamentary candidate in 1992, you and Sylvester Satsi served as the able lieutenants that I really needed.

The choice of the late Mr. Oscar Ameyedowo (as the cadres’ choice for the primary-may he Rest In Peace) and who then became our first Member of Parliament in the Fourth Republic was made when Kofi Attoh, the then Regional Organizing Assistant of CDRs introduced him to you, Satsi, and myself in the then garage of the District Assembly, besides our Secretariat. Thenceforward, you were instrumental in our campaign efforts until our victory in the 1992 elections.

Gas, you were also instrumental when we got Professor Norvor elected in 1994 as the Volta Regional Party Chairman of the NDC at the elections held in the dining hall of Sogakofe SHS. You were an active member of the Strategy Team that we had formed to ensure that Tongu produced its first Regional Chairman of the NDC. We barely slept that night and our sacrifices paid off with Professor Norvor winning the elections. It was a historic moment!

Gas, your commitment to the December 31 Revolution and the National Democratic Congress was again demonstrated in our search for a parliamentary candidate for the 1996 general elections. You and I spent sleepless nights riding motorbikes throughout the length and breadth of the Constituency mostly at night to ensure that we prepared our cadres as delegates to the Constituency Congress for the election of the parliamentary candidate.

At your suggestion that because people knew our motorbike we could easily be ambushed, I had to borrow and change bikes severally for our nocturnal political work, keeping in mind that we had a mission on our hands. At the end of the day, your tireless efforts alongside those of other cadres enabled us to get Mr. Ken Dzirasah through the NDC primary and finally enabled him to win the 1996 parliamentary elections.

Your last bold and fearless demonstration of commitment to the principles of the party was when the Constituency in 2022 requested cadres of the United Cadres Front (UCF) to investigate an alleged “Skirt and Blouse” campaign in the Constituency during the 2020 elections by some party members against the sitting Member of Parliament.

Although the UCF did what was expected of it, we were told that people expected to reason with the gravity of the issue abandoned their obligations, thereby shirking their responsibilities for reasons best known to themselves, and bringing to nullity the efforts by the United Cadres Front to bring people to accountability.

In fact, the defiant manner in which you and the other cadres had staked your collective position on the matter underlay the extent to which you were committed to the founding principles of the NDC that was born out of a Revolution.

It showed that the UCF shared the views of Wilhelm Liebknecht,
To negotiate with forces that are hostile on matters of the principle means to sacrifice principle itself. Principle is indivisible. It is either wholly kept or wholly sacrificed. The slightest concession on matters of principle infers the abandonment of principle itself.

People who are not truly committed to or understand the philosophy of the NDC think that ex-President Rawlings signed our party’s Constitution with his blood for nothing.

That act was to tell several historic narratives among which was that because our party was born out of a Revolution during which some cadres lost their lives, we must not compromise over its principles and the blood was also symbolically in remembrance of the lives that were lost in our struggle for national independence.

Principles are sacrosanct and must be observed as such!
I wish to sign off this tribute to our departed Comrade with this wisdom from John Donne, the Elizabethan poet when he wrote that, when you hear the funeral bells being tolled, “… send not to know, For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.”

Fare thee well, good Cousin and Comrade, and may the flights of angels sing thee to thy rest in the presence of Mawu Kitikata.

GAS, REST IN ABSOLUTE PEACE