Sylvester Mensah of the NHIA

Today, I have decided to share with you my own perspectives on the recently launched autobiography of the Chief Executive of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Sylvester Mensah.

Several reviews of this excellent work have appeared in several publications in and outside Ghana, and quite a few in this very newspaper. As the author himself said in several radio interviews following the book launch in December last year, he was encouraged to write when he had the chance to read proofs of the autobiography of President Mahama’s  “My First Coup d’etat.’’ I had reviewed the President’s book in this newspaper in August, 2012.

I have chosen to devote my column today to my view of this fine work because none of the reviewers had adverted our minds to the enduring strength of this book; the unapologetic passion for politics that is displayed in the life and work of the author. This is even more important seeing that he himself confesses that politics is his first love, well, apart from his wonderful ‘queen’ and  wife, Millicent, and that he sees the complex tapestry of his life as recorded here as some fulfilment of his political passions.

I consider such a view of himself as extremely important for several significant reasons. 

First, this is the longest period all of us have lived under elected governments in our history as an independent nation, and Sylvester has had a successful political career spanning the long period immediately preceding this democratic dispensation, and beyond, one score and two years into the present democracy. 

 At 50 years of age, he provides a unique insight that is worth sharing across the board from grassroots PNDC politics right up to the second Parliament of the fourth Republic and now head of a very important national institution, the NHIA.  There is no question of his youthfulness being a bar to any aspiration because he believes that “every active member of a party may be considered a mature partner, whose views must count in the formulation of decisions, especially if the party is in opposition”.

Secondly, his story provides some insight into the inner workings of the NDC as a party from the first days in 1992, when the ban on political party activities was lifted right up to today. I was drawn to this because I have had experience in the NPP in some of the matters he discusses, throwing up for me, and his knowledgeable readers, a real comparison between the two main parties in how similar issues were and are handled. It was a revealing and sobering insight that even when he was down in his luck in the NDC, he was considered extremely valuable human material. The differences are not merely ideological, but a complete affirmation of a dog-eat-dog ethos in one party, and its vigorous denial in the other.

Thirdly, the life story of Sly Mensah uncovers the condign rewards of personal determination to improve oneself, and up his employable skills in a world where his initial educational attainments would have earned him a job with meager remuneration today. It is, therefore, a story that serves as a moral exemplar for those without hope of navigating their way in our increasingly complex and difficult society. He succeeded because first and foremost, he dared. He dared because he believed in himself. He had the self-esteem and confidence that the youth of today need to get on in life.

A lot of attention has been paid in assessments of this book on the politics and work of his father, Lovelace Mensah, but I agree with Victor Gbeho in his contribution in a GBC-TV programme last March 6, that the story of our decolonisation process belongs in our past, and would not be fought again. The present circumstances of the author are ample testament of the primacy of the concerns of today in our lives.

The depth of the political commitment of Sly Mensah can be measured by his confident assertion that ‘‘beyond the crippling din of insults, name-calling, and distasteful innuendos, there is tremendous satisfaction in rendering selfless service to the people, which transcends all pettiness.’’ 

He considers politics a worthy pursuit because it is public service.  In some quarters in our society today, the whining and whingeing that accompanies our fraudulent distaste for politics can be traced to a fevered partisanship that Sly finds a welcome challenge to performance. His politics is the politics of a renewed and revitalised NDC unashamed of its revolutionary past, and willing to smoothly adopt democratic practices that have earned them four electoral victories in six elections in the fourth Republic.

The partisanship that lies at the heart of multi-party politics, can also be used to create and nurture the environment for personal savagery that was strongly deplored by President Kufuor in his first meeting with President Rawlings after the former had been confirmed as the winner of the seminal 2000 elections. But this noble sentiment by President Kufuor did not stay in the hands of a vengeful new government. Sly Mensah did experience at first hand this pointless savagery when he declined to take up a rental property belonging to a person who passionately believed, falsely, that the defeated MP, and now opposition politician, was very corrupt while in office. 

Sly Mensah joined the PNDC government right at its inception in 1982, fresh from sixth Form at St. Thomas Aquinas Senior High School, doing odd jobs with his brother, bereft of hope for further education because of straitened circumstances at home. His father, after his traumatic Congo experience in 1960, had been a victim of Apollo 568 in 1970 because of his CPP background. This had of course, considerably destabilised the family, coupled with the fact that it was really a very large family, about 19 children in all. 

As he explains, he was ideologically drawn to the revolution, convinced that the earlier AFRC revolution of 1979 had not gone far enough to alter attitudes to public service in Ghana. His association started in the People’s Defence Committee , progressed to the Students and Youth Task Force, and on into the National Mobilisation Programme, and on and on in the echelons of the PNDC and the NDC till he got elected as the Member of Parliament for La Dadekotopon Constituency in 1996.

Mr Mensah titled his life story; ‘’In the Shadows of Politics, Reflections From My Mirror’’, probably indicative of his early, humble beginnings in Ghanaian politics. It is not wholly accurate, because the story ends with him in the forefront of our politics, and spans the entire period of both the PNDC and the fourth Republic, from the unique perspective of his eventful life. From this auspicious and advantageous angle, his book is worth a respectful and reflective read on how far we have come as a polity in the past 30 years.