THIS IS HOW JB DANQUAH DIED August 24, 2013 at 10:42pm Drum: July 1966 This is the tragic story of one of the horrors of Nkrumah`s regime – the story of Dr. JB Danquah`s death. DRUM`s Henry Thompson, himself a detainee, saw the grand old man wasting away in Nsawam prison, and chronicled this account. I was in gaol with Dr. Danquah at Nsawam prison. I was there with the old man for four months, before leaving two weeks before he died. Dr. Danquah died on February 4, 1965, and during the imprisonment I never spoke to him – conditions did not permit it – but we sent messages to each other through the jailers.Every day, I saw him at exercise; I peeped through the jalousies, the slits made by cement slabs, so that I could see him but he could not see me. Each day until his death, his voice echoed round the prison shouting at the warders. He was very irascible and the slightest thing upset him. The story I am giving you is what I heard myself and what I pieced together from what the jailers told me. Dr. J.B. Danquah`s year-long suffering in the `special block` – the part set aside for men condemned to death – of the Ghana Nsawam Prison ended piteously with a stroke which left him unconscious for several hours. The director of prisons reported the fatal stroke immediately to his lord and master, Kwame NkrumahNkrumah at last sanctioned that a doctor should be called. When Dr. Danquah regained consciousness, the doctor passed on the news to Nkrumah, adding that he could never regain his normal health and would be condemned to the life of an imbecile for the rest of his time on earth.Nkrumah found this the moment to call on his arch-enemy. When Dr. Danquah set eyes on him – at that time his sense were mercifully restored – he spoke his last defiant words, namely, `I`ll resist you and fight to the last.` I have it from the warders that Nkrumah fumed with rage and stalked out. Dr. Danquah breathed his last a few hours after Nkrumah had departed. Thus did the great soul of Dr. J.B. Danquah take leave of this wicked, strange world. The grievous calamity could have but the good Lord prepared the young and lovely Mrs. Danquah for this, the greatest ordeal and trial in her delicate life. She tells me that it was revealed to her in a dream. She had seen briefly and kaleidoscopically the hazy bust of her beloved husband perching in a circular wreath of black flowers with figure 40 written clearly under the doom-portending object.Whether you believe in dreams or not, Dr. Danquah gave up the ghost exactly 40 days after his tormented wife had this dream.Was Dr. Danquah aware of the fate awaiting him on his second arrest and detention? Certainly! For although when he last left his home, escorted by soldiers from Flagstaff House in January 1964, he told his wife `I shall come back to you.` He sent another message to be delivered by trusted friends. The message said: `This time Nkrumah will kill me. I know I shall return no more. We are bound to win some time –God`s own good time. `A week before the stroke, Dr Danquah dreamed constantly. The warders told me that he had told them it was always recurring. In it Jesus stood before him, holding in the right hand a crown of thorns. His left palm was stretched out for Dr. Danquah to behold. The pierced spot was as fresh as on the day of crucifixion. He told this story to the jailers and they in turn have passed it on.When Dr. Danquah was taken, his wife made every effort to get men and women who could approach Nkrumah to plead for his release. She visited him and was shocked by the rapid deterioration in his condition. He had reduced to almost skin and bones.Mrs. Danquah tells me that the most outstanding effort was made by Mr. Sherman, the Liberian Ambassador in Ghana, who called constantly on Nkrumah, pleading with him relentlessly to set Dr. Danquah free in view of his age and the miserable state of his health. In the initial stages Nkrumah had asserted furiously that Dr. Danquah deserved some pernicious punishment because he was a `bad man`For sheer humanitarian reasons, Mr. Sherman pressed his plea to the point of importunity. Nkrumah eventually gave the diplomat `his word of honour` that he would try Dr. Danquah in court in October 1964, which he failed to do. Then again he promised Mr. Sherman outright the release of Dr. Danquah in December 1964. Once more Nkrumah did not honour his word. In the most serious days of his suffering at the `special block`, Dr. Danquah complained that he had received careless and irresponsible medical attention. Though doctors prescribed whatever they thoughtfit to keep him in something like good health, some jailers displayed an irrational callousness and cruelty in the application of the prescriptions.They quarrelled incessantly with the sick old man and provoked him constantly to the point of madness by calling him names and pouring insults and abuses on him.Dr. Danquah resisted and fought back in mind and body the maltreatment meted out to him by the jailers. He could engage them whole nights on end until he quietened down out of sheer exhaustion. This unwarranted engagement broke my heart. I was myself beset with all sorts of mental and physical torture, but I found time to divert my mind to the despicable events around me.The jailers were completely intolerant of him. They chained him forcibly when they thought him boisterous and troublesome. Every cell has an anchor embedded in the cement floor. Leg-irons are passed through the anchor and attached to your leg. Then a handcuff is also passed throught the leg-iron chains and fastened to your wrists. You are so trussed up like a chicken that you can`t move in any comfortable direction. I saw it done to several people. It was never in fact done to me. Some warders told me it was done to Dr. Danquah. On one occasion when the old man was resisting the chain as he normally did, one of the jailers twisted his left thumb so violently that the thumb got strained and swollen. The thumb was still bandaged when Mrs. Danquah called on a visit. On such calls the young wife was kept waiting for hours before she could see her husband. She was refused permission to send him small food parcels, which she had done during his first detention.When she pleaded with the director of prisons, she was told, `You husband deserves a little bit of punishment`. She returned home in tears.Dr. Danquah lived on milk and soup. For he could not swallow the unappetizing fufu, rice with sand in it, mouldy kenkey and `twenty-five-year-old` cassava which was offered to him.In spite of the hard time he experienced, the old man kept up a barrage of petitions to Nkrumah – 55 sheets of copy a day – which infuriated the dictator more and more, so that his heart was hardened into holding his enemy faster in prison. At one time Nkrumah summoned a psychiatrist to examine Dr. Danquah. The old man was certified perfectly sane.Dr. Danquah underwent the most grueling physical torment in this spirit-destroying exercise. His death goes down in African`s twentieth century history, as to say the least, shaming. He languished and suffered in a cell six by four feet. He slept, or rather turned and twisted on a small straw mattress, spread on the floor.He was supplied in his cell with a chamber pot, an enamel jug with water and an aluminum cup. He was permitted only two minutes under the shower without a sponge, a highly soda-concentrated prison-manufactured soap and a strip of tarpaulin for a towel.He died to save all detainees. For it was only after his passing-away that the unbearable rigidity of treatment was relaxed a bit.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 10:52:28 +0000
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