The Motowners reading this probably sat up when they saw the title. Everyone who’s had anything to do with Motown in the last decade knows the green Kia Shuma. Anybody involved with Motown in the last 40 years knows its rider.
It was more or less the Batmobile of Motown. And every Batmobile needs a Batman. Say hello to the Batman of Motown, Kassa.
Kassa
In the early days, Kassa drove an old beat-up white Opel Astra.
At first glance, he was an unassuming balding man, Kassa. But you couldn’t spend a week in Motown without learning to be wary of that name. His name was treated with the same fear that students of Hogwarts ascribed to Lord Voldermort. At least, in the old days.
A few months ago I asked one form one boy whether Kassa was still making waves in the school. He said, “Who’s Kassa?” I almost gagged.
Who’s Kassa?
There’s no single answer to this question. It’s harder than it has to be.
Kassa was my Core Mathematics teacher, and a good one at that.
If I’m being honest, he is the best mathematics teacher I’ve ever had. I know a lot of students who would agree that this man changed their approach to the soup of numbers, letters and symbols that is math. I still remember his explanation of simultaneous equations using ballistic missile interception. He brought a new zest to mathematics, but “Kassa the math teacher” barely describes Kassa.
Kassa was also a housemaster. A feared housemaster. The terror, if you will, of Fraser House on the West. When it comes to stories of Kassa as a housemaster, we need a whole book. One post is not enough.
I could tell you about the time some students were breaking bounds late at night when Kassa dropped out of a tree and apprehended them.
I could tell you about the times when he would dress up as a student, and walk into the dorms under the cover of darkness during a power outage to eavesdrop on students gossiping about him.
Or how about the time he met some students who had broken bounds at the Papaye fast food restaurant at Tesano? He put his arms around them and took a selfie. That picture was the only evidence needed at the disciplinary committee.
Or how about the other group of students he met at Papaye? (No, I don’t know what his deal was with Papaye) This time he drove them back to school, and put their food in his freezer for a week. Rumour has it he gave the frozen rice and chicken to them to eat. Like I said, rumour.
There’s more. A lot more. Stories of students made to dig useless pits as deep as they were tall, only to fill them back up… for nothing.
Stories of cricket, his favourite game, and teddy bears.
Stories of heart-warming kindness and a cold absence of empathy.
Considering that he was in charge of allocating work to the people on internal suspension, Akua hated his guts. She was not alone in her hatred. There are all kinds of stories, chale, but the Kassa we knew was just a product of who Kassa was in the 80’s.
The Legend of Emperor Bokassa
The real Emperor Bokassa was a 20th-century African dictator. After two quick Google searches, I’d rather not know anything else about the man. He’s like the wickedest man you never heard of.
That’s how Kassa got the name “Bokassa”, later shortened to “Kassa”, back in the 80’s; back when he was a student, and the Senior Prefect of Motown.
Yep! Kassa was an old “School P”, and not any regular School P.
Heck, he’s arguably the most popular School P since 1927. As a Senior Prefect, Kassa’s story was the stuff of legend. It wasn’t because he was a stellar student, which he was; it wasn’t because he was strict, which he certainly was; it wasn’t even because he was uncompromisingly mean.
It was because, for almost one whole term, Kassa doubled as the headmaster of Motown, after overthrowing the actual headmaster. 
I cannot make this stuff up. The idea is so ridiculous, I wouldn’t mention it if it was not a historical fact.
Boss-level ‘hard-guyness’.
Do you realize how much influence you need to have to orchestrate a coup d’etat, In high school of all places?!
What could possibly have led to students overthrowing a whole headmaster? Well… once again, there are many stories, but two popular ones stick out.
The first says that the headmaster was a weird occultist who used to walk around the school barefoot. Not that there’s such a thing as a regular occultist, but I’m just relaying a story here. I wasn’t there.
The second story says that the headmaster was mismanaging the school and its resources. I know, the second one sounds more reasonable, but where’s the fun in that? Once again, I wasn’t there.
All I know is that one day the headmaster was in his office when Kassa and about a dozen other seniors walked into this man’s office and asked him to leave and never come back.
The boys had just one job: if he refused to leave, they were going to carry him out! See? Hard guy!
I bet you’ve seen all kinds of freedom fighters in your day, but I dare you to show me a student who dethroned their headmaster. I’ll wait.
There are many more stories. One of my favourites involves Reggie Rockstone and a nightclub where Kassa was undercover, catching students who had gone clubbing.
But let’s move past this crazy throwback.
The Shuma
Kassa was late to class that Friday morning. It was very unlike him. We kept looking out of the window in search of the white Opel Astra that would announce his arrival. The man made us jittery.
After fifteen minutes a green Kia Shuma pulled up in front of the form one block. We didn’t know that car. Maybe it was an old student, we thought.
Technically, we were right. Kassa stepped out of the car and jogged — yes, for some reason, he jogged a lot — into 1 Science 4. The class went deathly quiet. Without offering a greeting, he scribbled a number of equations on one side of the board.
“I have a meeting with the headmistress. You have thirty minutes to finish this.” And with that, he was off, jogging back to his new car.
As he opened the door and sat in, we could hear the buzz of whispers across the block as everyone realized that Batman had a new batmobile.
He reversed out of the parking space like he was hot on the tail of the Joker, then sped off towards the administration block, heading to the principal’s office. The same office where thirty years earlier, he had asked a man thirty years his senior to leave and shut the doors behind him.
The days of the Opel were over. The Kia Shuma was the new symbol of terror.
PS. (Random Fact)
Kassa was in McCarthy House, back when it was a boys house. That was also former president J.J. Rawlings’ house. It’s another thing they have in common besides coup d’etats. I find that funny.
But really, I think Kassa is most like Papa J in this way: you can love him, you can hate him, but you can’t ignore him.
I’m not his biggest fan, neither am I his biggest critic. But to take Kassa out of the Motown story is like taking an infinity stone out of Thanos’s gauntlet. It’ll still be powerful, but it won’t snap the same.
I know, I know, I need better references.