Opinions of Thursday, 20 March 2008
Columnist: Dugbazah, Mawuetornam Apostle
Analysis: Ghana's Chieftaincy Debate (Part 2) by Mawuetornam Dugbazah
The Injustices of Chieftaincy as an Institution
I have often wondered why some debaters from the ante-chieftaincy camp readily perceive the flaws of chieftaincy's actors (not necessarily the institution itself) but choose to be lenient when similar flaws arise in association with conduct demonstrated among elected officials who are actors within the largely European-funded ?democratic? governance institutions. Let me ask: do these modern democratic institutions of governance not have roots in Europe's traditional belief that Africans are inferior? It is no wonder then that terms like ?ko?εto? (villager) largely originated from among educated Ghanaian urbanites as a term of ridicule for those who inhabit the nation?s rural areas. This may partially explain why some from the ante-chieftaincy camp are outraged by the ill-doing of chiefs but lenient when similar behaviour is exhibited by elected officials. "Tis a case of cultural (perhaps Europe-inspired) bigotry. I say this because of the double standards the ante-chieftaincy camp uses in this circumstance.
There are four perceived injustices of chieftaincy that are usually articulated in the analytically deficient writings of some from the ante-chieftaincy camp. They are: mismanagement of land resources; questionable or backward customs or traditions (i.e. trokosi and/or fiashidi); the absence of meritocracy in attaining to offices associated with chieftaincy institutions and following from this, the belief that chieftaincy retards modernism or 'development'. All of these perceived injustices of chieftaincy, except the absence of meritocracy argument are based on evidence that can be unearthed from primary and secondary sources. Unfortunately though, the ante-chieftaincy camp has left much to be desired in unearthing this evidence. This only provides more opportunity for the pro-chieftaincy camp to argue its case to uphold the institution.
The point I want to raise in relation to the story is that the locality in question has a series of very simple but well laid out procedures for land acquisition. Apparently, the entire process is common knowledge to many of the indigenes of the area. In this particular case, there is a land granting elder who works in concert with several other elders and even reserves the right to reject land acquisition requests in the interest of its posterity and the norms of the community. Land acquisition requests can also be rejected on the basis of non-compliance with community obligations, an occurrence which sometimes happens with young people deemed by elders as ?amεyewo me?o ta o (people with no direction). More recently an occasion arose where a ?foreigner? acquired land from a member of the locality who is not a part of the land-granting group. The foreigner?s means for land acquisition was circumvention of the traditional land granting person(s): the man bribed another member of the community to acquire land for him. In the end, the traditional land-granting elder also granted the parcel of land to another individual with consent of the other elders. As you can see, this situation can create considerable difficulty. And it has.
Whose is to blame in this land acquisition fiasco? Is it the chiefs and land-granting elders? Or corrupt individuals who do not respect their own commonly accepted land acquisition customs? It seems that some people need to learn to respect and interpret customary land acquisition regulations (published and formal or not) as though they were indigenous ?bye-laws?. Again they may not be published or even formally enshrined, but they are what they are: the norm. This particular story opened my eyes to the fact that many times, when Ghanaians cackle over the so-called duplicity of chiefs in land sales, they conveniently leave out the other details: land purchasers trying to bribe their way into land acquisition via circumvention of their own customs. They also fail to point out that these occurrences have sometimes led their elders to answer their land requests with a big NO. This is hypocrisy and indicates that some of these stories that Ghanaians peddle need to be investigated further. In these discussions we should at least hear the chiefs and elders' side of the many land mismanagement stories. Perhaps there is something that those in the mainstream aren't being told.
The truth about some of these land acquisition tales that some corrupt Ghanaians among the educated elites usually tell in order to justify the disbanding of chieftaincy needs to be told. Perhaps when we get to the heart of the matter, we may learn that in some cases, it was a non-royal, a corrupt elder or even a corrupt purchaser who facilitated land acquisition thereby leaving certain royals to be absolved from guilt. Now that the Ghana Land Administration Project (LAP) has been put in place, this young writer predicts that foreign interests will only escalate the problem of land disputes because of Ghana?s current crop of higher educated (in the western sense) but treacherously corrupt elected officials. Yes, I believe that these elected officials will demonstrate themselves worse than the chiefs who are often being condemned without an opportunity to provide their side of the story.
If you do not believe my thesis, that foreign influence on elected officials via financial support of Ghana?s LAP will escalate land dispute issues just consider the history of the Buem state (Jasikan District of Volta Region) in modern Ghana. If Ghanaians refuse to learn from their history, as a diverse group of nations within a modern republic, they will repeat it. Buem?s example supports the thesis that European influences on Africa's leadership institutions lead to corruption. Of course, this is even when things are made to look good on the surface and are projected to be as such in the European and North American media.
Buem, it should be recalled was an experiment in ?amalgamation? where Akan monarchical chieftaincy models were intermingled with the priestly chieftaincy model of Eυes with the intention of making Eυe chiefs cater to European economic agendas. The experiment was intended to see how easy it would be to effect changes in Eυe chieftaincy elsewhere in Togoland in order to motivate its actors to chase cocoa profits, personal aggrandizement and British interests at the expense of indigenes of the Eυe-speaking populations of the early 1900s period. The experiment failed with the case of Buem ending in ethnic fighting due to problems with stool authenticity. Among the Ho-Eυes, resistance to amalgamation later gave way because of the availability of willing actors to participate in Britain?s corruption of Eυe chieftaincy. Now, if European interests were successful in achieving amalgamation in Eυedomε in the 1930s, despite considerable initial resistance on the part of Eυe indigenes, they will likely be more than successful using elected officials of the modern epoch whose allegiance to domestic interests has historically been next to non-existent. Check out what I have to say on the issue of questionable or backward practices associated with chieftaincy in Part 3 of this series.
Mawuetornam Dugbazah is the Editor of Our Insight, a quarterly published in Western Canada. His articles usually deal with African affairs, Health and Science issues and Business. To subscribe please write Our Insight c/o D-COMM at Suite 1428, 5328 Calgary Trail NW, Edmonton AB Canada T6H 4J8.