After Rev Balmer's achievements newer hurdles persisted, but these were good signs in response to growth, i.e. the need for more dormitories and classrooms to meet larger numbers, including fresh enrolments trekking in from the Gold Coast hinterland. The faculty's continuous professional growth and students' academic achievements became necessities too. In these, headmaster Rev R.A. Lockhart (1926-1936) poured in his heart, mind, and two hands.
Before Lockhart, Rev A.A. Sneath (1911-1919) and Rev R.P. Dryer (1919-1925) had set strong tones, in a combined period of about fifteen years, for the school's continuity from grassroots to greatness.
It is this writer's view that the school's golden years began with the elevation of Rev R.A. Lockhart as headmaster. In remembering this maverick, it is apt to hear this classic comment by Winston Churchill: "One mark of a great man (is) so to have handled matters during his life that the course of after-events is continuously affected by what he did".
Rev Lockhart's foresight and motivation were extraordinary. Having served as an assistant headmaster (1922-1925), he grew sensors for running a successful school. He cultivated other things too: a thick skin and a "right-on" temper for "managing" the smugness of colonial intrigues.
He was driven by what was clearly a distaste for imperial arrogance. His native Irish sensibilities (possibly chipped off his strong countryman Charles Stewart Parnell, and particularly from Nobel literary laureate George Bernard Shaw) must have endorsed this stormy script from Shaw's play "The Man of Destiny": "you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles".
Irish republicans identify with freedom struggles. The rebellions tapped into a deep seam of independent movements. Joe Appiah, a lawyer, Pan-Africanist, and doyen of Ghana politics (Abaa ba se) recalled: "Rev. Lockhart had persuaded me (in sixth form) to consider joining the army, since he believed that the path to freedom lay that way."
While being groomed by Rev Lockhart, the young F.L. Bartels observed him as "an expert proponent of conviction politics - standing up for the right as one sees it, come what may." He was also "a great orator, clear-headed, and extremely eloquent".
Dr Shawki Haffar, a practicing psychiatrist, remarked: "As a greenhorn in 1960, I sensed a presence. It was later that I discerned the Lockhart character."
Rev Lockhart led by commitment, and a sheer force of personality; his aversions, however, he chose neither to disavow nor conceal. His nature defied being hemmed in under a colonial yoke. His antagonists, the imperial agents (including the suave Governor Guggisberg himself) couldn't help but see the man's earnestness. But even more, they detected his abhorrence of the colonial snootiness. It wasn't long before that undercurrent began piercing the surface calm.
There were two main reasons for the scuffle: One, the Governor reneged on a promise to fund "one third of the total cost" of the proposed new buildings at Mfantsipim. Two, the government was spending a whopping £1,400 for each student per year at Achimota, and a paltry £45 at Mfantsipim.
First, the discontent came out disguised in coy official letters; then the mood shifted into tensed colourful letters. Finally, the back and forth volleys aggravated into a blatant war of wits where all sides - headmasters, governor, imperial accountants, and missionaries alike - dug in their heels. The word "fool" was sounded in one hectic moment. Naturally the battle attracted editorial judgments, and inflamed national passions.
Some newspapers questioned the colonial government's intentions. The Spectator said: "Mfantsipim is doing what Government ought to do but is not doing, either through lack of energy or a deliberate disregard of the necessaries of the public." The West Africa Times reported: "there seems to be lacking a sense of fairplay towards Mfantsipim".
It will help to see the genesis of the schools in question. Mfantsipim was founded, it seemed, from collections in a mission house, and various promises. The accidental founding headmaster, a 19-year-old teenager, James Picot, was enticed for the job by his elder brother, Rev T.R. Picot, of the Wesleyan Mission. The adolescent began as "the only teacher", and even bought "equipment at his own expense". After a few years (1876-1878), he left the Gold Coast to finish his own education back home in Britain. He did not return for the job.
In contrast, Achimota (named Prince of Wales College then) started out royally with an impressive government budget and a massive tract of land. These assets were crowned with the famed founding triumvirate: Governor Sir Gordon Guggisberg, Rev Alec Fraser, and Dr Kwegyir Aggrey.
(According to Dr Adu Boahen, the trio - plus the governor's deputy, Dr J. Crawford Maxwell - had visited Cape Coast earlier, and "observed" Mfantsipim before embarking on their grand project in 1925.)
Rev Lockhart was a custodian of the underdog, so to speak; and too shrewd to be anyone's cannon fodder. Knowing how far his cherub had come, the chaplain was in no mood to lead it like a passive lamb in an obedient imperial salute to the slaughter. My students are not "plaster saints", he declared.
Of the school's folk heroes, he was with those in whom the stuff of leadership timber was most abundantly needed. Like an airborne hawk guarding its brood taking virginal flying lessons, Lockhart's instinct spotted the purpose of the brief visit by the triumvirate. (As Shakespeare would say,) He smelled a wild fire begin with a straw. But for him, Mfantsipim would be another "syto" elementary school. His suspicion proved all too prescient with the call by the government to reduce Mfantsipim to a basic school for it to gain twice as much funding.
(Rev Alec Fraser, the founding headmaster of Achimota - then retired - was to disclose to Bartels in England how the Governor, Sir Gordon, intended to "absorb" Mfantsipim into Achimota to relieve the former's "feeble efforts" at becoming. It was possible that Fraser blocked that wanton idea, realizing that his own school's academic success depended on a healthy rivalry, which Mfantsipim - though cash strapped, but home grown from the grassroots up - could provide.)
Rev Lockhart's priorities included protecting his turf, and avenging the colonial stereotyping of the African as inferior. Additionally, he tired in persuading Cape Coasters to walk the talk; i.e. enroll more of their wards and also pay for their upkeep. His sword cut from both edges. His beef, according to Bartels, was that local people "talk a lot, criticize a lot in negative ways, but their lack of action betrayed a lack of inner self-confidence." (Even in retirement, Rev Lockhart returned to the newly independent Ghana and repeated that very same point. The work of a good mission, he said, was to develop action oriented, self-confident citizenry.) Those observations had earlier inspired his template for nurturing and producing "young people with tremendous self-confidence" as exemplified in the likes of R.P. Baffour who became the first vice-chancellor of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (KNUST).
Asked of Bartels in France which three headmasters, besides himself, were Mfantsipim's greatest, he responded with a Bartelsian astuteness: "I will give you only two - Balmer and Lockhart; you add the third!"
In the academic sphere, Rev Lockhart's focus favoured the cognitive - that being the substantive mode for comparison with the so-called civilized race. His speech day reports resonated with pride, with the excellence of students' Cambridge examination results year in, year out. The number of successful boys were for years, the largest in West Africa. He prophesied: "In a few years the people of this country (Ghana) will be amazed at the number of its influential citizens who owe allegiance to this school."
In infrastructure, he embarked on the bold expansion scheme that we see at the school today. In staff development, he raised teaching standards to the highest levels, often recruiting the sharpest teachers from within the school itself.
Joe Appiah recalled: "For nearly a quarter of a century this Irish patriot had given all of his best to the building of the new Mfantsipim and had been spared, even by the almighty mosquito, which must have recognized the great contribution he was making to our nation's development - In the dispensary, Mrs. Lockhart was a veritable Florence Nightingale."
In certain circles, there was still the unresolved question about why Rev Lockhart left Mfantsipim. Was it his free will after years of impeccable service, or was he pushed? History, being mainly the record of man's follies and miseries, finds a parallel in the politically induced quitting of the gallant headmasters Rev W.G.M. Brandful (1961-1963), and J.W. Abruquah (1963-1970).
The first founders, up to the task in 1876, were seized by the word "soul" in the spirit of the greatest teacher they knew. That spirit seems to have hovered over the school like a halo, which transients could not penetrate. Regardless of any external intrigues, the school itself was firm, and rooted like a mother lode.
In a positive way, Rev Lockhart, Governor Guggisberg, and Rev Fraser were all cut from the same superior ideals; but their routes diverged. Education in the Gold Coast, however, was blessed to have all three on board. They were men for the season. Rev Fraser pursued the cause of schools into his retirement in England. Guggisberg's vision - and the enthusiasm that drove it - came from a different place. Contrary to the colonial expectation, and being American minded, he dreamed bigger dreams to "develop without shackles". According to Bartels, "no Englishman would say that" in that colonial setting.
For Rev Lockhart, the day Alex Quaison-Sackey (attired colorfully in Kente) sat in the United Nations dais and presided over the world body, both he and the founders - whichever side of the curtain they were - must have nodded with knowing smiles. With the former school prefect's spectacular presence in full view, the African personality was at its peak. Those were the days, my friends, with heartfelt thanks to the likes of Rev Lockhart (and his wife) who grew boys into men of international stature. |
