Meet the new members <strong>of</strong> the E-TeamPr<strong>of</strong>essor Obeng Mireku –P A G E 3 0Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Obeng Mireku
INTELLECTUAL ADVENTURER‘THE EARLY pr<strong>of</strong>essors tended to move from institutionto institution and country to country. They were rathersimilar to wandering minstrels. They were intellectualadventurers. They made knowledge an internationalcommodity. My life has tended to reflect those earlytendencies.’The voice belongs to Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Obeng Mireku,Turfloop’s new Executive Dean <strong>of</strong> Management andLaw. He’s a compact, charming man, and he smiles<strong>of</strong>ten as he provides a synopsis <strong>of</strong> his remarkablecareer.‘I was born in Ghana,’ he begins, ‘in a small villagenot far from the city <strong>of</strong> Kumasi. I went to anexcellent Roman Catholic primary school, and laterto an equally excellent Presbyterian teacher trainingcollege. But I’m actually Methodist by persuasion. Soyou can see that from an early age I was exposed toa broad view <strong>of</strong> things.’But Mireku’s adventures really began when hebecame a law student at the national university inLegon. He soon became a member <strong>of</strong> the Students’Representative Council and, as he says with one <strong>of</strong>his smiles, ‘did many revolutionary things’. To beginwith, the SRC mounted sustained protests againstthe repressive military regime <strong>of</strong> Colonel IgnatiusAcheampong and his notorious NationalRedemption Council. Then in 1976, the SRCpersuaded the authorities to receive a large number<strong>of</strong> black South African students after the Soweto riots.‘We certainly empathised with them,’ Mireku recalled.‘We understood what repression was. And the SouthAfricans urged us to continue with our protests. Wedid. The result was that by the time I was trying to doa postgraduate degree, I was so hounded and huntedby the military, that I was obliged to go into exile.I went to Liberia, little knowing that Liberia was asrepressive as Ghana at that time. I nevertheless wasable to teach in a Liberian college.’The South Africans who had appeared at Legon alsospoke tellingly about the acute scarcity <strong>of</strong> humancapital among black South Africans under apartheid.They urged Mireku to go to South Africa. This themewas repeated when he went to Nigeria, where forseveral years he lectured law in the College <strong>of</strong>Pr<strong>of</strong>essional Studies at Onitsha. And it was fromNigeria, in 1985, that he accepted the challenge andcame to the ‘independent’ Transkei.While South Africa moved inexorably, and <strong>of</strong>tenviolently, towards freedom, Mireku worked as a highschool teacher in Transkei schools. At the same timehe completed a Master <strong>of</strong> Laws through Wits <strong>University</strong>.Armed with this qualification, he took up alecturing post at Fort Hare. In that capacity hesucceeded in obtaining a scholarship to study inGermany. He went to the <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Hannover in1997; he studied constitutional and human rights law;he received his Doctor <strong>of</strong> Laws cum laude in 1999.He was 49 years old.The South African leg <strong>of</strong> his itinerant intellectualjourney continued. He became a senior lecturer inlaw at Fort Hare and then departmental head in thatuniversity’s Department <strong>of</strong> Constitutional and PublicInternational Law. He then moved to the <strong>University</strong><strong>of</strong> Venda as a pr<strong>of</strong>essor, at the same time serving aspart-time lecturer in the Master <strong>of</strong> Laws programmethat had been established at the <strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> theNorth (now <strong>Limpopo</strong>). At Venda, he was charged withthe responsibility <strong>of</strong> setting up the IsmailMahomed Centre for Human and People’s Rights(Ismail Mahomed was South Africa’s first black ChiefJustice) and finally became Venda’s Dean <strong>of</strong> theSchool <strong>of</strong> Law.Now he’s taken on his next challenge at Turfloop.Behind him lies this long road: Ghana, Liberia,Nigeria, South Africa, Germany and again SouthAfrica. Behind him, as well, lies Catholicism andProtestantism and school teaching and law. In law, hehas studied both the British precedent-based commonlaw and the statute-based civil law as enunciated inthe Roman-Dutch model. He has lived withrepression and human rights abuses; he hasspecialised in constitutional and human rights law;and he has witnessed the emergence <strong>of</strong>South Africa’s Constitutional Court that is based onthe German model. The lines <strong>of</strong> his experience andlearning diverge and intersect. There is an intellectualrestlessness beneath the charm.‘Intellectual adventurers is what we need,’ he repeatswith a smile. ‘It is incumbent on us here to engineer anew society. It is therefore incumbent on all academicleaders to make that a goal. The best way <strong>of</strong> doingthis is to provide the type <strong>of</strong> education that directsstudents towards free enquiry. Because it is onlythrough free enquiry that we can build a society thatvalues equality, human dignity, freedom, andresponsible citizenship.’P A G E 31
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