Mfantsipim @ 140 years: New thinking, new possibilities for a Great Renaissance
Following the Daily Graphic report on Mfantsipim (Jan 14, 2016), I got calls from Radio and TV producers for my take on the charges against the headmaster by the Ghana Education Service that he allegedly charged a litany of illegal fees such as “SMS services, GH¢5”; “exams gloves, GH¢20”; and “T-roll, GH¢7”.
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My heart sank at the inclusion of the “T-roll”: what we called (in our school days in the 1960s) “ablu sheets” or toilet paper. Just think: Mfantsipim in the news, in the 21st century, on account of matters as flimsy as toilet paper! That last straw must have prodded the discerning to see that all is not well, and also that crises offer great opportunities.
It’s time for new thinking and new possibilities by revisiting and acting boldly on the inspiring Mfantsipim credo, “Dwen Hwe Kan” [Think into the future].
The motto is, in itself, a reminder of greater possibilities as envisaged by the great alumnus, John Mensah Sarbah (1864 – 1910) when he composed it. The Mfantsipim creed is a visionary imperative for Ghana’s own success.
We lose sight of our glorious history, at the cost of losing ourselves for posterity. The history of Mfantsipim will be neither complete nor sincere without visiting the minds of some of the key protagonists for the Gold Coast nationhood.
Humble beginnings
The original founders in 1876, Rev Thomas R. Pico (whose teenage brother James was crowned the first principal), Rev Dennis Kemp, and the rest, wanted a school to grow missionary clerics for the Methodist church.
But it soon became clear that Gold Coast needed more than just preachers, and that in itself caused a stalemate. Cape Coast needed to groom businessmen, and especially lawyers for the Aboriginal Rights Protection Society, for example.
The missionaries were of the view that if more was needed than the missionary fervor then they were prepared to close the school down. But they allowed that, “if the natives were prepared to bear the financial burden, we ought to give them the opportunity.”
Several “native gentlemen” including W.E. Peterson, J.P. Brown and Sarbah opposed a closure, and some accepted the challenge, but it soon became clear that help was needed.
After many trials with one headmaster after another, fate became benevolent with the arrival - in Cape Coast in 1907 - of the father figure in the person of Rev W.T. Balmer from Fourah Bay, Sierra Leone.
By that year, the enrolment was a paltry eight students whom Rev Balmer famously dubbed “The Faithful Eight”.
With no teachers, the eight taught each other. Rev Balmer was so impressed that he worked tirelessly, at the cost of his good health, and by 1911, the enrolment had hit the eighty mark. He left soon after for medical attention. He had developed sores all over his body, and his heart had become weak.
Situation today
If today, in 2016, we have thousands of students wanting to enroll to benefit from the enviable Mfantsipim pedigree – that is indeed great news, considering our most humble beginnings. But our propensity in Ghana – typical of negative parochial mindsets - to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory is not just unfortunate; it is repulsive. [The way forward on this challenge later].
Sarbah, for one, called the battle for education a prime social demand, a leading civil rights issue. He propped Mfantsipim to lead the battle for Gold Coast political and economic emancipation, even as his family donated the hill on which Mfantsipim proudly stands today.
Sarbah went as far as to compare the vision of the Gold Coast with none other than Japan. In 1902 he said, “Fanti patriots and the Japanese Emperor with his statesman were both striving to raise their respective countries by the proper education and efficient training of their people.
He same laudable object was before them both … Japan [has] succeeded, and her very success ought to be an inspiration as well as incentive to the people of the Gold Coast territories to attempt again, keep on striving until they win in the Twentieth Century that which they sought for thirty-five years ago.”
Sarbah was way ahead of his time and furnished a foretaste much before Winston Churchill’s salient observation (in the aftermath of World Wall II) that “The empires of the future will be empires of the mind.”
Similarly, Joseph Ephraim Casely-Hayford (1866 - 1930), also an old boy in the company of Sarbah, “was anxious that the youth of West Africa should be well-equipped educationally as well as alive to their responsibilities as the trustees of posterity.”
Listed as the eighth principal of Mfantsipim, and serving briefly from 1889 – 1890, Casely-Hayford foresaw quality education in the Gold Coast extended through all of West Africa. Mfantsipim was never in his view to be caught in a narrow parochial strait jacket, as we find it today hustling over gloves and squabbling over toilet paper.
Casely-Hayford was influenced by an earlier African patriot, James Africanus Horton (1835 – 1883), and especially by Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832 – 1912) to cast a wider net for a Nationhood of British West Africa to include Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, and Nigeria.
Blyden possessed a vision of independent African college producing a new generation of African youth imbued with a public spirit to live meaningfully and respectfully, and work and prosper together.
It was from that larger vision that, after World War l, in 1919, Casely-Hayford attracted some 50 African delegates for the first National Congress of British West Africa.
[To be continued].
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F.L. Bartels