Nana Akwah
Ex–Warrant Officer Class One (WOI), Ghana Armed Forces
Military Historian | Traditional Governance Commentator

A Study Reflection

The contemporary criticism of the Asantehene’s position on the inclusion of queen mothers in the National and Regional Houses of Chiefs is largely framed within modern expectations of gender equity, institutional visibility, and statutory inclusion. Critics often assert that resistance to such inclusion reflects marginalization of women and an unwillingness to adapt tradition to contemporary governance norms. While this perspective is understandable within modern democratic discourse, it risks misinterpreting the internal logic of Asante customary authority.

In Asanteman, power is not organized around visibility but around legitimacy and balance. Authority operates through layered roles that are complementary rather than identical. The Asante political system deliberately separates functions in order to preserve coherence, continuity, and restraint. Within this system, absence from public councils does not equate to exclusion from power.

The queen mother (Ohemaa or Asantehemaa) occupies a foundational position within Asante governance. Her authority precedes that of the chief. As the custodian of lineage and genealogical memory, she nominates the candidate eligible to occupy the stool. Without her sanction, no chief can legitimately rule. This role places her at the origin of political authority rather than at its public display.

Beyond nomination, the queen mother functions as private counsellor, moral guardian, and ultimate corrective authority. She alone may publicly rebuke the chief and initiate destoolment proceedings when he violates custom or governs contrary to ancestral norms. These powers are not ceremonial; they are structural safeguards embedded within the Asante system to prevent arbitrariness and abuse.

Asante political philosophy does not seek symmetry of roles between male and female authority. Instead, it is grounded in complementarity. The chief governs publicly and administratively; the queen mother governs legitimacy, continuity, and moral order. To merge these roles or force them into identical public spaces would be, from the Asante perspective, a disruption of a carefully balanced system rather than an enhancement of equity.

The present controversy is intensified by the intersection of custom and the modern Ghanaian state. The National House of Chiefs is a statutory institution created by the Constitution to coordinate traditional leadership within the Republic. While its role is significant, it is not a source of traditional legitimacy. In Asanteman, authority derives from ancestry, lineage, and the sacred trust embodied in the Golden Stool, which symbolizes the soul and sovereignty of the Asante people.

Asante chieftaincy predates the modern state and does not derive its legitimacy from parliamentary enactments. Statutory recognition acknowledges an existing authority; it does not confer it. Consequently, proposals to impose uniform statutory roles for queen mothers across all traditional areas raise legitimate concerns. Ghana’s chieftaincy systems are diverse—matrilineal and patrilineal, centralized and segmentary- and cannot be harmonized without risking the erosion of their internal coherence.

The Asantehene’s resistance to such uniformity should therefore be understood not as opposition to queen mothers or to women’s authority, but as a defense of a specific customary order. His position reflects a commitment to preserving the philosophical foundations of Asante governance rather than subordinating them to administrative convenience or contemporary expectations of visibility.

Tradition, in this context, is neither static nor hostile to progress. However, meaningful reform must emerge from within the logic of the tradition itself. Change that disregards the reasons customs were structured as they were risks weakening what has historically ensured stability, legitimacy, and accountability.

In Asanteman, what is quiet is not weak, and what is unseen is not absent. The queen mother’s authority remains central precisely because it is restrained, protected, and rooted in ancestry. Any effort to honour her role must therefore begin with understanding it as it exists, rather than reconfiguring it to fit external institutional models.