A well written article. I hope our politicians read this.
A well written article. I hope our politicians read this.
Kojo Billy Duncan 9 years ago
Much appreciated.
Much appreciated.
Annorwuo 9 years ago
When they are busy turning us into what Francis Tawiah has aptly described as "useful idiots", for their selfish ends?
When they are busy turning us into what Francis Tawiah has aptly described as "useful idiots", for their selfish ends?
C.Y. ANDY-K 9 years ago
This is the second time this article is being posted. Some of us pointed out some historical errors in it, specifically the writer not knowing that the Aflao area was part of the Gold Coast proper and so did not participate i ... read full comment
This is the second time this article is being posted. Some of us pointed out some historical errors in it, specifically the writer not knowing that the Aflao area was part of the Gold Coast proper and so did not participate in the plebiscite. But there are more serious errors than that.
The writer expresses jaundiced and unsupported views that indeed are behind and are fueling the ethnic imbroglio! These views and claims must be tackled. I have been doing so and shall soon resume that exercise.
For one, it is the failure of the very education that he praises to teach students certain human geography facts about various regions and people in Ghana that had produced the ethnocentric jingoists spreading the tribal viruses. It is thus the chickens coming home to roost. And why not in the B/A too? After all, its poster scholar Dr Kofi Abrefa Busia, a Brong and leader of the NLM and then the PP, led in sowing the poison ivy that is engulfing us today.
Personally, some of the most virulent ethnocentric elements I had known come from B/A, esp. those calling themselves Ahafos.
I am posting two pieces I had done on the issues in question to shed a different kind of light on this matter. In many respects, they added precise, historical details to things he mentioned in general.
Here we go with the first.
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 movement 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?
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. I can make long comments on the above quotes 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.
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; better still, Ayawaso! 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,” as Anlos refer to them, through intermarriages, 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 came 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, which increasingly took an ethnic tone. My own father was a sacrificial victim. 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 express1ed 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.
The interested reader is referred to the link on the Internet to read an extended abstract of the book in order to get a fuller understanding of the ethnic imbroglio in Ghana and so be able to compare events from then and now and subsequent analysis.
Dennis Austin - 1976 - Political Science - 199 pages
books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=084190278X...
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.
C.Y. ANDY-K 9 years ago
HOW SOME “EWES” BECAME PART OF PRESENT GHANA
To say that one is sick and tired of reading ignorant utterances about how “Ewes” were given the chance to join Ghana by Nkrumah from patently jaundiced and bloody-minde ... read full comment
HOW SOME “EWES” BECAME PART OF PRESENT GHANA
To say that one is sick and tired of reading ignorant utterances about how “Ewes” were given the chance to join Ghana by Nkrumah from patently jaundiced and bloody-minded, ignorant fellow Ghanaians, MOSTLY of Akan origins and a few most stupid and ignorant Gas, is a big understatement. I therefore put together a concise history of how some “Ewes” became part of Ghana for all readers. Its strident nature derives from the fact that it was directed at the virulently bigoted anti-Ewe elements that afflict the Ghanaweb forum. Nothing reasonable sinks into them unless it is hammered in with mighty blows. So dense they are, consumed by their own phenomenal ignorance!
Nonetheless, I am under no illusion whatsoever that this brief piece will stop the bozos who indulge in this kind of display of ignorance from continuing to do so, even after reading this; not only because of the scientifically recognised fact that awareness and knowledge of adverse causes and better practices do not necessarily stop continuation of adverse behavioural practices leading to adoption of best practices, but also because the putrid and rotting worm-wood from which they emerge from, that is, our educational system, continues to churn out similarly ignorant and foolish elements on an annual basis. The problem must therefore be addressed at source: our educational system and curricula.
Steeped in the foregoing knowledge, I have carved for myself a monstrous-looking spikes-studded club to deal with any such miscreants who might be provoked by this article to begin their ethnic cleansing of the much vilified “Ewes” from Ghana to Togo.
I would not bother myself now and again with retelling (I’ve done that elsewhere) of how the groups of linguistically and culturally different peoples who now comprise the ethnic group known to many as “Ewes”, but which linguists now have tagged the “Gbe” people, migrated and settled within the borders of Togo and present Ghana up to seven hundred years ago, as Ghana came into being on 6 March 1957 and that is where my story begins. That has been dealt with elsewhere in an upcoming series, an abridged version of a book which has been on ice for a long while now.
After all, it was Gbedemah, an “Ewe,” and the leader of the Committee for Youth Organisation (CYO), who was asked to replace him (Nkrumah) as General Secretary of the UGCC, who convinced him (Nkrumah) to leave the UGCC and gave him the chance to lead the CPP which was being formed by elements within the CYO; and who again gave him his Accra seat and led the campaign for the CPP and Nkrumah to win while in prison to become Leader of Government Business. Gbedema himself went to stand for the Keta seat. If Gbedema had not done that, he would have become the first Leader of Government Business, not Nkrumah; so Gbedema, an “Ewe,” gave Nkrumah the chance in more ways than what I have referred to in the foregoing to become leader of independent Ghana. Of course, I consider it in poor taste to mention in details the financial support and sustenance Gbedema gave then homeless Nkrumah, as someone did in an article on Ghanaweb a while ago even though it was part of the relationship.
Nkrumah, of course, a chief in his own right in Nzema, got his first ceremonial chieftaincy title in Anloga, when he came on his Thank You visit for the valiant roles Ewes played in the election victory of the CPP. That was before everything turned sore and Anloga led the revolt against the CPP in 1953, for breach of election promises not to enforce the much hated poll tax and not properly dealing with grievances about the cutting of swollen shoot diseased cocoa trees and failing to increase cocoa prices when the world price was hitting the roof, thanks to the Korean War. The decision not to increase cocoa prices paid to farmers was due to the infamous “anchor of safety” and stemming inflation advice (it created the large reserve on attainment of independence, btw.) he, Nkrumah, accepted from the West Indian Nobel Laureate Sir Arthur Lewis. Some Anlo elite were also major cocoa farm owners in the TVT and elsewhere. The riots that started in Anloga and spread to the rest of the country were well documented by Dennis Austin in his seminal book on Ghana, so check it, if you want to be properly informed. Those events had deep impacts on the Anlo elite and eventually led to the coup of 1966 spearheaded by some Anlo officers in the Police and Army.
Those of you who like to criticise Kofi Awoonor for what he wrote in his book “The Ghana Revolution” should also look up his book specially devoted to Asantes and Ewes to read what he said about how they escaped from Anloga across the Volta to Ada Foah when the “Buga Buga War” started. I bet you never heard of that war before, eh?
So, nobody gave Ewes the chance to join Ghana in 1957, as some Ewe stalwarts led in the fight to create modern Ghana. Left to some Ewes though, they'd have seceded from the Gold Coast, to which they were lampooned by the British many decades earlier and had become fed up with because of the nascent demonization and vilification started by the forebears of today's Ghanaweb jaded jingoists. I had already partially dealt with that in an earlier article and the abridged series mentioned above shall follow suit.
Moreso, the coastal areas from Anlo, through Tongu up to Peki and Tsito-Awudome, being part of the Eastern Province of the Gold Coast, were even indeed declared part of the British sphere of influence way back in 1850, 6 yrs after the signing of the Bond of 1844 with the Fantes. The British “bought” in 1850 the area from the Danes who were forced to leave the Gold Coast after they were defeated with Napolean at Waterloo in 1848. Interesting to note that Norway, then under Danish control for over 400 years, was also passed over to the Swedes, allies of Britain at Waterloo. Of course, those “bought” were not consulted and did not accept that their homeland had been sold and thus resisted attempts by the British to asset their authority over the area, leading to conflicts.
The area was declared part of the Gold Coast colony proper in 1876 or so. Before that, the Anlos had sued for peace with the British, bringing to a close the Glover War, fought against the Anlos as a side show to the Sagrenti War. A Peace Treaty was signed at Dzelukope after the Sagrenti War of 1874. I have a sketch of that historical event which appeared in the UK Graphic of Oct, 10 1874, which is an attachment to this article (not attached here, so I can send it privately to anyone interested), as it is a historical relic of interest to many. You’d see sitting “Folu, King of Jella Coffee,” “Adjaba, King of Awoonah,” and “War Captain Cocumay” and “Chief Asantee Ambassador Okobim Paba” addressing them and you’d know where yours truly comes from. War Captain Cocumay happened to be the father of Torgbui Sri II who was in the Legislative Council from 1916-42, and same as my great, great grandfather. Our ancestors therefore played their roles on the battle-fields and on the high table when the Gold Coast and its history were being carved, so before you open your mouth against us, ask yourself who born you, and who and what were your ancestors when the Gold Coast was being carved? The Ga kings Tackie from Accra and Solomon from James Town were also there, among others who fought on the side of the British.
In fact, those wars were fought due to events which also occurred in northern Eweland [besides events on the Fante side], when Asante slave raiders kidnapped and took the missionaries and white traders (the Ramseyers, Bonnat, etc.) from Ho to Kumasi as hostages for ransom. Of course, not only the missionaries were taken, as even some natives who collaborated with the Asantes soon found themselves as captives at Kontsiabu instead of the promised gold dusts but that is another story altogether I had recounted elsewhere and is due for recounting soon. With the decisive defeat of Asante and her steadfast Anlo ally, that Ewe area known in the annals as “Krepi” through Buem, Dagbon in N/R to much of present Upper East, which later on became known as the Trans-Volta Togoland (TVT), became a British Protectorate until after the Berlin Conference when Queen Victoria gave it in 1884 as a birthday present to her German cousin, who famously wanted a "place in the sun," as part of the balkanisation of and Scramble for Africa after the Berlin Conference. The Germans already had a small strip of Togoland. So the TVT was even under British sphere of influence for some years before being given to the Germans.
In 1915, at the start of WWI, the British took back the area and much of German Togoland (the French took the eastern part) with the help of troops raised by Torgbui Sri II, for which he was awarded the KMAC and sword of honour, and inducted into the LegCo in 1916 with Nana Ofori Attah of Akyem Abuakwa. After WWI, despite the campaign by the natives to unite the whole of Togoland to the Gold Coast, the British kept what they gave to the Germans in 1884 (TVT) and gave the rest - what the Germans had before - to the French, thus forming present Republic of Togo. Of course, the records show that it was Torgbui Sri II who was the first to call for the unification of Togo to the Gold Coast way back in 1915. By the end of the war, it was fully embraced by some native leaders of German Togoland, some of whose leaders sent a letter to the colonial government of the Gold Coast which curiously stated inter alia:
“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...” (“December 6, 1919 edition of the West Africa magazine, culled from West Africa 12-16 Dec. 1994)
I have always wondered why no mention of being “Ewes” was made by the supplicants. Of course, conspicuously absent too were names of many others such as Dagombas, Konkombas, Dagbons, Akans, Mamprusis, Grunshies, Nkonyas, Kabres, etc., etc., who also have the TVT and Togo as their homeland at the time too. That was not an auspicious beginning for their objective, being what they were: descendants of fugitives who have settled amongst the original Ewe speakers in southern Togo!
Anyway, how those claiming to be Gas and Anes (Anyis) in Togo got there is quite another story I had re-told a number of times but I’d like the Akwamus and Asantes, former allies of we Anlos, to tell us their versions respectively. And to those ignorant and jaded MPs of the NPP who went to Lome to look for the roots of Fiifi Kwetey, who of course, claimed to be from Nogokpo in the Klikor area, and thereby rubbing a sore spot in my memory, next time they should begin the search in Ayawaso so that I am not reminded of Dzenunyegbodzi and the treacheries of Klikor!
How that desire for a union with the Gold Coast turned into the drive for secession is quite another story I had already touched upon in a previous article and better covered by the likes of Prof. Amenumey in his book on the subject, a copy of which I have behind me. In any case, the plebiscite of 1956 was to determine whether TVT, a UN Mandated Territory, should be added to the Gold Coast, be on its own, or rejoin present Togo, or something like that, whatever. It was a messy affair, as it did not take into account the wishes of the Ewe Unification Movement which had reached fever pitch in southern Eweland from Anlo to Peki, already part of the Gold Coast, and which was prevented from taking part in the plebiscite. Had those areas taken part, enough votes would have been garnered to secede from the Gold Coast, as a majority voted in the Ewe areas of the TVT to secede. Unfortunately, their votes were outweighed by votes from the non-Ewe areas of the TVT stretching from northern VR through eastern section of Northern Region to much of present Upper East. Indeed, parts of the TVT were also later added to the Greater Accra and Eastern Regions too by Nkrumah and Busia. So, only a portion of the TVT was added to the Eweland within the Gold Coast to form the present VR. Those of us who come from the south were thus part of the Gold Coast decades earlier before 1900 when the Protectorate of Asante was declared after their defeat in the Yaa Asantewa War, and before 1946, when the Burns Constitution made Asante and the Northern Territories part of the Gold Coast Colony proper too.
That, in brief, is how parts of Eweland and some Ewes became a part of present Ghana. It is a pity that this basic history is not taught in our basic schools so that all know this somehow. Rather, we get all kinds of ignoramuses spewing rubbish about how Nkrumah allowed Ewes to join Ghana and they would deport Ewes to Togo! I am waiting for them bozos with my spikes-studded club. Let no one say I didn’t warn them!
[This article can be freely quoted or reproduced without my permission.]
Andy C.Y. Kwawukume
cyandyk@ymail.com
Paa Kojo 9 years ago
A very balanced and well thought out article.
It has been said over and over again that many well educated individuals are guilty of ethnocentric views and ride on the tails of ignorance,particularly of those not so privileg ... read full comment
A very balanced and well thought out article.
It has been said over and over again that many well educated individuals are guilty of ethnocentric views and ride on the tails of ignorance,particularly of those not so privileged with the same level of education when matters of ethnicity and culture are discussed-they shed their dispassionate knowlege and put on very partisan ethnocentric hats.
We need to stay as one nation as envisioned by Dr.Nkrumah, through the good old boarding school system till early 1990s, when things fell apart on our cherished education front!!
Asiwome 9 years ago
If we don't appreciate the nature of the education we are receiving, it becomes a dangerous tool like guns. The festivals and celebration of culture is everywhere. Corn festival is celebrated in America, and these festivals a ... read full comment
If we don't appreciate the nature of the education we are receiving, it becomes a dangerous tool like guns. The festivals and celebration of culture is everywhere. Corn festival is celebrated in America, and these festivals are a source of economic activity. This is when people work hard, save money and buy new clothes. It is our Christmas celebrations or a trip to Mecca. All cultures can coexist only if we have healthy fences and respect each other. It sounds paradoxical, and the only way this will happen is if people start to rely on God and stop exploiting each other. Thank you for the article.
Kofi Kyeremeh 9 years ago
Thank you for your compliment
Thank you for your compliment
REV YEBOAH 9 years ago
GOOD JOB TOM
GOOD JOB TOM
K Atoh 9 years ago
This is an article written with wisdom behind it. It would do a lot of good for Ghanaians to take cues from the sense in it.
This is an article written with wisdom behind it. It would do a lot of good for Ghanaians to take cues from the sense in it.
A well written article. I hope our politicians read this.
Much appreciated.
When they are busy turning us into what Francis Tawiah has aptly described as "useful idiots", for their selfish ends?
This is the second time this article is being posted. Some of us pointed out some historical errors in it, specifically the writer not knowing that the Aflao area was part of the Gold Coast proper and so did not participate i ...
read full comment
HOW SOME “EWES” BECAME PART OF PRESENT GHANA
To say that one is sick and tired of reading ignorant utterances about how “Ewes” were given the chance to join Ghana by Nkrumah from patently jaundiced and bloody-minde ...
read full comment
A very balanced and well thought out article.
It has been said over and over again that many well educated individuals are guilty of ethnocentric views and ride on the tails of ignorance,particularly of those not so privileg ...
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If we don't appreciate the nature of the education we are receiving, it becomes a dangerous tool like guns. The festivals and celebration of culture is everywhere. Corn festival is celebrated in America, and these festivals a ...
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Thank you for your compliment
GOOD JOB TOM
This is an article written with wisdom behind it. It would do a lot of good for Ghanaians to take cues from the sense in it.