We honour a man today who was always able to question superstition and strip it bare; make scary religious stories look ordinary; challenge traditional and conservative thinking, and make rational thinking remind us of the greatness in us all.

Hope Nuertey Tawiah lived the last 40 odd years of his life debating and challenging religious oddities that define the life of the conservative African society which shaped his formative years. After several years of intensely studying various literatures on evolution in search of what makes us human, Hope established the Rational Center in Accra to serve as a foundation for the education of a society steeped in religious superstition.

Hope was born 74 years ago into a highly religious family. His father was Presbyterian and mother was Methodist. Both backgrounds kept strong and rigid allegiance to traditional animist beliefs as well. Either way, Hope, like any other African, was virtually imprisoned in deep-seated superstition from the cradle to the grave. Religion and superstition is always embedded in the DNA of an African at birth. This is the society that Hope fancifully wanted to change. Practically impossible, one may dare say. But he defied the odds and took up the challenge.

Hope struggled to elevate Humanism beyond academic exercise. He desperately tried to persuade his compatriots to appreciate the fact that life is what humanity makes of it and enjoyed here on earth. For a society that literally believes that its survival depended on superstition, any attempt to reason otherwise is considered blasphemy.
He, however, spent many years working and frequently had interaction with many like-minded Humanists to find ways of distilling reason and rational thinking. By the mid-1980s, Hope could no longer contain the burning desire to transform his thoughts into an organised institution. The Rational Center was the starting point. Ironically, the first “disciple” that found wisdom in the philosophy being espoused by Hope was Nii Oto Kwame (now deceased), a traditional chief whose very status depended on rigid superstitious rituals and practices. Together, the two “drafted” Nortey Kwesi Orgle (also deceased), who was Hope’s cousin. These three were, arguably, the pioneers of organised Humanism and rational thinking in Ghana. Together, they spent long hours studying, analysing and debating literature received from the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). The residence of Hope was virtually turned into a library where books and pamphlets donated by IHEU and the African-Americans for Humanism (AAH) were displayed for public study.

As a student of journalism during the same period, I became a target and a conduit through which the three free-thinkers used to reach fellow students in college.
Even those of us who were not heavyweight thinkers at the time always wished to pillow our craniums a bit more carefully at night after listening to Hope. He made us realise that the gray mass between our ears is quite a treasure!

Hope was passionate about free-thinking. He was restless in propagating the ideas he read about and constantly organised lectures, even if the attendance was not encouraging. The first and biggest breakthrough came sometime in 1989 when Norm Allen Jnr. of the AAH visited the Rational Center and addressed a series of lectures on free-thinking. Subsequently, he persuaded the AAH to sponsor two students from college in Ghana to attend the 1990 IHEU Congress in Brussels. This, he believed, would serve as a learning forum for the students who were being “nurtured” by the Rational Center to take over the “crusade” of disseminating Humanists’ philosophy. I’m glad to say I was one of the beneficiaries of this scholarship.

Hope had a cherished dream of building a library to house literature on free-thinking which would serve as a center to attract fellow Humanists. Unfortunately, the late Nii Oto Kwame could not fulfill his promise of donating land for this purpose.

The departure of Hope on September 27, 2009, marks the end of the trinity that defied traditional pressures and defined organised free-thinking in Africa. The death of Nortey Kwesi Orgle in 1997 and Nii Oto Kwame in 2005 respectively, literally derailed the momentum towards building a strong and viable alternative to religion in Ghana.
Hopefully, the death of Hope Tawiah will not mark the end of giving hope to hundreds (probably, thousands) of other free-thinkers spread across Ghana and Africa who are looking for an opportunity to free themselves from religious slavery.

Hope Tawiah lit the flame for Humanist work in Ghana. He always wore glasses of optimism, hoping that the future would see more enlightenment than the past. Others will now have to take up the mantle after his death.

Nii Noi Vanderpuye