It would be naïve to imagine that the deportation of Bankole Timothy of the Daily Graphic from Ghana did not have a profound effect on the rest of the staff.
As I reported in my article on 9 November 2010, the attitude of the Graphic management was not at all helpful to the development of press freedom in Ghana.
The chairman of the Daily Mirror Group of London that owned the Graphic, Mr Cecil King, flew down, and having obtained assurances from the Nkrumah Government that his investment was safe and that the paper itself would not be touched, obviously decided to make Timothy carry his own can, and ensured that the paper did not make much mention of the Timothy deportation.
To the public, this was enormously shocking, for the Daily Mirror was nothing if not a master of campaigning: its editor, Hugh Cudlipp, was counted among the most skilful editors in Fleet Street, and his book, Publish And Be Damned, was something of a bible for would-be champions of press freedom all over the world.
Had it not been for the financial interest it wanted to preserve in Ghana, I am sure the Mirror would have sent down its fierce columnist, Cassandra, to come and breathe fire on the government of Ghana.
But instead, Cecil King, a man whose ego was as big as his physical stature, allowed himself to be privately briefed, and he publicly disowned Timothy, and went back to London, where, in later years, he was to plot a pathetic coup against the British Prime Minister of the time, Harold Wilson.
Timothy’s deportation started the decline of the Graphic as a force in Ghanaian journalism. The editor, Martin Therson-Cofie, was subjected to mockery in the CPP press, mainly on account of his physical stature: he was ridiculed as a “a short man with s became fairly tame and eventually left the paper. Eventually, having emasculated the paper, the CPP government bought it.
The Ashanti Pioneer a(owned by a private businessman, Mr Tsiboe) and the Ashanti Times (owned by the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation at Obuasi) were the main independent newspapers left.
But they didn’t have a tenth of the resources of the Graphic and thus could not match the coverage it provided at its best. The Pioneer, published in Kumasi, was political -- from A to B! Its political message was the same every day: the CPP Government was ruining the country and must be replaced by the Opposition (which had been transformed from the National Liberation Movement (NLM) of pre-independence days, into the United Party).
It was courageous and informative, but if one was not of its political persuasion, it was boring, in the sense that it never wrote a good word about the CPP Government.
The Pioneer had a very erudite and personable editor in Mr Sam Arthur. When the Pioneer was eventually shut down, he was lucky enough to be brought down to Accra to teach journalism at the burgeoning Ghana Institute of Journalism. Unfortunately, his most courageous columnist and Accra correspondent, Kwame Kesse-Adu, was placed in preventive detention and spent many years in prison without trial.
Unlike the Pioneer, The Ashanti Times not poli5tical-minded, though its founder, Major-General Sir Edward Spears, chairman of Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, used it to safeguard the interests of his business. It was one of the first papers I ever contributed to -- I phoned stories to it from Accra on occasion.
The actual end of the “golden age” of Ghanaian journalism occurred shortly after the passing of the Preventive Detention Act. It was marked by a strange phenomenon hitherto unknown in Ghana -- the anonymous pamphlet. Every now and then, one would come across a pamphlet, authorship unknown, pouring vitriol on the CPP Government.
Foreign newspapers also began to publish unsourced news -- generally negative in tone -- about Ghana, because their correspondents could not obtain visas to come to Ghana and see things for themselves.
Nkrumah had, meanwhile, set up his own “Guinea Press” to publish newspapers that pushed his agenda. Yet he felt the need to acquire even the by now spineless Graphic. His own papers, the Ghanaian Times and the Evening News, did not hesitate in taking on and even abusing writers, both local and foreign, who criticised Dr Nkrumah’s regime.
I had been an eyewitness to the well-modulated debates that occurred between government and opposition, as Parliamentary Correspondent of the Ghana Broadcasting System. Now, even CPP members who were critical of aspects of the Government’s policies, were shut up.
For instance, Mr Patrick Quaidoo, a former Minister of Industries, was sent to Nsawam for criticizing the Government. The Preventive Detention Act was so broad in its provisions -- all that was required was for the Government to decide that someone was engaged in “activities not conducive to the public good” and he could go in for five years without trial.
The ranks of Opposition MPs whose contributions to debates brought out the best in witty Ministers like Kofi Baako and Komla Gbedemah began to dwindle. Indeed, the PDA was the single legislation responsible for the total destruction of democracy in Ghana.
For it shut up good debaters, including journalists. By 1960, a CPP man, Kodwo Addison, had been installed in the Ghana Broadcasting System newsroom to actually censor news items before we could broadcast them. I left to edit the monthly Ghana edition of Drum, where I was forced to tread a careful, almost apolitical path, Drum having been banned once before.
Then, in August 1962, the sick society Ghana had gradually become was stripped of all pretence. A bomb was thrown at Dr Nkrumah at Kulungugu, in Northern Ghana, which nearly killed him. He survived, but a little child was killed. Absolutely horrific incident.
The police investigation somehow “implicated” three of the topmost men in Nkrumah’s own party in the crime, including the powerful Tawia Adamafio, former Information Minister as well as General Secretary of the Party, and Ako Adjei, former Minister of Foreign Affairs. (Ako Adjei was in fact the man who invited Nkrumah back to Ghana from London, to come and take part in the political struggle in Ghana.)
It is very likely that the party men were framed up, for when they were charged with treason, the highest court in the land could not find any hard evidence upon which to convict them.
There was plenty of circumstantial evidence, but this was a treason trial and such highly-placed people could not be found guilty on the basis of speculation. So the court, presided over by the Chief Justice, Sir Arko Korsah, acquitted them.
But Dr Nkrumah and his Attorney-General, Mr Kwaw Swanzy disagreed with the verdict, and Dr Nkrumah got Parliament to empower him to set the verdict aside and order a retrial! It was scandalous and outraged long-term Nkrumah admirers as C L R James, George Padmore’s friend from Trinidad. Korsah was dismissed and the other judges soon retired. Ghana, whose national motto was “freedom and justice”, had committed a monstrous outrage against natural
justice.
By this time, no newspaper in Ghana could have criticized the Government’s action. All I could do myself at Drum was to publish huge chunks of the cross-examination in court and leave readers to come to their own conclusions. Indeed, from then on, such was the dearth of open political discourse that any propaganda crafted against Nkrumah was believed. And some of the propaganda was quite vile.
Thus it was that when a group of soldiers and policemen decided to strike against the CPP, they were able to successfully overthrow it on 24 February 1966, while Dr Kwame Nkrumah was visiting Peking, on his way to Hanoi to try and negotiate a end to the war in Vietnam. He died in exile in 1972.
Now, the question is: what if? My own candid opinion is that if Ghana’s political situation had been frozen at say, mid-1958, when the opposition had not yet been driven underground, and everyone could have his say, we would have had a much cleaner and more efficient government, which would, of necessity, have been more stable. Instead, Ghana descended from the initial totalitarian rule into cycles of military rule, some of which resulted in horrible atrocities and, of course, did not enshrine press freedom.
We reached a new low point when one regime (led by Flight-Lieutenant J J Rawlings) had its agents “shit-bomb” the offices of an opposition newspaper. And we saw two newspapermen -- Tommy Thompson and John Kugblenu -- die shortly after being released from prison, where the hard treatment had taken its toll of their health.
So, the road to controlling the press, however attractive it may seem, must be trodden with extreme wariness. For it is strewn with unexpected consequences.
As I reported in my article on 9 November 2010, the attitude of the Graphic management was not at all helpful to the development of press freedom in Ghana.
The chairman of the Daily Mirror Group of London that owned the Graphic, Mr Cecil King, flew down, and having obtained assurances from the Nkrumah Government that his investment was safe and that the paper itself would not be touched, obviously decided to make Timothy carry his own can, and ensured that the paper did not make much mention of the Timothy deportation.
To the public, this was enormously shocking, for the Daily Mirror was nothing if not a master of campaigning: its editor, Hugh Cudlipp, was counted among the most skilful editors in Fleet Street, and his book, Publish And Be Damned, was something of a bible for would-be champions of press freedom all over the world.
Had it not been for the financial interest it wanted to preserve in Ghana, I am sure the Mirror would have sent down its fierce columnist, Cassandra, to come and breathe fire on the government of Ghana.
But instead, Cecil King, a man whose ego was as big as his physical stature, allowed himself to be privately briefed, and he publicly disowned Timothy, and went back to London, where, in later years, he was to plot a pathetic coup against the British Prime Minister of the time, Harold Wilson.
Timothy’s deportation started the decline of the Graphic as a force in Ghanaian journalism. The editor, Martin Therson-Cofie, was subjected to mockery in the CPP press, mainly on account of his physical stature: he was ridiculed as a “a short man with s became fairly tame and eventually left the paper. Eventually, having emasculated the paper, the CPP government bought it.
The Ashanti Pioneer a(owned by a private businessman, Mr Tsiboe) and the Ashanti Times (owned by the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation at Obuasi) were the main independent newspapers left.
But they didn’t have a tenth of the resources of the Graphic and thus could not match the coverage it provided at its best. The Pioneer, published in Kumasi, was political -- from A to B! Its political message was the same every day: the CPP Government was ruining the country and must be replaced by the Opposition (which had been transformed from the National Liberation Movement (NLM) of pre-independence days, into the United Party).
It was courageous and informative, but if one was not of its political persuasion, it was boring, in the sense that it never wrote a good word about the CPP Government.
The Pioneer had a very erudite and personable editor in Mr Sam Arthur. When the Pioneer was eventually shut down, he was lucky enough to be brought down to Accra to teach journalism at the burgeoning Ghana Institute of Journalism. Unfortunately, his most courageous columnist and Accra correspondent, Kwame Kesse-Adu, was placed in preventive detention and spent many years in prison without trial.
Unlike the Pioneer, The Ashanti Times not poli5tical-minded, though its founder, Major-General Sir Edward Spears, chairman of Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, used it to safeguard the interests of his business. It was one of the first papers I ever contributed to -- I phoned stories to it from Accra on occasion.
The actual end of the “golden age” of Ghanaian journalism occurred shortly after the passing of the Preventive Detention Act. It was marked by a strange phenomenon hitherto unknown in Ghana -- the anonymous pamphlet. Every now and then, one would come across a pamphlet, authorship unknown, pouring vitriol on the CPP Government.
Foreign newspapers also began to publish unsourced news -- generally negative in tone -- about Ghana, because their correspondents could not obtain visas to come to Ghana and see things for themselves.
Nkrumah had, meanwhile, set up his own “Guinea Press” to publish newspapers that pushed his agenda. Yet he felt the need to acquire even the by now spineless Graphic. His own papers, the Ghanaian Times and the Evening News, did not hesitate in taking on and even abusing writers, both local and foreign, who criticised Dr Nkrumah’s regime.
I had been an eyewitness to the well-modulated debates that occurred between government and opposition, as Parliamentary Correspondent of the Ghana Broadcasting System. Now, even CPP members who were critical of aspects of the Government’s policies, were shut up.
For instance, Mr Patrick Quaidoo, a former Minister of Industries, was sent to Nsawam for criticizing the Government. The Preventive Detention Act was so broad in its provisions -- all that was required was for the Government to decide that someone was engaged in “activities not conducive to the public good” and he could go in for five years without trial.
The ranks of Opposition MPs whose contributions to debates brought out the best in witty Ministers like Kofi Baako and Komla Gbedemah began to dwindle. Indeed, the PDA was the single legislation responsible for the total destruction of democracy in Ghana.
For it shut up good debaters, including journalists. By 1960, a CPP man, Kodwo Addison, had been installed in the Ghana Broadcasting System newsroom to actually censor news items before we could broadcast them. I left to edit the monthly Ghana edition of Drum, where I was forced to tread a careful, almost apolitical path, Drum having been banned once before.
Then, in August 1962, the sick society Ghana had gradually become was stripped of all pretence. A bomb was thrown at Dr Nkrumah at Kulungugu, in Northern Ghana, which nearly killed him. He survived, but a little child was killed. Absolutely horrific incident.
The police investigation somehow “implicated” three of the topmost men in Nkrumah’s own party in the crime, including the powerful Tawia Adamafio, former Information Minister as well as General Secretary of the Party, and Ako Adjei, former Minister of Foreign Affairs. (Ako Adjei was in fact the man who invited Nkrumah back to Ghana from London, to come and take part in the political struggle in Ghana.)
It is very likely that the party men were framed up, for when they were charged with treason, the highest court in the land could not find any hard evidence upon which to convict them.
There was plenty of circumstantial evidence, but this was a treason trial and such highly-placed people could not be found guilty on the basis of speculation. So the court, presided over by the Chief Justice, Sir Arko Korsah, acquitted them.
But Dr Nkrumah and his Attorney-General, Mr Kwaw Swanzy disagreed with the verdict, and Dr Nkrumah got Parliament to empower him to set the verdict aside and order a retrial! It was scandalous and outraged long-term Nkrumah admirers as C L R James, George Padmore’s friend from Trinidad. Korsah was dismissed and the other judges soon retired. Ghana, whose national motto was “freedom and justice”, had committed a monstrous outrage against natural
justice.
By this time, no newspaper in Ghana could have criticized the Government’s action. All I could do myself at Drum was to publish huge chunks of the cross-examination in court and leave readers to come to their own conclusions. Indeed, from then on, such was the dearth of open political discourse that any propaganda crafted against Nkrumah was believed. And some of the propaganda was quite vile.
Thus it was that when a group of soldiers and policemen decided to strike against the CPP, they were able to successfully overthrow it on 24 February 1966, while Dr Kwame Nkrumah was visiting Peking, on his way to Hanoi to try and negotiate a end to the war in Vietnam. He died in exile in 1972.
Now, the question is: what if? My own candid opinion is that if Ghana’s political situation had been frozen at say, mid-1958, when the opposition had not yet been driven underground, and everyone could have his say, we would have had a much cleaner and more efficient government, which would, of necessity, have been more stable. Instead, Ghana descended from the initial totalitarian rule into cycles of military rule, some of which resulted in horrible atrocities and, of course, did not enshrine press freedom.
We reached a new low point when one regime (led by Flight-Lieutenant J J Rawlings) had its agents “shit-bomb” the offices of an opposition newspaper. And we saw two newspapermen -- Tommy Thompson and John Kugblenu -- die shortly after being released from prison, where the hard treatment had taken its toll of their health.
So, the road to controlling the press, however attractive it may seem, must be trodden with extreme wariness. For it is strewn with unexpected consequences.
