The Man Guggisberg

“I see myself as an engineer sent out here to superintend the construction of a broad highway of progress along which the races of the Gold Coast may advance to those far-off cities of promise, the cities of final development, wealth and happiness”.

Those were the words of the Royal Engineers officer of the British Army when he landed on the Gold Coast to commence his assignment.

Brigadier-General Gordon Guggisberg the man credited with landmark infrastructural development in the Gold Coast did not appear to many as one who could effect a major turnaround of the colony handed over to him in 1919.

From Accra to Takoradi his lasting legacies stand prominent a constant reminder of a selfless personality who sadly passed away a pauper in a nursing home in his old age.

He was born at the turn of the 18^th Century to Polish Jews at a time when conscription into the Russian Army was at its peak.

In order to avoid conscription his father took refuge in a Swiss village, Guggisberg, name which he adopted as his surname.

In 1869 the Guggisbergs migrated to Ontario, Canada where in 1869 Frederick's wife gave birth to a son who was named Frederick Gordon Guggisberg.

At the age of four, the young boy lost his father whereupon he and his mother moved to Toronto where the widow met an English Admiral Ramsey Dennis who took her and the young boy to England.

The young boy who was to shape the history of the Gold Coast had his education as fate would have it in England. He was admitted into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich where upon his commissioning was posted to the Royal Engineers at the age of 20.

He was posted to Singapore where he served in the Malay Submarine Mining Company of the Royal Engineers. In 1897 when he returned to England, he was appointed at the Royal Military Academy as an instructor in Fortification and Geometric Drawing. In 1900 he was promoted to the rank of Captain and posted to the Colonial Office as Assistant Director of Surveys, an appointment which brought him in direct contact with the Gold Coast. It was to be an association lasting until his death in 1930.

The survey department had a correlation with the military hence the appointment of military officers to deal with mapping and other geodetic activities in the Gold Coast. Perhaps that accounts for the presence of the Survey Department in a military environment.

Gordon Guggisberg as Assistant Director of Surveys arrived in the Gold Coast a year after the appointment of Major Alan Watherston as head of the newly created Mines Survey Department at the behest of Governor Nathan Mathew.

This was a time when the Gold Coast was largely unmapped and gold coast prospecting on the ascendancy.

After six years, Guggisberg was appointed Director of the department upon the appointment of Major Watherston as Commissioner of the Northern Territories.

Under the direction of Gordon Guggisberg, the department was moved from Takoradi to Accra with its emphasis shifting from mines surveying to mapping.

So much progress was made that by 1906 a map of the Gold Coast was in place depicting districts and the main boundary with Ashanti.

Surveying and mapping virgin lands at this period of the history of our part of the world was a herculean task and Guggisberg had to rely on the benevolence of local people along the way.

The tools of the industry were not up to scratch and he had to improvise, as it were, his African labourers supporting him immensely.

Sometimes the food stock was depleted and the local people were contacted for replenishment as Guggisberg and his men soldiered on. By the time the assignment was over some Africans had been trained sufficiently enough to become qualified surveyors.

He learned a lot about Africans' experience which proved valuable later when he became a Governor of the Gold Coast, position which he managed so well that he was described as the greatest occupant of the Government House.

In 1908, he was ordered back to England, the Army impressed with his achievement; a source of his promotion to the rank of Captain and decoration with a CMG.

Between 1910 and 1914 he served as Director of Surveys of Southern Nigeria and as he awaited his posting to the Gold Coast to head the Public Works Department (PWD), World War I broke out and played from 1914 to 1919. The PWD was an important colonial outfit responsible for almost all infrastructural development in the Gold Coast colony as well as the protectorates and territories.

He was recalled by the Army and posted to France where he served until the end of the war by which time he had risen to the rank of Brigadier General, a One-Star General.

At the time of his ascension to the position of the Governor of the Gold Coast in 1919 succeeding Governor Hugh Clifford, he was 50. The man who was to prove his mettle as arguably the best governor in the Gold Coast suffered questions of qualification for the position he was going to take up. His earlier request to be transferred to the Administrative Service was not obliged. He tried again and was once more turned down. Then he applied to be considered as Chief Commissioner for the Northern Territories but this too was turned down.

The above played a part in informing those who opposed his appointment as Governor in persisting in their cause. Perhaps they were peeved that somebody whose requests for the Administrative Service and later as Chief Commissioner were turned down would be elevated to such a top position.

Governor Hugh Clifford is said to have vilified Gordon Guggisberg; their relationship not too good.

Guggisberg's spouse Decima was said to have influenced the appointment of her husband through her relationship with Elinor Glynn whose friend was Lord Milner who lobbied the Secretary for the Colonies.

His tenure saw the blossoming of the exploitation of the extractive and cocoa industries, proceeds from which went into the development of legacies such as Achimota School, Takoradi Harbour and the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.

His personality, tall and handsome, is said to have impacted positively on his success.

His engineering background in the military played an important role in what he achieved for the Gold Coast in terms of infrastructural development.

Upon his arrival in the Gold Coast from Liverpool in October 1919 as Governor, he presented a 10-year- development plan for the colony to the Legislative Assembly which stood at twenty four million, six hundred and eleven thousand pounds.

The projects envisaged were the Takoradi deep sea harbor, a railway system and a road and public building projects.

Also to be tackled were water supplies and town improvement projects.

It was Guggisberg's view that an efficient transport system is important for development and so set aside three quarters of the total ten-year development budget towards this goal.

Given his obsession for the construction of the Takoradi harbor, he sent a dispatch to the Secretary of State which read “So profoundly convinced am I of the unlimited potentialities of the colony if modern transportation facilities are provided that I unhesitatingly place the deep sea harbor at the head of my programme.'

On 3^rd February 1921 he appointed an advisory committee of experts that included Africans like Nana Ofori Atta I, EJP Brown and CJ Bannerman to appraise the project. The committee recommended Amanful as the location of the harbor.

Guggisberg faced some opposition but eventually raised a loan from a London market and awarded the contract to Messrs Steward McDonnel.

• I benefitted immensely from the biographical sketch of Robert Frimong-Addo-Fenning on Governor Guggisberg in composing this piece.