A long career as an academic and social critic, spanning over four decades has been fairly stable, but not without its dreadful moments. The birth of my writing during military rule and successive revolutions, somehow immersed me in turmoil rather early in life, compelling me to confess to a colleague I would be lucky to hit the age 50.
When I wrote my memoires The Pen at Risk, 2023, it was an opportunity to spill ‘my little beans’ and breathe easier. In 2017 before the passing of J. J.Rawlings, I managed to make my peace with him at his Ridge residence. With that historic encounter, I put behind me the tension and suspense in which his Revolution had immersed me and my family. The recent passing of General Arnold Quainoo, Ghana’s celebrated ‘Buffalo Soldier’ sends me to similar frontiers, and calls for a spillage that should free me to step up and wave a final goodbye.
Member of Government, Chief of Army Staff, Commander of the Armed Forces: these were Gen Quainoo’s credentials at various periods of the Rawlings Revolution. His countenance spoke louder: stocky, moody, hot-tempered, and a passion for bravado and tough-speak. Arnold was simply a buffalo on human legs.
My first encounter with him was at an arm’s length, enabling me to steal glances at his signature frown. This was at the famous lecture by Professor Adu Boahen on the platform of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1988; the J. B. Danquah Memorial lectures at the British Council. It was at this event the history professor tabled a searing critique of the Revolution, and paved the way for others. The lecture was entitled, ‘The Ghanaian Sphynx: Reflections on the Contemporary History of Ghana’. They call it the lecture that broke the culture of silence.
I was one of the early birds at the crowded event and was lucky to be seated on the third row, not far from the celebrated Commander whose huge frame straddled the front row. The 75-minute bashing of the PNDC was blunt and daring, and found a restless General rocking his upper torso and itching to butt-in midstream. The climax came when the professor finally made a number of recommendations to Government, concluding with a bombshell:
‘It is up to the PNDC to add to these solutions I have suggested, and see that they are implemented. If not, to borrow the phrase of the Late James Baldwin, there will be Fire Next Time.’
The mammoth crowd cringed smelling disaster in the offing. All eyes turned in the direction of a fuming General Quainoo who had sprung to his feet ahead of the speaker’s last sentence. ‘May I respond please,’ he gestured. Not quite, but the Chairman for the occasion, Prof Evans Anfom who was also the Academy’s President eventually obliged, softening a laid down Academy protocol that prohibits on-the-spot reaction to memorial lectures. A celebrated historian had publicly threatened fire and brimstone on a military junta in the presence of a military commander and member of Government! The inflamed General propped himself to rebut the impudence.
He buffaloed his way to the podium and bellowed a rejoinder that rattled the auditorium. Where Adu Boahen threatened to unleash ‘fire next time,’ an enraged Gen Quainoo raised the stakes higher, guaranteeing an ‘inferno, a conflagration,’ and swaggered back to his seat. The crowd cheered the bluff. Tension swirled in the auditorium and the huge crowd soon dispersed in a muted state of suspense.
Anxious for a follow-up chat, I paid the professor a visit at his airport residence the day after, and panicked seeing him relaxed with a neck wrap. Was his stiff neck in fulfilment of the General’s threat? I asked in good humor. The professor exploded in laughter assuring me his neck wrap had nothing to do with a ‘conflagration.’ It was from hours of sitting.
But the public confrontation between Pen and Gun became talk of the town for months. While this happened, however, hardly did I know my own clash with the Buffalo Soldier was in the offing.
One Friday evening October 1990, I stopped by a popular khebab stand near the 37 Military Hospital and was approached by a well-dressed gentleman, who whispered in my ears a vague message that left me confounded: “Kwesi, don’t worry we are behind you.” After a little hesitation the gentleman, apparently a military officer in plain clothes opened up and explained himself. He said a meeting had been held with officers at the Burma Hall (in Burma Camp), where an important member of government (higher than the Buffalo) fumed about an article in Yankah’s weekly column. According to him the big man ranted, waving a copy of the article, and ended his monologue with a vague threat: ‘Gentlemen if you don’t do it, I will.’ That was of course a message any military man clearly understood. If you don’t do it, I will.
I froze hearing this; but the informant said not to worry, for they were solidly behind me. But who were ‘they,’ I wondered. Soldiers defending a faceless civilian?
In truth, my popular weekly column, Kwatriot, which had then run for four years in the ‘Mirror,’ had published a ‘bombshell’ considered by many as the most contentious in my writing career. The piece entitled ‘Generally Speaking’ was a ‘no-holds barred,’ on the sorry circumstances under which the Liberian President Samuel Doe died, where the blame was put on Ghana’s General Quainoo who was leading the ECOMOG Peacekeeping contingent. It was that comment that had riled Ghana’s military regime, frayed nerves and landed me in trouble. The General who was also a member of Govt had boasted ahead of the assignment, “If I am going with three thousand troops, I am coming back with three thousand troops.”
I had ruthlessly gone to town on this. It was one of those articles that amazed readers if a day after publication, they still found the author walking freely in Accra. The comment was often, Ei Kwesi Yankah, woda so nenam ha? ‘Kwesi Yankah, are you still walking a free man?’
No, I was not a free man. I got worried and recoiled to ponder the column’s future, then made further inquiries about the rumor. I knocked on the door of the Minister for Information, Kofi Totobi Quakyi, while a close relation contacted Mr Kojo Tsikata the legendary state security capo. Was there an evil plot by Government against Kwesi Yankah? Was it true that a coup d’etat would be feigned, giving PNDC a cover to eliminate media critics including this young lecturer? The feedback was a total denial. The affable Totobi indeed gave me assurances of my total safety under PNDC, and indeed urged me to resume my column for which a few years before, his Ministry had given me a ‘Columnist of the Year’ award. The Minister was prepared to take me along to J. J. himself if that would calm my nerves. To many such officials contacted, the PNDC Govt could not dream of any such plot since my brother Kojo was one of their own.
That was indeed the first in a series of grisly incidents encountered in the 1990s. Those were tense moments; but was Ghana worth dying for at the age of 40? Upon further reflections, I decided to soldier on with the column, with or without Buffaloes.
Happily, a breakthrough was in the offing. A common friend in the Ghana police, sensing my cold war with the Buffalo Soldier, decided to broker peace. The friend, Chief Inspector Ben Mensah, was also a great pal of the Yankah family. The plan was to visit the General together at his home in Ashaley Botwe and congratulate him on his birthday. Another opportunity followed and General Quainoo and I met again at New Achimota, Ben Mensah’s home and exchanged pleasantries. Then again at a banquet at the Mensah Sarbah Hall, where his wife worked as domestic bursar. From my observations though, I was not convinced peace had been successively brokered, noticing the General’s cynical smiles, and furtive glances in all our encounters. Were we at peace?
We never met again after the mid 1990s. Now comes this reported demise of the celebrated soldier a few weeks ago. I knew Arnold himself had no ill will towards me. Indeed in spite of his temperament and passion for tough talk, the General was a lamb in private life, a man of great warmth. What I was unsure of, however, were the motives of anonymous foot soldiers behind the Revolution.
Buffalo Soldier, please accept my Fare Well salutation; and believe me I meant well. It was clearly not my fault.
It was the fault of my Write Hand!
By Kwesi Yankah
kyankah@ashesi.edu.gh