Subj: Our Past, Present and Future : Part 2
Date: 18/02/97
To: Okyeame@mit.edu
CC: chronic@ghana.africaonline.com

CC: indep@ghana.africaonline.com

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Compatriots,



Excerpts of  and comments on the Chronicle Article



The following excerpts are reproduced for the benefit of those who may not seen the original article ("THE ASHANTI IN THE FACE OF DISCRIMINATION") in the Ghanaian Chronicle of 3-4 February 1997, p. 9:

1. "It is a singular thing that these people - the Ashantees - who had never seen a white man nor the sea, were the most civil and well bred I have ever seen in Africa ... (Mr John Swanzy before a Parliamentary commission, 20 June 1819)". ..
2. .. "The Asante conquered the British at the battle of Nsamankow and captured General (sic) Charles MaCarthy commanding the army."..
3. .. "During the Second World War, Asante alone bought three war plans (sic) for Britain to assist her defend herself." ...
4. .. "All the above are about a people who have been variously referred to as the saviours of the Gold Coast. Many knowledgeable personalities have admitted that but for the Asantis, the white man would have treated the Gold Coast with a worse form of apartheid than they did in South Africa." ....
5. .. "In the end, the Ashanti won and the British ran away from Cape Coast to Accra. The Ashantis traced them to Accra and they packed bag and baggage and left for Britain." ..
6. ... "The last war the Ashantis fought with the British was the Yaa Asantewaa War, and the British did not win that war on the battlefield." ..
7. .. "The the whole of land of the country now known as Ghana would have been taken free of charge, without the least resistance from any of the remaining nations or tribes." .
8. ... "For as Rattray puts it, the Ashantis cook their war. We the youth of Asante don't know whether our elders are cooking a war." ...
9. .. "Have you heard of the Asante kente and Kookoo sika? Have you not heard of the Kwahu stores?" ...
10. .. "The Ashanti ruled an empire bigger than modern Ghana for centuries." ...
11. .."Ashanti was nation over two centuries before Ghana became a nation." ..
12. ..."Ashantis will fight and liberate themselves and all Akans from tribal discrimination, for Ashantis know that they are nothing without Akan." ..
13. …"Ashantis will fight." ..
14. "The free education programme of Dr Nkrumah which has spread academic knowledge to all sorts of people was financed by the Asante "kookoo-sika." (Please note that inconsistencies in the usage of words, including Asante and Ashanti, are attributable solely to the writer of the original article).

I cannot believe that all Asantes share Kwame's interpretation of Ghana's past and the supreme importance of the Asantes in Ghana. Many have complained about protracted discussion on Okyeame of Asante complaining, particularly on the basis of fairness, about the over-targetting of particular peoples.

Personally I am concerned about the possible effects propagandist articles such as the one under discussion might create in Ghana. Tribal, racist or blood-based ideologies as set out in Kwame's article are dangerous and can lead to genocide as occurred in Nazi Germany and is presently occurring in Bosnia, Rwanda and elsewhere.

The Chronicle article, while presumably criticising Ewe tribalism, unashamedly trivialises the role of all non-Asantes in the history and development of Ghana. Carried to its logical conclusion this article would amount to a plain proclamation of a master tribe doctrine in Ghana. What would be the place of non-Asantes in Ghana if such doctrine were implemented?  


Ethnic Discrimination in Ghana

Kwame's article with its dire warning of a new Asante war is both ridiculous and contemptible. The general claim of anti-Asante discrimination in the Ghanaian Chronicle is only one of countless such allegations which seem to have become an id¾e fix¾ for some. I am personally tired of addressing these claims. Yet at the risk of being traduced as dabbling in tribal matters I feel compelled to continue to refute the unsupported claims of the latter day tribal supremacists. Whatever the validity of Asante claims it is largely vitiated by the inclination of some Asantes to see the alleged discrimination as directed almost exclusively at Asantes.

There is currently in vogue a multiplicity of writers who while expressing genuine concern about aspects of ethnicity in Ghana see the victims as essentially Asante. Such a stance is misconceived; it puts the Asante in an invidious position. Certainly, the Asante are not the most deprived people in Ghana; nor has a cogent argument been yet presented which proves that the excesses of the Rawlings administration have affected the Asante more than most.

On the other hand, it can probably be proven that Asantes have been among the main beneficiaries of the present political dispensation. What about the Frafra, Dagomba, Dagarti, Gonja, Krobo, Guan, Kwahu, Assin, Ga, Nzima? Are they exempt from the discrimination complained about or are they not entitled to equal political aspirations? One wonders whether Kwame realises that his article implies a natural Asante right to political power in Ghana which excludes the above and other peoples.

By rubbing people the wrong way in this manner Kwame only sets in train a self-perpetuating prophecy which creates considerable angst various Ghanaian peoples. Will they and their children and their children's children perpetually tolerate a political configuration which sees power as only swinging between the Asante and the Ewe, with the Asante effectively claiming to be the master tribe of Ghana?

As to the excerpts produced by Kwame to support his article there is nothing extraordinary in the report of James Swanzy that the Asante were civil and well-bred. Many such comments have been made about countless other peoples throughout Africa. The works of Rattray on Asante are generally recognized as eulogistic; as for Rattray's theoretical model of Asante as a feudal state it has been decisively disproved by amongst others Professor A.N. Allott, Akan Law of Property, University of London PhD thesis 1954.

This discredited feudal theory is at the heart of the "empire" thesis of the territorial extent of Asante. Kwame states that the Asante "empire" was greater in size than modern Ghana. If it is seriously stated that Asante was feudal and the Asantehene had suzerainty over all peoples within this "empire" then logically the Asantehene could at some stage claim to have once owned all Ghana lands as well as some lands in Togo and Ivory Coast; for really suzerainty is a feudal term that involving land ownership. In this regard some might find certain recent developments in the Brong Ahafo region of some importance.

In spite of the blanket statements of Adu Boahen regarding Asante the idea of an Asante "empire", the notion of an "Asante empire" remains a contentious and in all probability unsustainable. In the "Structure of the Greater Asante (1700-1824)", The Journal African History, Vol. 8 (1967), pp. 65-85 K. Arhin has questioned whether there was in fact any such thing as an Asante empire, noting at p. 67: "
I am not yet clear whether the territorial results of the Ashanti wars can be called an empire."

In fact, not all of the Asante wars even had territorial results. Yet in several of his writings Boahen includes the Ga among the states conquered by Asante, but nowhere are we told when they were conquered; nor can Asante suzerainty over the Ga be assumed simply because the Asante had defeated some other power. The plain truth is that Ga won every fight they had with the Asante: a skirmish over Asante interference with salt-mining in the Songor lagoon at Ada; the storming of an Asante garrison on Duffo island on the Volta; and most memorably at Katamanso.
The Fanti were never completely subdued, hence the frequency of Fanti-Asante skirmishes; they resisted continually, rejecting the imposition of alien authority.

Queen Dokua and many of her subjects left for Accra when Asante gained ascendancy over Akyem. Yet Boahen's "map" of the Asante "empire" offers no possibility of any tribe within Ghana being outside the "empire". I have seen no evidence in the records yet of Asante soldiers and administrators at Brofoyedru or at Kpedze.

To be Continued

Onukpa Kwei