There is archeological evidence of human inhabitation of modern Ghana
300,000 years ago, and clear evidence of agriculture, domestication of animals,
and quite large settlements dating back to 2,000 BC. But, perhaps not surprisingly, nobody knows
who the people were or what became of them.
The evidence is mainly from the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo regions south of
the Black Volta river and west of Lake Volta – ie in the middle of modern
Ghana. There is apparently also evidence
in the central and northern part of Ghana of settlements of more than 2,000
people dating back to circa 1,000 AD, which is said to indicate increasing
urbanisation and probably points to a significant volume and frequency of trade
with the empires further north in the Sahel.
I don’t know whether archeologists have searched in vain for early
evidence in other places – but my guess would be that there hasn’t been much
serious archeology or anthropology here and that there would be things to find
if anyone had the urge and money to look.
The Brong-Ahafo and Ashanti regions also happen to be where the Ashanti
kingdom was when the Portuguese arrived.
The Bradt guide is at pains to point out that before the nineteenth
century the Portuguese (and indeed other Europeans) weren’t guilty of
“colonialism” in Africa. They built
fortified trading stations on the coast, with the permission of the local
chiefs, and on land leased from them – but the fortifications were directed at
other European powers rather than the natives.
The trade was channeled through the people whom the Europeans first
encountered – the Ashanti in the case of the Portuguese, and later the Fante in
the case of the British. The new contact
with the Europeans was a valuable asset for these people and they seem to have
taken care both to protect it by preventing other groups from trading directly
with the Europeans, and to organise themselves so that they could trade onwards (in
both directions) with others.
Bradt says that trade was carried out genuinely and “on an even
footing”. It probably isn’t for me to
wonder what “an even footing” really means, and in particular whether the
African traders had any real appreciation of the relative value of what they
sold and bought. But something in me
thinks that they didn’t; and from other reading I have formed the view that
European traders became very rich (and that the wealth their countries amassed
enabled them to venture out into the wide world and encounter peoples in other far-flung
places, not always to their immediate benefit).
By contrast, you can’t see a lot of evidence of accumulated wealth or
other benefits from the relationship here in Ghana. However, it has probably always been the case
that people sell their trade-goods for as much as they think they can get for
them, and buy at a price that they think represents reasonable value – and over
time the operation of the market will normalise prices in both directions. So it’s probably wrong of me to feel that the
Europeans got the better end of the bargain and in some unfair way exploited
the Africans they encountered.
I might also be under-estimating the financial risk for the traders, and
the physical risks their captains and crews took. Sailing far from home in the best ships their
technology could produce (which don’t exactly look robust to a modern eye) was
undoubtedly a highly hazardous business.
Many ships didn’t make it back; and money must have been lost in
quantity as well as gained. Despite
these arguments, though, my feeling remains that the Europeans got a pretty
good deal.
So, the Ashanti were the people the Portuguese came into contact with
when they arrived on the coast. The
Portuguese were content not to try to go inland (and they didn’t, for example,
attempt to find and take hold of the gold mines). The Ashanti (or Asante) people prospered as
they were able to take control of trade in a similar way to the previous Ghana
and Mali empires. Were they the direct
descendants of the original hunter-gatherers and early farmers? Well, Bradt says that “oral tradition” has it
that most of the present-day inhabitants of Ghana migrated from elsewhere in
West Africa and displaced a race called the Guan – who seem to be widely
regarded (in the same oral tradition) as the aboriginal occupants of Ghana, but
have been assimilated into other groups except for a few small populations.
Now, on the plane coming here there were – not surprisingly – quite a
lot of black people. I assumed they were
mainly Ghanaian, on the flimsy evidence that they had a choice of African
destinations from Heathrow and had picked Accra. It struck me that they were really rather big
people – tall, broad and bulky (and some of them also well-covered). Sitting between them on the flight, Jane and
I were quite constrained in our little pocket of airline-allocated space.
At the hotel, I discovered that Ghanaians also came in several other
shapes and sizes. There were some very
tall, bean-pole-like people carrying not a scrap of spare flesh and not many
body curves. They reminded me strongly
of a character in an old film – perhaps King Solomon’s Mines – whom I think I
remember being referred to as an Ashanti.
Another group were much shorter in stature, still distinctly slim, but
with more curves (both genders). The
women in this group, like some of the larger and well-covered individuals, have
quite prominently sticking-out buttocks (but the very tall, slim ones don’t) –
very convenient if you carry you baby on your back (and I paused to wonder
about cause and effect).
Then there were other people who didn’t fit into any of these shapes and
were, in effect, just ordinary. I also
thought there were some quite distinctive facial shapes – high cheek-bones;
rounder or more oblong faces; different shaped noses and eyes; back of the
skull with either a prominent bulge or no bulge at all. Some of these regularly went with a
particular body shape – the tall, slim people have oblong faces, high
cheek-bones and not much bulge at the back, for example.
I naively assumed that these different-shaped people, which (I thought)
clearly exemplified the genetic diversity on this continent, would map at least
approximately onto different ethnic groups.
Well, an admittedly limited bit of personal research has pretty much
blown that theory out of the water. It
seems that population movements over millennia have thoroughly mixed up the
body-shapes so that nowadays you get some of each in all the groups, and all
sorts of mixtures. I think this might not
be true of some specific populations in other places – the bushmen of the
Kalahari for example – but it seems to be the case in Ghana.
At school they teach that there are five broad ethnic and language
groups in Ghana, all going by names that I hadn’t previously heard. They also teach (with what strikes me as an
undue degree of confidence) approximately where these groups came from and when
they arrived. Ghana doesn’t have written
records of the long periods of history when these population movements were
taking place (and neither does any other African country). It does seem that the present population
groups were established where they are now by the time the Portuguese sailed
over the horizon. Since then until
independence they seem to have been reasonably static. Probably the biggest disruption during this
period was the slave trade, but that seems to have taken individuals out of the
country and perhaps caused some settlements to disappear altogether, rather
than push people round the country.
The Ashanti are part of the Akan group, who account for more than half
of Ghana’s total population and whose language, Twi, would be the obvious
contender to be a national African language for Ghana. Apparently some people have advocated this. But there are enough non-Twi speakers and, perhaps
more to the point, non-Akans here for this to feel like domination by one
ethnic group and thus to be very widely unacceptable, even among Akans. They Akans are reckoned to have come from the
north, from the Sahel, and many of their traditions mention Bono as their
starting point (that’s another of the empires in the Sahel, which was going
full-swing under King Akumfi Ameyaw I (1328 – 1363(!))).
The eastern part of Ghana is predominantly occupied by Ewe people (this
is pronounced Eh-veh – it was written down by Germans – though I’ve heard lots
of Ghanaians say Eh-weh). They also live
next door in Togo – further evidence that Ghana’s borders are arbitrary as
regards population groups.
In the north it’s the Moshi-Dagomba, who might be descended in a
slightly roundabout way from the Mande-speakers of the ancient “Ghana empire”;
and in the south it’s the Fante on the western side of the country and the Ga,
or Ga-Adangbe in and around Accra, and to the east along the coast. The Ewe and the Ga-Adangbe are thought to have
come from eastern Nigeria; not all at once, and by a range of routes; probably
a hundred or two years later than the Akans and the Moshi-Dagomba arrived.
Pick a Ghanaian at random and ask him/her which ethnic group he/she
belongs to, and you might get a blank look.
Ask him what tribe he belongs to, though, and you can be one hundred
percent sure that he knows with complete certainty. He’ll also know the names of a dozen other
adjoining tribes that he doesn’t belong to, and he’ll know what their languages
are (and he’ll probably be able to understand most of them at least to some extent)
and how their traditions differ from his own tribe’s. My strong impression is that, if you’re
talking about different “ethnic groups” in Ghana, the aspect which would make
sense to Ghanaians is the bit about tribes.
Ghanaians can’t quite get their heads around the fact that we white folk
don’t have tribes – how can you not be part of a tribe?
Some books tell you there are 70 or 80 different languages in
Ghana. I’m only going to quarrel with
that to the extent that it isn’t easy to draw a clear boundary between languages,
and I think that a lot of these might more properly be dialects – but that’s
territory for linguists and (speaking as an ex-linguist if not a current
paid-up member) to be honest it’s pretty sterile. There are more tribes than this – some
different tribes speak the same language (half the population speaks Twi, after
all), while others have a language all to themselves.
The main inhabitants of Zebilla are the Kusasi, and they (and only they)
speak Kusaal. They also speak Kusaal in
Bawku, 25 miles to the east – and you can start quite a serious argument when
you notice that the Kusaal in Bawku isn’t exactly the same as that in Zebilla,
and ask which one is “right”. They
continue to be Kusasi and to speak Kusaal north over the border in Burkina
Faso. Bolgatanga, 25 miles to the west,
is a Frafra town and their language seems to be rather different.
South of Zebilla and Bawku you enter the lands of the Mamprusi, who
speak Mampruli. Conflict between the
Kusasi and the Mamprusi in Bawku is the only example in Ghana of inter-tribal
disharmony which has cost lives in recent times. Things are said to be quiet at the moment,
and have been for the best part of 10 years, though we understand that there
was conflict-related a murder in Bawku as recently as November 2013. A favourite tactic when things are tense is
for people to ride round on motorbikes, with the pillion passenger shooting at
people. For that reason, men are not
allowed to ride motorbikes in Bawku.
A
local person told us a little of the history of this conflict and I’ll relay
what we were told because it is interesting; but I can’t vouch that it is a
true or complete account. Apparently, at
some point in the past, the Kusasi were being dominated (ruled?) by another
tribe; and they didn’t like it; and they enlisted the help of the rather
warlike neighbouring Mamprusi to liberate themselves. The action was successful and, in gratitude
and recognition, the Mamprusi leader was made a “king” (see below for the
meaning of this word – but note that “king” here isn’t the top dog). Apparently this wasn’t intended to be a
hereditary position but when that individual died, either he tried to hand the
position on to his son, or his son tried to claim it; and there has been
conflict about this ever since. It gets
referred to as a “chieftaincy dispute”. We
didn’t pick up how long this has been going on for. And perhaps the important point to emphasise
is that this is a thoroughly isolated instance.
Throughout Ghana the different tribes and ethnic groups coexist in
harmony; and Ghanaian people are known across Africa for their tolerance and
for their propensity to talk rather than fight.
A really good example of this is that the result of the last national
election here was disputed, and referred to the Supreme Court for
judgement. When that judgement was
delivered, the two opposing parties accepted the decision, and shook hands on
it, and life went on as normal, and the supporters of the party that the
decision went against don’t seem to harbour bad feelings. People here are as justifiably proud of that
as our USA friends can be over the outcome of the “hanging chads” affair a few
presidential elections back.
This
hasn’t always been the case, incidentally.
For example, in the 19th century there were repeated
instances of warfare between the Ashanti and the Fante – but that’s a long way
in the past now.
An
interesting feature of Ghana’s civic set-up is that in parallel with the
elected parliament there is a hierarchy of “chiefs”. I only want to mention this briefly here and
I haven’t done a huge amount of homework on it, but the key points seem to be
as follows.
Obviously,
before the colonial period, there had been local systems of government among
the various people living here. Given
the multiplicity of tribes and their differing ancestry, the local arrangements
presumably differed one from the other – certainly in detail and possibly in
some quite fundamental ways too.
In
the colonial period – beginning in the middle of the 19th century - Britain
ruled its “Gold Coast Colony” under a system referred to as “indirect
rule”. The way this worked was that the
local systems of government continued as before, but under the supervision of
the colonial administration. The main
reason for this was probably that Britain couldn’t afford to send enough people
to all its colonies to rule them directly, so it had to come up with a less
expensive option. The “indirect rule”
approach was working successfully in Uganda so it was tried elsewhere,
including the Gold Coast.
There
are all sorts of problems with “indirect rule”.
The people are pretty quick to realise that their chief isn’t actually
in charge any longer, so internal respect for the local government risks being
substantially undermined. Consequently
there’s every bit as much tension between the colonial administrators and
locals as there is under direct rule – but there are fewer colonial
administrators to deal with the problems, though extra resources can in theory be
shipped in if needed. For any Scouts in
the audience, the future Lord Baden-Powell was among the soldiers sent to the
Gold Coast to deal with problems with the Ashanti which led to the British
occupation of Kumasi in 1896.
In
instances where the local chief wants to do something which goes against what
the colonial administration wants, he ends up having to back down or is
removed. Also, to make life easier for
the colonial administration, the different flavours of local government end up
being treated as if they’re all the same – so various quite important aspects
of the traditional government are swept aside, further undermining the standing
of the local chiefs and increasing the locals’ sense of having lost their
independence and traditions.
One
aspect of the traditional government which disappeared in this way was the fact
that the local chief tended not to be a hereditary ruler in his own right, but
rather the appointee of the local tribal elders. The elders had the power to overturn any of
the Chief’s decisions and laws that they didn’t like, and they could remove him
and replace him with someone more suitable if they didn’t like the way things
were developing. Of course, “indirect
rule” couldn’t cope with that, so the “council of elders” was effectively
stripped of its role and power and the local version of “democracy” went out of
the window.
I’m
not sure that the role of the “council of elders” was exactly the same
everywhere – in fact, my guess is that the model wasn’t identical, and there
might well have been tribes or groups where there was a ruling family or
dynasty and there wasn’t any local “democracy” – but I haven’t researched the
point very far.
An
aspect of the local arrangements which seems to have survived is that, in some
places at least, there was quite a bit of internal hierarchy. Small tribes just have a chief and life is
simple. But bigger tribes have a chief
for each local part of the tribe, and a “paramount chief” who has power over
them. There are different titles for
these lesser chiefs, “king” being one of them (“naba” is another). My impression is that people here quite like
hierarchy and the pomp and paraphernalia that go with it, which provide an
outlet for what seems to be a reciprocal need for the powerful to be deferred
to and the less powerful to defer - so there seems to be quite a lot of
it. Zebilla is apparently divided into
19 districts, each of which has a “chiefette” (my term) who forms part of a
council presided over by the Zebilla chief.
I think there might also be a “paramount chief” (this is the title of
the top dog) – maybe of the Kusasi - who is one up from the Zebilla chief. Jane and I have been presented to the Zebilla
chief – it seems it’s one of the things that has to be done. We haven’t actually encountered the local
“chief assistant to the assistant chief”, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to
learn that there is one.
As
well as these bits of local hierarchy, there were also all sorts of allegiances
and ties which linked tribes, and of course they all continued under the new
regime and were one of the ways in which the authority of the colonial
administration could be undermined a bit.
At
the point when Ghana became independent, this dual system of government was
still in place – and, not least I suppose because Ghana’s independence was done
in quite a hurry, it carried on post-independence. So, as well as all the “chief” arrangements
which I’ve just described, there is also a District Assembly for the Bawku West
District of the Upper East Region (whose capital is Zebilla and which extends
several miles from the town in all directions); and a Regional Assembly for the
whole of the Upper East Region; and of course a national government. Maybe a some point in the future I’ll blog about
how things actually get done and where power actually resides under this system
– it all seems pretty complicated,
unclear, inefficient, and ultimately unsatisfactory to me.
It
doesn’t seem now to be the case that the Government of Ghana has authority over
the chiefs in the same way as the colonial administration did. But things have not reverted to the position
where the “chief” (as appointed by his local “council of elders”) makes and
enforces the law in his land – all of that remains the province of the national
government. On the other hand, if you
ask someone in Zebilla whether the power lies with the chief or the government,
the majority seem to think that the chief is more important. They can’t actually tell you how that comes
about, but it seems to lie in an ability to ensure that things don’t happen if
the chief doesn’t want them to. “Accra
is a long way away”, they will say. If
people have a problem that needs sorting out, they seem more likely to try to
enlist the chief’s help than to have recourse to the institutions of the
government. I’ve heard it said that the
situation might be different in big cities, and I can imagine that would be the
case since the cities are populated by people who have migrated there from all
over the country, so there aren’t long ties of family and tribe which form a
chief’s power-base, and which individuals can use as a conduit to access him.
Different
systems of local/internal government don’t seem to be the only things that
were/are different in different parts of Ghana and among different groups. Different tribes have their own traditional
dances and music, probably also their own drumming traditions. They have traditional clothing – here in the
north it’s the “smock”; the Akans wear the “kente” (which is actually the name
of the stripy fabric, but also seems to be the name of the long and wide strip
of cloth that they wrap round themselves and over one shoulder).
They
put different tribal marks (ie scars) on their babies’ cheeks, which stay with
them for life. Each tribe has a
different pattern (though I think some might not indulge in this practice). These marks are quite a shock when you first
see them and you imagine that it’s a cruel practice and really painful for the
baby; however, I’m assured they’re
actually only small and superficial scratches into which some herbal concoction
is rubbed so that they remain visible permanently. As an outside observer, actually what I see
is the similarities between all these things, rather than the subtle
differences between one tribe and its neighbour.
Some
things seem to cut across all tribes.
Religion is an example I think.
There are said to be three religions in Ghana – Christianity, Islam and
Traditional. Probably the actual
situation is that each tribe has the traditional religion, but they tolerate
Christianity and Islam. As far as I can
tell, you get practitioners of each religion in every tribe. I’ve asked whether the traditional religion
is the same in every tribe and the answer seems to be yes and no. It’s “yes” in the sense that the traditional
religion is actually a pretty vague concept, without a core text or a specific
doctrine, or any central institutions or accredited training for its ministers. You might conclude that it barely passes as
an organised religion at all! It’s mainly
to do with the mysteries of life – the miracle of reproduction and birth, the
mysteries of death. There are rituals
for these important events, and if they’re not followed properly then all sorts
of unpleasant interactions happen between the human world and the spirit
world. Jane has been told more than once
that a child’s disability is the result of the placenta having been handled
wrongly at birth… This is where the answer turns into “no”; because different
tribes seem to have their own take on these rituals, so what is required in one
tribe might not be the same as in the next tribe. Since each tribe has its own priests/witch
doctors, and the craft is handed down to the next acolyte/apprentice, this
isn’t really a surprise.
My
own impression though is that, despite the different labels that might be given
to religious beliefs and observation here, there is a huge amount of
commonality. Christians and Muslims seem
to have incorporated all sorts of aspects of the traditional religion into
their faith and practice, as well as imitating each other. Taking funerals as an example (funeral here
doesn’t just mean the occasion when the body is buried – it’s also the party
that happens afterwards (sometimes weeks afterwards)), as far as I can tell the
only differences between a Christian, Muslim and traditional funeral are
whether alcohol is drunk and whether fire-crackers are let off. Muslims mainly don’t drink alcohol; neither
do some varieties of Christian; traditional beliefs don’t seem to pose any
limits on imbibing. Whether the drink is
alcoholic or not, they all spill a bit on the ground before they drink to
appease the ancestors/spirits (or to honour the Chief if he is around). Only the traditionalists let off
fire-crackers.
All
the religions seem to bury the deceased person near or in his/her home compound
(though we have seen a couple of quite small cemeteries in cities). All seem very keen indeed to ensure that the
deceased’s spirit is given a good send-off and doesn’t have any excuse or
incentive to hang around and interfere with ongoing life. Ghanaians in the main also seem to be very
tolerant of other Ghanaians’ religious beliefs – they enjoy each other’s
festivals and holidays, and they’re entirely happy for the prayer at the start
of a meeting to be Christian and the one at the end Muslim – or vice versa or
any other combination.
The
guidebooks are keen to point out a feature which distinguishes the Akans from
the rest of Ghanaians. Their inheritance
is “matrilineal” rather than “patrilineal”.
Now, given that “women’s lib” doesn’t seem to have got anywhere near
Ghana yet, this sounds like an encouragingly liberal idea and worth exploring a
bit more. “Matrilineal” means that
inheritance is down the mother’s line rather than the father’s.
When
I was asking what this meant in practice, I started with the question of
marriages between members of different tribes.
Are these allowed? Yes, of course
– and they happen quite a lot. Now, I
know here in the north they are “patrilineal”, and that when a woman marries a
person from another tribe, she joins the husband’s household and tribe not
vice-versa. So, in a matrilineal system,
does the husband join the wife’s tribe?
No. That suggestion meets with a
furrowing of the eyebrows. Obviously it
wouldn’t be practical given that many men (of all religions) have multiple
wives – a man couldn’t sensibly be a member of each of his wives’ tribes, could
he now? And the children are members of
the husband’s tribe, even in a matrilineal system? Yes, of course.
So,
when a man dies, who inherits? It seems
that in both patrilineal and matrilineal systems, property, land etc are
divided amongst the sons (daughters being catered for by benefiting from the
inheritances of their husbands). I
haven’t managed to get entirely to the bottom of what happens to unmarried
daughters – they certainly exist, but they’re a bit of an aberration. Unmarried daughters normally remain part of
their parents’ household. And since
family living is a communal experience here, it’s unusual for a man to live
alone, so when he dies “his” house is still occupied by lots of people and they
seem to continue living there. The house
seems to continue to belong to the family in general – it isn’t inherited by
the eldest son, who of course is married and has set himself up with his
wife/wives in a house of his own. I
can’t see this being an enduring arrangement but it’s all I’ve been able to
discover. But it doesn’t seem to make
any difference whether this happens in a patrilineal or matrilineal
system. From what I’m told, widows don’t
inherit under either system – though that seems to be at odds with what I’ve
observed in at least one case. Our
landlady, who has featured before in this blog, was widowed a year or two back,
and she certainly behaves as though she continues to own the house and land.
The
difference between patrilineal and matrilineal seems to come to the fore when a
man dies without having produced any sons.
In a patrilineal system, property would be shared among his brothers;
and in a matrilineal system it would be shared among his wife’s brothers. Presumably if there are multiple wives, there
are conventions about which wife’s brothers have a call on what – but I haven’t
managed to find out what they are! It’s
clear that inheritance has been a problem in Ghana, because laws have been
passed stating that it has to be spelt out who will inherit at the point a
marriage is contracted. On the ground
that doesn’t necessarily make a difference, though, because the law only
applies to the “legal” arrangements, and plenty of people seem to get married
in church or mosque or “over the brush” without anyone bothering about legal
documentation. And, coming to the end of
this blog, I think that’s another feature of life here which is a constant and
applies to all ethnic groups and tribes.
Ghanaians of all flavours and persuasions don’t seem to get hung up on
the formalities of the law.
To
summarise, it seems to me that the people who live in Ghana today have quite a
diverse inheritance in terms of ethnic make-up, but the differences are of
detail not substance and that any individual Ghanaian will turn out to have
much more in common with his neighbour than differences arising from different
ethnic, tribal or religious background.
There is probably more difference between rural and urban people, and
it’s probably the case that everything is more fluid in the cities. I do think that Ghanaians could produce a
pretty good list of their national characteristics and it might be the case
that these would distinguish them from their neighbours. Developments over the last couple of
centuries might be a significant cause of those differences, since Ghana is
surrounded by francophone countries where the colonial power didn’t apply
“indirect rule” and might have left more of a colonial legacy – unless perhaps
you think that being pretty laid-back about pretty much everything was a
distinguishing characteristic of the British as colonists (but that’s not a
view I would share).
No comments:
Post a Comment