Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana 9780748626847

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International African Library 33 General Editors: J.D. Y. Peel, Colin Murray and Suzette Heald

ETHNICITY AND THE MAKING OF HISTORY IN NORTHERN GHANA

The International African Library is a major monograph series from the International African Institute and complements its quarterly periodical Africa, the premier journal in the field of African studies. Theoretically informed ethnographies, studies of social relations 'on the ground' which are sensitive to local cultural forms, have long been central to the Institute's publications programme. The IAL maintains this strength but extends it into new areas of contemporary concern, both practical and intellectual. It includes works focused on problems of development, especially on the linkages between the local and national levels of society; studies along the interface between the social and environmental sciences; and historical studies, especially those of a social, cultural or interdisciplinary character.

International African Library General Editors

J.D. Y. Peel, Colin Murray and Suzette Heald Titles in the series: Sandra T. Barnes Patrons and power: creating a political commtmity in metropolitan Lagos 2 Jane I. Guyer (ed.) Feeding African cities: essays in social history 3 Paul Spencer The Maasai of Matapato: a study of rituals of rebellion 4 Johan Pottier Migrants no more: settlement and survi·val in Mambwe villages, Zambia 5 Gunther Schlee Identities on the move: clanship and pastoralism in northern Keuya 6 Suzette Heald Controlling anger: the sociology of Gisu violence 7 Karin Barber I could speak until tomorrow: oriki, women and the past in a Yoruba town 8 Richard Fardon Between God, the dead and the wild: Chamba interpretations ~f religion and ritual 9 Richard Werbner Tears Qf the dead: the social biography of an African family 10 Colin Murray Black Mountain: land, class and power in the eastern Orange Free State, 1880s to 1980s 11 J. S. Eades Strangers and traders: Yoruba migrants, markets and the state in northern Ghana 12 Isaac Ncube Mazonde Ranching and enterprise in eastern Botswana: a case study of black and white farmers 13 Melissa Leach Rainforest relations: gender and resource use among the Mende of Gala, Sierra Leone 14 Tom Forrest The advance ofAfrican capital: th£ growth ofNigerian private enterprise 15 C. Bawa Yamba Permanent pilgrims: the role of pilgrimage in the lives of West African Muslims in Sudan 16 Graham Furniss Poetry, prose and popular culture in Rausa 17 Philip Burnham The politics of cultural difference in northern Cameroon 18 Jane I. Guyer An African niche economy: farming to feed Ibadan, 1968-88 19 A. Fiona D. Mackenzie Land, ecology and resistance in Kenya, 1880-1952 20 David Maxwell Christians and chief< in Zimbabwe: a social history of the Hwesa people c. 1870s-1990s 21 Birgit Meyer Translating th£ devil: religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana 22 Deborah James Songs of the women migrants: peiformance and identity in South Africa 23 Christopher 0. Davis Death in abeyance: illness and therapy among the Tabwa of Central Africa 24 Janet Bujra Serving Class: masculinizv and the feminisation of domestic service in Tanzania 25 T. C. McCaskie Asante identities: history and modernity in an African village 1850-1950 26 Harri Englund From war to peace on the Mozambique-Malawi borderland 27 Anthony Simpson 'Half-London' in Zambia: contested identities in a Catholic mission school 28 Elisha Renne, Population and progress in a Yoruba town 29 Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of struggle and the end of apartheid 30 R. M. Dilley Islamic and caste knowledge practices among Haalpulaar'en in Senegal: between mosque a11d termite mound 31 Colin Murray and Peter Sanders Medicine murder in colonial Lesotho: the anatomy of a moral crisis 32 Benjamin F. Soares Islam and the prayer economy: history and authority in a Malian town 33 Carola Lentz Ethrzicity and the making of history in northern Ghana

ETHNICITY AND THE MAKING OF HISTORY IN NORTHERN GHANA CAROLA LENTZ

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS for the International African Institute, London

© Carola Lentz, 2006

Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Plantin by Koinonia, Bury, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne

Transferred to digital print on demand, 2007 A CIP record for this book is available from the British library ISBN-10 0 7486 2401 5 (hardback) ISBN-13 978 0 7486 2401 0

The right of Carola Lentz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. For other publications of the International African Institute, please visit their web site at www.iaionthe.net

CONTENTS

List of maps and plates Preface

Introduction

Vl

Vll

1

1 The North-West in the Nineteenth Century

14

2 The Introduction of Chieftaincy

33

3 The Discursive Creation of Ethnicity

72

4 The Lawra Confederacy Native Authority

104

5 Labour Migration, Home-ties and Ethnicity

138

6 'Light over the Volta': the Mission of the White Fathers

153

7 Decolonisation and Local Government Reform

175

8 'The Time When Politics Came': Party Politics and Local Conflict

199

9 Ethnic Movements and Special-interest Politics

228

10 The Cultural Work of Ethnicity

252

Epilogue

275

Notes Abbreviations Glossary Divisional (Paramount) Chiefs of Lawra District References Index

280

322 323 324 325 337

LIST OF MAPS AND PLATES

MAPS

1 The Black Volta region today 2 North-Western District of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 1905 3 Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, Provinces and Districts, 1907 4 Carte du Haut-Niger au Golfe de Guinee, L. H. Binger, 1887-9 5 The Hinterland of the Gold Coast, G. E. Ferguson, 1893 6 North-Western District of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 1905 (detail) 7 Northern Province by Tribal Areas, 1928 8 Territoire dagari, Paternot, 1949 9 The new districts of the Upper West Region, 1989 10 Tribes in Ghana, 1960

Xll

35 54 77 78 81 106 161 243 258

PLATES

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Lawra Confederacy divisional chiefs, c.1939 Nandom Naa Imoru and chiefs, 1940s Gratiano Naabesog and his wife in Tarkwa, 1950s Lawra Naa J. A. Karbo, 1949 Abayifaa Karbo, Member of Parliament, 1954 Jirapa Naa Bapenyiri Yelpoe, 1962 K. Y. Baloro as teacher, Lambussie, 1950s Nandom Naa K. P. Polkuu, 1960s Chiefs during the Kakube festival, Nandom, 1994

109 124 148 177 205 206 223 225 255

PREFACE

Tuonianuo, 'Bitterness is sweetness': this name, given to me by Anselmy Bemile, my Dagara father, was intended to encourage me to be patient and persevere. Like all Dagara personal names it expressed the name-giver's life experience and was to guide its recipient through life. As one of the first Catholic converts in his family and in his village in North-Western Ghana, Anselmy had courageously worked for many years as a catechist and farmer, and sent all seven sons and one daughter to school. Conflicts with chiefs, imprisonment, the malicious gossip of his enemies- this was the bitterness, the hardship, as Anselmy would often tell me. And the joy? Well, now in his old age, he had little cause for complaint. One of his sons worked his fields, and all children visited home regularly- never with empty hands. Thus, his own name had proven true: Bemile, let them talk, never mind what others may think. Tuonianuo: Were not all his efforts rewarded in that his eldest son Paul became Bishop of the Wa Diocese and that Sebastian, after many years of study in Germany, had finally come home, together with me and so many other students, to study the Dagara culture? That I was now a part of the family was no coincidence, Anselmy continued, his father Yob was not baptised with the name Carolus for nothing. And Yob, actually y6b-bvm, means: the rewards of travel. It was on my very first trip to Ghana in 1987, that I got to know Anselmy and his wife Catherina, his brothers Jonas Nifaasie and Gervase Waka with their families, his son Barth and his wife Cordelia and the extended family of the house ofYob in Hamile. To make Ghana the place where I would do my future research was in effect an armchair decision, when the Department of Social Anthropology of the Free University of Berlin asked me to organise student fieldwork in a West Mrican country. Back then I had no idea that I would become so attached to Northern Ghana so as today to consider it to be a second home. But after having spent a week of my first trip at Anselmy and Catherina's compound in Hamile I knew this was where I wanted to conduct my research. It was particularly the long conversations with Anselmy that impressed me: he, who had never been to school, spoke with great authority about the Dagara way oflife and about their neighbours, about the history of his family and the Kpiele clan, about his earlier role in local politics and his estimation of the current government. And when he asked

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ETHNICITY AND HISTORY IN NORTHERN GHANA

about the various customs in Germany, as he often did, and I responded, he would be amused by how 'uncivilised' we were. Of course in his eyes Christianity and the wisdom of the ancestors, local knowledge and greater politics, and the enjoyment of modern consumer goods and pride in one's traditions did not contradict or undermine each other, but were part of one greater reality. I would later come to know more such old men and women, who with great dignity knew how to balance 'tradition' with 'modernity'. And I made friends among the younger generation, the labour migrants and the educated elite, who impressed me no less; under the most arduous circumstances they would try to reconcile the expectations of their relatives back home with the requirements and constraints of modern professional and family life in the city. The present work is the product of my many stays in Ghana and would not have been possible without the support of a great many people, only a few of whom can be named here. First and foremost I would like to thank Anselmy Bemile and Catharina Kuunifaa, Barth Bemile and Cordelia Y elkekpi and of course Dr Sebastian Bemile and his wife Kate Kuuire as well as my other brothers and sisters for their love, friendship and support. With gratitude I will always remember the instructive conversations with Archbishop Peter Dery, Bishop Dr Paul Bemile and Dr Edward Tengan. To Father Gervase Sentuu and Father Richard Abba-Kugbeh I owe thanks for their heartfelt hospitality and their continuous encouragement. Without the kind support ofNandom Naa Dr Charles Imoro, Lambussie Kuoro K. Y. Baloro, Lawra Naa Abayifaa Karbo and Jirapa Naa Bapenyiri Yelpoe my research would not have been possible. Conducting 'multi-ethnic' research is a tricky endeavour, and it was not always easy to proceed through the thicket of older and more recent conflicts, some of them still quite virulent, with the requisite diplomatic sensitivity. Some have accused me of being too 'pro-Dagara', others of being much too understanding of the Sisala perspective. But in the house of the Nandom Naa and of the Lambussie Kuoro, where I had the privilege of being a frequent guest, my research was followed critically, but quite benevolently. I owe a great many thanks also to the other members of the Nandom chiefly family, particularly Rear-Admiral (Gn. rtd) Kevin Dzang Chemogoh and Gbeckature Boro, as well as to W. K. Dibaar from the earth-priestly family in Nandomkpee for their readiness to speak with me. Dr Daniel Delle, also a member of the Nandom chiefly family and a surgeon in Trier, Germany, who kindly supported my work from the very beginning, often provided me in our many conversations with just the information and the advice I needed to be able to continue writing. Heartfelt thanks also go out to Kumbonoh Gandah, who was so generous with his wealth of expertise on tradition and politics in Lawra District, and Salifu Bawa Dy-Yakah, from the chiefly house of Lambussie, who was always ready to explain the intricacies involved in the politics ofNorth-West Ghana.

PREFACE

ix

Thanks also go out to the former District Secretaries ofLawra-Nandom, Raymond Maaldu and Isaac Dasoberi, and of Jirapa-Lambussie, Jacob Boon and Ivan Angbing, Regional Secretary Y. Antunmini, his successor Y elechire and the employees of the regional archives in Tamale as well as those at the Ghana National Archive in Accra. Professor Nana Kwame Arhin Birempon and the Institute of Mrican Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon, welcomed me as a research associate and extended their generous support. I am also grateful to the assistants who have worked with me over the years: Anthony Baloro, Cornelius Debpuur, Isidor Lobnibe, Gregory Sullibie and Dominique Ziniel. And last, but not least, I would like to name at least some of those friends, whose many conversations contributed greatly to my work: John-Bosco Baanuo, Aloysius Denkabe, Peter and Claire Der, Ben Kunbuor, Dr Edward N. and Prudence Gyader, Linus Kabobah, Ambrose and Lucy Kokoro, Alexis Nakaar, Bruno Ninnang, Jacob Songsore, John Sotenga and Jacob Yirerong. Far too many of my most important Ghanaian interview partners have passed away in recent years: Y. Antunmini, Anselmy and Barth Bemile, Dr Daniel Delle, Peter Der, Bawa Dy-Yakah, Lambussie Kuoro K. Y. Baloro, Jirapa Naa Bapenyiri Yelpoe, S. W. D. K. Gandah, Lawra Naa Abayifaa Karbo ... Their deaths have been a great loss. It is in their memory that I would like to dedicate this book. Like the research itself, this book has a long history, during each phase of which I incurred many debts of gratitude. The initial manuscript was written between 1995 and 1996 and submitted as a post-doctoral thesis to the Free University of Berlin. Here I would like to thank first and foremost the staff of the Department of Social Anthropology and especially Georg Elwert for their faithful support. A grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft financed part of the field research and made the write-up possible. During my time as Professor at the Department of Historical Ethnology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt, the manuscript, more than one thousand pages in length, was shortened and published in 1998 by the Koppe-Verlag in Cologne, appearing in the series 'Studien zur Kulturkunde' under the title Die Konstruktion von Ethnizitat. Eine politische Geschichte Nord-West Ghanas, 1870-1990. Only generous financing by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft made the publication possible. I owe many thanks particularly to Karl-Heinz Kohl and Beatrix Heintze, the editors of the series, as well as to Rudiger Koppe, who approved the generous distribution of free copies so that German-speaking Ghanaians could read it and together with reviewers push for its translation into English. This marked the beginning of a long odyssey through the world of English-language publishing, which ended with the realisation that there simply was no market and therefore no publisher for such an extensive monograph about such a small spot on the African continent. It took me four years to get used

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ETHNICITY AND HISTORY IN NORTHERN GHANA

to the idea that I would have to sacrifice much of the historical detail that was so dear to me and shorten the book to less than half its original length, i.e. to make an altogether new book out of it. Without the encouragement and editorial support of John Peel I would most likely have never embarked on such an undertaking. A great many thanks to Robert Parkin for his competence as translator, to Stephanie Delfs for her assistance with the technical aspects of producing the new manuscript, and to Richard Kuba for his great help with the maps in this book. In addition, without Katja Rieck's tireless editorial commitment, wonderful feel for the subtleties of language and skill in identifying argumentative snags the English text would never have become as readable as I hope it now is. And finally I would like to mention the names of at least a few of those who supported me throughout the writing process and in innumerable conversations helped further clarify my thoughts: Emmanuel Akyeampong, Andrea Behrends, Thomas Bierschenk, Artur Bogner, John Comaroff, Mamadou Diawara, Andreas Eckert, Peter Geschiere, Axel Harneit-Sievers, Beatrix Heintze, Richard Kuba, John Lonsdale, Tom MacCaskie, Birgit Meyer, Paul Nugent, Achim von Oppen, Mike Rowlands, Gerd Spittler, Katja Werthmann, Ivor Wilks and Albert Wirz, who unfortunately also left us far too soon. Finally I would like to send this book on its way with a Dagara proverb and ask my friends and interlocutors for forgiveness should- despite all my efforts at preserving historical accuracy and balance- half-truths, ignorance, imbalances or errors have crept into the text: Saan zi bavnE yaarz' kpa-puo tirv E. A guest who knows his way around, often wounds the back of his head.

In other words: the better a visitor or a researcher thinks he knows his way around and the more confidently he moves about in the house, the more often he will in the dimness of the interior whack his head on the low ceiling, reminding him that he does not know the place as well as he thought he did. NOTE ON SPELLING, TERMINOLOGY AND ETHNIC NAMES

Because of the variances in both Dagara and Sisala spelling, place names and indigenous terms pose problems. There are attempts at standardisation, but many people still use their personally preferred orthographies as does much of the archival and other written material quoted in this book. When using my own words, I have, with some simplification in the use of diacritical signs, mainly relied on the orthography proposed by Sebastian Bemile (1990), which has been adopted by many Ghanaian Dagara intellectuals. However, when quoting, I have retained the original spelling. I hope that readers are not offended by my use of words such as 'tribe' and colonial ethnic names such as 'Dagarti', 'Grunshi' or 'Lobi' without always employing quotation marks or italics. The use of these terms and

PREFACE

xi

names, even if not set off in direct quotation, are part of a particular historical discourse, be it of colonial administrators or local actors, of which I am by no means uncritical. But since the subject of this book requires that I use these terms and names in almost every other sentence, I have often omitted the quotation marks in the interests of readability. A final problem concerns the use of the terms 'Dagara' and 'Dagaba', which are currently the most common, but also controversial ethnic selfdesignations, as is discussed in further detail in the final chapter of this book. Some believe that the people living around Wa, Nadawli and Jirapa form a distinct group, the Dagaba (the British 'Dagarti'), who speak Dagaare, and that they should not be confounded with the Dagara, who speak Dagara and live around Lawra and Nandom and in parts of South-Western Burkina Faso (the British 'Lobi' and 'Lobi-Dagarti'). Although some would admit that these two groups together actually form a single large ethnic community, they still insist that the correct name for this large community is Dagaba. Others hold that Dagara is the only correct term for both the language and the entire ethnic group. According to the available evidence, neither Dagaba (sing. Dagao) nor Dagara are neologisms but rather long-standing indigenous ethnonyms which the local people themselves generally use when speaking in their own language. However, in English-language conversations, and particularly when addressing Ghanaians unfamiliar with the North-West, one often also hears the colonial term 'Dagarti' or 'Lobi'. In any case, Sean Hawkins' (2002: 6, 41, 102-3) decision to adopt Jack Goody's nomenclature that refers to the Dagara/Dagaba as 'LoDagaa', because of a purported lack of consensus on which name to use and because 'these terms are of little concern to the people themselves' (Hawkins 1996: 233 fn. 3), is highly problematic. Unlike Hawkins, I did encounter a 'strong sense of collective consciousness' (ibid.) and a lively interest in the issue of which name to use. The lack of agreement on the part oflocals regarding the choice of terms does not justify simply imposing an observer's name, particularly when it is one that the locals themselves actually reject. Because most of my discussions refer to the area around Nand om and Lawra, I have in this book decided to use the term Dagara unless referring specifically to the residents of the 'Dagaba' area and unless, of course, when quoting from other discourses.

S/SALA

Bourra

----------.------.--·-

S/SALA

• Jirapa