GRi Arts &
Culture 21 - 02 - 2002
Book
on missionaries in Colonial Ghana revised
Accra
(Greater Accra) 21 February 2002- Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo, the Attorney
General and Minister of Justice on Tuesday expressed concern about poor
publicity and recognition given to African writers and publishers who had work
with extraordinary originality, flair and great integrity.
"Over
the last 100 years, African writers have written of their lives, experiences,
culture, history and myth, published widely on the globe in diverse languages,
nonetheless their work as a corpus deriving from the African continent remains
largely unknown and uncelebrated."
Nana
Akufo-Addo, whose speech was read on his behalf by Mrs Betty Mould Idirissu,
Chief State Attorney, expressed the concern in Accra at the presentation of the
Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century by the Zimbabwe International Book
Fair (ZIBF).
The
celebrated author, Dr Ali Mazrui floated the idea of the listing at ZIBF, in
1998, as a way of directing international spotlight on the achievements of
African writers, who had their works published in the 20th century.
The books considered
were in three categories: children's writing, non-fiction/scholarship and
creative writing, which was further divided into short stories, novels, poetry
and drama.
Professor
Njabulo Ndebele, Chairman of the ZIBF Project in announcing the list said it
was time to celebrate a century of superb achievement in African creative
writing, scholarship and children's literature.
He said:
"ZIBF believed that this list will provoke debate and lead to
republication, translations and curriculum inclusion." Prof. Ndebele said
over 500 nominations were considered from the original entry of 1,521 proposed
from many sources all over the world.
The books
considered were also written in diverse languages including, Afrikaans, Arabic,
English, French, Gikuyu, Portuguese, Sesotho, Shona, Swahili,
Yoruba and
IsiZulu.
Professor
Abena Dolphyne, who presided, called for a new culture of reading, especially
of African Books to serve as promotional and market creation for African
writers and publishers. She said "we need to present books as gifts to our
loved ones and relations, children as birthday gifts to encourage and challenge
people to read."
Mr Richard
A. B. Crabbe, Chairman of African Publishers Network (APNET), which aimed at
strengthening indigenous Publishers in Africa, called on Africans to recognise
and appreciate what ever Africans produce.
He said;
"it is only through such recognition and usage of what we produce that we
could open up the continent for development and create opportunities for
growth." The Pan-African Writers Association noted the significance of the
celebration of the first 100 best books of African writers on the eve of the
creation of the African Union.
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Accra
(Greater Accra) 21 February 2002- Revised edition of "Survivors On The
Gold Coast - The Basel Missionaries in Colonial Ghana", a book written by
Dr Peter Alexander Schweizer, Swiss Ambassador, was on Thursday introduced to
the press.
The second
edition catalogues and reflects on the various aspects of missionary
involvement in colonial Ghana and recalls the difficulties and sacrifices that
a succession of missionaries had to endure towards the implanting of
Christianity on the Gold Coast in the 19th century.
Dr
Schweizer said the 213-page book also exhibited 100 photographs taken between
1862 and 1940 by the Basel Missionaries, who worked to establish the
Presbyterian Church of Ghana.
"While
pioneering their works of development in the spiritual, educational, medical
and economic sectors, the missionaries revealed an astonishing disregard for
all sorts of discomfort," he said. This included the deadly menace of
malaria, yellow fever and similar diseases.
He noted
that what motivated the missionaries to persevere against these odds, was their
deep-seated moral conviction that the colossal wrongs of the slave trade needed
to be rectified.
Dr
Schweizer said the missionaries thought of travelling to Africa, "in
response to call to elevate the uneducated and heathens from their state of
ignorance" but were surprised to see well-developed structures with
intricate cultural tissues.
He said the
missionary enterprise eventually became mutual elevation and a cross-cultural
two-way street with both sides gaining a lot of experiences from each other.
The
physical and spiritual work that the missionaries of the various confessions
had set up and perpetuate on the Gold Coast during the last two centuries,
constituted a significant heritage, he added.
Comparing
the missionary work to foreign investment in the epilogue of his book, the
Ambassador said the missionaries spent a lot of time to establish the necessary
confidence and make the preliminary experimentation to effectively implement a
project.
"Modern
consultants rarely live among the target groups, nor do they have time to share
with their counterparts as many of their daily concerns as the missionaries
did."
He said it
could be advisable to revert to the more measured and personalised forms of
co-operation that the 19th Century mission workers had practised. Dr Schweizer
was born in Zurich, Switzerland, on 18th January 1941 and studied Law at the
University of Zurich.
He did his
post-graduate work at the University of British Colombia, Canada, with a
doctoral thesis on "Contempt of Court in the Anglo-Saxon Legal
Tradition." Dr Schweizer has
authored various articles and essays including "Pancasila", the State
Philosophy of Indonesia" and a collection of poetry, among other things.
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