Money Galore

AMU DJOLETO published his first novel, The Strange Man, in 1967. He was born in a small Ghanaian village in 1929. He went to Accra Academy and St Augustine’s College, Cape Coast before reading English at the University of Ghana. He later studied textbook production at the Institute of Education, University of London. He became editor of the Ghana Teacher’s Journal and was for a time Principal Education Officer in the Ministry of Education. He is now the Deputy Chief Education Officer in the Ministry. With T.H.S. Kwami he has edited a selection from the African Writers Series called West Africa Prose. His latest publication, Amid the Swelling Act, is a collection of his poems.

This witty, extravagant but seriously intended satire marks the arrival of Ghana’s answer to T.M. Aluko. Abraham Kofi Adu finds teaching a hard grind and lacking in rewards. He stands for the Liberation Party, the party of businessmen, landlords, smallholders and taxi drivers. As Minister of Internal Welfare Kafu pursues his political career with a lively devotion to women, drinking, gambling and skullduggery of various kinds and an almost aversion to work unless it is devoted to some personal end. He is supported by a large cast: a crooked but amiable contractor, Anson Berko; a less amiable and even more crooked contractor, Otu Lartey; the Permanent Secretary, Mr. Vuga, an ineffably dreary civil servant who strives to manipulate Kafu as he has manipulated previous Ministers but also turns out to be as crooked and so is subject to blackmail; the slimy Reverend Dan Opia Sese, who takes over as headmaster from Benjy Baisi and seduces Kafu’s maid. But even Kafu cannot get away from it forever.