Book Review: Swords and Crosses for Nation Building
Institutional history particularly of education has often been told on trinity of sources : of the pioneer administrators, the students who constituted the first batch and of the infrastructure they depended on for over-all development.
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The story of Opoku Ware School cannot be otherwise. Growing up in the 1980s, I was always fascinated with this school- in fact more so then the other- on its eastern geographic part- Prempeh College, a rival of a sort; an Oxbridge identity of a kind. By some coincidence I did not study there but persuaded my younger brother to do so. It was through him, Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng the lead author of Swords and Crosses- The Story of Opoku Ware School- MCMLII-MMXII asked if I could review this book.
Perhaps, I would be able to find reasons for my teenage nostalgia was the first interest to review: was it anything to do with Swords and Crosses which could imply Catholic salvation of Christianity ending with the summit of Calvary and the symbolism of the crucifix? Or could it be what is in a name as in the Ashanti king- Opoku Ware I who expanded the frontiers of an emerging empire, laid a huge infrastructure for expansion and whose honorifics the palace poets sing to this today?
Could the school’s spiritual inspiration come from a replica of the Mpomponsu State Sword presented it by that renaissance king- Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyeman Premeph II in 1958 during whose reign 23 secondary schools were established in Ashanti making it the region with the highest number of schools? Or better still, praises to missionaries of Europe whose political sides of colonial adventures and sometimes exploitation notwithstanding , laid the foundation of much of the solid educational institutions that Ghana inherited and which have served it well?
All are mixed up and treated in different ways in the Swords and Crosses’ six chapters (and serial prefaces and appendixes) of 325 pages. It has photos to compliment as it has to in such stories. From the first chapter of, The Pioneering Years to the last, Century 21 OWASS, committed leadership from Asanteman Council, the Catholic Church through its missionaries and the laity constituted a visionary post spelling the anticipated future. It was however the headmasters- to date eight of them who had to implement the day to day policy management leading to this re-count.
“60 years ago on 28th February 1952 about 60 young boys gathered at the forecourt of St. Peter’s Cathedral, Kumasi between 9am and midday. They waited to be bused to their new school, a catholic institution at Fankyenebra……..Because each student had more than one box, Father had to do two trips. Finally, by 4.30pm all the boys were settled in.”
Rev. Fr. P.R. Burgess the Oxford educated first headmaster of the school (whose bust is strategically located on campus), is not forgotten and is the one referred to as bussing students to the new school and consciously or unconsciously telling them that leadership is service and not lordship.
After him there had been seven others which also saw a transition of leadership from the over 90 percent British management and teaching staff to Africanisation of leadership : for Ghanaians who had acquired skills to continue and at a period of the Africanisation of national development agencies and civil service in the 1960s. Kwame Nkrumah so desired and felt proud of all such transitions.
The assessment of each of the headmasters gives a clearer time-frame accomplishments and challenges over the last half century in this historical journey. It is written critically but fairly because the authors have ceased to be students and have a license of ‘insolence’ to review works of their ‘elders.’
The curious part for me is Chapter 3- The Acheampong Years. Maligned in gigantic proportions as a military head of state, a revisionist history is gradually been kinder to some of his policies of the 1970s. We are told of three benefits the school derived: “Operation Feed Yourself” (OFY). “ We actually farmed” Rodney and his co-authors tell us of that period. “The school won the 3rd prize in the OFY regional championship for which it was presented with a big tape recorder…OWASS was the only school in the region to win a prize…….A significant impact of the bumper harvest flowing from OFY was that the quality of the food served at the dining hall improved……as a result the school farm supplied corn and pepper for a whole term free of charge to save money.’
The second Acheampong public policy that interested the school was “Operation Serve Yourself” . The students decided to wash their own plates and cups after meals and clean their environment and thus save the school money for labour.
The third policy was however one of political disagreement. Perhaps to live up to the valor of their title- Katakyie.; opposing Acheampong’s UNIGOV through confrontation with soldiers as they matched at dawn to Kumasi city center to protest with other school students .
Interestingly, they were able to overpower the soldiers for the school cadet corp. had detected that the soldiers didn’t have bullets in their riffles . They destroyed cars and one even said some of the soldiers ran back to their near-by barracks.
A second confrontation another time was attempted blockage when Acheampong was travelling from Kumasi through the school’s vicinity to the mine city of Obuasi. The soldiers as part of the security advance party were on the road and fully armed. It took an old student, Air Vice Marshall Yaw Boakye flying a helicopter to prevent a potential tragedy for the students.
Youthful enthusiasm sometimes misdirected had defined the history of student behavior and agitation across board but like students everywhere, some still grow to be responsible leaders. The late PV Obeng could be counted among the school’s famous alumni who had both experience of rebellion and been rebelled against as the Prime Minister of part of the Rawlings’ era.
OWASS is yet to produce a president of the republic like the other but they have been many good people to be proud of: the Juabenhene Nana Otuo Siriboe, the Agogohene Akuokuo Sarpong belong to the alumni royalty . Perhaps the highest concentration of American lvy league trained professionals at one point in the country’s development were from this school .
It’s difficult to write history of institutions. We are told of the lack of access to data which runs through even research analysis for national public policy. But valuable sources of the book also came from the student produced OWAREAN magazine of the ‘70s and ’80s; a part of the extra-curriculum missing in much of secondary education today.
In the second edition of Swords and Crosses, the authors might want to talk to another British professor until recently Vice Principle of the University of Glasgow and curator at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge University, Malcolm McLeod. He taught for years at OWASS and could be an excellent link to the period of ‘70s and ‘80s.
And so, sixty years after that bus drive by Father Burgess, hundreds if not thousands of alumni have become men of the world with at least some of the dreams of the forebears fulfilled to tell the story of the Swords and the Crosses.
[Swords and Crosses-The Story of Opoku School MCMLII-MMXII by Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng].