Calus Von Brazi
If I had presidential ambitions in Ghana, I would have carefully crafted a programme, that shall be inserted in my manifesto, clearly spelling out what shall be my flagship promise: the celebration of Tetteh Quarshie day. I will ensure that, the day shall coincide with the Jericho Hour at Action Chapel, off the Spintex road. That way, I can be sure that warrior-like prayer warriors who believe that since the time of John the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force, would deploy an arsenal of seventh heaven penetrating prayers to ensure that the ghosts that haunt us from the labyrinths of hell and the machinations of men of the occultic nomenclature shall have no bearing on the future of the good people within the Land of Our Death. Tetteh Quarshie day shall be one that would not be based on any political ideology designed and formulated by specie homo sapien; rather it shall clearly be hinged on gazing towards the hills, from whence cometh our strength, it shall also recognize that authority comes from God and not from the swearing of oaths that we violate with arrogant glee. O! Tetteh Quarshie day shall be a glorious day indeed.
The above is not to overlook the reality of contemporary Ghana, where whether by accident or design, we have collectively chosen to forget about a certain Tetteh Quarshie, without who the Ghana of today would have been perhaps a salt smuggling enclave. Tetteh Quarshie in my humble opinion was and is the most selfless son of this soil. Of course he did not link his smuggling of cocoa from Fernando Po, nor its rapid growth in the then Gold Coast to the total liberation and subsequent nationalization of Africa’s agricultural resources. Tetteh Quarshie could easily have decided not to bring any cocoa to Ghana at the time he did; after all, of what benefit would it have been to him to risk his very life to bring the prized seed to a country where envy can be masked under political ideology to victimize people with a victimization that would make Adolf Hitler’s interaction with the Jews look like an anthology of longer poems? Instead, Tetteh Quarshie aptly and clearly demonstrated that he was Ghana’s truest visionary, for he had determined within his spirit, mind, soul and body that the one legacy he could contribute, even at the peril of his life was to ensure that the soil of Ghana produced premium grade cocoa of which he would become the provider of the seed.
I am sure if he had formed his own “cocoa religion” he would have had many ardent followers, except of course as for Tetteh Quarshie, he “always dies”; he had neither party nor religion that can be exploited exploitatively for political expediency; he had no known birthday that could be earmarked as a silver, brass, bronze, golden, platinum or titanium anniversary; BBC would never organize a poll to determine if he was Africa’s most renowned agricultural-economy visionary for people to quote copiously from or remind us about: is it not interesting that the very people who hypocritically find it fashionable to pour disdain and scorn on the same BBC when they publish the true reflection of the continent’s woes are the first to belch out their popular refrain “BBC’s African of the Century”? I almost get an intellectual orgasm anytime I read or hear that statement for conveniently hidden under that phrase is the very colonialist thinking that allows an entity based in the colonialist or better still, imperialist heartland to organize and publish who in their imperial mindset is the African continent’s best foot for the century. How come no African based entity has found it expedient to do such a thing? I am quite certain that if GBC organizes a poll to determine who the European of the century is/was, we shall gladly vote the Queen of England, after all, are we not a people noted for rewarding those who give us “saajito fans”? I mean exchange would be no robbery at all if you get my drift? All the same, Tetteh Quarshie would never make it unto any such poll: people like that are anathema to the world system for they distort, disable, disorganize and derail the political economy of interest maximization for both the core and the periphery of business and politics whether the form is pre or post-colonial.
Yet, save for occasional fundraising to support a certain site on the Akropong-Mampong foothills, we conveniently forget this great man and what he did for this country. In all truth, my personal founder if we choose to have a ‘founder’s day’ is the self-same Tetteh Quarshie. If we choose to have a “founders’ day”, I shall still agitate for the key founder to be Ataa Tetteh Quarshie for long before anybody hypocritically rode on the backs of a vacuum created by those whose descendants sometimes still think big names at the forefronts of political campaigns does magic, Tetteh Quarshie had seen into the future and stabbed guess who in the back? Colonialists who intended to keep our economy subservient to theirs. Had Tetteh Quarshie become our first president, would he not have employed the same tactic to outwit those who determine the price of the very crop he risked his life to grow in Ghana?
My vote for Tetteh Quarshie as the fulcrum around which the idea of a “founders’ day” would revolve is also premised on my finding that he did not lock up any of the people who bought into his vision. Whether they watered the first cocoa seedling or uprooted weeds too close to the young shoot, Tetteh Quarshie did not give their ignorant heads hefty knocks or tie them up in monkey chains to teach them a politico-agricultural lesson. In fact so affable was Tetteh Quarshie that not a single person ever dreamt of conspiring to overthrow or undermine him. Even his enemies from within and without allowed his vision to fester without reservation, for they never saw or heard him talking of not “going east or west but forward” and then make a sharp detour to the west when it suited his political, egoistic deceitful self; how could he have behaved as such given that he had no political or egotistical ambitions? Tetteh Quarshie did not impose curfews at Akropong-Mampong or fund migrant Cocoa farmers from Upper Volta sojourning in Ivory Coast to destabilize the prevailing order therein or especially, never did he decide to fund splinter groups of cocoa farmers simply because he did not like the fact that they did not like his style of cocoa leadership within the continent. And come to think of it, Tetteh Quarshie never changed his name from Kofi to Kwame, which a recheck with history has rather proven to be Kwabena for 21st September 1909 is so very Tuesday it isn’t funny, neither did he accept any titles or accolades of self-glorification.
For sure, if ever there was a man of greatness who exuded selflessness and a genuine unmistakable commitment to Ghana, it was Tetteh Quarshie of blessed memory. If anybody subsequently held any position in what became known as Ghana, the person and his lapdogs (and I reserve the right to use the male largely because no female has directly held the reins of political power within Ghana) should thank God for the life of a certain Tetteh Quarshie, whose hard work made it possible for the colonialists of all sorts to leave a stash of cash that ended up supporting the construction of schools, factories, roads and other socio-economic infrastructure that our ears are constantly being bombarded with, never mind that the progenitors of “ear bombardiers” found it fashionable to sell off the most prized of the same factories that Tetteh Quarshie’s sweat and toil paid for over the years? When the railway line was first constructed by the British, it was also to cart a lot of the outcome of Tetteh Quarshie’s exploits; when the Accra-Tema motorway was commissioned, it was also to ensure that cocoa could easily be sent to the new harbour for export to the farthest reaches of the globe so that whichever way one looked at it, Tetteh Quarshie was here, there and everywhere. Just so we recognize that he is still with us, many of the people, who ungratefully mock the self-same Tetteh Quarshie in the face are direct beneficiaries of his prowess, lobbying for the Cocoa Scholarships that were first granted by Achimota School and now nationalized nationwide as the CMB scholarship. Is it not interesting that not many children of cocoa farmers benefit from it and yet, greedy onanists grab them without shame for their kith, kin and when it suits them, their political opponents just to find favour for rainy days? Tetteh Quarshie the blacksmith, did not have anybody pay for his trip to and fro Fernando Po. Maybe that is why nobody can fault him for either stabbing them in the back or provide him with a golden opportunity to steal the limelight after some “book long” people had unwittingly thought it wise to allow someone else come do their dirty work while they spent their off-duty hours “progressing” the fairer sex “progressively”.
Tetteh Quarshie’s date of birth remains unknown but never did he or any member of his family create any controversy about his unknown date of birth. As a matter of fact, what is known regarding dates concerning him is his date of death, given as 25th December 1892. Nobody till this day, has been able to tell us in what month or on what day of 1842 he was born, unlike those whose dates of birth are an unresolved battle of controversy oscillating when it suits their clouded political somersaults between December and September.
Again, nobody has ever thought it wise to honour the name, integrity and image of Tetteh Quarshie after all he has done for this country. I would have thought, that anytime representatives of the Government of Ghana, acting through the Ghana Cocoa Board go for negotiations that allows Standard Chartered Bank (imperialist symbol, not so?) to syndicate loans for either the major or light crop season within the cocoa industry, they would have had the simple courtesy of institutionalizing something in memory and commemoration of Tetteh Quarshie; would it not be nice and wise to put his effigy on our one Ghana pesewa for example? When the late Baah-Wiredu declared cocoa as our “national drink” on the floor of parliament, I thought Tetteh Quarshie was about to be immortalized only to be disappointed with a disappointment that this truly noble patriot had once again been bypassed by the sands of history when his patriotic blood was screaming to the living from wherever it remains buried for us to do the right thing. Yet we are in Ghana, where new ideas are usually opposed not only because they are not already common, but mainly because the political shape of one’s nose is not attractive to whosoever finds himself striding the corridors of power. What would have been more uniting than combining all those who contributed in whatever way towards our destiny as a full-fledged politically independent member of the comity of nations in a celebration of life and works of those countless persons? Would we not succeed in sending the clearest signal yet to all of Africa and the world at large that Ghana has began moves to traverse the useless and self-defeating boundaries of political vendetta, historical atrocities and deliberate side-tracking of the very people who facilitated the rise of those who otherwise would have remained faint footnotes in folkloric tales told by itinerant lay speakers wandering around Hyde Park and its environs?
The time has really come for us to get off the political gimmickry bandwagon and do something meaningful, if for nothing at all, to signal to the up and coming but increasingly despondent youth that the Ghana that is becoming relatively not worth dying for, is also a place of appreciation where the sacrifices of its citizen would remain etched on the tablets of the hearts of its generations past, present and yet unborn. I shudder to think, that until and unless we deliberately veer off the path chosen by those who think Kofi Nwiah, nay Kwame, nay Kwabena was the best thing that happened to Ghana since creation, we shall only end up producing “reverse Tetteh Quarshie syndrome”. Now is that not too frightening to contemplate? If in doubt, start counting the number of Ghanaian doctors in the district of Washington alone: you would be left in no doubt about both the need for a more meaningful rethink of who or what we classify collectively as founders of Ghana and the implications inherent in the reality of reverse “Tetteh Quarshie syndrome”. We have a unique opportunity to do that which we know in the deepest recesses of our consciences must be done for the benefit of all Ghanaians now and in the future unfolding before our very eyes. Yeshua El-Berith keep us in a covenant to do that which is right and pleasing to the memory of our heroes and heroines.
