Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World by Yepoka YeeboMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Dr John Ackah Blay-Miezah – politician, investor, philanthropist, football club owner, royal, patriot, conman. A man who came from abject poverty in Ghana to run a con so successful that he not only extracted tens of millions of dollars from investors in Ghana, the US, the UK, and South Korea, but 3 decades after his death there are still people who swear he told the truth.
Most cons are structured as Ponzi schemes, but Blay-Miezah’s frightening ability to defraud sophisticated Western and Ghanaian business owners, politicians, and even activists of their money from the early 1970s to early 1990s and never pay a cent back is quite rare.
Yepoka takes no shortcuts in explaining why Blay-Miezah was so successful. She takes great pains to explain how Ghana’s history of being exploited by several European countries created the perception that it was exceptionally rich – a mine inhabited by people who did not have any use for the wealth around them. Combined with the West’s own slander of the nation’s first president as corrupt, Blay-Miezah created an unoriginal tale of the nation’s wealth being kept in Swiss banks, but with the twist that he was the only one who could access and repatriate that wealth.
Through changing military and civilian regimes, Blay-Miezah spun his tales as craftily as the fabled Ghanaian trickster, Anansi the spider. He thrived in the turbulence of the times, worming his way into the audience of almost every Ghanaian head of state from the 70s to the 90s, and surrounding himself with prominent statesmen, journalists, spy chiefs, and royalty that all vouched for the legitimacy of his Oman Ghana Trust Fund.
As a Ghanaian, I am most grateful that Yepoka’s book is as much a book on Ghanaian politics from the first republic to the dawn of the fourth republic as it is on Blay-Miezah’s life. The young nation was barely on its feet when the cocktail of Cold War politics, African liberation struggles, domestic political violence, and corruption led it to over 20 years of instability. Blay-Miezah was in many ways a man of his time. A man with a simple, if fraudulent, explanation for Ghana’s failures and medicine for its malaise.
This is definitely a 5-star book and a brilliant debut from Yepoka Yeebo. If you’re a young Ghanaian interested in understanding the politics that led to our current system I daresay it’s a must read.
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