Mahama's shameful tribal campaign must be condemned

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THE REAL C.Y. ANDY-K 7 years ago

As someone who has decided that there is no real good choice, as they are all the same, and resigned myself to whoever wins the election, I have kept away from making comments on this farcical election. I am making an excepti ...
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As someone who has decided that there is no real good choice, as they are all the same, and resigned myself to whoever wins the election, I have kept away from making comments on this farcical election. I am making an exception here.

The truth of the matter is that Mahama is simply trying to use the undeniable ethnocentric and bigotic credentials of the NPP tradition against them. Even in opposition, their supporters never toned down their contempt for Northerners and Ewes in particular. Only a newcomer to Ghanaweb or a deranged hypocrite will deny that Northerners are not held in much contempt by many NPP supporters from the Akan ethnic group. We may not be reading much of the pepeni and ntafo name-calling recently but it is still there.

Voting for NPP therefore may be like blacks and Asians voting with far-right parties in the recent BREXIT ref. in the UK to leave the EU, or for Trump. Soon afterwards, the racists they joined to vote started attacking them!

On the other hand, it is a proven fact that the NDC is ethnically more accommodating than the NPP. It is the only party in Ghana which is embraced passionately on a large scale in all the 10 regions of the country. The shakers and movers in it are spread all over the country, not only in two regions like the NPP. Indeed, if an Asante emerges as a presidential candidate in the future, he/she will garner the same support and enthusiasm accorded Mills and Mahama. That's why Mrs Konadu Rawlings shouldn't have been in haste to become President and left to form her own party.

Mahama was therefore simply fishing in the muddy waters of ethnocentric politics to score points against the NPP as a party (not Akans as a people as being miscontrued here by mischievious xters like bentil), even if some consider that as cheap points. But the fact remains that he was trying to throw back the NPP's own mud - its ethnocentric credentials.

Andy-K
Mr Bond 7 years ago

Like l always said if those people in the north will hate their own children and themselves to vote for president John Dramani Mahama who refuse to pay their children feeding grant that lead school closer for three months and ...
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Like l always said if those people in the north will hate their own children and themselves to vote for president John Dramani Mahama who refuse to pay their children feeding grant that lead school closer for three months and student has to stay home missing their lessons and their NHIS also not active to receive service is very pathetic and these people will hate themselves and forgot president John Dramani Mahama wickedness and vote for then they are enemies to themselves and the wards who president John Dramani Mahama starve them to teach them a lesson and also ordered the military to beat youth nurses trainee and let them watch the sun.Folks it time we should remind the north folks to let know the atrocities president John Dramani Mahama commit against his own people.
THE REAL C.Y. ANDY-K 7 years ago

Yeah! Upon all that claimed neglect, just as we in the VR suffered under Rawlings many years in office, you then come to rub pepper in their wounds with constant insults, vilifications, accusations of tribalism, and what not! ...
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Yeah! Upon all that claimed neglect, just as we in the VR suffered under Rawlings many years in office, you then come to rub pepper in their wounds with constant insults, vilifications, accusations of tribalism, and what not! Think about that! Ibi the monkey wey say the person wey insult am say his left arm be left, his own no dey pain like the person why add salt to it. Abi, you sabi dat?

What tribalism did JJ practise if all indices showed that the VR came out among the worst regions under his rule? And what tribalism is Mahama practising if his own people are also on the receiving end of his alleged misgovernance and incompetence?

I am pissed off by the Mahama regime but the ethnocentric jerks in the NPP preclude me from wishing that the NPP wins this election. Besides, I am an unrepentant pro-Nkrumahist.

Andy-K
Onnidin 7 years ago

God bless you.

God bless you.
Kweku Donsuro 7 years ago

Being an apologist for Mahama?

Being an apologist for Mahama?
Kwesi 7 years ago

The president was 100 percent right, the truth is bitter.

The president was 100 percent right, the truth is bitter.
THE REAL C.Y. ANDY-K 7 years ago

Twum Boafo has said it as it is without mincing words. I have been saying it as it is for over two decades now. SO WHAT THE HECK WHEN THE SHITE HITS THE CEILING?

Having read a more accurate version of what Mrs Attivor rep ...
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Twum Boafo has said it as it is without mincing words. I have been saying it as it is for over two decades now. SO WHAT THE HECK WHEN THE SHITE HITS THE CEILING?

Having read a more accurate version of what Mrs Attivor reportedly said, I agree 100% that it is simply hypocritical for anyone to come out to denounce her and ask her to apologise WITHOUT at first or ever condemning the ethnocentric utterances and actions of the NPP leaders and elements that gave grounds for her own utterance, which simply sought to benefit from the ethnocentric politics and actions of the NPP tradition when in power. She might have goofed by misspeaking factually but what she said was simply a reaction, albeit a skewed one, thereby giving a golden opportunity to hypocrites to bare their rotten teeth. And now against Mahama!

I myself had pointed out those things that instigated her many times in articles. An anti-PNDC refugee, an Ewe himself, Dr Kodzi, even wrote a book in the early 1990s in which he pointed out the Anlos as the Ewes to be killed, in response to the rampant loose talk by some Akans that Ewes would be killed by them. That was long before Agyapong's loose talk a few years ago.

I had narrated and posted many times my own personal experiences in Nigeria with some of those would-be assassins. All of you pretending and insulting Attivor should therefore fcuk off! Hypocrites! Attivor’s faus pas is just the tip of the discontent in the VR she tried to mine. For an increasing number of people from there, particularly Ewes, secession from Ghana is the only option and they say worse things.

I welcome Manasseh's plead that we don't sweep the matter under the carpet but discuss it. I have been doing that since the early '90s. I have a 10-series continuation of my Ethnic Imbroglio waiting on ice for years now. I shall post the Part 1 here to refresh the memories of all and inform those who didn't read it before. First, another refresher.

WILFULLY BLIND OR JUST PLAIN IGNORANCE?

I have been amused, and somehow puzzled, at the rumpus being raised about what crazed Agyapong said. But what I find surprising is the virtual hypocrisy and mendacious attempts to brush this issue under the carpet by some linked to the NPP as just a one off aberration. These people pretend or do not seem to know that Agyapong’s threats were not the first admonishing the killing of Ewes, something the readily available facts betray. Facts I have been referring to from 1994 in cyberspace, recounting my own personal experiences with some of those advocates of Ewe killers in Nigeria during the early years of the PNDC. Of course, I have not as yet told the full story. But as Fela said, “I no kpata de finish!”

Hmm! As I found out when I was insulted “basabasa” by a man who turned out to be one of my many uncles, (when I apparently misspoke on the hike in petrol prices in the 1993 budget, on a bus from Anloga to Dzelukope in 1993), - being mistaken for a Quashiga hireling who had joined the “Eblutorwo” (Akans) preparing to come and kill them - my people back home were fully prepared and waiting for the quislings to start the attacks; I was assured. That was long before anyone heard of Justice Kpega as a political pundit! Phew! Me, a die-hard Nkrumaist in league with NPP assassins, to go and kill my fellow Anlos? Well, after all, it was in Lome, an Ewe centrepiece city even if many are of Ga-Elmina(Anyi) extraction, that they first congregated and started those loose talks against Ewes, thus forcing most Ewes in exile opposed to the PNDC to abandon the opposition to the PNDC and the anti-Ewe bent it had taken. So, many of us Ewes knew about their evil intents a long time ago, as they were eating our akple and fetri detsi and planning it in our kinsmen homes! Hardly any of them knew that much of the land of Lome is owned by people from Aflao and environs. Ignorant morons come in all shapes, you know. They were lucky no one poisoned them in Lome.:-)

Equally, I have read opponents to Agyapong’s utterances, including some Ewes, made some false and misleading statements, which shows that they are ignorant of the facts of the origins of the ethnic imbroglio in Ghana, despite my persistent efforts and write-ups sketching that sordid history, from the pre-colonial to the post-independence era. I read someone situated in the 1979 elections period Victor Owusu’s scathing attacks on Ewes as “inward-looking” during the exchanges with Dr Agama in Parliament after the Apollo 586 sacking of mostly Ewes by the Busia regime! How come?!

Ignorance and superstition are recognised as key cogs in the vicious cycle of backwardness that is our lot as developing people but the extent most so-called educated Ghanaians wallow in these two inhibiting traits is just stupendous and disheartening!

Many try to claim that Rawlings introduced tribalism into Ghana by employing predominantly Ewes into sensitive public posts, especially the security sector; whereas the same claims of Ewe domination of posts had already been used effectively against Gbedema’s NAL by Busia’s Progress Party during the 1969 General Elections, as I had quoted from Dennis Austen to show but something all grown-ups at the time knew about. It was therefore unfortunate that the late Prof Adu Boahen, as a historian who knew or ought to know better, fed into these fabrications of Ewe dominance, creating his own when he reportedly claimed in a British Council lecture in 1988 that Prof. Akilagpa Sawyerr, a Ga who was given the VC post which he thought he deserved at the time, was an Ewe; and promised in his interview granted to Mahoney and his Africa Watch magazine to redress the presumed ethnic disparity when the NPP was elected into office. To me and many discerning Ewes, especially the Ewe elite, it was all déjà vu. But I was still surprised to find out that some decade long Ewe opponents of the PNDC voted for the NDC in 1992! It would not even surprise me if someone who knew Justice Kpegah’s political views very well in the 1980s came out to say that he was an arch-enemy of the PNDC in the Bar Association. I was visiting Ghana and in Ho in 1990 when the people of the VR angrily rejected the no party idea that the PNDC was then lobbying for, effectively halting the campaign for it. Those in BA had already voted yes.

Yes! The NPP had itself to blame for their dismal reception in the VR, as they lost the plot with their tribal agenda reminiscent of the 1969 campaign. In Accra, they lost a lot of Ga support when the same Prof Adu Boahen at a rally, in trying to whip the anti-Ewe venom, made that gaffe about Gas being pushed by the PNDC to be sleeping 10 persons to a room, besides many of the main speakers speaking in Twi which pissed off the Gas! In 2000, they (NPP) won simply because of JJ’s unwholesome Swedru Declaration and the disrespectful Obed Asamoah led attempts to impose sitting candidates on their constituents, which nearly got him beaten at Dzelukope/Keta. My own Anlo Constituency elected an independent MP though linked to the NDC too, having rejected the NDC official candidate Rtd. Captain Sowu.

Fact is, I have been aware, just as many other people, since the early 1980s of various threats by some Akans opposed to the PNDC to have Ewes killed and had written about that many, many times on Okyeame and SIL. Perhaps, adding Gas to those to be killed is just the new dimension added by Agyapong, since it appeared, this time, the Gas, in Agyapong's warped mind, had acted in prosecuting the "Ewe agenda" by beating up Ursula on behalf of the Ewes! Well, warped minds think in strange, circular terms!

After all, the threats were so opened and so rampant that one Ewe, the late Dr Kodzi who died here in London in exile, pointed out the "Anlos” in his own virulently anti-Rawlings/PNDC book, "Ghana: Worse than Apartheid S. Africa," as the Ewes to be killed, for being allegedly the culprits of the complaints and angst of the Akans! That was long before anyone heard of Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe and his renewed “war” on “Anlo-Ewes,” a war his ancestor joined the Akyem Gen. Dompey to fight in "Krepi" against the Asantes and their allies and lost way back in the 1860s and got stranded there, lucky enough not to have been killed like others. That’s another story I had re-told elsewhere and needs a re-visit soon in order to let the populace know what makes bozos like Ahoofe tick. For a man, (I mean Dr Kodzi, not the jerk Ahoofe) who, due to his sterling stewardship when in charge of the Keta Govt Hospital, was much beloved by the so-called Anlo-Ewes, regarded as an honorary Anlo and entrusted with pouring the libation at the Hogbeza celebration of the Noviha association here in London, that was something to write! How could he be sure that the would-be killers would not mistake him for an Anlo man, in spite of the pain he took to identify the other Ewe groups in his book? Well, the failure of the so-called Ewe elite - academic, traditional and the political - to deal rationally with this animus against Ewes is itself an intra-Ewe shambolic intellectual failure I shall deal with by and by. I have right here on my table the rantings of some other Ewes from northern Eweland based in the UK, (Ewedome as we Anlos refer to the area referred to by Europeans as Krepi), against the PNDC and Anlos in particular which I have not even as yet dealt with in my writings.

I must, however, make exception here, as Prof. Kofi Awoonor’s much distorted and maligned prison book (in league with Soyinka’s The Man Died) is probably the first book by a Ghanaian which tried to explain the tribal imbroglio and to point the way forward. His only mistake was that he fell prey to the standard Western simplistic, linear and reductionist methodology of reducing what is without doubt a complex articulation of interests and forces which cut across the ethnic divide with people from all ethnic groups found in both or all contesting camps for political ascendancy or “hegemony”, as he put it, in Ghana to a dichotomy delineated on one side by Ewes and the other Akans/Asantes. So, for instance, those who imprisoned him for helping Brig. Kattah to escape to Togo were not only “Akans/Asantes” but included Ewes, Gas, Gonjas, etc., as Kutu’s NRC comprised a cross-section of Ghanaian ethnic groups.

You have to be wilfully blind or totally ignorant of what has been happening in the opposition to the P/NDC camp in order to claim today that you are not aware of talk of and even attempts to foment what would have become an ethnic war in Ghana prior to 1992. I personally had to intervene and quelled a serious fracas on Okyeame between two well known non-Ewes when the “brave Asantes” were queried again by a non-Asante why they could not deal with the apparently Ewe P/NDC which allegedly committed atrocities on they Akans only, I suppose. I bet many can remember J.H Mensah's arrest in America for allegedly attempting to buy weapons to prosecute their “liberation war” to get their country back. It is no wonder the NPP gurus, many of whom shared in those nefarious ideas, talked about it, plotted to carry it, etc., are finding it very hard to distance themselves from this public utterance of it again. How can they desert their fellow journeyman, without being double hypocrites? At least, there must be some honour among thieves (and tribal bigots, if we may add).

There are many questions to ask and many issues to take up. Had my PC not kaput and eventually leading to the loss of a huge part of what I had painstakingly written with references while in Norway with additions in London, my intended book taking up those issues would have been out years ago.

Incidentally, my next intended article after writing "How Some "Ewes" Became a Part of Ghana" is titled "Who Are the Ewes". It is just a revisit to my first ever post to a cyber forum in early 1994, Okyeame precisely, which Azar (Prof. Steven Kwaku Asare) should remember so well, as in spite of my providing a reference, he still challenged me to give that! It was sent as my contribution, incidentally, to another NPP instigated scare against poor but hard working Ewe and Ada fishing cum farming pioneers (won't call them settlers) displaced by the effects of the Akosombo Dam on the neglected downstream people who opened up the mosquito infested and disease-ridden Afram Plains. The claim was that the NDC wanted to carve a district for them there and thereby claim the land for them! Wives and children were hastily sent home in order to keep them out of harm’s way in the event of attacks on the communities. That was when I decided not to sit any longer on the fence, just like the majority of my fellow educated Ewes, who think responding to such attacks on Ewes is beneath them, since madmen, "dzimakplawo" and "gbemelawo" were responsible! That was the common “wisdom” repeated by Rawlings at Tsiame, when he was queried by the worried chiefs and people about the ongoing Ewe demonization in the opposition media and on political platforms in the ‘90s.

Gratuitous counter abuse, especially directed at Asantes ad nauseam, is not the way to tackle the issues, as some are presently doing on Ghanaweb. In the ‘90s, the Ghanaian stage was left to a novice like Komla Dumor to deal with on JoyFM with his “Ayigbe Jokes” series, which horrified and mortified me when I first listened to it online in 1997 or so. A programme like that would have found him and JoyFM foul of the Anti-Vilification Laws of any of the Western Europe countries and sanctioned appropriately. I doubt though whether half of our “honourable” MPs have heard of such a law, but that is the way we must go and huge revision of the school curricula. But that calls for another article.

Well, simply, many do not know how to deal with the madmen who repeatedly take their loins cloth while in the bath house! I know how! After all, I know the story of how the Anloga man dealt with the mad man of Tegbi and remained sane; the mad man who used to way lay the “asisiawo” - the market women - from the Keta market with a club and the question: axor a ava lo, alo axor a ekpo?, i.e., do you want penis or do you want club? And one day he raped and killed the heavily pregnant wife of the Anloga man. Of course, it is a taboo to deal with mad men in our society, but he did and nothing untoward ever happened to him afterwards.

Ahoofe and his ilk’s tribalistic insults directed at “Anlo-Ewes” in particular and Agyapong's call to mayhem can be placed in perspective if you are informed about their origins. They used the tribal card so well in 1969 and think they can continue using it forever. No! Some of us decided long ago that ourselves and children shall not remain objects of demonization and vilification for the political objectives of some people who are still suffering from the mental “warpedness” that the slave trade had foisted on their ancestors. We shall therefore make sure that these appeal to ethnic differences backfire big time on their stupid, ugly faces!

I am therefore re-sending and shall continue re-posting this short piece I had put together especially for the readership of Ghanaweb and shall continue with my series on the Ethnic imbroglio in Ghana. Agyapong's outburst is simply the tip of the canker that permeates our body politic that must be dealt with at its roots. They are not the only Akans who suffer from what I have dubbed “Ewe angst and fears”, which afflict the generality of Akans due to how they are weaned and socialised. What do you expect from people who, as kids, are frightened to drink their Mist Alba, behave themselves or go to bed early with the Ewe bogeyman imagery?

C. Y. Andy-K

cyandyk@ymail.com
London

THE ETHNIC IMBROGLIO IN GHANA: THE ORIGINS, PART 1

The tribal imbroglio, rather than starting in recent times, has been brewing for a long, long while now. In fact, the roots of the prejudices and the insults we see some raining on others date back to pre-colonial times. So, any attempt to understand the worrying phenomenon must address the canker from that era. That is what I intend to do, with special focus on the apparent cleavage between Ewes and Akans (and any others). But now, I’d begin with the colonial times. When you hear the cry of lamentation:

Dza le le leeeeeee!
Me zu kluvi
The road to Kontsiabu
Strewn with gold dusts.
Only those without
in their eyes gold dusts
felt the pangs of hunger and thirst…

then you’d know that the time to narrate the doleful tales of the pre-colonial era, where it all began, has arrived; but you’d get a glimpse now.

Not to waste time apportioning blame, the Akans (and Gas, if I may add them), started these tribal abuse and attacks on Ewes many decades ago; nay, centuries back, as I said earlier. But as mentioned above, I won't delve as yet into the pre-colonial times when it was free for all, with even some Ewe states joining in marauding and plundering other Ewe states for the slave markets of the Gold Coast. I had indeed provided a write up on that sordid era on Ghanaweb’s SIL in the 1990s, which is available. One German businessman with biz connections to Ghana who used to read the nonsense on SIL wrote a private mail to me saying that he was always wondering why Africans sold each other into slavery to Europeans and Arabs; reading my detailed historical account enlightened him on how and why it happened for the first time. That story must be re-told all over Africa in other to understand the roots of the conflicts that bedevilled the continent after independence.

In Ghana, the colonial times modern version started after the WW1 when Anlo, Tongu and Peki migrants from within the Gold Coast and those from the newly acquired TVT from the Germans started moving to the Akan and Ga areas to either fish, farm or seek paid employment. Ewes from Togo and Benin Republic (Dahomey) escaping from French repressive rule came later. Some Ewes, esp. the educated ones, also got jobs with the commercial houses and the colonial administration. Some, such as Gbedema and Nkulenu, started their own private businesses. Soon, they were becoming prosperous in their chosen fields and/or rising up in the ranks wherever they were employed due to the usual hard working nature of most migrants. After all, the far superior German missionary vocational educational set up, compared to the British, had equipped them much better with skills in the crafts and building, such as carpentry and masonry, which were in much demand by the colonial authority and the other natives of the Gold Coast and Asante. That was when trouble began and the attacks started, as far back as the 1930s.

Below is a brief quote from S. Greene about how the Fantes started perceiving Anlo-Ewe fisher folk; a perception or prejudice which is not much different from what permeates the Akan ethnic group as a whole up to today (not only a few bigots on Ghanaweb). Ewes find out to our chagrin or amusement, often as a kid, that that was how our fellow country men and women perceive us. The encounter is therefore a personal story too.

Not much has changed in the prejudiced minds of too many Akans, as we daily witness on Ghanaweb, even though many too have developed over the years an obsession or desire to marry Ewe girls, failure which often brought in its wake stories of tribalism heaped against Ewes. As I told some Akan teacher colleagues in Nigeria, it was the scary and “irrational” Akan “wofa” (uncle) inheritance system, stupid! Horrible stories of how Ewe widows were in particular dispossessed and treated shabbily were enough to dissuade any idea of marriage to even a most love besotted Akan man! It is no wonder that, with the interstate law of inheritance in place, marriage to Akan men has been on the increase.

I know an Ewe from the Peki area who swore that it’d never be possible to change the jaundiced perception of Akans of Ewes from his own experiences attending Mpraeso Teacher Training College, and then teaching at Mpraeso and in Kumasi. He said one particular woman - a cook in the school - they used to go to church with wouldn’t believe that he did not have any “ekpelekpedzi” under their bed! I said it was possible and gave an example of my own experiences in Nigeria. I managed to convince my fellow Akan teachers that I don’t indulge nor believe in those things - juju or voodoo or even any god (white or black), and wouldn’t drink “ogogoro” with them – when there is original Gordon’s gin and lime cordiale to have – and they somehow lost some “respect”, (or was it fear?) for me. They’d say I wasn’t a proper Anloman and fool around with me!

Between 1982-4, when their Anti-Ewe diatribes had reached fever point and they were advocating massacring Ewes as done to the Ibos in Nigeria who they claimed were also allegedly dominating Nigeria in the 1960s, I thought of putting some fear into them by creating some “kporsi” (“see-and-run”) to scare them. Fact is, practically every smart Ewe knows how to scare Akans and Gas even though they don’t have “foko” (anything), as we say in Anlo but I will keep that out of this write up. Good I didn’t do so, otherwise they’d be giving testimonies up to today about what an Anlo teacher did to them in Nigeria – they’d have packed out and run from their rooms on the ground floor of the storey building we were hiring. I “protected” myself practically by chocking the door handle with a chair, as I had seen in movies, before I went to bed, in order to prevent them from making me the first casualty of their let-us-kill-Ewes mania! Funny some of them even became staunch PNDC supporters, only to change their minds again years later when I met some on a visit to Ghana.

Anyway, enough with the digression into the personal narrative and to Sandra Greene.

From p.148 of Sandra Greene I quote:

"Increased Anlo identification with their northern Ewe-speaking neighbours may have also been enhanced by the experience many had while participating in migrant fishing. After World War I, numerous groups of Anlo men and women traveled to other coastal areas, including the Fante area of the Gold Coast, in order to pursue their commercial fishing activities. For many, this was probably the first time they had traveled outside their home area, and/or to a district where they were a distinct linguistic minority. In these locations, they conducted themselves as they had in their own home villages, but those among whom they come to live - often temporarily, just for the fishing season - came to view the Anlos' prosperity with jealousy and suspicion. Stories circulated that associated the Anlo with "blood-curdling" crimes. R.W. Wyllie indicates, for example, that from at least the 1930s "Fanti [children] learned to view the Anlos as thieves, kidnappers, sorcerers, and ritual murderers." The social tensions that accompany these beliefs - and the very fact that these beliefs were held by a non-Ewe speaking people - must have heightened the Anlo's awareness of their linguistic and cultural background and generated some sense of identification with their Ewe-speaking peoples whom they would have encountered in the Gold Coast."

The encounter with the Gold Coasters was enough to turn any Ewe into a paranoid schizophrenic, developed a siege mentality (become “inward-looking”?) and very resentful towards any idea of union with the Gold Coast, not to mention marry an Akan.

As some of you know, the Anlo area through Tongu to the Peki area had been part of the Gold Coast colony proper, effectively from 1874 though the British “bought” and claimed the area from the Danes in 1850; hence the freedom to move to other parts of the Gold Coast and Asante later. Besides, many southern Ewes are descendants of Ga-Adangbe, Elmina and Denkyira fugitives dating back respectively to 1687 when the Akwamus first thrashed the Gas for cutting the “bolobolo” (foreskin) of their prince sent to the Ga Mantse Okai Koi’s court to understudy courtship, and 1700, when the Asantes defeated the Denkyiras and took over Elmina from the Denkyiras. Going back to Ge (Accra) and Sima (Shama) with their new kinsmen was just like returning to the ancestors' land. In fact, it was the descendants of those fugitives who were the first migrants, having maintained links with their ancestral lands during their long period in exile. Reindorf had written about that back and forth movements among the Ga fugitives long ago. That’s how Osu-Anecho came to be founded and how all Ewes got the derogatory epithet “Ayigbe” (Ayi refuse), whether they were descendants of fugitives or not. The “dzulor” bit the Gas added originally referred to the Okai Koi stool regalia which the Ga-Ewes in Togo refused to return to Accra and still claim to be its protectors. Remember the trips with pre-colonial undertones their chiefs made to Ghana when the NPP took over power in 2000?

I can make long comments on the above quote but suffice it to say that it was the beginning and end of the love affair which started as unification with the Gold Coast movement ending up as the drive to secede from the Gold Coast. So we read from the December 6, 1919 edition of the West Africa magazine a letter sent to the colonial government of the Gold Coast:

“We PEOPLE of Togoland, descended from two principal countries, Elmina
(Ane) and Accra (Ge), both of the Gold Coast Colony, ask to have British government because it is the government of our fathers, whose customs are our customs, and a British Colony is half-an-hour distant from us.
We ask to have British government because it is the government of our kith and kin, our race and our tribe.
We ask for British government because of our relationship with our people on the west, which must assert itself..” (culled from West Africa 12-16 Dec. 1994)

And so on it went. One may wonder why the petitioners did not even acknowledge the Ewes, Dagombas, Konkombas, Akans and the host of other ethnic and tribal groups in Togo who also have their “kith and kin” within the Gold Coast and the Northern Territories. I guess this piece of history may come as a surprise to the ingrates who make a living of always reminding us that Ewes come from Togo, some of whom carried a video to Lome to trace the roots of Fiifii Kwetey there, instead of doing so in Accra! Well, he said he was from Nogokpo, which rubbed a sore spot for me, but that’s another story.

THE EWE BACKLASH

By the 1940s, Ewes, Anlos in particular, in the Gold Coast had had enough of the vilification and undeserved demonisation their successes were arousing. The returnee Anes (Anyis) and Ges (Gas), now fused as the Genyis through intermarriages, as Anlos refer to them, also soon discovered that they were not welcome, or often welcomed with shouts of “Ayigbe dzulor”! Disenchantment set in and secession from Ghana became a far better option. The result was the 1956 plebiscite and the rest is history.

Then comes the post Feb 24 1966 coup era, when Busia and his PP turned this traditional vilification of Ewes into a political tool to win the 1969 general elections. It was preceded by an internal struggle within the NLC to share the spoils of office after the coup. An extended quote from Dennis Austin, that great chronicler of Ghana history, captures the gist of it, so here we go:

“A surprising and disagreeable novelty of the election was the extraordinary anti-Ewe sentiment that was expressed in conversation with many of those who were against Gbedemah and his party. One can explain this strong animus not simply by a dislike of Gbedema’s reappearance in political life but in relations to events after the 1966 coup. Suddenly there were the soldiers and the police, and everyone burst out singing, but when the music died down away it was noticed that the NLC (it seemed) was commanded by minorities: Ewe and Ga. When Ankrah (a Ga), was moved out, and charges were brought over-hastily by Harlley against the Chief of Defence Staff, Michael Otu, the evidence to many was overwhelming. It was all an Ewe plot. Soon Ghana would be run for the benefit of an energetic minority, operating first within the armed forces, and now behind Gbedemah. ‘Appoint an Ewe to a public corporation or to a government department and within a year the entire hierarchy down to the messenger will be an Ewe.’ So the argument ran. And there was always some evidence for it, since the Ewe, deprived of any natural wealth in their own barren region, have been energetic in seizing the opportunities of public employment, including positions in the army and the police, which wealthier communities (like the Akan) did not wish to occupy. In practice, looking through the list of senior officers in government department and the public corporations, the evidence is certainly not clear of any Ewe domination: it could hardly be in view of their number. But a belief does not, of course, have to be true before people hold it fervently.
Now there is an Akan-dominated government of an Akan dominated society. Were I to become, by some improbable chance of fate, leader of the governing party I would be much less apprehensive of my Ewe opponents in front than of the large and expectant following behind. I would be fearful too of the ambitions of those now excluded from power, remembering the Songs of Innocence that:
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caeser’s laurel crown” (D. Austin 1976:125)

Austin was writing with hindsight about what befell Busia’s regime, overthrown in a coup led by an Asante.

In Part 2, I intend to examine the hate campaign against the Ewes and the consequences or reactions from the 1970s which led to Kofi Awoonor’s infamous prison book, The Ghana Revolution, which he claimed he wrote in prison when gaoled for helping Brig. Kattah to escape from Ghana. It’d be necessary to focus on the Ghana Army, from its origins and recruitment trends since it is at the crux of the matter.
.
Andy C.Y. Kwawukume, better known as C.Y. Andy-K, is a freethinker, Pan-Africanist and an ardent Nkrumaist.
cyandyk@ymail.com

References:

Dennis Austin (1976): Ghana Observed: Essays on the Politics of a W. African Republic.
Manchester Univ. Press.
Sandra E. Greene (1995): Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Change on the Upper Slave
Coast: A History of the Anlo-Ewe. Heinemann and James Currey
Robert W. Wyllie. “Migrant Anlo Fishing Companies and Socio-Political Change: A
Comparative Study.” Africa, XXXIX, 4 (1969), 396-410.
Moo 7 years ago

Who is this big fool ? What have you said or did you do about all die be die and yen akanfour and so on. Up till date we are stills l waiting for an apology ... What is this arrogance that in this morden milelium some Ghanaia ...
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Who is this big fool ? What have you said or did you do about all die be die and yen akanfour and so on. Up till date we are stills l waiting for an apology ... What is this arrogance that in this morden milelium some Ghanaian still think they are more superior than others. Kweah!
babs 7 years ago

U r rather fool.u use it against akufo addo so we do t expect u to repeat it.u can't use somebody's murder to justify for killing.

U r rather fool.u use it against akufo addo so we do t expect u to repeat it.u can't use somebody's murder to justify for killing.
Onnidin 7 years ago

Mo akanfo) de3!!!!

Mo akanfo) de3!!!!
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Zakari Atiewini 7 years ago

There is nothing wrong with what the president said.JM TOASO. .

There is nothing wrong with what the president said.JM TOASO. .
Ashanti 7 years ago

Condemn osafo marfos comments first before you can condemn Pres Mahamas comment.condemn akufo addos yen akanfoo comment before you can condemn Pres Mahama comment. Stupid hypocrites

Condemn osafo marfos comments first before you can condemn Pres Mahamas comment.condemn akufo addos yen akanfoo comment before you can condemn Pres Mahama comment. Stupid hypocrites
Ibrahim3 7 years ago

I wonder what the president intends to achieve by those shameful tribal comments. It smacks mischief or ignorance on the part of the president. The constitution of Ghana empowers the veep to succeed the president in case of ...
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I wonder what the president intends to achieve by those shameful tribal comments. It smacks mischief or ignorance on the part of the president. The constitution of Ghana empowers the veep to succeed the president in case of any eventuality; but the party constitutions of all the political parties in Ghana does not allow a running mate of the government in power or in opposition to automatically become the presidential candidate. If that was the case, Lawyer R.I Alhassan should have been chosen as the presidential candidate for npp in 96 after Adu Boahen declined to contest.
John Mahama must remember that it was the antecedent of the NDC (PNDC) which overthrew the Dr Limanm led PNP government of which his late father E.A Mahama was a prominent member. It is therefore the NDC which has done more harm to the northerners and not NPP.
John Mahama should refresh his memory to recollect that the PNDC which overthrew a Northerner led government, was initially dominated by Young Northerners like Chris Atim, Zaya Yebo, John Ndebugri and Sgt Daniel Alolga Akatapore. What happened to these men is history now as all of them were hounded out of the PNDC .
Fast tracked to 1992, when The npp chose Prof Adu Boahen as their presidential candidate, he picked Lawyer R.I Alhassan as his running mate where as JJ picked Ackah as his running mate. In fact in 1996 again, the JJ picked Atta Mills as his right running mate when the likes of Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama, Issifu Ali and Dr Chambers were around.
There foregone conclusion is that the NPP has shown northerners more respect than the NDC.
Naamugtan Soo 7 years ago

JM TOASo, need noo apology

JM TOASo, need noo apology
Ayele 7 years ago

ken agyapon and osarfo manfo have said dangerous things than what the president said, we are all in this country, all die be die, were equally said

ken agyapon and osarfo manfo have said dangerous things than what the president said, we are all in this country, all die be die, were equally said
Dressy 7 years ago

"Rogue Journalism"

"Rogue Journalism"
success 7 years ago

Even npp don't know what they tribal politics. Its very shameful,npp you need to learn.

Even npp don't know what they tribal politics. Its very shameful,npp you need to learn.
Samson 7 years ago

How quickly does the daily stateman jump to condemn when it is the NDC or Mahama that says what they consider improper. Not all of us think there is anything wrong with what Mahama has said. He was stating historical facts. I ...
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How quickly does the daily stateman jump to condemn when it is the NDC or Mahama that says what they consider improper. Not all of us think there is anything wrong with what Mahama has said. He was stating historical facts. It has always been the policy of the NPP not to make a northerner a presidential candidate. You can go back to the start of democratic dispensation in Ghana and you will find that the NPP have never made a northerner a presidential candidate. Even when all the opposition parties in Ghana were ordered by Osagyefo to merge, the UP did not make the largest Northern People's Party's leader Dombo the leader. Instead they made Busia the leader. Ever since they have maintained this as a policy. In recent years NPP leading members have stated on radio that it was their policy not to make a northerner presidential candidate. This is exactly what Mahama said. There was nothing tribalistic or divisive about what he said. Why did the stateman not condemn Akufo Addo when he said to the Nzema people to vote NPP because their own son Blay is Nzema. That is truly tribalistic, but the stateman said nothing. The hypocrisy will kill those who champion it.
Bitter Truth Pill 7 years ago

You say you pity Bawumia because he will be ditched by NPP when it comes to his turn. There is no automatic transfer of power from a President to his Vice in NPP internal politics. Every one has to earn his place by winning a ...
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You say you pity Bawumia because he will be ditched by NPP when it comes to his turn. There is no automatic transfer of power from a President to his Vice in NPP internal politics. Every one has to earn his place by winning a contest on his own merit. That is democracy and rule of the majority. If Prof. Mills had lived he would not have endorsed JDM as his successor. And the NDC would also have fielded candidates to contest him just as Ali Mahama had to proved the he was first among equals. It has nothing to do with tribalism. If you cut your teeth by genuinely winning the mandate of the party you will govern with respect and discipline with authority when you go for the national election. Why are you only talking of Notherners for the Presidency? Akans also want to find out from the NDC President and Party why the only Akan to rise to the position was not allowed to complete his term of office and died in mysterious cicumstances to benefit a smooth replacement by a Northern Vice who he displeased with to the point of refusing to barely speaking terms with in his final days
Kwame 7 years ago

They said NDC and the North are one tribe. If I an Ewhe goes to Nkonya and told them to vote for me because I am from the Volta Region they said that has turned Ewhes and Nkonyas into one tribe. NPP this is an ugly noise beca ...
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They said NDC and the North are one tribe. If I an Ewhe goes to Nkonya and told them to vote for me because I am from the Volta Region they said that has turned Ewhes and Nkonyas into one tribe. NPP this is an ugly noise because it is out of tune.

Mahama's shameful tribal campaign must be condemned

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