J B Danquah Letters

J B Danquah

Political leaders are the best role models anybody can aspire to, depending on their level of success, because they have the acumen to manage and lead people with all the attendant problems.

We hope that in our series of article which seek to introduce to the public of today the letters of Dr J B Danquah, readers would discern the extreme patience and tolerance of Dr Danquah as a leader, even in the midst of his adversaries.

Dr Danquah had a great capacity to absorb insults and all sorts of insinuation from his opponents and detractors. He would, out of extreme patience, reply to the most scurrilous attack on his person and career, with a most sensible and simple reply which, left to some other leader, would be a firebrand reply that would cause friction and havoc.

This is the sort of patience characteristic of President John Agyekum Kufuor, who would swallow and absorb insults and attacks by replying in a very cool hearted and sensible manner. Such conduct of cultured people hurt their detractors the most.

Read what Dr Danquah wrote to Mr K A Gbedemah on 20th August 1950, when he found the conduct of the addressee and his party men to be rather unbecoming of any responsible political leadership.

LET US BEHAVE LIKE GENTLEMEN

20th August 1950

K A Gbedemah, Esq.,

Chairman, Editorial Board,

Accra Evening News,

Accra

Dear Mr Gbedemah,

Your paper continues to use scurrilous and libelous language against your political opponents, despite your appeal on August 6 at Cape Coast at your party conference that members of your Party should behave like cultured people, in short "to be gentlemen.”

As you are Acting Chairman of your Party and Chairman of the Editorial Board of your Party's newspaper, The Accra Evening News, and as, according to your Cape Coast speech, you are the director and controller “over all in the Party,” I should like to know how you justify the following scurrilous and libelous attack against Mr W E G Sekyi and myself in the editorial of The Accra Evening News August 19, 1959:-

“It also indicates that had the Convention People"s Party not been formed, Mr Sekyi, of the Aborigines Society, and Dr Danquah of the UGCC, through Pa Grant would have us follow them blindly and then bound hand and foot and sold to the imperialists for a pat on the back, for scholarships to their children and for subsidies to publish books.”

In reply I would ask you to keep in mind the fact that the CPP was formed just over a year ago upon fictitious and malicious allegations of bribery and corruption against the founder and all but one of the leaders of the Convention; that the Aborigines Society which saved our lands has passed its jubilee, and that the UGCC, originator of the modern aspect of our struggle, is in its fourth year.

Further, Mr Sekyi entered politics some 35 or more years ago and I myself did so some 25 or more years ago.

In the editorial in question, your paper further states: “The Aborigines and the U.G.C.C have now revealed their true colours to the people of this country. No wonder they have never succeeded in doing anything beneficial to the country.”

Do you, as leader of a Party, the members of which are counseled to behave like gentlemen, honestly believe that you do journalism in West Africa any good by that kind of ungentlemanly perversion of history in your party paper?

Do you honestly believe that the younger men who have hardly any means or opportunity of checking up such perversions of fact in your paper would be able to refrain from behaving like hooligans against leaders in other political parties concerning whom your paper writes such malicious rubbish?

As to the statement that the Aborigines and the UGCC have never succeeded in doing anything beneficial to the country, I myself have no doubt that the CPP has done something “to the country” - its value is quite another question.

Yours very sincerely,

J B Danquah.

Credit: “Journey to Independence and after” (J B Danquah Letters – Vol. III. 1949 – 1951) by H.K Acheampong.

Courtesy: The Archives of V O D Twum-Barima