Professor Kofi Awoonor killed in Nairobi terrorist attack
The late Prof Kofi Awoonor
Former Chaiman of the Council of State, Prof. Kofi Awoonor has been
killed in Saturday's shooting incident at a shopping mall in Nairobi,
Kenya.
Prof. Awoonor died from gun shot wounds in the stomach
during an attack on the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi which Somali
militant group Al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for.
He was
in Nairobi as a guest speaker for a conference. Professor Awoonor left
his hotel with his son who drove him to the mall to have breakfast
together when the fatal incident occurred.
Ghana’s High
Commission in Kenya has confirmed Prof. Awoonor’s untimely passing and
indicated that his son who also sustained injuries in the attack,
survived and is currently responding to treatment.
Government has
issued a statement describing the death of the former Council of State
Chairman as regrettable, and has extended condolences to the family and
Ghanaians at large for this tragic loss.
Prof Kofi Awoonor was
born in Ghana on 13 March 1935 when it was still called the Gold Coast.
He was a poet and author whose work combined the poetic traditions of
his native Ewe people, contemporary religious symbolism to depict Africa
during the era of decolonisation. He taught African literature at the
University of Ghana. He started writing under the name George
Awoonor-Williams. While at the University of Ghana, he wrote his first
poetry book, Rediscovery. Like the rest of his work, Rediscovery is
based on African oral poetry.
In Ghana he managed the Ghana Film
Corporation and founded the Ghana Play House. He then studied
literature at the University of London, and while in England, he wrote
several radio plays for the BBC. He spent the early 1970s in the United
States, studying and teaching at universities. While in the USA, he
wrote This Earth, My Brother, and My Blood.
Prof Kofi Awoonor
returned to Ghana in 1975 as head of the English department at the
University of Cape Coast. Within months, he was arrested for helping a
soldier accused of trying to overthrow the military government and was
imprisoned without trial. After ten months, he was found not guilty and
released. The house by the Sea is about his time in jail. After
imprisonment Awoonor became politically active and has written mostly
nonfiction.
From 1990 to 1994 Awoonor was Ghana’s Ambassador to the United Nations, where he headed the committee against apartheid.
He passed on to his maker on Saturday 21st September 2013.
Some of his masterpieces are as follows:
Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964) Night of My Blood (1971) – poems that explore Awooner’s roots, and the impact of foreign rule in Africa The House By the Sea (1978) This Earth, My Brother (1971) Comes the Voyager at Last (1992) The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (1975) A Political History from Pre-European to Modern Times (1990)
