Subj: SIMPLE LIES & COMPLEX TRUTHS  -   Majorities, Minorities and the Rest of Us !
Date: 28/11/97
To: KDanso@compuserve.com,  Okyeame@mit.edu

CC: africa_think_tank@databack.com, yarak@tamu.edu, eddtorto@hackney.gov.uk, enikoi@spelman.edu, africa@Africaonline.com.gh,  chaindzi@aol.com , kotobabi@mcs.net, saryee@HKBU.edu.hk, samaddy@uiuc.edu, ayittey@american.edu,  quaynor@ncs.com.gh, CpCoaster@aol.com, addyy@rpi.edu, akwawukume@usa.net, M.AMOAH@lse.ac.uk, fmanu@morgan.edu, masallar@unixg.ubc.ca, ade@equinoxc.demon.co.uk, Gilbert_Addy@europe.notes.pw.com, ades@equinoxc.demon.co.uk



Mr. Rt. Hon. Kwaku Danso ( Presidential Aspirant ),

SIMPLE LIES & COMPLEX TRUTHS  -   Majorities, Minorities and the Rest of Us !

I notice that you referred to me several times during your recent emotional exchanges with Ade Sawyerr. For instance you,  on a couple of occasions,  questioned why somebody of my advanced years should be living outside Ghana. I would like to inform you that I spend as much time in Ghana as I do outside of it every year. I have family and Ga-Dangme community commitments in North America and the U.K. which require me to visit these places regularly.

I also decided many years ago to spend this evening of my life in scholarly pursuits in the belief that in knowledge lies the truth, honesty,  humanity, humility and a host of other qualities and virtues which are evidently foreign and anathema to you. Unlike you and some others, I have never run away from Ghana.  In fact I was there only two   months ago and will be there again in a few weeks time.

Since my last posting to you, I have decided to try to forget about you in the firm belief that you are your own worst enemy and that politically you will inevitably be your own hangman as a result of your monumental arrogance, materialism, ignorance and tribalist bigotry.

One of the pleasures of the past week has been observing the way in which the brilliant Nii Addy and some others have made you look like an intellectual paperweight. To be brutally frank, Nii Addy has not only made you look like an intellectual paperwieight - he has actually neatly and cleverly exposed you as one  !

Since you are in the habit of using the net to spew a lot of ignorant garbage, I feel obliged to correct you,  and others who may have been influenced by you , on a number of issues which have led to your recent fights with just about everybody who stands up to your unique blend of ignorance and arrogance.  Let me speak finally on this political obsession of yours : the myth of the Akan majority.




The Akanfo or Akan Concept



It is never been cogently argued who the "Akan" are, and why that definition should exclude, for instance, the Ga and Ewe who share some Akan traditional institutions and nomenclature. So far the main criteria for Akanness seem to be matrilineality, alleged original or first known settlement at Bono-Techiman, the sharing of common borders and the non-practice circumcision.

As to language for example, the Xhosa and Zulu of South Africa speak mutually intelligible versions of the Nguni language without being considered one people. Strictly-speaking one becomes an Akan through possession of the female blood. This means that a son of e.g. the Asantehene by a Dagomba woman is not Akan.

In case, you consider this too academic, I can assure you it is the definition adopted by the courts of Ghana in succession to the property of intestate Akans.  The venerable John Mensah Sarbah, for instance, wrote that: "Fanti laws and customs apply to all Akans and Fantis and to all persons whose mothers are of Akan and Fanti races" (See JM Sarbah, Fanti Customary Laws, London 1897, p. 15).

It would be interesting to know whether this factor was taken into consideration in   compiling statistics in the past on ethnic composition in Ghana. If it wasn't the census-takers must have been in some very gross error indeed. It may further be noticed from the above quote that Sarbah himself appears to make a distinction between Akan or Twi-speakers and the Fanti.

By the above criteria for "Akanness" other peoples in South-eastern Ghana, say, the Gá-Dangme, the Ewe and certain Guan groups could easily create their own ethnic bloc based on the practice of circumcision, patrilineality, migration from the East and historical inter-mingling through settlement on each other's territory.

Such a group could be designated the Boka ("East"), emphasising their origin Eastern origin. Like the Akan they would not all share a common language but would be cohesive and numerically strong enough to polarise Ghana (at least the Southern part of it) along an Akanfo/Boka faultline.



Development of the Akan Concept



Reference has been made on Okyeame to the influence of Fanti "philosophers" to the development of Southern Ghanaian, specifically Akan, culture. The term Akan was actually introduced by John Mensah Sarbah, Kobina Sekyi, J.E.Casely-Hayford, J.B. Danquah, etc., deriving it from the term "Akanfo" of which "Akan" is the anglicised version.

A 1629 map reproduced in John Bosman's A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, London 1967 reprint (plate opposite p. 1), shows that Akan was actually one of a number of small states in what is now Southern Ghana.Questions of common origin and the like, as considered by the early native intellectuals, were at best guesswork.

JB Danquah, for instance, suggested that the Akanfo originated in Mali, arguing that they were the builders of the ancient Ghana empire, and therefore succeeding in his argument that the Gold Coast should be re-named Ghana. In fact, the ancient Muslim empire of Mali had nothing to do with any of the peoples of present-day Ghana; the Mandingo and kindred peoples were the known builders of the Ghana empire.

If anything, it was the serendipitous lumping together of various native groups of uncertain origin within the forests of Southern and Middle Ghana which provided the beginnings of a common culture as well as a lingua franca in the form of a common trading language, Twi. Much of what is today depicted as being distinctly Asante culture, for instance, derived from things introduced by the Portuguese - for instance the carrying of notables in palanquins, the art of weaving, goldsmithery, deathmasks, etc.

There is no common history of unity, the dominant factor in defining a people, to link the Asante to the other Akanfo. Further, day-names, such as Kofi, Kwame and their variations are so widely spread over Southern Ghana, Southern Togo, Benin Republic, Southern Ivory Coast (e.g. Kojo (Ga), Kwadwo (Asante/Fanti) and Kodjo (Ewe)) that it would be absurd to suggest that they should constitute the basis of a common identity for only Akanfo peoples.

There is evidence that the practice of chiefs sitting on stools was long practised in the kingdom of Benin with which the Ga and Ewe have been associated during their migrations. Also, history tells us that long before the Asante allegedly conjured and worshipped a stool out of the skies (believe it if you wish; as far as I am concerned it is utter mumbo-jumbo) (approximately 1700) the Ga stool had been sent by Ga royal migrants, the present-day Gé or Genyi of Anecho in Togo.

Even more crucially, the Akwamu whose emergence really bequeathed the Asante with notions of statecraft, learnt the art of government from the Ga; they sent their princes to the court of King Okaikoi. The contention that the Asante and allied peoples taught the rest of Ghana the art of chiefship is therefore of dubious validity.

But perhaps the greatest evidence of the meaninglessness of the Akanfo concept is Asante tendency to go it alone politically, play mischief with the term, and lord or attempt to lord it over other Akanfo.  For the Asante, the term "Akan" is no more than a tool of convenience to be used in furtherance of their majoritarian claims and covert aims and aspirations. Herein lies the justification of the baseless claims by some Ghanaian politicians and journalists ( like yourself , Otuo Acheampong of GRI as well as some NPP politicians )  that Akans constitute over 60 per cent of Ghana's population. Some more fanciful tribalsits put the figure at over 70 per cent.  I wouldn't put it past those who repeat this lie to massage population figures in Ghana at the least opportunity.
  


Asante wars of aggression upon the Akanfo



Worse, Asante wars of aggression, waged mainly against other Akan at the least excuse shatters any notion of the Asante ever realistically spearheading a drive for Akanfo unity. Please refer to the statement of Bowdich ( "Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee",  London 1918, page 4): "Few [Fantis] were slain in battle, for they rarely dared to encounter the invaders; but the butcheries in cold blood were incredible, and thousands were dragged into the interior to be sacrificed to the superstitions of the conquerors."

Mr. President -to-be, people like myself ,  Andy-K , Ade Sawyerr , Nii Addy and Dodoo have provided enough factual and statistical evidence to disabuse your tribalist mind with its divisive agenda of any fallacies regarding the ethnic make-up of Ghana's population.

If you want to dispute this  version of things, by all means do so on empirical grounds, but do not fail to cite your proofs. You have undertaken no such task. Instead you have behaved like a vulture or hyena - the choice is yours -circling frenziedly over the intellectual exertions of others, salivating and then madly picking over the bones of what has been  carefully and meticulously articulated.

Your tribalistic rantings  remind me of Antonio in the Court scene in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice describing Shylock (in dogged pursuit of his pound of flesh) as the devil quoting scripture to suit his purpose, when Shylock described Portia as a Daniel come to justice.

It was Thomas Paine who observed: "Freedom has been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and slavery of fear had made men afraid to think." See T. Paine, Rights of Man, London: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature 1996, p. 117. Emboldened by Paine one must not stand idly by and through "slavery of fear" permit the writings of tribalistic historians, inadequate aspirant intellectuals , politicians and mean gutter journalists to stand as truth.
Or to paraphrase (quote?) the English poet, John Donne and the motto of Commonwealth Hall, University of Ghana:  "On a hill, cragged and huge/Truth Stands and he that will approach her/About and about must go."

Truth stands.  Poor Danso, by all means challenge us but show , rather than claim, your sterling scholarly qualities in doing so. You do not win over anyone by mechanically ( your qualification in mechanical engineering notwithstanding ) and thoughtlessly spewing questions and generalisations off the top of your head. Say something worthwhile, something meaningfully and systematically articulated, supported by relevant evidence.



Developments in Ghana - The Way Forward



I am a disinterested observer of developments in Ghana - a dangerous and iron-hearted free thinker, if you like. I fear neither the wrath of governments nor the displeasure of any particular tribal lobby; those are for the faint-hearted.

We must encourage reasoned debate up front, before the fierce whirlwind blows and the Augean stables are cleansed of charlatans and self-seekers as well as the detritus of corruption and pollution; not prove to be expert post-mortem analysts when the bitter hand-wringing starts and our words have no use.

Does a reasonable man bite back at a mad dog? I am not amused by your theatrical exaggeration of facts and manifest lack of comprehension of simple writing. Once your writings are elevated to the level of serious and/or rational contemplation and analysis, however inelegantly expressed, I will respond to them. But will the cactus ever flower?

Danso, You are probably playing above your league; fighting above your weight.
If anyone asked me what ought to be done to arrest the ethnic fermentation currently developing across my motherland, and the mentality of the writers of odiously tribalistic articles in the national press, I would say:
firstly, change the primary and secondary curricula to ensure that our children learn about all of Ghana's peoples.
The Ghana education system is rotten, but formulating curricula, as has been the case since the 1960s, in which some children read only about their people and therefore think no one else is important in Ghana leads particularly to jingoism and false perceptions. At present the majority of material covers mainly the coastal peoples (basically Fanti and Ga) and Asante; there is scope for re-arranging the presentation of such material and including other material on peoples from the north and the Volta region. 



Moving On



One smells fear and defeatism in your recourse to dodgy argumentation, Mr. Danso. But you needn't worry,. As far as I am concerned this particular issue has been over-squeezed; we cannot perpetually dwell on the subject of the Akan / Asante proportion of the population of Ghana

For all and sundry the 1996 elections may well go down in history as the moment the wheels fell off the tribal bandwagon in Ghana politics, and the crushing realisation dawned on the chauvinists that accession to leadership should primarily be on the basis of calibre, not ethnicity or Asanteness or Akanness.



Arguments & Logic



Mr. Rt. Hon. Danso, your argumentation is prototypical intellectual rubbish: muddled sequencing, baseless assertions, lack of hard evidence, spelling and grammatical mistakes,   and merely cottoning on to the points raised by others - nothing original; nothing even by way of decent critique.

As Ghanaians in North America and Europe would fully appreciate, the absence of Black history of the national curricula of Western countries has been a favourite means of undermining Black confidence and increasing White assertiveness. Should we, knowing fully well the consequences of such education, tolerate such a situation in the land of our birth?

Any generation of men or women fed on the material currently constituting the history of Ghana in primary and secondary school curricula is bound to produce the ignorance and pigheadedness shown in by you and some others on Okyeame  and by the chauvinist and divisive articles one increasingly reads in some sections of the independent press in Ghana.

When that happens people who have hitherto taken no interest in the plight of their own ethnic groups would sit up, take notice and draw conclusions.

Unlike many I still have faith in Ghana, faith that we will overcome our problems even if our triumph will not be in my lifetime. The prophets of doom and the myopic and divisive politicians will always fail.

Long Live Ghana !

NUMO NOTSE AMARTEY