Tag: mfantsipim

The Principled Kobina Sekyi

Kobina Sekyi was born on Nov 1, 1892 in Cape Coast. He attended Mfantsipim School and became not only a lawyer, but also a philosopher, sociologist, political activist, and writer.

Growing up in the then Gold Coast, he witnessed how the people of the Gold Coast were shunning indigenous culture and traditions for European ones. Names were being europeanized (Danso became Dawson, Andah turned into Anderson), the cloth was giving way to suits, and even diets were changing.
His years studying philosophy and law in England confirmed in him the deep conviction that what is African is worth maintaining and there was no need to drop those values, traditions and culture for European ones.
He went to write and direct the play “The Blinkards” in 1916 in Cape Coast.
The play satirized this tendency to see all things African as backward and savage and embrace all that was European as good. It also ridiculed some Euro-Christina beliefs and colonial laws. The play has stood the test of time and expertly captures how colonialism also stole who we really are, and his role as a playwright has never been celebrated enough.
This desire to be as African as can be led him to insist on wearing out traditional cloth to court.

This paragraph from a piece he wrote in 1920 captures his beliefs expertly:

“I would submit that the individual who, in spite of the many burdens which he must bear in the matter of assisting relatives under the Akan-Fanti social system, nevertheless thrives, becomes a better man, and is better fitted to look after other human beings: my point is that the person who goes through the Akan-Fanti system of growing up becomes a fuller man, and has all that is good in him brought out, and all that is bad restrained or suppressed by the discipline which in a well-set-up family is exerted on the thriftless individual through the disapproval of the family.”
– Kobina Sekyi, Cape Coast Observer, 1920

He was also very active in the Aborigines Rights Protection Society and a member of the Coussey Committee, that drafted a constitution for the Gold Coast in 1949. It is sad that he died in 1956, a year before Ghana attained independence

Kobina Sekyi is an illustrious son of Mfantsipim, a Botwe boy and one of the Faithful Eight..

The Amazing Raphael Armattoe

Over the decades, Mfantsipim School has produced some illustrious men. One of my all time favorites and someone I really, really admire is Dr. Ralph Armattoe. Following is but a brief synopsis of his impressive life.

An anthropologist, physician, scientist, poet, and Nobel Prize nominee, he was born in Denu on August 12, 1913. He studied at Mfantsipim from 1925-29.

Already fluent in French, German, and English, he would leave for Germany in 1930 to study but had to flee the country because of the Nazis. So he finished his studies in anthropology and medicine in France, and Scotland. He later settled in Ireland, where he had a medical practice.

Beside his practice in Ireland, he also spent time in Ghana, then the Gold Coast, doing medical research and running a clinic in Kumasi. Armattoe’s research led him to create a drug called “Abochi” that was based on herbs and was a potent treatment for water-borne diseases along the Volta. He would be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace and Physiology in 1949 but did not win.

He was also politically active, fighting for the unification all Ewes under an “Ewe Nation”. He even addressed the UN in 1953 regarding Togoland and the “Eweland Question”.
He rubbed shoulders with Nkrumah and though both agreed on independence for African countries, Armattoe favored a federalist approach whereas Nkrumah was centrist. He was also very good friends with W.E.B. DuBois.

He became best friends with the Nobelist and physicist, Erwin Schrödinger. He accompanied Schrödinger to the Nobel ceremony in 1947. The latter would later write the foreword to Armattoe’s book, “The Golden Age of West African Civilization”.

Interestingly, in his poem titled “The Way I Want To Die”, he expressed the wish to die young so as to avoid the scourges of old age, and sadly, he would die at the young age of 40 in Hamburg, Germany. It is believed he was poisoned. On his gravestone are the words “Africa’s Greatest Nationalist”.