Great-grandpa, what sort of world are you guys going to bequeath to us?

I once wrote an article entitled as above. Ex­cept for one word.

The first word of the headline was not “Great Grandpa”

It was “Grandpa!”.

Yes, you’ve guessed right: since I wrote that piece, my family has been blessed with the arrival of a new member. And I, who was once widely touted a “a young Ghanaian writer” I am now to be called “Great-grandpa!” I can’t stop laughing at myself.

Mind you, the new arrival is as sweet as an orange eaten after one had eaten asowa! (Asowa, also known as “asaa”, is a type of berry, (The”Miracle Berry”) that turns things sweet in the mouth. Its botanical name is “Synsepalum dulcifi­cum”. Only God knows why it isn’t cultivated in Ghana in commercial quantities. I know from personal experience that it grows well here if good care is taken of it. I lost mine be­cause of constant travelling. It requires a skilled attendant who can devote loving attention to a delicate, unique plant.)

A former employer of mine, Jim Bailey, proprietor of DRUM (Ghana edition), the magazine I was privileged to edit from 1960 to 1965, once told me, “When we hold ourselves up to our children, let it be as a warning, not as an example.”

Now, I was used to Bailey’s often eccentric witticisms. He had collected them from Christ Church College, Oxford University; various versions of the “Officers’ Mess” of the UK’s Royal Air Force (during the Second World War and after the war), the plush boardrooms of several enormously wealthy Johannesburg-based companies whose shares had been be­queathed to him by his father, a transnational entrepreneur called Sir Abe Bailey.

Drum was started in 1951 as “African Drum” by Jim Bailey and a former South African test cricketer and author called Bob Crisp. But after a few months, Jim Bailey took it over com­pletely.

He then invited to South Africa a fellow Oxonian, An­thony Sampson (later to achieve fame in Britain as the author of such best-selling books as The Anatomy of Britain Today) to become the paper’s editor.

Under Anthony Sampson, Drum achieved a huge circula­tion among the educated sec­tion of the African population of South Africa, who had hith­erto been largely ignored by the white press of apartheid South Africa. Bailey was inspired by the success of South African Drum to branch out into other African countries. He estab­lished editions in Central and East Africa, as well as Nigeria and Ghana.

Bailey was, a pocket philos­opher who could not tolerate boredom and the real purpose of his constant travels was to sample the thinking – and (par­ticularly) the wit – of Africans (especially, what they thought their contribution should be to the then raging decolonisation) process in Africa.

Bailey loved a good argu­ment, and encouraged people like myself and his Nigerian editor, Nelson Ottah, (as if we needed encouragement!) to feel free to say “Go to hell” to him, even though we were taking his shilling. He loved to see us sending vendors running into the streets, yelling “African Drum!….African Drum!”

BY CAMERON DUODU