Opinions of Monday, 12 May 2008
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
Chris Asher – The Passing of a Legendary Ghanaian Institution
Among the very few Ghanaian writers who have had quite a profound impact on my literary career, particularly in the field of journalism, is Mr. Chris Asher, firebrand and patriotic publisher of the Palaver newspapers. The other equally seminal influences on my intellectual development and perspective vis-à-vis Ghanaian political culture are Messrs. Cameron Duodu, Henry Ofori (Carl Mutt), Albin Korem, Dr. J. B. Danquah and Ms. Adjoa Yeboah-Afari, the reputable columnist of “The Thoughts of a Native Daughter.”
Mr. Chris Asher was a literary giant of Ghanaian journalism because he stood up to be counted, as it were, when it mattered most. And, perhaps, his profoundest professional achievement was actualized during the terror-charged and sanguinary political milieu sophomorically brewed by Flt.-Lt. Jeremiah John Rawlings and his infamous Abongo Boys of the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), a pseudo-civilian junta and the latter’s faux-constitutional machinery, the so-called National Democratic Congress (NDC).
Earlier on, during the Acheampong regime of the National Redemption Council (NRC) and the Supreme Military Council (SMC-I), the prolific publisher of the Palaver newspaper had been so trenchant and unsparing in his scoring of “military adventurism” (and some believe he actually coined the phrase) that he was to earn himself a prison sentence, then a coveted badge of honor.
Of course, it cannot be gainsaid that there was a palpably sensational and even muckraking edge to his journalistic artistry; the latter streak, however, was readily mitigated by the man’s epic passion for justice and liberty. And I personally remember rushing to the main library of St. Peter’s Secondary School (PERSCO), looking for a copy of the Palaver to devour nearly every week. I stand to be promptly corrected of my quite firm belief that the Palaver was either a weekly newspaper or one that was published several times every week – perhaps twice or thrice a week.
The quality of newsprint was also far better than that of either the Ghanaian Times or Daily Graphic, our two major government-owned and operated dailies. It was semi-glossy and slightly off-white. Indeed, the Palaver possessed a kind of cache that all the other Ghanaian newspapers appeared to visibly lack, which was primarily the fact that it was the best edited. And to be certain, other than its remarkably ticklish and juicy details, sometimes verging on the outright bombastic, almost every PERSCOBA (or PERSCODIAN) went to the Palaver in order to pick up a vocabulary or two; and quite often also an idiomatic expression or two.
Embarrassingly, other than such prized occasional fare as emanated from the indelibly perspicuous ink of the likes of Mr. Cameron Duodu (my paternal uncle) in the Daily Graphic; Carl Mutt, Mr. Albin Korem and Ms. Adjoa Yeboah-Afari in the Sunday Mirror, the PERSCOVITE (my personal coinage) went to either the Daily Graphic or the Ghanaian Times trying to proudly prove that he was either a far better editor or writer than the by-liners of the barely coherent snippets of articles that “disgraced” the pages of these government-owned rags.
The formulaic and largely artless nature of their fare pretty much ensured that both the Daily Graphic and the Ghanaian Times would lack the kind of creativity that made journalism a worthwhile enterprise. The latter, coupled with scabrous censorship also ensured, quite predictably, that intelligent and forward-looking Ghanaians would voraciously look elsewhere for more esthetically and culturally nourishing fare. And so we, PERSCOVITES, would go foraging for such world-class journalistic fare as Time magazine and Newsweek, for two ready examples, purveyed. Of course, we were also fully aware of the quite unpleasant and alienating fact that these news magazines did not really tell our stories the way that we, Ghanaians, alone knew best how to tell them. And it was precisely on the latter score that the Palaver demonstrated its unique relevance. The Palaver, in essence, had carved an enviable niche for itself.
It was also little wonder that in the wake of the PNDC putsch against the democratically elected People’s National Party (PNP), led by Dr. Hilla Limann, the first port of call by Monsieur Rawlings’ posse of nation-wreckers would include the Asher residence in the Kanda Estates enclave of Accra. Back then, legend even had it that having missed their prime target of possible assassination, the goon squad had unspeakably molested Mrs. Chris Asher. I, however, have yet to draw an accurate version of this narrative out of my friend and brother, Mr. Bernard Asher, a spitting intellectual and literary image of his great father but who, ironically, also envisages yours truly as his literary role-model.
Indeed, as I had propitious occasion to relate to Bernie in an E-mail recently, following my formal notification by him of his legendary father’s passing (for I had been very busy following and writing profusely about the Kyerematen episode with the ruling New Patriotic Party), I feel great kinship with the members of the Asher family, none of whom I have personally encountered, partly because my late mother, then Ms. Dorothy Tomina (Adwoa Attaa) Anin’waa Sintim, had briefly attended Agona Nsaba Middle Girls’ School in the late 1940s, prior to also attending the Akyem-Begoro Presbyterian Middle Girls’ Boarding School.
Another quite cosmic kinship that I feel between Mr. Bernard Asher and me inheres in the fact of my own father, Professor Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Sr., having peacefully expired at the age of 72, seven years ago, at exactly the same age as the phenomenal publisher of the Palaver newspapers. Of course, in his trenchant erudition, Mr. Chris Asher had strikingly followed in the enviable tradition of Dr. J. B. Danquah, the immortalized Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics. For like the latter, it was the unquenchable fire of African nationalism the predestined that Mr. Chris Asher would also become a pathfinder of freedom and justice for postcolonial Ghanaian political culture.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage. ---
