Reviews

Between Faith and History – A Biography of J A Kufuor
by Ivor Agyeman-Duah

ISBN: 978-0-9547023-9-7

Extent: 440 pages

Publication Date: December 2006

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Ghana Kufuor Volume II

The second edition of President John Kufour’s Biography, Between Faith and History, was launched at La-Palm Royal Beach Hotel in Accra on 10 January 2007.

Ghana will be awash with a plethora of activities in 2007 as it marks 50 years of independence and post-colonial rule. Throughout the coming year, attention will be focused, to a large extent on the heroes of the independent struggle, particularly Dr Kwame Nkrumah the charismatic leader of the African decolonisation period, and also Dr J.B. Danquah, Paa Grant, Ako Adjei, William Ofori-Atta and Obetsebi-Lamptey who make up the popularly remembered ‘Big Six’ who started the United Gold Coast Convention of which Nkrumah initially served as secretary and later broke away to form his own Convention People’s Party that led Ghana to independence on 6 March 1957.

Some attention will also be on the current leadership. One of the private activities that will herald this will be held this month (January) when the second edition of Between Faith and History, a biography of Ghana’s current president, John Agyekum Kufuor, will be launched in Accra.

Written by the Ghanaian author and journalist, Ivor Agyeman-Duah, the launch takes place on 10 January under the auspices of the Centre of Intellectual Renewal, a public policy organisation in Ghana, the Ayebia Clarke Publishing Limited in Oxfordshire, England, and the endorsement of the Arts Council of England. The Nigerian Nobel Laureate in Literature, Prof Wole Soyinka will be the guest speaker.

While in Ghana, Prof Soyinka and Ivor Agyeman-Duah will participate in a television production titled “Muses of Writing – Yoruba Culture, the Politics and Spirit of Wole Soyinka in the Global Stage” which will later be shown on some selected television stations in Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

It will be a sequel to a 1996 experience when Agyeman-Duah, then a 30-year-old journalist and an international visitor of the United States Public Affairs Secretariat, interviewed Soyinka, then an exile at Emory University in Atlanta (as the Nigerian prepared for publication of his next book, The Open Sore of a Continent).

The first edition of Between Faith and History (136 pages, mainly about the growing-up years of President Kufuor, his education and leadership of Ghana’s opposition which culminated in his election as president in 2000) was published by the Africa World Press of Trenton, New Jersey, USA, in 2003.

The second edition of Between Faith and History has evolved into a 400-page cloth edition, and includes coverage of the first six years of the Kufuor presidency. The Anglo-Ghanaian publishing press, Ayebia Clarke Publishing Limited, is owned by Ayebia Clarke and her husband, David. Ayebia is a Ghanaian and former editor of the Heinemann African and Caribbean Writers Series (that helped to promote Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott and many such distinguished writers).

Ayebia says they are in business to ensure that after Heinemann stopped the publication of the African Writers Series, there is continuity of African writing. Currently editor of The British Council’s Crossing Borders magazine. Ayebia will soon partner with Indiana University Press in marketing new African writing across the Atlantic.

Agyeman-Duah who has seven publications to his credit and does review and writings for the African and Asian Studies Journal in The Netherlands among others, currently serves as an advisor on the Andrew Mellon Foundation of New York’s Aluka Africa Project. One of the reasons for writing Between Faith and History, he says, was to “assess Kufuor’s presidential policy successes and challenges, and the high governance rating within a still crawling public sector as well as some policy failures”.

In a foreword to the book, Prof. Ali Mazrui, the distinguished political scientist, writes: “A good biography reveals not only the life of its subject but also the times in which the person lived. If the biography is of a politician, the book should encompass insights into the politics of the era. Ivor Agyeman-Duah’s book about President J. A. Kufuor achieves that fusion of narrative between the biography of a man and the history of a country.”

This second edition has three books. In Book One, there are eight chapters. The first two – “A child may resemble his father but has a family”, and “The making of Apagyafi” respectively evaluate the Akan belief in matrilineal inheritance and how Kufuor fits into it.

Chapters 3 and 4, “Return to Ghana – the sorcerer’s apprentice”, and “Following the footprints of the fathers” are about Kufuor’s political mentors and his formal initiation into national politics. “Farewell to the men on horseback” narrates how Kufuor impatiently looked at the advent of military dictatorship in Ghanaian politics and how he thought his years and those of many of his generation were being wasted.

Chapters 7 and 8 are proverbial: “The Agama lizard walks slowly but it will get to its destination” and “A long journey ends at sunrise” are about how Kufuor became president.

Book Two which is mainly about policy and governance has five chapters, the first, “Welcome to the Castle and to its problems” was how the former president, Jerry Rawlings, greeted Kufuor after the latter had been declared president and went to see him about the transition. “The Sign of Jonah and the economy and poverty: no matter how far the stream wanders, it must end somewhere” survey the micro and macro economic indicators Kufuor inherited in 2001 and what was done to improve them from structural revision. There is also frank analysis and criticisms of some government policies and how some of them failed. There are critical comments on lapses that attended some bilateral and multilateral loan negotiations.

This is followed by Chapter 12, “Foreign affairs: beyond Ghana and West Africa”, which starts with a philosophical underpinning over which Ghana’s foreign policy and affairs were conducted as well as an examination of humanism and economic diplomacy as tools. There is of course the re-election chapter – “Kufuor Nie, Osono Nie” (Here is Kufuor and here is his elephant – his party symbol) and “To whom much is given, much is expected”.

Book Three, which has three chapters, discusses contemporary issues such as the US Millennium Challenge Account and more efforts at economic development, and of course football - the Black Stars performance at the 2006 World Cup in a chapter sweetly titled “Something to make us happy”.

The book ends with an epilogue that discusses in philosophical terms development and politicians. In 2004, Between Faith and History was awarded jointly with A Month Sweeter than Salt written by the Nigerian historian, Toyin Falola, the “Distinguished Leadership and Scholarship Award” by the Association of Third World Studies.