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SAMUEL ASANTE ANTWI – A LIVING STORY
THE FIRST PRESIDING BISHOP OF THE METHODIST CURCH,
GHANA
A BOOK REVIEW BY ASARE OTCHERE-DARKO
I enjoy reading biographies but I have over-enjoyed
reading the biography of the Most Rev. Dr. Asante
Antwi. His book, ‘Samuel Asante Antwi – a living
story’ is 160-pages of courage, perseverance,
patriotism, Christian teachings and achievements of
a poor, village boy who saw the heavens as the limit
and rose through the filaments to become the First
Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church, Ghana.
As the author puts it, “”Seventy years ago, who
among the inhabitants of Juaben, Kasaam and Moseaso,
would have thought that the young, energetic, skinny
boy from that poor home would become a Presiding
Bishop over the souls of millions of people?” And,
he proceeds to answer, “Well, that is how God
works.” The book is full of gratefulness to what
God, his poor but loving parents, his teachers, and
others have done for him and what he has, in turn,
paid society back with his blessings.
It is a biography extraordinaire, in that it fills
you up with spiritual nutrients as you cut your
through the sumptuous menu of a great Man of God and
a great patriot of Ghana’s seven decades on earth.
Not many books have inspired many a sceptic like me
like this biography has.
To the youth, the former Member of the Council of
State says, you have to “work diligently, prepare
adequately and acquire skills, knowledge and
experience to make God’s plan for your life come to
pass in His time... Be focused and get all the
trainings and preparations you need. Never allow
anything else to distract you and cause a dent or
detour in your pursuit of purpose and destiny.
” He defines the character of leadership saying in
Godly leadership everything rises and falls on
character. “A leader with a shallow character will
crumble under the pressure of the people he leads.”
He makes the Lincolnian point that it is “one thing
to have character and another to have a reputation.”
To use Abraham Lincoln’s own words, “Character is
like a tree and reputation like its shadow.”
What struck me most in reading the book was his
reference to Peggy Noonan’s definition of character
“In a President, character is everything. A
president doesn’t have to be brilliant... He doesn’t
have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can
hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy
wonks. But you can’t buy courage and decency; you
can’t rent a strong moral sense. A president must
bring those things with him... He needs to have, in
that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless,
a ‘vision’ of the future he wishes to create... But
a vision is worth little if a president doesn’t have
the character – the courage and heart – to see it
through.”
But, like Saint Augustine, John Calvin, Martin
Luther King Jnr, Desmond Tutu and others on the long
alter of the priesthood and political activism,
besides being, in his own words, a doctor healing
souls, Rev. Dr. Asante Antwi has played a pivotal
role in the long fought struggle for democracy in
Ghana. In his book, he produces part of a very
fearless article he wrote in 1987 against the fierce
military dictatorship of the Provisional National
Democratic Council, which was in its sixth year of
ensuring a ‘culture of silence’ in Ghana. The
Methodist priest wrote: “The PNDC should disarm
itself completely, stand before Ghanaians and say it
has woefully failed the nation.” It took them
another five years to put that question indirectly
to Ghanaians in that controversial presidential
election.
He used the pulpit, evangelism and the pen to seek
to exorcise oppression from the body politic of
Ghana. In his own words, “I had been openly critical
of the PNDC Government and had been voicing out in
articles and preaching on the atrocities the
military rulers had unleashed on innocent and
peace-loving Ghanaians, especially during the early
days of the PNDC era. I spoke out against atrocities
such as: confiscation of property, destruction of
property, whipping of market women in public places,
rape of innocent women, and murder of all kinds.”
His strong sense of justice is a product of
his upbringing. As the Most Rev. Peter K. Sarpong,
Catholic Bishop Emeritus of Kumasi, states in his
eloquent foreword, the “author was very lucky in his
early ages to be linked to an affectionate family
replete with a rare depth of culture, from where he
learnt the traditions, the modes of ways, the
general mores of society.”
His grandfather was a Muslim, Kramo Kwasi
Opoku, from Juaben, a rich blend of a background
which rooted in him a spirit of tolerance so broad,
except when it comes to the toleration of injustice
against his fellow human being. Born in the small
Akyem Abuakwa village of Moseaso, on Saturday, 22nd
May, 1937, his home education started at so young an
age that by six he was effectively a historian who
could recite folklore and oral history passed down
to him by his traditional tutors, his grandparents.
He writes so beautifully about how he loved to
listen with curiosity and attention to those
treasured but rare stories today. He describes how
“We loved to gather at the feet of the aged and
listen intently as they told us fantastic stories
and myths... At a tender age of about six years, my
mind was already so fertile that I could think
through and creatively imagine and replay movies in
my mind, using the stories they told me.”
What has made him such a remarkable being, he
believes, is down to the “convergence and
integration of the Akan cultural and traditional
values, disposition, religious and moral education
as well as the Christian values of my parents and
grandparents.” And, it is difficult to argue with
him when he makes the point that he is “tempted to
conclude that our childhood days were far better
than that of the 21st Century child growing up in
urban and suburban communities.” His reason is that
television, video games, the internet and other
modern toys do not permit the modern child to use
his or her mind creatively. They had to use their
minds to innovate what today’s child can do with a
push of a button. Even before the author turned 8
years-old, he could use his father’s sewing machine
to make his own shirts and patch his own shorts. He
calls it “instructive upbringing.”
He cleverly links that kind of endangered upbringing
to the lack of career guidance and counselling in
our schools today and in our entire national
career/employment system. His advice is that “our
children must be guided and encouraged to choose and
pursue subjects and courses that are in line with
their God-given, natural temperaments, talents,
gifts, proficiency and interests. Indeed, our
children need to pursue purpose-driven lives.”
The story also tells of how active the traditional
leaders were then in bringing development to their
areas. One of the schools he attended, the
Methodist-Presbyterian School was established by the
Queen Mother of Moseaso. He also tells how what,
perhaps, made the quality of education in those days
far superior to what we have now. The teacher had
pride and dignity. He became a teacher by accident,
though. In the colonial days, secondary school
education was not free. Saw he went into teaching,
as a teenager, after completing middle school. To
give him a good grounding, he was able to undertake
a Pupil Teachers’ Training Course at Atibie, Kwahu
to learn the basic skills in teaching, making him a
certified teacher.
He moved on to the Komenda Teachers’ Training
College, where among the list of his teachers were L
A Creedy, Victoria Sackey and Atta Mills – yes Atta
Mills. He says those days being a teacher, even a
pupil teacher, “was a very respectable job and it
was a fulfilling work.” So fulfilling was the
teaching profession that at the age of 23, he had
saved enough money from teaching to build a
two-bedroom house.
He was also a sports man, to the point of becoming a
player and founding member of the Susubribi Football
Club, playing against big teams such as Kotoko, the
Republicans and the Academicals of the 1960s.
It was also in the 60s that his career in the clergy
took shape, starting with a 4-year certificate in
pastoral ministry from Trinity College. The book of
his life is also the book of Ghana’s history, from
the UGCC in 1947, the great hopes of Independence
after 1957, the dictatorship of the 1960s and the
series of coups and the occasional constitutional
rule that followed until the 1992 Fourth Republican
order. He was ordained in 1972 and followed that two
years later with study tours to the United States
and the United Kingdom. His studies took him to the
prestigious Yale University where he completed his
Master’s degree in 1977 and to Aberdeen University
for his PhD.
His forebears, originally from Duase, near Kumasi,
were refugees , who migrated from Juaben to Okyeman,
first in New Juaben where the Okyenhene allowed the
refugees to settle. I was interested in writing this
review because the author is not only a great man of
our life time but a member of the governing board of
the Danquah Institute.
Little did I expect that going through his biography
I would discover that we are related. His father was
of the Oyoko Abusua at Juaben Mmorontuo, same as my
father. Indeed, my father, Dr Joseph Boateng
Otchere-Darko, is the current Mmorontuohene of New
Juaben.
Perhaps, no other member of the clergy has played
the kind of active role that the Most Rev Dr Asante
Antwi played in bringing about the current nature of
Ghana’s multiparty democracy. This is because he is
one of the two main instruments behind what is the
New Patriotic Party. Apart from the historical fact
that the NPP traces its roots through the PP, UNC,
PP, UP and way back to the UGCC of 1947, the family
had to be rebuilt in 1992 and that process started
in 1991 with the Danquah-Busia Memorial Club which
was formed in Kumasi.
In his own words, the author narrates, “I became a
co-founder and spokesman of the Danquah-Busia
Memorial Club with the late Opanyin Attakora Gyimah,
a journalist, on 23rd February, 1991 in Kumasi.
There were twenty one original members. We were
encouraged by Appiah Menkah, Nana Addo Dankwa
Akufo-Addo, Dr Addo ufuor, Dr Sarfo Adu, Dr Donkor
Fordwour, Gyamfi Bikkai, Maxwell Owusu, Baafour Osei
Akoto, Ivor Agyeman Dua.” He names some of the
others as J A Kufuor, Yaw Osafo Maafo, Dr Amoako
Tuffuor, Richard Anane, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu,
Kwaku Dua, Courage Quashigah, Madam Gladys Asmah,
Madam Ama Busia, Gifty Ayeh, Prof Adu Boahen, Dr
Djane Selby, Felicia Kufuor, B J da Rocha, R R
Amponsah, Theresa Tagoe, Peter Ala Adjetey, Odoi
Sykes, Jake Obestebi-Lamptey, Hackman Owusu-Agyeman,
Rev Kodua, Stephen Krakue, J A addison and Dan
Botwe.
“This club was the harbinger of the NPP, he writes,
adding, “We taught and mobilised support for the
pillars and democratic ideas” of the
Danqua-Dombo-Busia tradition throughout Ghana.
But, though he was ready to retreat from frontline
politics since his years of prayers were answered
with the 1992 presidential elections, presidential
ballot papers in a rubbish dump were found by a
school child in his neigbourhood on the morning of
polling day, forming some of the evidential bases of
‘Stolen Verdict’ with the opposition NPP describing
the election as rigged and boycotting the subsequent
parliamentary elections.
The author, citing Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev
Jesse Jackson and others, argues, “There are many
Christian leaders who have and are playing crucial
roles in the body politic of their nations.” He
says, “I have played my role here in Ghana.”
I will say, Sir, your role for Ghana is far from
spent. The length of your days will be beyond
eighty, because God has given you the strength.
Printed
by Digibooks Ghana Ltd, 2011. ISBN 978 9988 1 4630 6
The author is the Executive Director of the
Danquah Institute. gabby@danquahinstitute.org
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