5. Posting to Kumasi and Return

I was still handling the Mumuni Dimbie case when we left Accra for Kumasi. After Festus Amarteifio had moved out of the residence of the Senior Crown Counsel at No. 2 Champac Avenue, we moved into it. We liked the businesslike structure of the A42 type Government bungalow so much that it was afterwards our dream to build a similar house for ourselves.

We met my father's old friend, Julius Sarkodee Adoo, as judge in Kumasi. It was his policy not to accept any invitations. But although he was then the senior puisne judge, he was preoccupied with another enquiry. This time into the Ashanti Stool affairs. It was something similar to the preview we had with the Akim Abuakwa enquiry. But as the Asantehene was so important an institution to the whole of Ashanti, the Government must have decided to be more circumspect about the scope of the enquiry and it did not touch the Asantehene in person. I did not have anything to do with that enquiry. Kodwo Boison was sent from Accra to be junior counsel. Azu Crabbe, who had then joined the Department as Senior Crown Counsel, was one of the counsel. But Bing himself led for the Commission. As ususal, he worked very long hours and, as usual, he wanted his subordinates to be around when he was working, not so much because he had as much work for them to do, but because he wanted somebody around on whom to bounce off ideas when they occurred to him. Azu did not get on well with Bing, and Azu thought we were entitled, in our own country, to support if we revolted against him. I did not want to get involved in this test of African solidarity and kept out. There was a lovely incident once when both Kodwo Boison and the Secretary to the Commission, the administrative agent, Patterson, had met in my office to air their complaints about how demanding Bing was when one was working under him. Bing would not even allow his subordinate time after the ordinary working hours to enable him to go shopping. To escape, Patterson had once put forward an excuse about needing to go to the toilet. As the office facilities were now closed, this meant he had to go home. He was recalling this incident with Boison, “Do you remember the day when I asked him permission to go to the toilet?” When all of a sudden Patterson's voice came to a dead halt because in came Bing with his long, slow steps, hunched shoulders and that mischievous look on his face, asking, “And what happened when you asked him to go to the toilet?” After a moment, Patterson started again, fumbling for words on a new subject. After a hard day's work, he would, from all accounts finish off a bottle of alcohol. We opened a bottle of Remy Martin cognac for him once. It was before we got to know him well. He finished it at a sitting. But he also noticed that Stella did not look too pleased with his achievement. He replaced the Remy Martin next day. Friends who heard about this replacement thought it was an unusual event.

Sarkodee Adoo's finding was against the advisers of the Asantehene, which led to Government taking measures to protect the Ashanti Stool. Whether this was acceptable to the Ashanti people or not was another matter.

I was in charge of the ordinary run of work in the Kumasi branch of the Attorney General's Department. The judges I had to deal with were Justice H.C. Smith, whom I had already met in Accra as a Senior Magistrate before his appointment to the High Court bench, and Justice R.H. Murphy. Both of them were most courteous men and I enjoyed appearing before them. Justice Murphy was the judge whom I appeared most often before. He always paid me the compliment of mentioning in his judgement how ably I had argued. I did not want to take a bad point before them. As a result, I often ran into social problems with the Magistrates whose judgments I had to support on appeal before the High Court if I thought them unsound. It was not long before I started hearing questions being asked by some Magistrates about who I thought I was. If they, in their wisdom, had given a judgement, what business had I to appear before the High Court to say that I was not supporting the judgment? That did not stop me from saying so whenever I thought the judgment of the lower court was insupportable. One thing my year in Chambers in England had taught me was that the prosecutor or Counsel for the State should be as fair as possible. There was no reason why I should say that I was supporting a judgment which I knew was palpably wrong just to please a colleague.

Some of the Magistrates did do naughty things. I once watched aghast when one, a Senior Magistrate at that, dealt with his list of cases for the day. He asked all who wished to plead guilty to the charges they faced to come before and dealt with them leniently. He made it known to the others that he was going to be very hard on them and proceeded to do so. There was one occasion when an illiterate farmer who had been convicted of possession of counterfeit currency without lawful excuse. Reading the facts of the case against him, I thought the conviction was suspicious. He was supposed to have found the counterfeit currency by the wayside near the bush. That may have been his story which the prosecution could not confirm. But his first action was to go to the bank in the nearest town and to ask the Manager whether the money that he had was good or not. The Manager looked at the currency; knew that it was counterfeit; asked the appellant to wait a moment outside while he checked on something; and quietly phoned the Police to come and collect the appellant. He did not know the ingredients of the crime. He was unrepresented. He was told by the interpreter that he had counterfeit currency in his possession without lawful excuse. To that he pleaded guilty. He was not made aware of the fact that the offence could be committed only with knowledge that the currency was counterfeit. I asked the Police about these matters before the Court sat. I then told the judge that it appeared to me that an important ingredient of the offence, that of the knowledge of the falsity of the currency, could not have been interpreted to the appellant before he pleaded. On the face of it, his conduct seemed inconsistent with knowledge that the currency was counterfeit. He would not have gone to the Bank Manager only to ask him whether the money was genuine. He was still unrepresented in the appellate Court. Justice Murphy asked him a few questions to determine what exactly was translated to him. The judge agreed with me that in the circumstances, the conviction was a nullity. So he told the appellant that he was going to send the case back to the trial magistrate in order that a proper trial may take place. The man started making an impassioned plea to the judge. He asked the judge to deal with him in any way that the judge wished but please never to send him back to that court. Of course, it became obvious what must have happened in that court. The only ground for sympathy one could have for the Magistrates was that they sometimes had very heavy lists.

As Crown Counsel in charge of Kumasi, my fief extended over what is now Ashanti, Brong Ahafo and the whole of the northern regions of Ghana. I advised the senior Police Officers, especially the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), of those regions. In prosecutions before the Magistrates' Courts, Police Officers of experience appeared, unless the case was one of some complexity or importance, when I would be asked to conduct it. Some of these Police prosecutors were very good. One such was Ernest Ako, who eventually became the Inspector General of Police during Acheampong's regime in the 1970s. He was then stationed at Kumasi and I thought that he was capable of dealing effectively with most defence lawyers appearing in the courts. These Police prosecutors, whether in Accra or elsewhere, were always irked by the fact that they were always told that, not being qualified lawyers, they could not “quote law” in court. I did not know where this supposed prohibition originated from. But some lawyers used it to deny the Police to advance their cases on prosecution by quoting legal passages. I thought the denial was quite unfair. A legal qualification did not give the lawyer an exclusive right to look into the statutes and law books and, if the Police Officers were by law permitted to practice, I could not see how they could be expected to discharge this statutory function effectively without being able to explain or support their cases by observing a total ban on their ability to quote law. Whenever they asked me, I advised them to quote what law they could find and stand their ground in arguing the matter out before the Magistrates.

Crown Counsel in the regions conducted all the prosecutions and the civil cases on behalf of Government or its agencies in the High Court. He also argued all the criminal and civil appeals coming before that Court. The difficulty about representation of the Crown or State in Ashanti at the time was due to political activity. Ashanti being the home of the opposition to Nkrumah, political rallies over the Region always led to attacks from opponents. In this, both the CPP and the NLM parties were equally to blame. NLM rallies were attacked by demonstrators and stone throwing from the opposing camp and vice versa. I found that as long as one kept an even hand in the prosecution of cases, there was no complaint. The policy I followed was to charge and prosecute the persons identified by the Police as the attackers of a lawful political rally, whether they be CPP or NLM. Sometimes the charges were as serious as murder, where the attack, usually in the form of stone throwing, had led to the death of victims. As always, I displayed no personal animosity against persons whom I prosecuted. So, I soon found that prisoners passing by our bungalow often waved to us as if we were old friends.

I went on trek to Tamale for the Assizes in the north and to Sunyani for the Assizes in Brong-Ahafo. The first occasion I went up north for the Tamale Assizes must have been in 1958, when Ghana was just over a year old as an independent country. As usual, Stella came with me as she wanted to know more about Ghana than even I did at the time. I drove our Borgward car. I knew we were to stay at one of the resthouses in Tamale. We got there and I began helping the old man who was the caretaker of the resthouse with the luggage. After we had packed them into the resthouse, the old man turned to me and said, “Madam will sleep here. But you, where you go sleep?” He had taken me as the driver for whom he had no accommodation. I was quite taken aback by the enquiry and replied, pointing at the bed, “Why? I will sleep there.” The old man was covered with embarrassment at the mistake he had made. He meekly said, “Nowadays, if you don't take care, you go talk nonsense for some big man.” We got on very well after that.

I got to know more about Ghana because Stella was with me than I would have otherwise done. At the week-end, she insisted on our travelling up further north to see Bolgatanga and Navorongo. My old school friend, D. S. Quacoopome, was the District Commissioner in Navorongo at the time. So we paid him and his wife, Emma, ² a visit. We went further to Paga to see the famous crocodile have its chicken meal. From Paga we went to the northern border of Ghana to set foot on the soil of Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso.

I thought the people of the north were quite unspoilt. They then had a custom, if a young man's father was killed by another, that young man would measure his foot in the footprint of the father and keep measuring until his was the same size. Then it was his obligation to avenge his father by killing the person who had killed the father. On such occasions, when the young man was brought before a Court on a murder charge, he would admit to the killing. It was the practice of the High Court at the time, following the practice of the English Courts not to accept a plea of guilty, but ask the accused to plead not guilty for the case to be tried. Quite often, the accused would say that the Court was wasting time; that he killed the deceased because he was under a duty to avenge the father; he was guilty. The Court would nevertheless record a plea of not guilty and proceed to the trial. I remember telling my friend, Garvin Scott, about this when he was made a judge. Garvin simply said, if an accused pleaded guilty to a murder charge before him, he was not going to ask the accused to change his plea; he would just record it and proceed to sentence him. I do not know how long the practice of not accepting pleas of guilty in murder cases in the north continued after Scott J. had been taking the Assizes there.

It was not only in murder cases that the people of the north displayed this candour with Courts. They pleaded guilty quite often to cases which would otherwise be fought in the south. I thought that if you found an obviously guilty accused pleading not guilty and having all the damaging evidence aired at a trial in the north, it would often be an accused who had spent some time in the south.

The criminal case I enjoyed prosecuting most in Kumasi was the case of Falconer, a bookkeeper with one of the department stores, who was charged with having falsified the accounts of his employers and stolen the resulting proceeds. He had a neat way of doing his books showing a shortfall in takings which he banked in his personal bank account. The falsifications were very clever and, but for the banking of the proceeds, could have been easily explained away. But the symmetry of the falsification and the personal deposits was too orderly for a court to which the case was presented to avoid the conclusion that the offences charged had been proved.

I made one recognised enemy through the conduct of a case. But that was a civil case. We were very happy to find in Kumasi my old class-mate, Katsina Atta, Adamu's sister, who was now married to Dr. Claude Ennin. They were our closest friends in Kumasi and we often visited their home. There we met quite a number of people, among them, David and Jenny Beer, then with BP, David and Sheila Fenn, with Mobil, the de la Mares of Kingsway Stores, the wife being a Secretary to Claud, the Hutchfuls, the Daniels .... People, who in the hotbed of Ashanti politics had no political affiliations and were quite “safe” to consort with. At one of the Ennins' many parties, we met Nancy Tsiboe, already a well-known political figure in the country. Her husband, Mr. Tsiboe, was the publisher of the Ashanti Pioneer, a paper which was critical of the Government. Nancy Tsiboe, at one point, mentioned to me that we would be on opposing sides in the case which she was bringing against the Kumasi Municipal Council for damages for the destruction of her Happy Home school for girls the following Monday, that is within two days of the party. I had that case to deal with. I knew it had problems. It was one of those cases in which a municipal council had taken action to destroy a structure which was being erected without permission but spoiling its case by not giving any notice to the person in default of its intention to pull down the structure. When she mentioned the case at the Ennin party, she was in a laughing mood and it struck me that she might be thinking that I would be pulling my punches when I met her in Court.

The case was heard by Murphy J. and the plaintiff gave her evidence of how this building which she was putting up for the education of the girls was pulled down, without just cause, by the Municipal Council. The case she sought to prove was one of victimisation as a political opponent of Government. The case which I was instructed to make on behalf of the Council was that the building had been pulled down because it was a dangerous structure. For this, I had done a lot preparatory work, including having the blockwork scientifically tested by a Professor of building engineering at the Kumasi College of Science and Technology, now the University of Science and Technology. To her surprise, I put her through a most rigorous cross-examination, to show that she was putting up a sandcrete~[* check spelling, altered, but occurs with this spelling elsewhere ]~ (cement) block building without the minimum amount of cement necessary. For this, I had got test results from the Professor to back my suggestions. By the time she left the witness box, she was in no mood to smile at me. I later got the Professor to demonstrate the strength of the sandcrete blocks she had used, by producing the machine tests of the strength of the blocks. I made him produce samples of the blocks. They could be easily crushed by hand, which one could not do with blocks which had the proper content of cement.

The Municipal Council lost the case on the ground of lack of notice or warning before the destruction of the building. The damages awarded were appropriately reduced. The case of victimisation did not come through as clearly as the plaintiff had expected. But after that she would not speak to me for years.

But the case which I did of constitutional and political significance while in Kumasi was the case of Nana Diko Pim, the Omanhene of Ejisu, against the Minister of Local Government. It arose from the Statute Law (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1957. One of the measures taken by the Nkrumah Government to break or curb the power of the Chiefs who had stood against the CPP was the destoolment and replacement of a large number of these Chiefs. Invariably, this led to disputes between the people on who was the real Chief. That meant that stool property was often withheld by the Chief who had been destooled or his supporters. To ensure that on the destoolment by Government, the stool property was handed over intact to the person appointed to replace him, the Act gave the Minister power to designate a person to take charge of the property in the interim period between a destoolment and the new enstoolment. This Act did not go through the procedure laid down by the Constitution for bills affecting the traditional functions and privileges of a Chief. The Constitution required such bills, upon introduction in Parliament, to be referred to the Houses of Chiefs. But, whether or not the reason for not following that procedure, was the fact that those Houses had not been constituted, the bill did not follow this procedure. The validity of the Act was promptly challenged by the traditional office holders in Ejisu in Ashanti where an order had been made by the Minister, upon the due announcement in the Gazette of the destoolment of their Chief, Nana Diko Pim, that the stool property be handed over. The office holders protested that under custom the designated person was not qualified or entitled to handle stool property. The case brought by the stool officers, under the title of Ware v. Ofori-Atta and Others, was heard by Justice Murphy in the High Court, Kumasi. Joe Reindorf appeared for the plaintiff and I appeared for the defending Minister of Local Government and the others sued. The non-existence of the Houses of Chiefs was not put forward in my presentation of the Government's case as the reason for the non-compliance with the particular provision of the Constitution. My submission that, in so far as the traditional functions of a Chief were affected by the Act, this was incidental, because the main purport of the Act was to ensure peace, order and good government of the people which the Parliament was empowered to promote. If no arrangement was made for the proper custody of the stool property which belonged to all the subjects of the stool, serious damage or loss might be caused to it and this might in turn lead to disturbances. This argument did not find favour with Justice Murphy, who declared the Act unconstitutional. After the restrictions of the Constitution had been removed in 1959, a validation Act, entitled the Stool Property (Recovery and Validation) Act 1959, was passed to legalise the acts done under the unconstitutional Act and to put an end to court actions brought under it. Advice on the enactment of this Act was not part of my duties. Kumasi had a number of very good lawyers at the time. I have mentioned Joe Reindorf. At the time, he was in partnership with his brother-in-law, Victor Owusu. Both were later to become Attorneys General of Ghana after I had left the Department. It was always a challenge and a pleasure to meet either of them in Court. Both were articulate and brilliant in their presentation of arguments. I knew I had to prepare my cases very well whenever I was to meet either of them, and often wondered which of them was the more dangerous opponent. I concluded that Victor was not only clever but cunning. He was often in Accra dealing with appeal cases and I lived in dread of him producing at the most crucial moment some new and unpublished judgment which had recently been given in his presence by the Court of Appeal in Accra, overruling an earlier published authority which one had to support an argument in Court. The state of the law reports at the time was appalling and it wholly undermined the doctrine of binding judicial precedent by which our law was determined.

Victor was heavily involved in NLM politics at the time, as was Joe Appiah, both of whom had been active CPP members and, in the case of Joe Appiah, the representative of Nkrumah, when they were in England. I did not see Joe Appiah often in Court. I think we were pitched against each other in only one of these “political crime” charges. On the few occasions that I saw him, I thought he was more of a political orator than a debater of fine legal points. David Effah and Tom Totoe, who were also in partnership, were serious legal opponents, whom I enjoyed meeting in Court. Kwaw-Swanzy, who later became my Attorney General, was at the time based in Kumasi. He was in partnership with Dr. Kwesi Kuranchi Taylor, one of the most brilliant academic lawyers that Ghana has produced this century. But Kwaw was mostly travelling out of Kumasi to do the chieftaincy disputes, then known as constitutional cases, which were most lucrative at the time, which he and Kuranchi Taylor specialised in, as the latter was known to be very sick. Commey Mills Odoi, who immediately preceded Kwaw as Attorney General, indeed the first Ghanaian to attain that position, was also in Kumasi at the time. He specialised in defending CPP clients accused of offences. We did not meet often in Court, though one saw him from time to time to get some indication of the inside political party news from Accra. Another lawyer with CPP political aspirations whom I used to meet in Court was Kweku Bonsu, who later became a junior Minister in the Nkrumah Government. The partnership of Effah and Totoe was highly regarded. Simon Sotomey had a good practice. Then there was my own cousin and Simon's mate at both Achimota and Newcastle University, Joseph Nee Lante Heward-Mills, who both in personal matters and in the court room was a fighter. My old Cadbury House prefect, Frank Mensah Bonsu, was, at first the Kumasi Municipal Council solicitor but later bought the well-known and respected expatriate practice of J. J. Peel and went into private practice. Him, we saw socially very often. We teased him mercilessly about his period of apprenticeship spent in Kensington Borough Council after qualification as a solicitor in England before his return to Kumasi. We had mentioned this fact when introducing him to our Canadian friend, Jean Steckle. Next time Jean met him, she greeted him breezily as Mr. Kensington. But he took all in good part. It was tragic that he died so young. All in all it was a Bar which commanded respect.

Jean herself, we met for the first time in Kumasi. A phone call from Ulric Cross in Accra informed us that there was this Canadian girl who knew nobody coming to Kumasi and he had given her our name. We spotted Jean in the town while shopping in the afternoon of her visit and she later turned up for tea. That began our long friendship which led to many kindnesses from her to both of us and later to our children. She was then a social worker coming to stay at Achinakrom, near Kumasi, where she was stationed with an Irish girl called Cara Schofield. We saw quite a lot of them then and even more of Jean after she had left Ghana and was stationed in Sierra Leone; Senegal, where we visited her with children; Rome with the FAO; and Canada, where we visited either as a family or individually over many years.

We also had our first visit from our friend from Oxford days, Dick Wilson. He wanted to know about Ghana and Nigeria. We were his Ghana contact, and Adedapo Aderemi, the son of the Oni of Ife, who was then a Senior Magistrate, was his contact in Nigeria. As we were not in Accra when he arrived, we arranged for him to stay with my cousin, Nee Quartey, then with Ghana Electricity. He later gave us a comparative account of the peoples of Ghana and Nigeria, in which the Ghanaians appeared as the quiet ones. Unfortunately, Dapo Aderemi, whom I got to like and admire for his sense of humour and leadership qualities while we were at Hans Crescent in London and at Oxford, died not very long after. At the time I was transferred to Kumasi, I was short of confirmation in the Civil Service by four months. Having entered the service in October 1955, the normal probation period being 3 years, I was due for confirmation in October 1958. By Civil Service rules one could not act in a more senior position if one was not a confirmed officer. I was handicapped by this rule from acting in a more senior position. But another rule of the service added to this to stop me from immediately getting the appropriate remuneration for the duties I had to perform. The office was that of a Senior Crown Counsel. I was still an Assistant Crown Counsel and it was the rule that one could not act in, as opposed to performing the duties attached to, an office which is two grades above one's own. Therefore, even if I were confirmed, which I was not at the time, I could not act as Senior Crown Counsel. I did not trouble much about these disabling rules. We did need the money but my main interest was in holding this challenging assignment I had been given as best I could and I set about doing that. Hilary Batcock,~[* Battcock? Uncle Roger suggests possibly ]~ who knew the Kumasi office well, was now supervising my work from Accra. We had a good working relationship. I sent a weekly report of the number of cases I had dealt with, their result, the cases outstanding, the advice I had been called upon to give and so forth. Usually that was the end of the matter. Occasionally, when there had been a few lost cases following one another he would send me a note raising the matter and asking whether there was any special explanation for the losses or whether it was just the run of the cases. I do not remember an occasion when the losses were due to anything other than the run of the cases. As I often had commendation from the judges about my work and I got on well with the Police, I had no anxiety about some different report reaching Accra about my performance.

It was not long after October 1958 that I had word from Accra that I had been confirmed in my appointment and had been simultaneously promoted to a full Crown Counsel. With that shortly afterwards came a recommendation from Bing that I should be made to act as Senior Crown Counsel in charge of Kumasi and, when approval came for that, my acting days started from the date of my confirmation in the service.

To begin with, I was alone dealing with the general office. When the Commission of Enquiry dealing with the Asantemam Council ended, Kodwo Boison was asked to continue in the Kumasi office to assist me. It must have been somewhat upsetting for him because he was senior to me by way of call to the English Bar by some two months but he had been made my junior at the Department because he joined it after me. Unbeknown to me, he had been fighting for recognition to be given to his time of call to the Bar. This battle he eventually won. But I only knew about it when I had a letter from Accra that my probation period had been cut by six months so that instead of being Crown Counsel from October 1958, I had my appointment backdated to May 1958. Although Kodwo Boison's appointment had been backdated to give recognition to his date of call, I still remained his senior in the service and in charge of the Kumasi office. He was soon replaced by Dan Annan.

For a time, monthly meetings were held in Accra which brought the officers in the outstations down to meet their colleagues and to discuss problems at headquarters. This was usually accompanied by some drinks in the Attorney General's residence. When these general monthly meetings stopped, I was occasionally invited down to Accra to discuss matters with the Attorney General. This probably added to the deep suspicion of me that was developing among some of my Ghanaian colleagues. I soon learnt that if I wanted to know how colleagues felt about me, it was not the attitude of these colleagues towards me when we met which mattered. It was the attitude of their wives. Colleagues might successfully simulate their real feelings towards me. Wives who had heard their husbands tell of the sneaky way in which I acted to their husband's disadvantage could hardly hide their feelings when they met me. The feeling that I was suspect came gradually to me. I could not explain it at first. Then it occurred to me that the suspicion was due to the fact that I appeared too friendly with Bing who in turn was openly promoting my interest. It may be that the thinking was also that my interest was being promoted because I was telling derogatory tales about them. This left me with mild surprise because in all my association with Bing, I never went to his house once without an invitation from him and whenever he chose to invite me, there were more interesting things to work on and to talk about than the defects of my colleagues. I was fascinated by his experiences as a politician and a soldier and he had a lot to tell when we were not working, including stories of times with Nkrumah, Padmore, Ras Makonnen and others in the days when they were involved with black emancipation in Britain.

Dan Annan and I got on very well, and I think we ran an efficient operation. We were both round about 30, he probably just over and I, just below. Our youth told against us sometimes when people met us first. There was, for example, the day that one of the Paramount Chiefs of Ashanti, the lady, Nana Juaben Serwah, the Omanhene of Juaben State and a strong CPP supporter, needed legal assistance from Government and had been directed to come to see us. She and her entourage were first taken to Dan Annan's office. In spite of Dan's impressive height, she immediately concluded that this was a young man. The advice she needed required the wisdom of a mature person. So she immediately told Dan than she really wanted the Government lawyer. Guessing what she really meant, Dan got up with a smile and said, “Come, I will take you to the Government lawyer”. They walked into my office, with Dan still smiling saying to her “This is the Government lawyer”. The lady took one look at me, turned in contempt to her entourage and uttered just one word, “Mmofra”, meaning, “Children.”

Throughout the time that I was stationed in Kumasi, Geoffrey Bing was Attorney General and Hilary Battcock was the Senior Crown Counsel in Accra responsible for the overall supervision of the work of the regional offices. We had a system of sending regular monthly reports of the type of cases that one had dealt with and the result. The report would also contain a list of the important advice given so that Accra was aware of what was going on. No doubt the office also had reports from the judges and the Police about how we were getting on so that it had a full picture of our activities and our comportment. I soon found out that the reports we sent were carefully studied because I remember a query being sent to me after one of my earlier reports had shown that I had lost about three murder cases in a row. Battcock wrote to me asking for an explanation of the string of losses or was it just the run of bad cases. I explained that it was the latter. For a period we also had a system of meetings of all the lawyers of the office once a month at the residence of the Attorney General. For these meetings, those of us who were outside Accra came down. These meetings, I thought, were a good system of finding out what the problems of the office both in Accra and in the regions were. ~[* flagged as repetition (asked to review earlier page) ]~

Two matters of status were settled during our Kumasi days. I was called to the Ghana Bar in 1959 and Stella in that same year became one of the earliest Europeans to register as a Ghanaian national. In my case, I had been appointed to the Attorney General's Department without being called to the Ghanaian Bar. I was entitled to appear in Court on behalf of the Crown because members of the Department having, prior to my appointment, been mainly expatriate colonial civil servant lawyers, had always been entitled to appear in the Courts of the Gold Coast without being called to the local Bar. This practice had been continued after independence. I could, therefore, like previous members of the Department, practise without being called to the Gold Coast or Ghana Bar. I was not worried about seniority at the Bar; as I had no intention of leaving the Department in the foreseeable future so, I thought there was no need to go through the formality of a call to the local Bar. But Bing thought that the Department should develop the practice of having all its members as members of the Ghana Bar. He, therefore, raised the subject with me. I expressed no objection. So he arranged for the call. I was called in Accra in absentia. Apparently, he had been present because he later told me that he had said some nice things about me at the ceremony.

Stella's change of nationality was at her own free will. I was not anxious that she should be Ghanaian. Indeed, I thought it was a very serious step for her to take. But her argument was that she did not want to be anything different from me and, in any case, having a different nationality was inconvenient. She had discussed the matter with her very good friend, Jytte Cartwright, who thought the step she was contemplating was unwise and she should consider it further. She told me this. I was inclined to agree with Jytte. But I could not press the point too hard. One of the inconveniences suffered by a wife with a foreign nationality was that her presence in Ghana was entirely dependent on the consent of the husband. Any time that the husband decided that he wanted to get rid of the wife, all he had to do was to inform the Ministry of Interior that he was withdrawing his consent to the wife's continued presence in Ghana and her residence permit would be cancelled. There had been occasions when husbands in mixed marriages had exercised this option. I do not think Stella had thought of this possibility. But as I was anxious that I would not be considered as leaving this option open to myself, I found it difficult to ask her to reconsider her decision. As a result of her decision, she found herself having to ask for a visa each time she visited Finland, and as for years we lived in Ghana or England where there was no consular facility for the grant of a Finnish visa on request, she found herself having to wait for weeks for permission to visit her own home or family.

My friend from the last year that I stayed at Oxford, Kofi Tetteh, who had joined the Department, married Dorma. I was not able to attend the wedding but he had asked my advice on marriage to a non-Ghanaian wife. He later always said that the only support that he got for his decision was from his father, which must have come to him as a surprise and myself. He started off in the civil section of the Department but later went over to drafting, where he received his training both in the Department and in Ireland under Vincent Grogan. My cousin, Lebrecht Hesse, who had joined the Department just before him, also went into drafting and had some training in Ireland. Thus began a very rich seam of drafting talent which was developed in Ghana for the benefit not only of Ghana but of other Commonwealth countries in and outside Africa.

We were in Kumasi when we heard of the detention of R. R. Amponsah and Modesto Apaloo for plotting the assassination of the Prime Minister. An officer of the Military Forces, Major Awhaitey, was also detained. The Court Martial into Major Awhaitey's involvement was conducted by Johnny Abbensetts. That was followed by the Commission of Enquiry into the alleged plot, which was known as the T Junction Affair, as some of the alleged transactions leading to the arrest of the detainees were said to have occurred near the Labadi T Junction on the Burma Camp Road. One of the Commissioners appointed, Maurice Charles, was then a Senior Magistrate in Kumasi and our neighbour on Champac Avenue. Apart from the newspaper reports of the proceedings and the gossip, I missed all that. I also missed the Court proceedings brought by my old teacher at Achimota, Attoh Okine, and others who were detained as members of the “Zenith Seven” who had conspired to poison the water supply of Accra. Indeed, I missed practically all the preventive detention proceedings in the High Court in 1958 and 1959 while I was in Kumasi.

Towards the end of 1959, I received instruction that I should come back to Accra. There was a need to send either Johnny Abbensetts or myself to Harvard to specialise in commercial law. Whichever of us was sent, it was necessary for me to leave Kumasi. The prospect of specialisation in commercial legal work for the Department was too good to be true. But I had a feeling that eventually it would be Johnny Abbensetts who would be sent. After all, he had had some commercial practice as a private practitioner before he was enticed to join the Office, where his work so far, except for excursions into the enquiry field, had been in the commercial section. Besides, Bing liked him. I had no reason to believe that Bing would prefer me to him. As I suspected, when I came to Accra, it was Johnny who was sent to the United States.

I returned, as instructed, to Accra in November 1959. ~[* see paragraph below ]~ By then Azu Crabbe, who was elevated to the High Court bench on 9 September 1959 had left the Office. I recall the difficulties which he had with Bing in Kumasi and thought it might be for the good of all. I was now mostly involved in appellate court work, doing all the criminal appeals and the habeas corpus cases before the Court of Appeal. But I also did some general advisory work. I soon had a report from Garvin Scott, then the Solicitor General, that some members of the Court of Appeal, I believe he mentioned Justices Van Lare and Granville Sharp, were complaining about being sent a junior Crown Counsel to appear before them. I was quite annoyed by this complaint because I had seen lawyers in private practice who were junior to me from the point of their call to the English Bar appear before the Court without complaint. Garvin said he had explained to the judges that the Department was short of staff and I was the officer they thought could handle the cases. The matter must have been raised with Bing because he later told me that he had had a discussion with the members of the Court about me and they were all impressed with my performance. I stayed on with my schedule of appearances before the Court of Appeal. At no time did the Court show to me in Court any dissatisfaction with my work.

I returned, as instructed, to Accra in November 1959. ~[* decide how to merge with paragraph that starts with same sentence above ]~ By a stroke of fortune we got a bungalow on 10th Road. It was one of those solid colonial style buildings on stilts. In the office, I was now mostly involved in appellate court work. I was given the responsibility of doing all the criminal appeals before the Court of Appeal and also some general advisory work. Work on the Republican Constitution soon began. Francis Bennion was doing the basic draft of the Constitution itself and some of the Constitutional Acts. Vincent Grogan was helping on this. One of the major contracts that I was involved in was the drafting and negotiation of the agreement between Ghana and Agip Minerali of Italy on the establishment of the Tema Oil Refinery. As was often the case with work given to me by Bing, I was summoned to his office and he told me that we had to start these negotiations almost immediately. He explained that the question of the establishment of the refinery had been raised some time ago but somehow it had been put on ice when the Italians went away and were not heard from any more. Now all of a sudden, they were in the country asking for negotiations and Nkrumah had asked that our Department should deal with them. Our negotiating team consisted of Geoffrey Bing, Patrick Atiyah and myself. It was my first involvement in the negotiation of a large contract and I found the experience exciting. None of us on the Government side had any experience of drawing up oil refinery contracts. And this was the same situation when Johnny Abbensetts was dealing with the contract to purchase the first VC10s. In all these things, expertise is acquired by experience in the type of contract, which led Bing to observe that in all these matters all of us approached our task from the standpoint of Assistant State Attorneys. The result was that we always waited for the other side to present to us a draft contract which we would examine to see whether the provisions were acceptable. But that was not the best way of deriving the greatest benefit for our side. We should have been at times in the position to present our own draft to the other side, or at least to bring to the negotiations, memoranda of particular provisions which we would like to see in the draft. When one had a draft from the opposing side to look at, most of the work is devoted to correcting the draft for excesses or omissions. It is not very original work. It struck me that this was akin to playing a match, whether football or other sport, on your home ground with your home supporters cheering, as opposed to playing an away match. I remember that our concern at the time that the VC10s were being bought was more a question of the wisdom in our purchasing that particular plane at that time. It was brand new. We thought that the usual thing for a new plane was for the national or some airline of the country developing the plane to buy and try it for some time before outsiders came in with their orders. But here, it seemed as if Ghana was in the vanguard of those ordering this plane which the British were developing. I was not in the position to say whether this concern, which some members of the Department, including Johnny Abbensetts, shared, was ever passed on to the authorising officers for the purchase of the plane. What I know is that it did not stop the purchase of the plane.

I was summoned to Geoffrey Bing's presence on Wednesday before the Easter holidays in 1960. “Austin, what are you doing for Easter?” he asked. For once I had a programme arranged. Stella and Jean Steckle had organised a holiday at the Keta resthouse. After showing some reluctance, I had at last consented to join in. Innocently, I began to explain these plans to Geoffrey. He listened patiently to my expectations of spending time in Keta for a while, then said, “You are not, you know.” I stopped in my tracks and asked why I could not keep those plans. He asked me whether I had heard of the Sharpeville and Langa massacres in South Africa. Of course, I had heard. So he continued, you are going to South Africa. “When?” I asked. “As soon as possible,” was the answer.

It was the morning of the Wednesday before Good Friday. Passages to South Africa apparently were heavily booked. He had been trying to put me onto one of the flights through the airlines in Ghana without success. So now, he got on to the telephone to South African Airways in London, and asked them whether there was a place on their plane from London to Johannesburg before Good Friday. They were fully booked. Geoffrey asked them whether they could not put somebody off the flight for an important official of the Ghanaian Government who needed to travel as a matter of urgency to South Africa. South African Airways did. Their flight was from London, through Kano to Johannesburg and I was expected to join it in Kano.

Geoffrey told me that I would be travelling with an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with diplomatic status, so I would have protection from him. He did not disclose who. Then he asked me whether I had yellow fever inoculation. The last time I travelled was in 1956, back to Accra, and all that was required of me was a small pox vaccination, which I had but I had never had a yellow fever inoculation. So he immediately rang the Medical Officer of Health and told me that I needed a yellow fever inoculation urgently as I had to travel the next day. To get over the problem that a fresh inoculation required a ten day period before travel, Bing told the MOH that this was a re-inoculation as I had been inoculated previously in London at the hospital for Tropical Diseases but had lost my certificate. The MOH asked me to appear in the afternoon, which I did and was duly inoculated and given a certificate showing that it was a re-inoculation.

What was my mission to South Africa? According to Bing, since Sharpeville and Langa, the Ghana Government had been trying to get some answers from the British High Commissioner to South Africa on the position of refugees without success. The Ghana Government wanted to find out how many wanted to leave the country and the best means which could be adopted in getting them out. South Africa at that time was a member of the Commonwealth. The Ghana Government wanted to make contact with the High Commissioner and to have some answers to these questions. But immediately, there were three refugees known to be on the run from the South African Government. They were Oliver Tambo, who later became the President of the African National Congress; Dr. Dadoo, the South African Indian leader, and; Ronald Segal, the young white journalist. I should try and make contact with them and see how best to help them out.

For an official reason for the visit, I was to have discussions with Dr. Gideon Roos, Director General of South African Broadcasting on the proposed copyright law which Ghana was then considering enacting. At that time, the experts advising the Ghana Government were Dr. Roos and the head of European Broadcasting based in Switzerland. My visit to South Africa would give a good opportunity for discussions with Dr. Roos on the proposed legislation. Geoffrey asked me whether I knew anything about copyright law. I confessed I did not. He directed me to the library to take out what book there was on the subject and mug up enough about it to be able to make intelligent conversation with Dr. Roos on it.

In the afternoon, I had a conference with the Director of Broadcasting in Ghana, James Miller, who according to his obituary in the London Times much later, had been an intelligence officer in the British services, and Francis Bennion, then the legislative drafting expert on technical assistance duty from the United Kingdom Parliamentary Counsel's Office. I remember a small point on which Bennion showed his obduracy. The head of European Broadcasting, who was an accepted international authority on the subject, had defined broadcasting as the transmission of signals without the aid of wires. Bennion would not accept that. How could broadcasting be so defined when radios depended on internal wiring from some mains for their operation? After a great deal of argument between him and Miller on the subject, the matter was dropped for the meantime. The rest of the conference was devoted to Bennion demonstrating that the draft bill proposed by the two international advisors was far too complicated and that what Ghana needed was a simple Act on copyright. In the end, the Act which was passed was the Act that Bennion wanted. But that did not help me from having to study the bill proposed by the experts before my visit to southern Africa.

I had to break the news to Stella. She had indeed worked very hard to get me to agree to come with them to Keta. So this was rather sad for her. What was more, she was then suffering from some food poisoning which she must have developed from a dinner~[* word added ]~ dance we had attended over the weekend. While Bing was unfolding my Easter holiday plans to me that morning, she had gone to see Dr. Anum Barnor for treatment.

That evening, I met Geoffrey Bing and the South African former Senator, who was now teaching law in Ghana, Leslie Rubin, for my briefing. I noticed immediately that my Foreign Office colleague who was to afford me some protection during the trip was not present. I asked about him. Geoffrey was dismissive of the attitude of the Foreign Office; the designated officer was not able to to travel next day and so I would have to go alone. It was years later that I learnt that my travelling companion should have been my old housemaster at Achimota, but at the time a member of the Foreign Service, S.P.O. Kumi, who never travelled by air. We discussed my mission at greater length and I received my final instructions for the time being. I was to find out from Bechuanaland where one could land a plane which could take out a number of refugees at a time. I was later to visit Southern Rhodesia to find out how money for the assistance of refugees from South Africa could be transmitted. My contact in Johannesburg was Advocate Unterhalter who would meet me at the Airport. My contact in Salisbury, Rhodesia was Advocate Lawrence. I was to record my activities in Ga. I was to take the Ghana Airways flight to Lagos early next morning. My connection from Lagos to Kano where I was to join the South African Airways plane was at 4 pm. But under no circumstances was I to leave Lagos Airport for town between the time of my arrival there and my departure to Kano. There was the famous Carter Bridge at which I might otherwise be caught up for hours. Leslie assured me that I was quite safe; the South African security services were quite inefficient and were unlikely to discover that I was out to assist wanted persons escape from the country.

I started reading Copinger and Skone James on Copyright as soon as I could. It was too large a book to master at such a short notice but I made the effort to cover what I could in the time available. I duly started off by Ghana Airways next morning, having been seen off by Stella and Bing. On the plane was my old Sierra Leonian friend from my Oxford days, Eldred Jones, now a recognised academic on the English language in West Africa, who was on his way to Nigeria to do some external examination. I had not seen him since we finished our Oxford final examinations in 1954 and was happy for the opportunity to catch up with what he had been doing for the past six years. But shortly after the plane started, we had an experience which marred the journey: one of the two engines of the plane caught fire. Eldred was sitting where he could see the engine. I knew of the fire but I was sitting opposite him where I could not see the fire develop. One could, however, judge the state of the fire by watching Eldred's face. It was quite a study. Eventually, we got to Lagos and landed with a bump on the runway, not moving further after we landed. We were then towed to the place where we disembarked.

I had made up my mind to use the time during my expected long wait at Lagos Airport for my study of copyright law . To my surprise, there soon appeared my old school friend, Vishnu Wassiamal, then serving in our Lagos High Commission. He brought me money. He also had fresh instructions for me. The three persons I was after had managed to escape from South Africa and were now in Bechuanaland. I should, therefore, change plans and proceed straight to that country, find them and offer them assistance to Ghana. My other business in South Africa could be taken up later. The capital of Bechuanaland was Mafeking, which was in South Africa. The British High Commissioner, who was also the Governor of Bechuanaland, was, according to my information, stationed there. But in the circumstances, the suggestion was that I should go to Francistown which was the provincial capital of northern Bechuanaland to see what I could do from there. That meant not stopping at all in Johannesburg, but merely changing planes to continue to Bechuanaland- I was not sure how, but I thought I would find out when I got to Johannesburg. Vishnu stayed with me until I left for Kano. He was great company but that meant I made no progress with my copyright law.

Kano Airport was picturesque, welcoming and sending off planes with trumpeting by the Hausa-clad figure on horseback. The South African Airways plane duly arrived, and I joined it. I must confess to being surprised that the air hostesses were so helpful and nice. They wanted to know eventual destination and I told them Francistown in Bechuanaland. They thought the best way was for me to go from Johannesburg to Bulawayo and from there to make my way overland. They thought that there was a plane I could connect with for Bulawayo within a short while after arrival in Johannesburg. The only problem was that we were running late and might miss it. If I liked, they would ask the Captain to radio that plane to wait for me. I agreed and they did so. As a result when I arrived at Johannesburg Airport, I merely walked the tarmac from one plane to the other.

Upon reaching Bulawayo, I hired a taxi to run me to Francistown. I recall that the road was not frightfully good. For most of the part it consisted of two thin parallel strips of tarmac about the width of the vehicle tyres, in the middle of the laterite road. The vehicles run on these strips until they met an oncoming vehicle, when one of them gave way to the other. The border post at Plumtree was simple, consisting of a hut with one immigration officer and one customs man. When I produced my Ghanaian passport to the immigration officer, he looked and mused aloud, “And what may a Ghanaian lawyer be doing in these parts at this time?” I said I was on business. He then said that the people I was after had already left Bechuanaland. I hope my face was sufficiently blank when I told him that I did not know what he was talking about. However, I knew that my main objective had been removed beyond my control. Nevertheless, I decided to continue to find out what I could do further in Bechuanaland. After all, I had to deliver the message that the Ghana Government genuinely wanted some answers from the British High Commissioner/Governor about the general refugee position. There was also the question of a landing for an aircraft which could evacuate a number of such refugees at a time and, finally, there might be individuals other than the big three now in Bechuanaland who might need assistance to travel further. My mission had not been totally frustrated by the departure of the big three from Bechuanaland.

I had come to Bechuanaland under an illusion. I had thought that apartheid was practised in South Africa; that Bechuanaland, which was under British rule, promoted liberal ideals and, therefore, the discrimination which one expected to find in South Africa would not exist there. I was in for a rude shock.

My Bulawayo taxi driver knew his way around Francistown and, upon our arrival there he drove to the first of the two hotels. Outside was a commissionaire resplendent in his Indian attire. I told him that I needed a room at the hotel. He said there was no room but I could try at the other hotel. We drove there. No such commissionaire met us outside. The only place where I could detect activity was the bar. It was full of clients drinking, all white. The place had been abuzz with the usual pub conversation which you find anywhere. But as I entered there was dead silence. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. All eyes were on me as I approached the white girl behind the bar. I asked her for a room at the hotel. She quickly said that she would call the manager and disappeared. When the manager came in, he asked where I came from. I said from Ghana. He then said that explained it, “we have no place here for people like you.” He directed me to the Anglican hostel where the migrant labour to and from South Africa stayed in dormitories. They might, he said, have some place for me.

I went to see the Northern Provincial Commissioner. He received me quite civilly. I told him about the problem the Ghanaian Government was having communicating with the British High Commissioner on the South African refugees. He took note of that. I told him that the Ghana Government would need some landing strip in Bechuanaland large enough to take an aircraft sent in to evacuate batches of refugees at a time. He talked about possibilities and then advised that I should see the local Police Chief. We talked about the three whom I was after and he did confirm that they had left Bechuanaland. They had been admitted on the strict understanding that they were not going to use the country as a political base. He said Ronald Segal had breached this understanding by publishing a long article of a political nature. So he was obliged to ask them to leave. Then I mentioned my predicament about accommodation. He expressed sympathy but confessed that there was nothing he could do about it. He looked quite uncomfortable about it. Then I suddenly suggested that I may have to hire the taxi for the period while I was there and sleep in it. He jumped at this suggestion like a shot. Yes, if I did that, he would arrange for one of the hotels to provide me with food. On that note, we parted for the time being. I went to see the local Police Chief. He was a pleasant enough man. As a Police Officer who had done a lot of prosecutions and had worked closely with the police, we had quite a lot to chat about. But we also talked about my interest in a landing strip. He suggested the one at Palapye which he said was good enough to take a fairly decent sized aircraft. We were in the middle of our discussions when I had a message that the Provincial Commissioner wanted to see me. When I got back to his residence, I met him and his wife in their car on their way out. He told me that he had given further consideration to my accommodation problem. There was a government bungalow some two doors away from his residence which was being renovated. If it was all right with me, I could stay there while I was in Francistown. He said prisoners were brought in in the mornings to work on the grounds but he hoped I would not mind that. Then the wife spoke. She was a Scotswoman. After introducing herself, she said that I could have all my meals with them. Even when they were not in, she had instructed the cook to serve me my meals at their residence. Then she said that I could, if I wanted to, speak to Seretse Khama, who was then in Serowe. I could not believe my luck. I accepted the kind invitation. Of course, I knew from where it had come. With that they drove out. I went to my new home, where I stayed for a few days.

I took up the invitation to speak to Seretse Khama. He said he was not too well then. I brought him greetings from Kwame Nkrumah. I regretted not being able on this occasion to visit him in Serowe. I did obtain some maps of the northern part of Bechuanaland and of the Palapye landing. I also made use of the kind invitation to eat at the Commissioner's residence. I found out from Reverend Ravenscroft of the Anglican Church about the situation of the refugees in the country. I was able to help one lesser known white refugee identified to me by the Church with some money. I later saw this refugee in Ghana. I left Rev. Ravenscroft with some money with which he could help others in the same plight. He wrote to me for specific instructions on whom to help. On 27 October 1960, I wrote to him, “Dear Rev. Ravenscroft, Thank you very much for your letters. I am sorry not to have replied to them for so long but I have been away from Ghana for several months. I should be most grateful if you would hold on to the money until you hear further from me. I have seen our friend here.”

After some four days' stay, I thought I had covered what needed to be done in Francistown and returned by the same taxi to Bulawayo. I paid him off when we arrived at Bulawayo. He had been my companion for the number of days that I had spent in Francistown.

At the Plumtree border post, I asked the officials whether there was some hotel where I could stay. Confidently, they said that I could stay at the Victoria Hotel. I duly made my way there and, to my surprise, I was admitted without fuss. It turned out that that was the first day on which blacks had been allowed to stay at that or any other hotel in Rhodesia. The reason for this dispensation was the Monckton Commission, established by the British Government to look into the problems of the Federation of Rhodesia. The Federation consisted of Northern and Southern Rhodesia, now Zambia and Zimbabwe, and Nyasaland, now Malawi. The members of the Commission included blacks and, of course, they had to have somewhere to stay. I remember seeing them at dinner.

Almost as soon as I had got to the hotel, I received a telephone call from one of the local papers. Would I care to give them an interview? I declined. But they sounded quite anxious to talk to me. So I eventually agreed, quite stupidly as it turned out to be, to their suggestion to talk to me off the record. Two reporters duly appeared at the hotel. I asked them how they knew of my presence at the hotel. They were puzzled, presumably at the naivete of the question and, said briefly, that the police told them. We had our chat “off the record”. It contained nothing which was startling. But to my embarrassment, next morning, I had been reported verbatim and at length in the front page of the paper. When I got to Advocate Lawrence in Salisbury, he knew quite a lot about my views. I told him how embarrassed I was by the publication. He treated it quite lightly and said it would serve as a lesson to me on the ways of newspapermen.

Lawrence was sad that I had decided to take the plane leaving for Europe through Nigeria that evening. He had booked me into a hotel in Salisbury and, now that there was the possibility of getting blacks into such places, he was disappointed that we were not going to avail ourselves of the opportunity. Among other things, we discussed the possibility of sending money through Southern Rhodesia for helping the South African refugees. He thought there would be no problem in that regard.

After our interview, I was driven round the town. I met Walter Kamba, subsequently to become the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe ,in his office in the law firm of Scanleon and Holderness. I also ran into Terence Ranger, the liberal teacher, there. He also guessed that I was in the region because of the South African refugees. I politely ignored his questions.

When I got back to Accra, I was greeted like a hero by Bing. There were already South African blacks in Ghana who were interested in my report and especially, in the maps that I had brought. Bing told me of the message of alarm he had received from Advocate Unterhalter, who had apparently come to Johannesburg Airport to meet me. He had sent word that he did not know what had happened to me but he had seen me get off the South Africa Airways plane and being marched straight on the tarmac to another plane. Of course, Bing understood immediately what had happened. Some twenty five years later when, as a judge of the Botswana Court of Appeal, I met Advocate Unterhalter for the first time and reminded him of the incident, he was able to recall that day quite clearly.

Bing was surprised that I had money from my trip to return to him. Apart from what I had used in hiring the taxi from Bulawayo to Francistown and back, for helping the lone white refugee in Francistown, and for my hotel in Bulawayo, I had practically spent no money. He simply could not believe it that I had spent so little. He asked me to deposit what I had returned in the Bing No. 2 Account at one of the banks. But he made a strong appeal to the Permanent Secretary for Finance for giving me a generous per diem for the period that I had been away.

My happiness on returning home did not last long. Bing after congratulating me warmly, added, “But you know, you are going back again.” I asked why. He said I forgot that I also had a mission to discuss copyright law with Gideon Roos, who was still expecting me in Johannesburg. I asked when I was supposed to go back. He said the following week. I tried to argue how pointless the mission was because nobody would believe that my real objective was to discuss copyright law. I told him of the inspired guesses of the immigration officer in Plumtree and Terence Ranger. The stories did not change his mind. I was quite worried that however inefficient Leslie Rubin thought the South African security was, I ran a real risk of finding myself in a South African jail. I solicited the aid of Vincent Grogan, the Irish law revision expert whom Bing had brought to Ghana to draft and revise our laws. Bing was quite adamant. In his annoyance, he asked me what I thought he had been promoting me for.

Some of the South Africans in Ghana, on hearing that I would be visiting their country, wanted to send messages through me to friends and family. I did not welcome this and Bing soon put a stop to it.

When the time came, I was driven to the Airport by Kofi Tetteh. Stella was with us. Bing was not at the Airport when I arrived. My route this time was by Pan American Airways starting from Accra in the evening through Leopoldville (now Kinshasa in Zaire) to Johannesburg. The official at the Pan American looked at my passport and said I could not travel by the flight as I had no visa for South Africa. I had just turned back to leave the Airport when I saw Bing walking in. He apologised for being late; then I told him that Pan American refused to carry me on the flight. He asked me to return to the desk with him. “What is this that I hear that you refuse to carry a senior official of the Ghana Government on your flight?” he asked the hapless official. The man explained that I had no visa for South Africa. “So what!” he exclaimed, “Do I need a visa for South Africa?” The Pan Am official said no. “Then why should he need a visa?” Patiently, the man tried to explain that he did not make the laws; what he knew was that Pan Am would be liable to a fine of $10,000 if it carried me to Johannesburg without a visa. Bing asked me to get along to the tiny VIP lounge then in use at Accra Airport and leave him to settle this matter. So Stella, Kofi and I went in. He joined us shortly after that, and ordered a bottle of champagne. We were drinking when an obviously more senior official of Pan American approached him, and said, “Mr. Bing, may I have a word with you?” “Yes,” said Bing, “but if it is a question of taking a senior officer of the Ghanaian Government off your plane, then I refuse to discuss the matter. I will discuss it only with the Pan American representative in Ghana. At the moment, I know that he is at a party at the American Ambassador's. If Pan Am insisted on putting me off the plane, Government would have to reconsider PanAm's landing rights in Accra.”

Bing turned round to me and said that I should have no worry. Nothing was going to happen to me in Johannesburg. Only that day, Nkrumah had received a message from the South African Prime Minister asking whether Nkrumah would agree to South Africa remaining in the Commonwealth when it turned into a Republic. As long as they had not replied, the South African Government dare not touch me. In any case, if it did, Nkrumah and he Bing would be in London at a Commonwealth meeting the following week and would be in the position to exert maximum pressure on my behalf. As I contemplated the prospect of languishing in a South African jail while Geoffrey Bing negotiated my release over a glass of cognac, the flight was announced and Bing asked me to walk on to the plane and leave matters to him. I was on the plane when it took off.

We stopped at Leopoldville at 4 in the morning. All passengers were asked to leave the plane; transit passengers were offered coffee at the terminal building. I went and sat by myself. But I was soon joined by two fellow-passengers; one an Indian and the other a black man. The Indian started by saying, “So you are going to Johannesburg.” I said yes. “And you have no visa.” I reared defensively, “how do you know?” He said, “We were at Accra Airport.” At that point, I admitted that I had no visa. He then generously explained that at Johannesburg Airport, all arriving passengers first went underground. If your papers were not all right, you never came up after that. From Leopoldville to Johannesburg I was fighting thoughts of how I was going to emerge from that underground reception at Johannesburg Airport. On the plane for that leg of the journey, the African amongst my early coffee companions joined me. He was the Basutoland politician, Mophalele,~[* spelling changed from Mphalele for consistency, check ]~ a great admirer of Nkrumah, whose sizable portrait he had facing him on the journey.

As we got off the plane, there was quite a reception party waiting at the bottom of the stairs; with quite a number of photographers snapping photographs of me. Others were asking me whether Mophalele was my secretary. I was totally confused. Waiting for me at the bottom of the stirs was a hostess, who said enquiringly, “Mr. Amissah?” and when I answered to it, she said “this way please.” Instead of the dungeon which I had expected, she led me to the VIP lounge. There I was welcomed to South Africa by their Deputy Director General of Broadcasting. We were photographed shaking hands. The photograph and news of my arrival were in the newspaper the next day. I was later told that that was the first time, perhaps since the Nationalists came to power, that a white man had been shown in the newspaper shaking hands with a black man. After the welcome, he drove me to my hotel, the Langham Hotel, which is now no more. I was given enough time to freshen up. My conferences with Gideon Roos were to start immediately afterwards.

Gideon Roos and his Deputy turned up at my hotel in about an hour. I was then given my programme for my stay in South Africa. We were to work in the morning until lunch, which we would have by ourselves, then continue for a while longer after that. At about 4 pm. we would go to one of the studios of South African Broadcasting and watch a documentary film on life in the country. After that, we would work some more until about 7.30 pm. when we would have dinner again at my hotel with a few guests and wives. If there was time after that, we could work a bit more on what was remained to be done. The next day, he had organized a trip for me and himself to Kruger National Park for a week. I knew that the Pan Am flight was leaving next morning to Accra. I thanked Roos for his invitation to the Park but said that owing to urgent matters which I had to attend to back at home, I could not accept his invitation to make that trip. I would like to return to Accra the next day. I think he was relieved by this. How a busy man like him could afford to spend a whole week just chaperoning me in Kruger National Park, was beyond my understanding. Obviously, he had been told by the powers that be that I was his responsibility, and he had to keep me out of mischief.

We set about our programme with gusto. We worked systematically through the draft bill which he and his co-advisor from Switzerland had prepared. We discussed all problems and difficulties. I made notes. From time to time, my telephone would ring. It would be taken by Roos's Deputy. No I was too busy to come to the telephone and he would put it down. I could only guess who it was who wanted me. In the afternoon, we had the break when I was shown a propaganda film on how well the black community in South Africa was treated. Then we were back at work. The dinner went as was planned. It was held in a private room at the hotel. It was lightened by female company and by the hotel staff opening the door to the room occasionally to peep at the spectacle at the hotel. After dinner, Gideon Roos thought there was still some work that we had to cover. The other guests and ladies disappeared; we went back to my room and continued. By midnight I was visibly nodding from tiredness. Roos thought it was time that he left me. He bade me good-bye. I would be taken to the Airport next morning by his Deputy.

At the Airport next morning, whom did I see pass by, but Stella's and my good Danish friend, Jytte Cartwright. I lost my senses momentarily, and started after her, calling her by name. Whether she did not hear, or she did but preferred to ignore, me, I don't know. I soon recovered and came back to my host and explained to him that I thought I had seen someone I knew. It was foolish of me. Jytte knew Bing well. She might have been sent by Bing to South Africa just as I was. Jytte had the perfect reason for visiting South Africa; her father was buried there. I knew she was on the plane with me but I did not make any attempt to approach her until we were in Leopoldville. When I did she embraced me warmly and said, “Oh Austin, I have been so worried about you.” We never discussed our respective visits to South Africa after that.

After my return to Accra, I continued a tenuous connection with South African refugees for some time. Oliver Tambo and his two colleagues duly arrived in Accra. I was amongst the crowd at the Airport to welcome them. They had travelled through Tanzania. Bing had a party for them, which Stella and I attended, and we had them in our house when they met some guests, like Charlie Easmon. Bing then devised the Commonwealth passports for the refugees with no passports. And we spent some time getting them to the various refugees we knew about who needed them. It was an interesting scheme. Bing's argument was that a passport was an authorization given by a government to a person with whom that government had a relationship, asking other governments through whose territory the holder passes to give him protection and assistance. As South Africans, like Ghanaians, were members of the same Commonwealth, any of the Commonwealth Governments was entitled to give a passport to the nationals of Commonwealth countries. There was great debate about the validity of these passports. Some countries, such as Italy accepted them. Others did not. Britain could never make up its mind whether the Commonwealth passport was valid or not. When I left Ghana for Finland in June for our first visit to Stella's home after our marriage, the argument was still raging in the British papers. By the time I returned to Ghana the following September, other issues like the Congo crisis had assumed centre stage.

It was about this time that Geoffrey Bing asked me to try my hand at legislative drafting. I was not keen on spending my time exclusively in the drafting section of the Department, and Bing noticing this tried to impress me with the importance of drafting to the country. His argument was in some such form as this: “What does it mean if you lose one criminal case? It is merely one case lost, however important it is. But what does it mean when you draft a bad piece of legislation? It affects the whole country.” I agreed to give drafting a try. On reporting to Francis Bennion, I realised that the matter had been discussed between himself and Bing but I did not know at whose instance. Bennion gave me some statutory instrument to try my hand on. I did it. Upon presentation, he appeared quite pleased with my effort. The next thing I knew, I had a visit from Fred Boyes, the New Zealand draftsman who was helping with the drafting in the section. He virtually tried to persuade me not to continue with the drafting section, giving me the impression that it would merely create tensions and rivalry between myself and Charlie Crabbe. I realised that I had trod once more on the toes of a colleague. Perhaps, I should have protested more strongly about my joining the drafting section. But my attitude had been that I was prepared to do any type of work which my superiors wanted me to do in the Department, if I was capable of doing it. After all, that had been the reason why I accepted the criminal work in Department although I had told the then Attorney General at my interview that criminal law was the subject I least wanted to pursue in my career. In the end, I thought, I would be obliged to do the work, whether I liked it or not. But I was not long in drafting before my scheduled leave abroad came up. By the time I came back from leave, demands for my services in the office had changed. But my venture in drafting were to have their consequences later on. After my escapade in to Southern Africa, I needed the leave which we took to Finland in 1960. Luckily, a ruling by the Ghana Government made it possible. We got married at the time when local senior civil servants in the Gold Coast were permitted to take leave abroad with fares paid for by the Government once every five years. I had assumed that the privilege would continue after independence. I, therefore, reckoned that Stella and I would be taking such paid leave within the period 1955 to 1960. When Ghana became independent in 1957, that privilege was the first to be cancelled. I became resigned to the fact that I would never be able to afford to pay for the two of us to visit Finland. What with my commitment for my brother's education and support for my mother, I could never make enough money to put any aside for leave purposes.

Geoffrey Bing knew of my desire to take Stella visiting home and he exploited this desire mercilessly. Whenever he had some unpleasant work to be done he told me of the assignment at the same time as plans he had for me to go abroad on some Government business which would enable me to take Stella, then we would break off at a convenient point to visit Finland. First it was to send me to work in the Attorney General's Office in a State like Oregon, which he said was about the same size as Ghana, for a year, then on the way back we could go to Finland. Then later, I was to go round to various countries promoting Ghana's view on the Law of the Sea. Then there was the time when he was organising the conference of the “World without the Bomb”, when it was a question of sending me round various countries to sell the idea of the conference. Then when the South West African case was brought before the International Court of Justice, I was to work in the New York office of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, with Ernest Gross who was leading the lawyers on behalf of applicants. None of these materialised. When the bait wore thin, he would nevertheless say that he would try and arrange some trip for me but add that if it did not work out it would not be for want of trying on his part. Stella became disenchanted with his promises after the failure of the first suggested trip, and never gave any credence or hope to any of his further suggestions thereafter. I do not know whether he ever did anything about my going to Oregon or on the Law of the Sea or World without a Bomb jaunt. But I know that he tried with Ernie Gross, because Gross visited Ghana. The three of us discussed my coming to work with him on the South West African case. As he said, everything was fine by him. He had a place for me in his office. The problem then was that some other matter came up which required me to remain in Ghana, and I lost my chance to go to New York. Nothing came of this either. As he came to excuse himself, if the things he promised did not take place, it was not for want of him trying. ~[* decide how to use, repetition ]~

In 1959, the Ghana Government made a ruling about officials who had accumulated leave over the years. Each senior civil servant was entitled to three months leave after every eighteen months. At their leave time, some were unable or did not wish to take this leave, so they accumulated it against some day when they would be able to. Government then ruled that in very exceptional cases, and with the express permission of the head of department, no civil servant was to accumulate leave any more. Those with already accumulated leave, had one of three options to elect. They could take all their leave immediately or defer all their leave until they were about to retire from the service or they could commute their leave for cash. I already had nine months leave accumulated. I could not take all of it right away, nor was it practical for me to defer it until I was about to retire. I had at least twenty five years ahead of me before I would be eligible for retirement. I could commute the leave for cash. That was what I did. By mid-1960, I had a fresh period of three months. With the commuted money, we paid our fares to Finland.

After my return from Southern Africa, I kept praying that no crisis would happen before our departure and, although trouble was brewing in the Congo, the time fortunately passed without any incident which would require my being asked to stay on. We left Accra on June 6. By now Stella had taken on Ghanaian citizenship. She was entitled to do so by registration, and she decided to do so. Her very good friend, Jytte Cartright, the Danish lady who had been in Ghana for a number of years advised her against it. Jytte asked her to give the most serious thought to this change as the loss of one's original nationality was a grave matter. As Ghana did not recognise dual nationality, upon her becoming a citizen. But she was determined that her nationality affairs should be governed by the same laws as governed mine. I myself was not too happy about the prospective change. But it was not a point which I thought I could press too hard without making myself suspect of some ulterior motive. ~[* repetition ]~ The problem for me was that several Ghanaians had married alien wives who had retained their nationalities of origin. That meant that they needed a residence permit to stay in Ghana, and that permit was granted only if their Ghanaian husband verified that the spouse was indeed married and living in Ghana with those spouses. It meant also that any time that a husband wanted to terminate the stay of his wife, whether for good or ill, all he needed to do was to withdraw his consent for the wife's stay and the Ministry of Interior would withdraw her residence permit. ~[* repetition ]~ It occurred to me that it might look as if I wanted Stella to retain her foreign nationality in order to have that option to break with her when I wanted to. I never discussed my view of this with her in detail until years later when she was trying to get back her Finnish nationality and she found she could only do so if she went to live in Finland for two years before this would be granted. We were living in Europe and we both found her having to obtain a visa each time she wanted to visit her family, especially her aged mother and invalid sister, Nora. The Finnish Embassy in London was not authorised to grant even tourist visas, everything having to be referred to Helsinki, where it took a minimum of three weeks and, often, prodding enquiries by more docile members of the family and finally angry visits from her cousin who was a journalist to secure the necessary visa before our planned and paid for departure to the country of her birth. This I found most frustrating. But she took the fact that I suffered from the same disabilities as herself and, on that account, her plight was tolerable. Even when her mother died and she needed to go home urgently because she was without a valid visa at the time, she had some difficulty. We had to console ourselves that we were being given special treatment when there came the time when we were given two yearly renewable visas to visit. It was not only going to Finland which would have been easy for her during our stay in Europe but also moving round the whole of Europe would have been easier and she would not have been regarded with the same suspicion as all Ghanaians were regarded from the 1980s onwards. But then all this was some twenty years ahead.

For our visit to Finland in 1960, as there was no one who could give us a visa in Accra, we made our application for them when we stopped in Rome on our way and, as the approval could not get to the Finnish Embassy there in time, we were advised to find out from their Embassy in Copenhagen, which was our next stop, whether we had the approval and could get the visas. Fortunately, we got them in Copenhagen. Our Rome visit itself, which we got to on June 7, was not a great success. Stella was full of the romance of this ancient capital and wanted to walk around and see the sights. Although we did some walking, we did not do Rome as most tourists would do, because, apart from obtaining our Finnish visas, I was not so keen on walking round Rome. I was more interested in the pedestrian desire of buying newspapers to read in our pensione. I confess this now with shame, but that is how I felt at the time. I have since learnt about myself that I am not very interested in sights. I am more interested in people and, even then, in people I can look up to. So we spent a couple of uneventful days in Rome before moving on to Copenhagen. My recollection of Copenhagen, some thirty years afterwards is that it was the place where I nearly had a serious accident. I had, in the life of a Crown Counsel in Ghana driving around in my own car, lost the art of getting off moving public transport vehicles, and when so that I stepped off a moving tram with the wrong foot, I immediately found myself sprawled on the street. I looked up to see Stella laughing, obviously at the comic situation combined with relief that I was not hurt. Stella had some family friends, Povl and Pirkko Muller, with whom we stayed. We crossed to Sweden by the ferry. This was at a time when Denmark was free with the sale of alcohol but such sale in Sweden was restricted. As a result many came over from Sweden on the ferry just to get drunk in Denmark and buy their alcohol allowance to take back home. At the harbour, I saw a very big drunken Swede staggering threateningly towards me. I was feeling quite uncomfortable at this approach; suddenly a number of his companions noticing his move started to restrain him, with him parrying them off. Just when I thought that I would not be able to avoid an ugly incident, he got to me and shot out his hand in greeting. The tension broke. There was some drunken singing and shouting on the ferry. We met a veterinary surgeon on board who was surprised that our destination in Finland should be Kimito; “But that is very rural”, he said.

In Sweden, we got on a train and went across the country from Malmo to Stockholm. We stopped in Skovde on the way as Stella's childhood friend Sara-Lena Wiiala, now married to Rune Soderberg, was with the Volvo plant there. We got to Stockholm on June 11 and stayed with Inger Knaust, Stella's eldest sister, who had been married some time to a Swede, and had stayed on with her daughter after she divorced her husband. We spent a night at Inger's in Stockholm before joining her and Ingela at her summer cottage in Smaldalaro, a few miles from Stockholm. A night in Smaldalaro and we were all back in Stockholm, where we spent a few days. I remember once going out with all of them and then the sisters wanted to continue to some shops and I was not so keen. I had got newspapers to read; Ingela was tired. So it was decided that she should take me home. Ingela was nine years old then. We walked hand in hand, with her carrying the flat key round her neck. Afterwards I wondered what would have happened if I had been stopped by a policeman and asked where I was taking the young girl. I would not have been able to explain myself in Swedish, and even if he understood English, he probably would, at that time when there were not many black faces around in Scandinavia, have greeted my explanation that I was the husband of the little girl's aunt with disbelief. I doubted whether Ingela's explanation of who I was would have been readily accepted. Ingela went with us on a boat trip under the bridges of Stockholm. Altogether, we spent our time in a relaxed manner with me trying to cook the few dishes that I knew.

We left Stockholm on the night of June 15 on the ferry boat to Abo (Turku) in Finland, getting there early next morning. It was Stella's birthday. On the boat, we met a friendly Finn who asked us where we were going to in Finland. We said, to Kimito. He was almost struck with disbelief, “But that is very rural!” was his observation. Why any person should come all the way from Africa to stay at such a quiet place beat his imagination. Having lived all my years in large townships, I myself wondered whether I would be able to cope with the countryside for the length of time that we intended to stay. The Finland I met was a country with wide open spaces. One could travel long distances without coming to any human settlements at all. I remember on one of our earlier journeys from Kimito to Helsinki by bus, when we covered kilometer after kilometer without seeing any villages or towns at all and I turned to Stella and enquired in surprise, “But where are the people?”, which only evoked laughter from Stella and lasted for a long time as a standing joke. Finland was still paying for the reparations exacted by Russia after the Winter War in 1939 and its continuation later. After Sweden, Finland looked like a poorer relation; a number of the major roads were still without tarred surfaces. The houses looked smaller and shabbier. Porkala was still occupied by the Russians. It is amazing to recall that and compare with Finland in the 1980s and 1990s when it had one of the strongest economies in Europe and a very strong currency.

Ingela was with us on the boat from Stockholm to Turku and we were met by a delegation consisting of Stella's brother, Rainer, the only brother and second in line after Inger; his wife, Teddy, and; her mother, Mama (E)Milia, Stella's godmother, Thyrah (Tutte), and cousin Alphonse and daughter, Ulla. We were driven the 60 kilometers to Kimito by Rainer and Teddy. There I met Stella's father, Papa Ejnar, who had not been too keen on our marriage, and her mother, Ester, who had been warmer about it. Papa Ejnar was not the formidable bear that I had expected him to be. He had little English and I had no Swedish which is the mother-tongue of a few Finns, about 8 per cent of the population then, of which the Mattsson family formed a part. So we could not really carry on any conversation. But we made the right friendly noises to each other. Stella's mother was wonderful, and we got on very well from the day we met until she died in 1986. We also met Stella's invalid sister, Nora, who was a treasure. She was confined to her wheel-chair by this time, and I thought she was very brave. She was suffering from an ailment which had left her paralysed in her legs and had made her right hand unusable. She was not a natural left-hander but she had learnt to cope with it and often wrote letters with it. In the community from which I come in Ghana, a disabled person like her would have been the object of sniggers and undesirable inquisitiveness. But there was nothing like that in Finland. Everyone loved Nora, and tried to help her enjoy life. In return she was kindness itself. She was very knowledgeable as she read a lot, was keen in observation and people tended to tell her things. If there was anything which any member of the family wanted to know, especially some incident which he or she had forgotten, the invariable solution was, “Ask Nora” and invariably she had the right answer to give. The only member of the family I had not met by now was sister Nina, whose position was between Rainer and Nora, and who lived with her husband Bjarne and their children in Helsinki. But this was soon corrected when we duly paid a visit to Helsinki, where we were met at the coach station by Nina, who was not difficult to identify from the crowd then waiting to meet the passengers. I fitted into the family quite easily and we spent a lovely holiday, doing little but eating and visiting relatives and friends.

I was introduced to the mysteries of the great Finnish institution, the sauna, by Stella's uncle on the mother's side, Arle Roos. I did not think I was going to participate in this ritual of sitting naked in a dry heated room with temperatures of 80 to 100 degrees Centigrade and sometimes more, at all. “Morbror” Arle was a kind and sensitive man whom I immediately took to when we met at his summer cottage by the Lake Hiidenvesi. He must either have had warning or, as a psychologist, had himself sensed the fact that I had some aversion to going into the sauna. We spent some time discussing about Finland and the world. Then all of a sudden he said to me, “I am going into the sauna; you need not come. You can stay behind and perhaps read.” So I quietly followed him of my own free will into the sauna. He did not look surprised or say anything about my first visit to the sauna. We just went on with our discussions. Then after a while, he just said, “Now I am going into the water. You may just want to have a shower.” I meekly followed him into the lake. I learnt to enjoy the sauna very much and was forever grateful to him for the introduction.

We also took the opportunity of seeing a gynecologist in Helsinki to find out whether we could have some indication of our having a child. We had by now been married for nearly four years and our not having a child was not for want of trying. Stella's sister, Nina, who was a nurse working at the clinic of Stockmann, the famous Helsinki department store, arranged for us to see Dr. Carl Johan Johansson, who went by the nickname “Sperma Johansson”. Dr. Johansson's first request was that he should examine me. I was surprised. Stella had consulted doctor friends in Ghana, some of whom had recommended drugs which she should take. None of them had suggested that he should see and examine me to find out whether the disability lay with me. I had several sessions with him. It was only after clearing me that he turned his attention to Stella, examined her and gave his prescription. The whole exercise was an education to me. We in Ghana assume, when a couple has been trying without success to have a child, that the fault is with the woman. Such was the belief that in my case, Auntie Awura Adjua had suggested to my mother after we had been without a child for some time that if Stella did not have a child soon, they had to find a new wife for me. She was only stopped from further thought of this course by my mother telling her that if anyone were to make that suggestion to me, I would stop talking to him or her.

Stella and I were in Finland when Ghana became a Republic. I heard of the new judges appointed and I was particularly pleased to hear that Fred Apaloo was among them. Akilano Akiwumi became a High Court judge, which I thought was well deserved. I also heard that I had been promoted a Senior State Attorney. The Congo crisis developed in intensity during this time. I heard of Johnny Abbensetts being sent to the Congo, and I thought to myself, if I had been in Ghana, it might have been me. I heard of a mission in which Richard Quarshie was involved which had resulted in their aircraft falling into the Congo River.

We returned to Ghana some three months later.