Captain (rtd) Effah-Dartey
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29th November, 2011
TRICKS OF MEMORY
This past weekend has forced me to burrow deep into the stream of consciousness buried deep within my psyche.
First, I was greatly interested to read this article, entitled "From Effah Dartey To Col. Crabbe", on the website of the Daily Graphic:
http://www.graphic.com.gh/dailygraphic/page.php?news=16870#cmts
The part that grabbed me most was this:
“….We walked briskly from the Supreme Court building to the High Street, hired a taxi and told the driver – Burma Camp.
“I have this interesting driver who always tells me ‘Captain, the problems of Hohoe are different from the problems of Sefwi Wiawso’ – imagine how desperate and anxious I was in wanting to get to Burma Camp and sitting in a taxi whose driver was more than a chatterbox – “‘Honourable – why, are you going for Court martial?’
“‘No – funeral service – driver hurry up!!...’
"Lt. Col. S. K. Crabbe – he was one of my instructors at the Ghana Military Academy – intake 20, and how can I ever forget Col. Crabbe – he was then a Captain – young, fair-coloured, handsome, almost angelic in appearance, always very neatly dressed, his shoes shining more than a mirror – for me, he looked the very epitome of the military officer corps. What is more, he was from the Airborne Force, the Green Berets, who, according to legend always jumped with the parachute on every payday!!!!
"Colonel Crabbe – I remember those days in 1981, when President Limann's dreaded military intelligence way-laid me and hauled me before the prisons-sitting General Court Martial – my former GMA instructor, Col. Crabbe, agreed to be my Defence Officer, to always be by my side at every sitting, until the very last day. Oh! Colonel Crabbe, rest in peace."...
When I read this, “awusi” [shivers] broke out all over me. I was immediately transported back to 1981, when I was the BBC stringer in Accra. One day, I read a terse report in one of our newspapers, stating that “military personnel” were being tried for acts of attempting to cause disorder -- or something of that nature.
The report was so uninformative that I could hardly make a story out of it. The military authorities were uncommunicative when I sought to obtain more information.
Anyway, I managed to put a story together and send it to the BBC. In those days, most of the Ghana media were lacking in curiosity. So everyone who wanted to know what was going on in Ghana listened to the BBC.
One day, I was at the State House covering a conference when President Hilla Limann, having finished his speech, got up to leave. As he passed, he stopped by me. He said in an accusatorial tone to me: “You! Every time I leave this country, they tell me “Cameron Duodu has reported this. Cameron Duodu has said that…”
Before I could think of saying a retort, like, “My job as a correspondent is to tell the world the truth!” he had walked on.
I felt outraged. I’d known Dr Limann when he was a member of the Constitutional Commission in 1968-69, and a mutual friend, Mr Gambong, had introduced us and had told me prophetically : “This man is very learned. He will one day be Ghana’s President!” I’d liked the man and had once visited him at his lodgings in the Airport residential area in Accra. He it was who’d first showed me the then unpublished report of the Constitutional Commission… And now, as President, he wasn’t please with truthful reports about his regime?
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Limann was not the first head of state to be displeased with you! Do you remember Lieutenant-General Joseph Ankrah? One day, you attended a press conference in the Castle. This was after the 17 April 1967 attempted coup led by Lt. S. B. Arthur (the “Guitar Boy” coup.) Lt-Gen. E. K. Kotoka had been killed. You got up and asked Ankrah, Chairman of the National Liberation Council (NLC) : “Sir, are you going to appoint another officer to replace General Kotoka on the Council?”
This perfectly innocuous question caused Ankrah to explode: “You are the people spreading rumours!” he barked. “When we made the coup, did we say that when one of us was killed, we would replace him with another soldier?”
All the journalists sitting with me seemed to shrink into their seats. Gee-whiz!
Jimmy Markham, a former colleague of mine at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (sadly now deceased) and a sharp-witted guy, later made fun of Ankrah: “Ankrah said ‘When we made the coup’! But where was he when Kotoka and the others were making the coup? They only called on him to ‘dash’ him the chairmanship – to his complete surprise -- after the coup had succeeded!” Jimmy laughed at his own mischievous witticism: “Hahahaha!”
I didn’t join in.
We thought that with the overthrow of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, dictatorship had ended forever in Ghana. But here were we being shown that even a question from a journalist at a press conference could infuriate our new head of state. “The same thing different”, as the Legon Observer was to remark.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Do you remember your other encounter with Ankrah? That was barely a year later. General Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire was visiting Ghana. He held a press conference with Ankrah present.
He described his efforts to make peace in Zaire with his rebel Generals who tried to secede – he gave them big jobs in Kinshasa! (This was an allusion to how General Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria could solve the Biafran secession problem.)
I got up and asked: “Sir, will you be sharing your experience with General Gowon, and if he doesn’t listen to you, will you recognise Biafra?”
General Ankrah [once again] exploded: “Don’t embarrass him!” he shouted at me. “He is not Gowon!” Gee-whiz!
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Did you hear that General Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of Biafra, has just died? You should write about him? Maybe next week? Oh, and don’t forget Mr Alex Ibru, who founded The Guardian newspaper of Nigeria and introduced an amazing level of literacy into the Nigerian newspaper world, has also passed? Maybe he too next week?
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Do you remember a military aide of General Ankrah telling you that on a visit to Canada, Ankrah told the Canadian Prime Minister that he thought the US should drop an atom bomb on North Vietnam and end the war there?
The guy said the Canadian PM was so shocked he told Ankrah – sarcastically -- that when he got to Washington, he should tell that to the man in the White House – ‘LBJ’ [Lyndon Baines Johnson] – who would be “very interested to hear that”.
But back to Captain Effah Dartey. Captain, you do not know this but you owe me a drink. For when you were arrested in 1981, I did report it on the BBC. As I say, the Government announcement of your arrest was opaque to the point of being incomprehensible.
So I commented that the omens for democracy in Ghana were not good if an "unnamed Ghanaian citizen could be arrested and tried at an unknown location by unnamed people for an unspecified crime!".
After my dispatch was broadcast, the Special Branch came to my house. They said their Director wanted to see me.
I went with them.
The Director told me that the Government was not pleased with my report.
I replied: "Then the Government should stop doing things that will make me send reports that do not please it."
The Director said I could go.
As I got up to leave, my professional instinct took over. I asked him: "By the way, what is the correct name of the Captain who has been arrested?"
He said :"I think it is Effah-LARTEY".("You think?" I said. In my head.)
Then, I left.
Later on, when I got to know your correct name, Captain Effah DARTEY, I laughed.
I wondered: "If the Director of the Special Branch does not know the correct name of an arrested person, then what sort of security service is being run in this country?"
We found out on 31 December 1981, didn’t we?
Captain, in your new profession as a lawyer, do always defend the truth at all times. For others, whom you do not know, have, in their own professional duties, tried to do just that -- for you and for Ghana.
First, I was greatly interested to read this article, entitled "From Effah Dartey To Col. Crabbe", on the website of the Daily Graphic:
http://www.graphic.com.gh/dailygraphic/page.php?news=16870#cmts
The part that grabbed me most was this:
“….We walked briskly from the Supreme Court building to the High Street, hired a taxi and told the driver – Burma Camp.
“I have this interesting driver who always tells me ‘Captain, the problems of Hohoe are different from the problems of Sefwi Wiawso’ – imagine how desperate and anxious I was in wanting to get to Burma Camp and sitting in a taxi whose driver was more than a chatterbox – “‘Honourable – why, are you going for Court martial?’
“‘No – funeral service – driver hurry up!!...’
"Lt. Col. S. K. Crabbe – he was one of my instructors at the Ghana Military Academy – intake 20, and how can I ever forget Col. Crabbe – he was then a Captain – young, fair-coloured, handsome, almost angelic in appearance, always very neatly dressed, his shoes shining more than a mirror – for me, he looked the very epitome of the military officer corps. What is more, he was from the Airborne Force, the Green Berets, who, according to legend always jumped with the parachute on every payday!!!!
"Colonel Crabbe – I remember those days in 1981, when President Limann's dreaded military intelligence way-laid me and hauled me before the prisons-sitting General Court Martial – my former GMA instructor, Col. Crabbe, agreed to be my Defence Officer, to always be by my side at every sitting, until the very last day. Oh! Colonel Crabbe, rest in peace."...
When I read this, “awusi” [shivers] broke out all over me. I was immediately transported back to 1981, when I was the BBC stringer in Accra. One day, I read a terse report in one of our newspapers, stating that “military personnel” were being tried for acts of attempting to cause disorder -- or something of that nature.
The report was so uninformative that I could hardly make a story out of it. The military authorities were uncommunicative when I sought to obtain more information.
Anyway, I managed to put a story together and send it to the BBC. In those days, most of the Ghana media were lacking in curiosity. So everyone who wanted to know what was going on in Ghana listened to the BBC.
One day, I was at the State House covering a conference when President Hilla Limann, having finished his speech, got up to leave. As he passed, he stopped by me. He said in an accusatorial tone to me: “You! Every time I leave this country, they tell me “Cameron Duodu has reported this. Cameron Duodu has said that…”
Before I could think of saying a retort, like, “My job as a correspondent is to tell the world the truth!” he had walked on.
I felt outraged. I’d known Dr Limann when he was a member of the Constitutional Commission in 1968-69, and a mutual friend, Mr Gambong, had introduced us and had told me prophetically : “This man is very learned. He will one day be Ghana’s President!” I’d liked the man and had once visited him at his lodgings in the Airport residential area in Accra. He it was who’d first showed me the then unpublished report of the Constitutional Commission… And now, as President, he wasn’t please with truthful reports about his regime?
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Limann was not the first head of state to be displeased with you! Do you remember Lieutenant-General Joseph Ankrah? One day, you attended a press conference in the Castle. This was after the 17 April 1967 attempted coup led by Lt. S. B. Arthur (the “Guitar Boy” coup.) Lt-Gen. E. K. Kotoka had been killed. You got up and asked Ankrah, Chairman of the National Liberation Council (NLC) : “Sir, are you going to appoint another officer to replace General Kotoka on the Council?”
This perfectly innocuous question caused Ankrah to explode: “You are the people spreading rumours!” he barked. “When we made the coup, did we say that when one of us was killed, we would replace him with another soldier?”
All the journalists sitting with me seemed to shrink into their seats. Gee-whiz!
Jimmy Markham, a former colleague of mine at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (sadly now deceased) and a sharp-witted guy, later made fun of Ankrah: “Ankrah said ‘When we made the coup’! But where was he when Kotoka and the others were making the coup? They only called on him to ‘dash’ him the chairmanship – to his complete surprise -- after the coup had succeeded!” Jimmy laughed at his own mischievous witticism: “Hahahaha!”
I didn’t join in.
We thought that with the overthrow of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, dictatorship had ended forever in Ghana. But here were we being shown that even a question from a journalist at a press conference could infuriate our new head of state. “The same thing different”, as the Legon Observer was to remark.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Do you remember your other encounter with Ankrah? That was barely a year later. General Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire was visiting Ghana. He held a press conference with Ankrah present.
He described his efforts to make peace in Zaire with his rebel Generals who tried to secede – he gave them big jobs in Kinshasa! (This was an allusion to how General Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria could solve the Biafran secession problem.)
I got up and asked: “Sir, will you be sharing your experience with General Gowon, and if he doesn’t listen to you, will you recognise Biafra?”
General Ankrah [once again] exploded: “Don’t embarrass him!” he shouted at me. “He is not Gowon!” Gee-whiz!
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Did you hear that General Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of Biafra, has just died? You should write about him? Maybe next week? Oh, and don’t forget Mr Alex Ibru, who founded The Guardian newspaper of Nigeria and introduced an amazing level of literacy into the Nigerian newspaper world, has also passed? Maybe he too next week?
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Do you remember a military aide of General Ankrah telling you that on a visit to Canada, Ankrah told the Canadian Prime Minister that he thought the US should drop an atom bomb on North Vietnam and end the war there?
The guy said the Canadian PM was so shocked he told Ankrah – sarcastically -- that when he got to Washington, he should tell that to the man in the White House – ‘LBJ’ [Lyndon Baines Johnson] – who would be “very interested to hear that”.
But back to Captain Effah Dartey. Captain, you do not know this but you owe me a drink. For when you were arrested in 1981, I did report it on the BBC. As I say, the Government announcement of your arrest was opaque to the point of being incomprehensible.
So I commented that the omens for democracy in Ghana were not good if an "unnamed Ghanaian citizen could be arrested and tried at an unknown location by unnamed people for an unspecified crime!".
After my dispatch was broadcast, the Special Branch came to my house. They said their Director wanted to see me.
I went with them.
The Director told me that the Government was not pleased with my report.
I replied: "Then the Government should stop doing things that will make me send reports that do not please it."
The Director said I could go.
As I got up to leave, my professional instinct took over. I asked him: "By the way, what is the correct name of the Captain who has been arrested?"
He said :"I think it is Effah-LARTEY".("You think?" I said. In my head.)
Then, I left.
Later on, when I got to know your correct name, Captain Effah DARTEY, I laughed.
I wondered: "If the Director of the Special Branch does not know the correct name of an arrested person, then what sort of security service is being run in this country?"
We found out on 31 December 1981, didn’t we?
Captain, in your new profession as a lawyer, do always defend the truth at all times. For others, whom you do not know, have, in their own professional duties, tried to do just that -- for you and for Ghana.
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