Tag: pioneers

The Old Boy called Samuel Emmanuel Kaye (1862 – 1903)

In the two books that delve into the history of Mfantsipim – Bartel’s “The Roots of Ghana Methodism” or Adu-Boahen’s“Mfantsipim and the Making of Ghana: A Centenary History, 1876-1976” – he is not mentioned as part of the first group of students admitted to Wesleyan High School (Mfantsipim’s precursor) in April of 1876. However, many indicators point to the fact that Samuel Emmanuel Kaye, who was born in Cape Coast in 1862 and died in 1903, is not only an Old Boy but also part of the founding class.

While going through newspapers from that era for research into an unrelated topic, the writer came upon the obituary for a man named “Samuel Emmanuel Kaye” who died in January 1862 in the Jan 24, 1903 edition of the Gold Coast Leader (GCL). In the piece, he was described as being “one of the first pupils of the Wesleyan High School under Mr. (now Rev.) James Picot”!

Since James Picot was at school from April 1876 till Feb 1878, Kaye was either part of the foundation class or entered a year after that class.

In another piece from the Dec 24-31,1921 edition of the same paper about the Rev. Attoh-Ahuma, another Old Boy, is this paragraph:

“Attoh-Ahuma did not join the Sarbahs, the Kayes, the Egyir-Asaams, and the Mark Hayfords during the principalship of Mr. James Picot, one of the finest educationalists the country has ever known…Attoh-Ahuma appears to have joined the school at the time of Principal Jenkins when Sarbah and others were in the highest form.”

So it seems Kaye was in the same class with John Mensah Sarbah and Egyir-Assam, two students noted to be in the founding class by both Bartels and Adu-Boahen.

(However, the mention of Mark Hayford as part of that class throws up another name that has not been cited as a foundation student by either Adu-Boahen or Bartels.  Mark Hayford is the younger brother of Ernest James Hayford, who was sent with Kofi Asaam to be trained as teachers in Freetown in 1873 in preparation for the opening of the Wesleyan High School. The two returned in 1877 and joined the school as student-teachers. It is possible that, like Ernest’s younger brother started with the Mensah Sarbah and others in 1876.)

After graduating, Kaye worked in the colonial government in Elmina and Accra till 1895, when he left to study law in England. He returned in 1898 and practiced till he passed away at the age of 40 on January 16, 1903, in Cape Coast. His death was described as a “national loss”.

He had a sister called Sophia Kaye, and to commiserate with her and the family and pay their respects, a group of Ghanaian students who were studying law in England when Kaye died in Cape Coast sent her a wreath. Shipped in February from England, its arrival in Cape Coast was reported in the Gold Coast Leader from August 22, 1903.

These students were E. J. P. Brown, J. E. Biney Jr., J. P. Brown-Pope, H. F. Ribeiro, O. K. Quarde, W. W. Brew, and John Theo Halm. Per the report in the paper, they described Kaye as “one who endeared himself to his people and was held in great esteem and respect by all”.

In Adu-Boahen’s book, “Mfantsipim and the Making of Ghana: A Centenary History, 1876-1976,” he notes that Samuel Kaye is one of the men who bought shares to help reopen the Wesleyan High School after it was closed by Rev. Kemp in 1889.

In the last paragraph of the preface of John Mensah Sarbah’s 1904 book titled “Fanti Customary Laws”, he writes:

“…and finally to my friend Mr. Samuel E. Kaye, of Lincoln’s Inn, whose unremitting assistance, in correcting the proofs and verifying many quotations and extracts herein referred to, has been simply invaluable.”

Preface from Mensah-Sarbah’s “Fanti Customary Laws”

Samuel Kaye’s father was Nana Kwesi Kyei of Denkyira who ruled from 1859 to 1869 and brought Denkyira into the ill-fated Fante Confederacy in 1868. His mother was a Safohene from Cape Coast called Nana Akua Awer. (The name “Kaye” is the anglicized version of “Kyei,”).

The chiefs of the Fante Confederacy, as a group, helped instigate a high school. It would only make sense that the son of one of them would attend the first one opened in Cape Coast by the Methodist Missionaries.

Kaye had three children – Elizabeth, Ekow (who is an Old Boy), and Charlotte. Elizabeth married  Mr. Josiah, and together they had two daughters – Beatrice and Esther. Esther married Emmanuel Brew-Butler, whose uncle was William Ward Brew – one of the students who sent Kaye’s sister Sophia a wreath when he died in 1903.

William Ward Brew, an Old Boy, became a great lawyer, Vice-President of the ARPS and co-founder of NCBWA. After leaving Wesleyan High School (Mfantsipim) in 1894, he worked as a clerk and then taught at both the Collegiate School and Wesley Girls before heading to England to study law in 1902. He was called to the bar in 1905. He practiced in Calabar, Nigeria for a while and was the first black judge there. Back in Ghana in 1917, besides his law practice and other civic duties, he headed the Building Committee as Rev. Lockhart built the first structures on Kwabotwe Hill in the late 1920s, and he was legal counsel for Mfantsipim until he died in 1943. Ward Brew also donated the land that Wesley Girls stands on today.

William Ward Brew

Emmanuel Brew-Butler was a manager at UAC and the founding father of Ebusua Dwarfs. With Esther, they had eight children six daughters and two sons.

One of the sons, Nana Sam Kaye Brew-Butler, was named after his maternal great-grandfather and also inherited the Safohene stool that his great-great-grandmother occupied decades ago. A business executive, he is the former Chairman of the Ghana Football Association, Chairman of the University of Cape Coast Council, Founder, Chairman and Shareholder of Cenpower Holdings, and Shareholder and Director of Arab Contractors Ghana. He followed in the footsteps of his great-grandfather to Mfantsipim and is a member of MOBA 1969.

Nana Sam Kaye Brew-Butler

Interestingly, at the launch of the 150th anniversary celebrations, Nana Sam Kaye Brew-Butler was picked to be the Distinguished Speaker. Unbeknownst then to all involved, not only did they pick an illustrious and very accomplished son of Mfantsipim, but they also picked the great-grandson of a member of that great founding class of 1876 – the great-grandson of Samuel Emmanuel Kaye.

References:

1. Bartels, F. L. The Roots of Ghana Methodism. 1965.

2. Boahen, A. A. Mfantsipim and the Making of Ghana: A Centenary History, 1876-1976, 1996.

3. Hutchison, C.F. The Pen-Pictures of Modern Africans and African Celebrities, 1922

4. Gold Coast Leader Jan 24, 1903

5. Gold Coast Leader August 22, 1903

6. Gold Coast Leader Dec 24-31,1921

7. List of rulers of the Akan state of Denkyira. Wikipedia

8. Family accounts from the Brew-Butler Family

He Refused to Wear the Scarf

The day was June 28, 1963. On Kwabotwe Hill, that was the day the Ghana Young Pioneers Movement (GYP) was going to be officially inaugurated. Unlike other school clubs like the Drama Club, Christian Union, Chess Club, Debating Club, etc., the inauguration of this movement had to be special and official. Rev. W.G.M. Brandful, the headmaster himself, had to be present. He also had to wear a signature GYP scarf, and it was going to happen at morning assembly.

So who were these Young Pioneers?

The Ghana Young Pioneer Movement (GYP) was a youth movement founded by Kwame Nkrumah in 1960. Modeled after youth movements like the Boys Scouts of the UK, the Kosmosol of the then USSR, the Israeli Gadna, the Red Pioneers of China, and youth groups in Germany and the US, the group sought to raise Ghanaian youth to be patriotic, pan-Africanist, socialist, and anti-imperialist. They were immersed in military drills, classes on Ghanaian culture, and taught lessons on being an upstanding citizen – the 12-point code of discipline. Training also included vocational and technical skills.
They wore crisp khaki uniforms, boots, and an iconic neck scarf.

The kids were taught to chant many patriotic slogans. However, there were also slogans like, “Nkrumah will make you fishers of men, if you follow him”, “Nkrumah is our Messiah”, and “Nkrumah does no wrong”, that rubbed the Churches and some in the Christian community the wrong way. Moreover, there was also the fear that the movement was replacing Christian teaching with political indoctrination, and the subject was mainly Nkrumah.
Added to that were the accusations that the kids in the movement were being trained to spy on their parents and other adults, and you had a section of the population that was against the GYP.

Despite the opposition, the only person to speak up about the use of biblical themes was the Right Reverend Richard Roseveare, the Anglican Bishop of Accra. On Aug 4, 1962, at the Anglican Synod, he condemned the movement as “godless” and accused them of a “gross parody of Christian scripture”. About a week later, he got expelled from Ghana (though due to public outcry, Nkrumah allowed him back two months later).

Interestingly, the man who helped put the movement together, made sure the kids got religious discipline (the spiritual architect), was the primary administrator, and the Rector of the movement’s training center – the Kwame Nkrumah Youth Leadership Training Institute – was a Methodist priest and an Old Boy called Rev. Dr. James Stanley Adama Stephens. He saw these slogans as metaphors. To him, a “messiah” in the political context meant a “liberator” or “political savior” who had freed Ghana from British colonial rule—not a divine being.
Suffice to say there was some disagreement between his position and the Church’s.

So after the expulsion of Roseveare and with the Preventive Detention Act (PDA) of 1958 as a great deterrent, most in the church and civil society kept mum.

Until that Friday morning on June 28, 1963.

Almost everyone at morning assembly that morning probably assumed that Rev. Brandful was just going to wear the scarf, oversee the inauguration, and carry on with the day. But is that what happened?

Now let’s take a step back and examine the school Rev. Brandful headed, its age, and the traditions that made Mfantsipim what it was. In 1963, the school had been in existence for 87 years! The 12-point Code of Discipline of the Young Pioneers was like the air Mfantsipim boys breathed daily.

“Love of Country?” Since Mensah Sarbah and Casely Hayford, loving Ghana is like the birthright of the school. Old Boys started the fight for independence!

“Discipline, Obedience, Honesty, Morality, Punctuality?” Just ask any Botwe boy.
“Comradeship and Forbearance?” Some people think MOBA is a cult!

The things the movement was trying to teach had been Mfantsipim’s tradition for 87 years!

What about the pan-africanism and anti-imperialism? Look, Mensah Sarbah got the school named “Mfantsipim” and gave it a motto in Fante in 1905. Rev. Brandful knew that on that hill, we are more conscious of who we are than a 3-year-old movement could ever teach.

And Mfantsipim as a school had a curriculum that included technical and vocational training. There were no military drills but life on that hill was close to one.

And I am sure the dear headmaster remembered the 1948 riots and their effect on the school. Moreover, he was definitely no fan of the biblical metaphors and indoctrination, and believed that they had no place in a school where the minds of the young were being molded.

And so he walked out that morning and uttered the famous words:

“They want to put the scarf around my neck, and I refuse it”.

A month later, he was fired as headmaster of Mfantsipim School.

Three years later, Nkrumah was gone, and with him, the Young Pioneers, but on Kwabotwe Hill, boys were still being raised according to traditions that were old and enduring. No matter where you stand on the issue of Nkrumah, Rev. Brandful’s action spells bravery. He had the courage to stand by what he believed in, even though he knew it would cost him. He epitomized the lessons he taught as headmaster. When it came to it, he walked the walk. Sadly, it was not the last time the government would meddle in the school’s affairs.

May the brave soul of Rev. Brandful RIP.