Owusu Ansah Is My Son - 60-Year-Old Woman

The serene and solemn atmosphere that had enveloped the Holy Spirit Cathedral last Saturday morning where the burial service for the late Kwame Owusu Ansah was being held was broken momentarily when a woman stormed the church alleging to be the real mother of the late actor.

The woman who cried and spoke at the same time said in Fanti, “O ye meba a. Nyimpa na weewu da ho no, mara me ba a. Emi na me woo n' meaning, “He is my son. The dead man lying there is my son. I gave birth to him”.

As she wailed saying Kwame was her son, she also showed off pictures of a baby who she claimed to be Kwame and one of a man who she alleged was the father of the late actor, as well as a post-natal weighing card.

But for the timely intervention of some media and security personnel who quickly whisked the woman away from earshot, things would have taken a turn for the worse as some family members of the dead man rushed towards her.
 
However, the burial service continued without paying attention to the short drama.

Speaking to Showbiz afterwards, the woman, Madam Paulina Koufie, 60, a native of Cape Coast but domiciled in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, repeated her claim that she was indeed the biological mother of the late Kwame Owusu Ansah.
 
She said she met the supposed father of Owusu Ansah, Mr Ofori-Attah many years ago at Michel Camp in Tema while she was a young woman staying with her aunt and husband, one Major Andrew.

“I'm not sure of the year but it should be between 1963 and 1965 and I was in the Workers Brigade at the time while he was a young soldier. He told me he was from both the Ashanti and Eastern Regions.

“When I realised that I was pregnant, he wanted me to abort the pregnancy but I insisted that I wanted to keep the baby”.

She said the pregnancy created a dispute between her aunt and the boss of Ofori, prompting her exit to Cape Coast to be with her mother until she gave to a baby boy on August 28, 1965. “It was a Saturday,” she said.

According to her, after the birth of the baby in Cape Coast, there was the need for a birth certificate to be prepared but because the naming ceremony had not yet taken place, she chose the name, Kwame Ofori for her baby.

“Later when Mr Ofori Attah invited us to Accra for the naming ceremony, he named the baby Kwame Owusu Ansah, claiming it was the name of one of his (Ofori Attah) family members”.

Madam Koufie said she went back to Cape Coast where she had started petty trading with her mother and Kwame after the naming ceremony.
 
Meanwhile, Mr Ofori Attah was remitting them in Cape Coast until the baby was about two years old when he sent a letter asking mother and child to proceed to Accra, since he had to prove to the military authorities that he had a family before he could secure accommodation at Michel Camp. They obliged.

She continued that at the age of six, Ofori Attah again requested for Kwame to be enrolled in a school in Accra but that did not go down well with Madam Koufie.
 
“I realised that he was interested in the baby and not me but my mother advised me to send the child to Accra to school.”

She said she visited the child regularly until the boy was about eight or nine years old when she learnt Ofori Attah had moved to Ashaiman in Tema and later transferred to the North.

“We tried as much as possible to get in touch with them but it was proving more and more difficult so I had to give up at a point.

“I travelled to Abidjan to start a new life and I stayed there close to 11 years without coming to Ghana. After that whenever I visited Cape Coast, I asked my mother whether she had heard from them, and she always told me there was no news about them,” she recalled.

Asked whether she was never informed that her son had become a popular actor or whether she never watched any of his movies she replied that she never did.

“ I neither heard nor saw any movies of his and due to the pain I went through with his father, I buried myself in my family affairs.
 
But I can tell you that I am the mother and have records and pictures of him to prove it,” she said almost in tears.

How did she get the news of Kwame's death? She explained that about a month ago when she came to Ghana, Kwame Owusu Ansah's name was being mentioned frequently on air and she panicked anytime she heard the name and could not sleep.

“My elder sister called me to watch something about Kwame on TV and when I saw him I started crying because I knew there and then that this was my long lost son and started making arrangements to come to Accra for the wake, but we could not make it and rather went to the church premises.”

Armed with the evidence that held the memories of her supposed son, Madam Koufie stormed the Holy Spirit Cathedral to catch a glimpse of Kwame and could not believe what she saw.
 
According to her, “There in a coffin was my son, cold as death.”

But Madam Victoria Cosmos, the known mother of Kwame Owusu Ansah, has described Madam Koufie's claim as “crazy” and reaffirmed her status as the mother of the late actor.

“I am the real mother of Kwame and that woman needs to be arrested. Is it because Kwame is now popular that she is claiming him as her own?”

By Hilda Owusu