To a legend who preferred anonymity
Though I had seen more harmattans than she, I made a choice to join her younger generation of admirers and colleagues in calling her “Auntie Maggie”. I was not merely being polite: It was my expression of respect for her impeccable professionalism, her scrupulous honesty and admirable Christian virtues.
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In terms of journalistic impact, the name ‘Margaret Safo’ did not ring a bell in every household. In that sense she was no Elizabeth Ohene or Ajoa Yeboah Afari. But on the other side of the craft, i.e. in creative writing, she bore a name that was in the mouths of many.
What those thousands never knew was that the creative writing goddess, Peggy Oppong, whom they adored as the author of the Mini-Series in The Mirror newspaper, was the self-same Margaret Safo, the journalist and editor of the paper.
She was to readers of The Mirror what Willie Donkor (RIP) was to generations of readers of the then Weekly Spectator. Few ever coupled that name with the popular, perhaps notorious, Baafour who, every Saturday for decades, took them to his holy village.
Before 1988, I knew Margaret Safo only as a by-line. It was during a self-introduction time on our first day in class as Master’s degree students at the School of Communication Studies, University of Ghana, that I was, to my shame, to know that the lady of few words who sat a spitting distance from me was the brilliant journalist who worked with The Mirror.
I say ‘to my shame’ because while I had, only a few minutes earlier, struggled to connect her name to the face, she had no such problem when it came my turn to introduce myself. Without knowing why, the rest of the class instinctively turned to her when I mentioned my name.
And as if she wants to assure them that she had read the meaning of their curious stare, she mumbled, “I know him”, slightly above a whisper.
In class, she did not elaborate. Later, outside the class, she had more surprises for me. When I caught up with her in the library, she reeled off a list of headlines of about half a dozen articles of mine in the Ghanaian Times. That was how we became closely associated.
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So in later years, when as a media consultant I wrote for corporate clients, I naturally felt assured that I had enough clout with Auntie Maggie to ensure almost automatic placement of promotional articles and news items in The Mirror.
That was when I came to know the Margaret Safo I had not known before: A horse of a different colour. Tell me about professionalism, and I will tell you about an editor. Nothing; not close associations or financial incentives would come between her and her professional ethics.
If she considered the material “too promotional” or that she had, on ethical grounds, turned down a similar request by any other person in the past, that was it: Her no was no.
She would smile with me, but she would not forsake the principles she had been brought up and taught to hold dear. A stickler for ethics, she would rather drop the most sensational story with a potential for upping sales than go with it if it would insult sensibilities.
When I became editor of The Spectator, Maggie earned my admiration as a “human being”. She did not hesitate to concede that “as for this one, you people beat us very well” whenever The Spectator scored with a particularly great weekend scoop.
Her compliment had nothing to do with the fact that long before my appointment to The Spectator, I used to place calls to her congratulating her on her success in building The Mirror into a compellingly readable, wholesome family paper.
A week before she resigned as editor of The Mirror, she called me to inform me of her intention. I gasped, and she heard it. Her assurance to me was that her creative writing skills were beckoning, and that she felt a certain compulsion to obey.
I shared a word of prayer with her and wished her well. I did not know that that wish was also my adieu.
Margaret Safo was a true journalistic treasure. That she did not chase after fame but was content to pour herself into millions, in anonymity; that she did this so well adds to her legend.
Alas, this labourer’s task is over. Sleep well, my sister, because you sleep in the Lord.