NPP pace- setters of Ghana's political evolution? What I see is opposition in Ghana trying heaven and earth to make Ghana ungovernable. I oppose people. Just so you know. Where is the wrong tag. The elephant is said to have a ... read full comment
NPP pace- setters of Ghana's political evolution? What I see is opposition in Ghana trying heaven and earth to make Ghana ungovernable. I oppose people. Just so you know. Where is the wrong tag. The elephant is said to have a long memory. Buy the short sightedness of NPP and its wayward communicators have left a sour taste in our collective mouths. And you are say you do not deserve your justly earned accolades? Sorry sir. Take it back
Kojo T 8 years ago
okoampa, Sarpong, Rockson,Nii Teiko, and a whole host always play the tribal card.Any way you forget the agenda of NPP was and is still tribal domination.Ask your founder of NLM Baffour Yaw Akoto
okoampa, Sarpong, Rockson,Nii Teiko, and a whole host always play the tribal card.Any way you forget the agenda of NPP was and is still tribal domination.Ask your founder of NLM Baffour Yaw Akoto
Hayford 8 years ago
Listen to this trokosi ethnocentric idiot called Kojo Tamakloe. The Ewes are the worst tribalists in Ghana.
Listen to this trokosi ethnocentric idiot called Kojo Tamakloe. The Ewes are the worst tribalists in Ghana.
Vodoo Xebieso 8 years ago
Idiot, so you accept there flows in your veins some trickle of tribalism!!!
Idiot, so you accept there flows in your veins some trickle of tribalism!!!
insight to the bone 8 years ago
Lets not beat around the bush and call a spade a spade , since the so called fake revolution of JJ we now have his legacy of the islamization of the country , tribal politics camouflaged by so called fake socialism , corrupti ... read full comment
Lets not beat around the bush and call a spade a spade , since the so called fake revolution of JJ we now have his legacy of the islamization of the country , tribal politics camouflaged by so called fake socialism , corruption fueled by the desire to undermine the Akan economy , brother hate and despise brother because of pepeni/ayigbe anti Akan agendas. Travel around the country and you will notice in every town village or hamlet a mosque and NDC banners / billboards all over the place. In some hamlets there are not even toilets , schools , clinics but yet a mosque has been placed there like a quiet insidious malignant cancer spreading all over the country through the pro Palestinian , pro Taliban politics of JJ and his ayigbe idiots, so we know why after establishing relations with Israel was Mills murdered .These same Isrealis then turn around and with their computer engineering rig the elections for the enemy all because of a few million dollars they earned. Our country has become a breeding ground for the worst kind of fanatical terrorists , our judiciary a sham , our institutions of state non functional , our economy in less than 7 years now rated junk , our oil blocks sold by pepeni/ ayigbe criminals , our industry destroyed , and them parading useless houseboys like Kofi Adams , Ahwois , PVs, Nketia etc as leaders of the Akans? We are on a roller coaster ride to political violence that will end up in ethnic war and conflict with the NDC hoping that the Fantis will join them to kill their brothers the TWI speakers but they forget war breeds new leaders and are led by intellectuals will can never allow that to happen , For centuries our fathers rejected this islam (and their desire to enslave the blackman) as though originally God's word has now become so perverse by the interpretations of the wicked Arabs and pepeni. Today we have a pepeni president who claims to be a christian but intimately remains a muslim with 17 children and 11 wives , his children have Muslim names and choose to go to be educated in Dubai as every weekend their Alajihs carry their loot there. We have a cabinet heavily lopsided in favor of Muslims northerners , ewes and other non Akans yet they ask we trust them and accept them . The few Akans they have are cowards and wimps who would sell their own mothers for glorified titles and monies but are totally corrupt incompetent empty barrels. Yes they have brought war unto our heads but its a blessing in disguise as it now gives us the opportunity to clean up this mess and form our own new country without this pepeni/ayigbe menace
Vodoo Xebieso 8 years ago
Just try some nonsense and you'd regret coming into this world. Bastard.
Just try some nonsense and you'd regret coming into this world. Bastard.
insight to the bone 8 years ago
the truth hurts some it seems
the truth hurts some it seems
Vodoo Xebieso 8 years ago
Is it the "truth" according to a mad man?
Is it the "truth" according to a mad man?
Insitu 8 years ago
Yes it is the truth and it hurts!
Yes it is the truth and it hurts!
C.Y. ANDY-K 8 years ago
Yeah! With bigoted idiots to the bone as kingpins of the NPP, I wonder what this Ex-MP is saying. Maybe he needs reminding of being told that the NPP tradition are the chief progenitors and purveyors of ethnocentric politics ... read full comment
Yeah! With bigoted idiots to the bone as kingpins of the NPP, I wonder what this Ex-MP is saying. Maybe he needs reminding of being told that the NPP tradition are the chief progenitors and purveyors of ethnocentric politics and tribalism in Ghana
Down Memory Lane....
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), for 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 Anlo-Ewes? 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 lose 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 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 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, after many of the main speakers had spoken in Twi! 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 though linked to the NDC too.
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 "Anlo-Ewes” in his own virulently anti-Rawlings/ PNDC book, "Ghana: Worse than Apartheid S. Africa," as the Ewes to be killed, for being 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 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 hononary Anlo and entrusted with pouring the libation at the Hogbeza celebration of the Noviha group 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 and 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. 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 journey man, 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 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 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.
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 our ancestors. We shall therefore make sure that these appeal to ethnic differences backfire big time on their stupid 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?
Andy C. Y. Kwawukume
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 “akpeledzi” 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 cordial 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 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?
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.
Charles Agbenu 8 years ago
NPP are not making Ghana u governance. It's a false evil idea wanting to subdue NPP psychologically. CPP , NDC PNDC are all dictators, autocrats and by force administrations creating tensions in Ghana. NPP as opponents will n ... read full comment
NPP are not making Ghana u governance. It's a false evil idea wanting to subdue NPP psychologically. CPP , NDC PNDC are all dictators, autocrats and by force administrations creating tensions in Ghana. NPP as opponents will not bulge and will always contend with such intimidators. When Busia and Kufuor were in power they treated dissension as democrats. NDC totalitarianism and hypocrisy and deceptive tendencies must stop for Ghana to grow.
ABU IDDRISU 8 years ago
Ooo, I can see blindness in Kojo w and Kojo T. The author made a good case which to me was an academic expose. It is clear the ilks of you are bent on pursuing the tribal card to serve the parochial interest of the ndc. Howev ... read full comment
Ooo, I can see blindness in Kojo w and Kojo T. The author made a good case which to me was an academic expose. It is clear the ilks of you are bent on pursuing the tribal card to serve the parochial interest of the ndc. However, some of us northerners are now wide awake. If there is any group of people who are using the tribal agenda, then it is the few ewes in ndc who have nursed this agenda since nkrumah's days.
Did the ewes not want to join German- Togoland until a plebiscite was held?
Is it also not true that the late Prof Kofi Awoonor has written in his book about establishing an ewe hegemony inspite of the fact that he has an akan wife?
Are you old enough to remember the One Man One Matchet Coup attempt against the Acheampong regime by Kojo Tsikatsa , Brig Katah and the rest. For this singular coup attempt is an indictment on the ewe group as having a tribal agenda. How can you explain a coup attempt by actors from the same tribe when the Ghana Army has ewes,akans, gas,akwapims,brongs,kusasis,gonjas,dagombas,walas etc etc enlisted in it and some particular tribe decides to overthrow a regime with soldiers from only within tbeir tribe?
Lastly, the 31 Dec Revolution was started with the Sgt Alolga Akatpores, Chris Atims, Zaya Yebos etc . Why were they chased away?
The NDC can never win this tribal debate with people like us around.
Menua Kwadwo 8 years ago
ABU, wait for a few minutes. "They" will come here and say that you are an Asante pretending to be a Northerner; implying that Northerners have not got the withal to discern where tribalism is coming from in Ghana. These peop ... read full comment
ABU, wait for a few minutes. "They" will come here and say that you are an Asante pretending to be a Northerner; implying that Northerners have not got the withal to discern where tribalism is coming from in Ghana. These people are so so stupid, it is not funny any more.
Vodoo Xebieso 8 years ago
Your "history" is bullshit. Your write-up alone has already singled you as a dirty dead dog-eating fool. For the records, you need to know that:
(1) British Togoland which stretched from parts of the current Upper East Regio ... read full comment
Your "history" is bullshit. Your write-up alone has already singled you as a dirty dead dog-eating fool. For the records, you need to know that:
(1) British Togoland which stretched from parts of the current Upper East Region, Northern Region and the Volta Region ended at Kpetoe/Ave Afiadenyigba in the Volta Region.
(2) Southern Volta Region was NEVER part of British or German Togoland
(3) Southern Volta Region became part of the Gold Coast Colony in 1851 after the Danes divested their interest there to the British
(4) Southern Volta Region NEVER took part in the 1956 Plebiscite
(5) British Togoland was not inhabited by only the Ewes
(6) Present-day Volta Region is not inhabited by only the Ewes.
People like you open your dirty mouths to spew total nonsense and rubbish! Was it only Ewes who overthrew Nkrumah? If so, then Afrifa was an Ewe as well. If the Ewes to your warped mind are inclined to dominate this country why did they not occupy all the key posts after Nkrumah's overthrow? Even in a country like Nigeria where the Northerners are always accused of domination, there is still space for other ethnic groups to rub shoulders with their brothers from the north.
A coup d'tat is a coup d'tat whether led by a rat or mouse, whether successful or not. If my memory serves me right, the coup against Nkrumah was led by Kotoka, an Ewe. Against Busia by an Akan. Against Acheampong by an Akan. Against Akuffo by an Akan (Boakye Djan) when an earlier attempt by Rawling was foiled and was facing trial for treason. Against Liman by a Northerner, Sgt. Alolga Akatapore. So if you look at history of coup-making in Ghana, it was only twice an Ewe led or announced a coup - Kotoka, Rawlings (foiled).
The alleged One Man One Matchet coup plot was invented by certain vested interest to weed out Ewes from their posts which became evident in Busia's Apollo 568 saga.
Regarding your swipe at late Kofi Awoonor, I need not tell you that what he wrote was his own imagination and thoughts and not representative of Ewes.
I don't know where you hail from in Ghana let alone the type of history you read. The foregoing should help educate and inform you on issues of which you are a complete ignoramus.
ABU IDDRISU 8 years ago
Your voodoo does not scare any one. The undeniable facts have deeply hurt u. You detest the truth and even as you try desperately to justify the composition of the 66 coup, you stil have not been able to disprove the fact tha ... read full comment
Your voodoo does not scare any one. The undeniable facts have deeply hurt u. You detest the truth and even as you try desperately to justify the composition of the 66 coup, you stil have not been able to disprove the fact that the one man one matchet was 100% ewe squad. You should know that your agenda might be led by a few ewes for their selfish interest; and that to me, runs thruogh all tribes in Ghana.
We are perfectly aware of the diabolical agenda of you ewes and you have always courted the support of we northerners to achieve your end. Even under this administration led by a northernet, ewes are scrambling for all top jobs. For instance EDAIF board is loaded with 5 members out of the 13 members grace a Prosper Biney. There should have been a representative each from the 10 regions . I believe you are just one of the few ewes pushing the rest into this heinous pit of hate.
C.Y. ANDY-K 8 years ago
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 br ... read full comment
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), for 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 Anlo-Ewes? 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 lose 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 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 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, after many of the main speakers had spoken in Twi! 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 though linked to the NDC too.
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 "Anlo-Ewes” in his own virulently anti-Rawlings/ PNDC book, "Ghana: Worse than Apartheid S. Africa," as the Ewes to be killed, for being 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 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 hononary Anlo and entrusted with pouring the libation at the Hogbeza celebration of the Noviha group 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 and 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. 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 journey man, 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 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 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.
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 our ancestors. We shall therefore make sure that these appeal to ethnic differences backfire big time on their stupid 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?
Andy C. Y. Kwawukume
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 “akpeledzi” 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 cordial 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 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?
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.
Charles Agbenu 8 years ago
250 Ghanaian scholarship students are studying medicine in Cuban. Only 3 are Asantes... they are all Northerners, Ewes and some sprinkling of Gas and others. 100 Norway scholarship for oil/ gas studies. None of the beneficia ... read full comment
250 Ghanaian scholarship students are studying medicine in Cuban. Only 3 are Asantes... they are all Northerners, Ewes and some sprinkling of Gas and others. 100 Norway scholarship for oil/ gas studies. None of the beneficiaries is Asante. They are all Northerners, Ewes, Fantes and very little s prinklings from other tribes. No Asante is considered in Immigration, Police, Army, Civil Service, top govt appointments. If u have Asante name hardly will you be considered for any position. The last NPP govt tried hard to balance the dangerous situation and NPP are rather tagged ETHNOCENTRIC. To them NDC, PNDC are not. Perpetrators of such satanic tendencies are bound to go to the hottest place in hell. Note that there is no Asante in the NDC executive or top hierarchy. The YAmoah Ponkos, Brogya Gyamfis, Sarpongs, Dr Agyeman Mensah, Tony Aidoo, Kojo Bonsus etc are treated like filthy rags in NDC.. let them see it themselves. They have
eyes
Kofi 8 years ago
Can you publish the list of the Ghanaian students in Cuba AND Norway? Make this available so we can all see for ourselves. Be Anas for one day and show us the truth. We are patiently waiting for that authentic list.NOW!
Can you publish the list of the Ghanaian students in Cuba AND Norway? Make this available so we can all see for ourselves. Be Anas for one day and show us the truth. We are patiently waiting for that authentic list.NOW!
kojo nzo ekangaki 8 years ago
Blame the akan tag on NPP on Victor Owusu.... president Kufour,Nana Akuffo-Addo,Kennedy Agyepong and those playing de tribal card in NPP with impunity........
Blame the akan tag on NPP on Victor Owusu.... president Kufour,Nana Akuffo-Addo,Kennedy Agyepong and those playing de tribal card in NPP with impunity........
Vodoo Xebieso 8 years ago
It is unfortunate that late Victor Owusu was understood out of context when he labelled the Ewes as "inward-looking". The fellow never meant an insult. Refer to the dictionary definition of that word and you'd give kudos to t ... read full comment
It is unfortunate that late Victor Owusu was understood out of context when he labelled the Ewes as "inward-looking". The fellow never meant an insult. Refer to the dictionary definition of that word and you'd give kudos to the man for respecting the Ewe mentality.
BOY KOFI 8 years ago
When Kwame Nkrumah was fighting for the national unity,the unitary government Danquah,Busia and Dombo opposed him violently.The opposition leaders Danquah,Busia and Dombo were advocating for federal system base on regional co ... read full comment
When Kwame Nkrumah was fighting for the national unity,the unitary government Danquah,Busia and Dombo opposed him violently.The opposition leaders Danquah,Busia and Dombo were advocating for federal system base on regional cooperation rather than a central government.This tradition was what PP led by Busia had in store but failed to change Nkrumah's unitary govt when he was elected as Prime Minister in 1969.NPP led by Kuffour could also not change the unitary govt.NPP believes in the Danquah,Busia,Dombo tradition,that is where the tribal propaganda begun from.On a more serious note,Bawumia is a big liar.There was nothing like Togolese or Cambodians in the 2012 elections report.We did not hear anything like foreigner in the 2012 elections petition,so why now?Thank you.
Kofi 8 years ago
Dedicated to Nana Akumfi
Ameyaw of Takyiman, “A True National Hero,†who together with the
Brong-Kyempem Federation, saved the Country from a Civil War, threatened
by the NLM-NPP Declaration of Secessionism on ... read full comment
Dedicated to Nana Akumfi
Ameyaw of Takyiman, “A True National Hero,†who together with the
Brong-Kyempem Federation, saved the Country from a Civil War, threatened
by the NLM-NPP Declaration of Secessionism on Nov. 2, 1956.
What I have been trying
to show in my articles is that Dr. J. B. Danquah was not “a compatriot
saint of Ghana†or “a pathfinder†of Ghana’s politics as President
Kufuor claimed in his February 2005 public pronouncement. Certainly,
since he was rejected by his own Akyem Abuakwa electorate in the 1954
and 1956 general elections, Danquah could not have been “the best
Prime Minister Ghana never had,†as contained in President Kufuor’s
speech. Based on his pro-British Empire stands (read Part III of this
series), absolute contempt for the ordinary people, anti-electoral process,
secessionist assertion, and the coup plots against Kwame Nkrumah’s
government, Danquah does not deserve to have the University of Ghana
renamed after him, as urged by Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin of Akyem
Abuakwa in February 2005. As stated in my introductory article, President
Kufuor and the Okyehene’s views, and the serialized articles by Dr.
Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr. (whose father was a foot soldier of Kwame
Nkrumah, a Young Pioneer official and a graduate of the School of Music
and Drama at Legon) suffer from a severe historical amnesia. They were
deliberately orchestrated to honor Danquah in a big way during the coming
50th Anniversary of Ghana’s independence. Otherwise, why would President
Kufuor appoint Mr. Tony Oteng-Gyasi as Chairman of the University of
Ghana Council (Ghanaweb, July 11, 2006)?
The Undemocratic Behavior of Danquah and His Allies after the 1956
Election.
In November of 1957,
a Commission of Enquiry, headed by the British Judge J. Jackson, found
serious abuses of power by the Akyem Abuakwa State Council, in terms
of its willful promotion of the NLM as the sole party of the State.
In its findings, the Jackson Commission accused Ofori Atta II of failing
to behave “as an impartial statesman.†He was also accused of using
“coercion to bring other chiefs into line,†in such a case as the
oath-taking to support J. B. Danquah and the NLM. Additionally, the
Commission found an abuse of power in the appointment of Danquah as
Twafohene, and in the financial manipulation of the State Council in
favor of Danquah and the NLM. During the Commission’s sittings, Danquah
categorically denounced the authority of the government saying that
the people of Akyem were not subject to the laws of Ghana (see the Report
of Jackson Commission, 1958). The irony is that the Akyem Abuakwa electorate
rejected all the five NLM candidates (including Danquah himself) in
the 1956 election. Because of the Jackson Commission’s findings, Nana
Kena II called a meeting of a section of the State Council at Kukurantumi
on June 13, 1958, at which time Ofori Atta II was glumly deposed as
Omanhene, while Nana Kena II was appointed as Regent (Simensen, 1975).
In his July 13, 1959 letter to Mr Brockway in London, J. B. Danquah
said, “I was against any election as premature and favoured Constituent
Assembly,†where the pre-ordained rulers would be selected to rule
(see Historic Speeches of Danquah). To understand Danquah’s reason
for disregarding the electoral process and disrespecting the CPP victories
and Nkrumah’s government, we must point to the root of Danquah’s
political ideology. Aside from being a “tame student of Kant’s moral
philosophy†(Danquah, Vol. 1), Danquah (including Busia) echoed and
practiced Edmund Burke’s ideology of the rule by the preordained elite
(Bankole, 1963; Bing, 1968). Burke’s political philosophy was developed
at Oxford University into an ideology that the elite is born to rule
the world. Thus, it does society great harm, Burke reasoned, if the
masses (affirming Aristotle’s views that the masses should have been
slaves) are allowed to participate in governance by voting. So, since
Kwame Nkrumah was a goldsmith’s son with some “ntafo†(Northerners)
in his government (Danquah’s infamous remarks), and since the CPP
was voted into power mostly by the ordinary people, Danquah and Busia
considered the CPP government illegitimate and dangerous to the society;
and hence must be destroyed. Accordingly, Dr. K. A. Busia and the NLM
warned the British government in August of 1955 of grisly aftereffects,
if the country attained independence under the CPP government (Ninisn,
1991). It was also for the same reason that the Danquah-Busia camp resorted
to the undemocratic methods and terrorist bomb attacks to overthrow
the democratically elected government of Kwame Nkrumah, before Ghana’s
independence.
1. On November 10, 1955, Nkrumah’s house was bombed while he was resting
and working in his house with his secretary and others because of a
terrible cold.
2. On August 3, 1956,
the Opposition boycotted the constitutional debate tabled by the CPP
government.
3. On November 20, 1956,
the NLM and NPP sent a resolution to the Secretary for Colonies, demanding
separate independence for Asante and Northern Territories (McFarland
& Owusu-Ansah, 1995).
4. Before independence,
Dr. Busia traveled to London to make a plea to the British Government
to deny granting independence to Ghana. He said, “We still need you
in the Gold Coast…Your experiment there is not complete. Sometimes
I wonder why you seem such in a hurry to wash your hands off us (Nkrumah,
1957).
5. On the eve of Ghana’s
Independence on March 6, 1957, the Ewe Unificationists, led by S.G.
Antor (Danquah’s buddy), formed themselves into a ragged guerilla
army in Alavanyo and prepared for an armed insurrection with homemade
guns against the CPP government. (See my Thesis for M.A. Degree in History,
1977). The Governor- General sent troops to the region to put down the
revolt (Mahoney, 1983).
What we must keep in mind is that Kwame Nkrumah’s Government had just
inherited four fragmented territories from the British Government, when
these primitive acts of terrorism became the language of the Opposition.
This was manifested by the undemocratic and/or violent activities of
sectarian groups in Asante, Accra and Volta Region. But the first duty
of any government is to preserve the internal security of the country
and govern. Hence, the consolidation of national unity and security
for which the Ghanaian electorate voted was strengthened by the parliament’s
enactment of the Nationality and Citizenship Act of 1957 (Act 1), and
the Preventive Detention Act of 1958 (Act 17). These laws were debated
in parliament before their enactment and the consent of the British
Governor-General. The first Act was for the deportation of aliens found
to be “engaged in activities inimical to the unity, security and stability
of the Ghanaian state†(Ninsin, 1991). The act only renewed the powers
previously possessed and exercised by the Colonial Government. The second
Act, the PDA, “made it possible for the government to imprison, without
trial, some Ghanaians whose activities were found to be prejudicial
to the state security and stability.†As such, it was an emergency
measure to foster a strong national unity against both ethnocentrism
and the “danger of fragmentation,†and national rivalry (Ninsin).
These Acts became the laws of the land by which the people, irrespective
of (one’s) social status, profession, political affiliation or ethnic
background, had to live. On the contrary, the disjointed Opposition
disregarded these laws and continued its vow to make the country ungovernable
in order to overthrow the CPP government by violence. To this end, the
government issued a White Paper in 1959 registering its unadulterated
vow “to the very existence of the state of Ghana by [not] allowing
to go unchecked plots and conspiracies which might result in the destruction
of the state itself†(Ninsin). Two measures were taken: (i) “the
elimination of sectarian or sectional tendencies which militate against
the unity and security of the Ghanaian state; and (ii) the elimination
of the structural basis of the tendency toward national fragmentation.â€
This reinforced the “Avoidance of Discrimination Act†of 1957, which
forbade “racial, tribal, regional as well as religious political organizations
and propaganda†(Ninsin). Above all, it produced the United Party
for all the political parties to become one thereby reinforcing the
unity of the nation-state of Ghana, Prof. Kwame Ninsin explained. Was
this an act of dictatorship? The other alternative would have been an
outright proscription and the closure of the offices of the ethno-regional
and parochial political parties in Ghana. Yet, the Opposition, now turned
enemy of the State, accelerated its acts of terrorism to make the country
ungovernable.
1. After the passage of the Avoidance Act, the anti-Nkrumah movement,
the Ga-Shifimo Kpee, was formally launched in Accra, where a sheep was
slaughtered and oaths were sworn against all ‘strangers,’ including
Nkrumah who was accused of encumbering a Ga constituency seat. Strangely,
Danquah and S. G. Antor were in attendance. From then, on the organization’s
youth wing, “Tokyo Joes,†thronged themselves at vantage points
in Accra hooting and jeering at Nkrumah and the CPP leaders. After his
trip from abroad, Nkrumah was met with placards reading: “Welcome
Mr. Dictator,†“PM Is Goldsmith Your father’s name?†etc. (Austin,
1964; Awoonor, 1991, Bing, 1974).
2. In 1958, there was
a plot to assassinate Nkrumah at the airport and then overthrow the
CPP government as Nkrumah was about to leave for a state visit to India.
The plot was discovered and the plotters were arrested (Forward Ever,
1977).
3. On July 7, 1961, two
bombs exploded in Accra, one wrecking Nkrumah’s statue in front of
the Parliament House (McFarland &Owusu-Ansah).
4. In September 1961,
there was a conspiracy among the senior Ghanaian military officers,
but the plot collapsed because of the death of the chief conspirator
Brigadier General Joseph E. Michel in an airplane crash (Mahoney, 1983).
5. On August 1, 1962,
as Nkrumah was returning form a state visit to Upper Volta (now Burkina
Faso), and had gotten out of his car to speak to the school children
in the crowd that had gathered to greet him at Kulungugu, a bomb contained
in a bouquet carried to him by a schoolgirl, exploded; it killed several
school children and injured many others. The victims’ bodies bled
from cuts caused by the splinters from the bomb (Kanu 1982; Tetteh,
1999). Nkrumah sustained a serious injury but he refused to have any
device to deaden his pain while the operation went on.
6. On September 9, 1962,
another bomb exploded near the “Flagstaff House, where the Ghana Young
Pioneers Orchestra Band was entertaining the audience to modern Ghanaian
Music.†The explosion killed one person and injured many others (Tetteh).
7. On September 18, 1962,
two bombs exploded in Accra killing and injuring many people. One of
these bomb blasts occurred in Lucas House in Accra, where nine children
fell dead on the spot with their intestines gushed out of their bodies
(Tetteh).
8. September 20, 1962,
two bombs exploded in Accra, killing and injuring several people (McFarland
& Owusu-Ansah).
9. On September 22, 1962,
there was another bomb explosion in Accra (McFarland & Owusu-Ansah;
Tetteh).
10. On January 11, 1963,
another bomb exploded at a CPP rally at the Accra Sports Stadium shortly
after Nkrumah had left the scene. This explosion killed over twenty
people and more than four hundred people were injured; among the victims
were children of the Young Pioneer movement (McFarland & Owusu-Ansah).
11. January 1, 1964,
a police officer, Seth Ametewe, was posted on guard duty at the Flagstaff
House to assassinate Nkrumah. His five shots missed Nkrumah, but succeeded
in killing his personal security officer, Sgt. Salifu Dagarti.
The question is, what
government would permit these primitive and terrorist methods of attack
by an opposing political party? In the light of these senseless, barbaric
bomb attacks against the founder of Ghana, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah,
the Young Pioneers and other school children, how was the CPP government
going to protect and develop the newly independent State of Ghana? The
main reason for the repeated bomb attacks against the Ghana Young Pioneers,
according to Dr. Tetteh, was that Nkrumah’s enemies saw in the Ghana
Young Pioneers movement (of which I was a member at Koforidua) “the
source of permanent power if allowed to last for at least one generation
or 35 years.†At any rate, given Dr. J. B. Danquah’s hostility towards
the democratic process and given his open statement during the Jackson
Commission of 1958 indicating that the laws of Ghana did not apply to
him, was it surprising that he resorted to undemocratic and violent
methods? As demonstrated above, J. B. Danquah and his cronies chose
the uncivilized methods and terrorism, including collaboration with
the CIA to kill Kwame Nkrumah and overthrow his government. Was this
what Danquah meant when he said that Nkrumah would pay with his neck
for the Positive Action
crusade in 1950? What a shameful legacy!
Therefore, President Kufour should, on the 50th Anniversary of Ghana’s
Independence and in the spirit of a true reconciliation, pardon J. B.
Danquah and his cronies for their coup plots and/or their senseless
bomb attacks that killed and maimed several Young Pioneers and other
school children, instead of promoting him as a national hero.
Kwame Botwe-Asamoah,
Ph.D. Professor of African and African American History
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
** I am not in a debate with any person
or persons who express emotions, because debate, as we know, is the
art of debunking the data of one’s opponent with facts.
‹ The Fallacies of J. B. Danquahs Heroic Legacy (V)The
Bozango 8 years ago
You are the most disunited group of people with one language in Africa and you will always suffer for that politically in Ghana,who and what is stopping Akans from coming together in unity to practice Akanism just like nyebro ... read full comment
You are the most disunited group of people with one language in Africa and you will always suffer for that politically in Ghana,who and what is stopping Akans from coming together in unity to practice Akanism just like nyebroism, your answer lies in arrogance, jealousy and hate among the Akans.
C.Y. ANDY-K 8 years ago
Really?????
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 ... read full comment
Really?????
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), for 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 Anlo-Ewes? 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 lose 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 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 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, after many of the main speakers had spoken in Twi! 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 though linked to the NDC too.
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 "Anlo-Ewes” in his own virulently anti-Rawlings/ PNDC book, "Ghana: Worse than Apartheid S. Africa," as the Ewes to be killed, for being 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 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 hononary Anlo and entrusted with pouring the libation at the Hogbeza celebration of the Noviha group 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 and 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. 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 journey man, 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 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 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.
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 our ancestors. We shall therefore make sure that these appeal to ethnic differences backfire big time on their stupid 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?
Andy C. Y. Kwawukume
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 “akpeledzi” 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 cordial 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 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?
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.
Bozango 8 years ago
Well it's true though, the unity of the Ewe people must be acknowledged and respected,the only difference between the Ewe folks from Benin,Togo and Ghana to me as layman is probably their individual passport,that of which ca ... read full comment
Well it's true though, the unity of the Ewe people must be acknowledged and respected,the only difference between the Ewe folks from Benin,Togo and Ghana to me as layman is probably their individual passport,that of which cannot be said of the so-called Akans,not in Ghana and for that matter also not between Ghana and the Ivorians,and that's a fact.
Menua Kwadwo 8 years ago
That is a very good analysis; the solution to correct this anomaly starts now!!!! AKANS MUST COME TOGETHER AND PRACTICE THEIR OWN BROTHER(SISTER)HOOD; OTHERWISE THEY WILL PERISH IN SHAME!!!!!
That is a very good analysis; the solution to correct this anomaly starts now!!!! AKANS MUST COME TOGETHER AND PRACTICE THEIR OWN BROTHER(SISTER)HOOD; OTHERWISE THEY WILL PERISH IN SHAME!!!!!
Adomako Frobour 8 years ago
Khosas(Xhosas) and Zulu inter-marry. In fact S Africans marry across the tribal spectrum. I should know it's my home of 28yeard and my 4 children have SA mother
Khosas(Xhosas) and Zulu inter-marry. In fact S Africans marry across the tribal spectrum. I should know it's my home of 28yeard and my 4 children have SA mother
NPP pace- setters of Ghana's political evolution? What I see is opposition in Ghana trying heaven and earth to make Ghana ungovernable. I oppose people. Just so you know. Where is the wrong tag. The elephant is said to have a ...
read full comment
okoampa, Sarpong, Rockson,Nii Teiko, and a whole host always play the tribal card.Any way you forget the agenda of NPP was and is still tribal domination.Ask your founder of NLM Baffour Yaw Akoto
Listen to this trokosi ethnocentric idiot called Kojo Tamakloe. The Ewes are the worst tribalists in Ghana.
Idiot, so you accept there flows in your veins some trickle of tribalism!!!
Lets not beat around the bush and call a spade a spade , since the so called fake revolution of JJ we now have his legacy of the islamization of the country , tribal politics camouflaged by so called fake socialism , corrupti ...
read full comment
Just try some nonsense and you'd regret coming into this world. Bastard.
the truth hurts some it seems
Is it the "truth" according to a mad man?
Yes it is the truth and it hurts!
Yeah! With bigoted idiots to the bone as kingpins of the NPP, I wonder what this Ex-MP is saying. Maybe he needs reminding of being told that the NPP tradition are the chief progenitors and purveyors of ethnocentric politics ...
read full comment
NPP are not making Ghana u governance. It's a false evil idea wanting to subdue NPP psychologically. CPP , NDC PNDC are all dictators, autocrats and by force administrations creating tensions in Ghana. NPP as opponents will n ...
read full comment
Ooo, I can see blindness in Kojo w and Kojo T. The author made a good case which to me was an academic expose. It is clear the ilks of you are bent on pursuing the tribal card to serve the parochial interest of the ndc. Howev ...
read full comment
ABU, wait for a few minutes. "They" will come here and say that you are an Asante pretending to be a Northerner; implying that Northerners have not got the withal to discern where tribalism is coming from in Ghana. These peop ...
read full comment
Your "history" is bullshit. Your write-up alone has already singled you as a dirty dead dog-eating fool. For the records, you need to know that:
(1) British Togoland which stretched from parts of the current Upper East Regio ...
read full comment
Your voodoo does not scare any one. The undeniable facts have deeply hurt u. You detest the truth and even as you try desperately to justify the composition of the 66 coup, you stil have not been able to disprove the fact tha ...
read full comment
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 br ...
read full comment
250 Ghanaian scholarship students are studying medicine in Cuban. Only 3 are Asantes... they are all Northerners, Ewes and some sprinkling of Gas and others. 100 Norway scholarship for oil/ gas studies. None of the beneficia ...
read full comment
Can you publish the list of the Ghanaian students in Cuba AND Norway? Make this available so we can all see for ourselves. Be Anas for one day and show us the truth. We are patiently waiting for that authentic list.NOW!
Blame the akan tag on NPP on Victor Owusu.... president Kufour,Nana Akuffo-Addo,Kennedy Agyepong and those playing de tribal card in NPP with impunity........
It is unfortunate that late Victor Owusu was understood out of context when he labelled the Ewes as "inward-looking". The fellow never meant an insult. Refer to the dictionary definition of that word and you'd give kudos to t ...
read full comment
When Kwame Nkrumah was fighting for the national unity,the unitary government Danquah,Busia and Dombo opposed him violently.The opposition leaders Danquah,Busia and Dombo were advocating for federal system base on regional co ...
read full comment
Dedicated to Nana Akumfi
Ameyaw of Takyiman, “A True National Hero,†who together with the
Brong-Kyempem Federation, saved the Country from a Civil War, threatened
by the NLM-NPP Declaration of Secessionism on ...
read full comment
You are the most disunited group of people with one language in Africa and you will always suffer for that politically in Ghana,who and what is stopping Akans from coming together in unity to practice Akanism just like nyebro ...
read full comment
Really?????
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 ...
read full comment
Well it's true though, the unity of the Ewe people must be acknowledged and respected,the only difference between the Ewe folks from Benin,Togo and Ghana to me as layman is probably their individual passport,that of which ca ...
read full comment
That is a very good analysis; the solution to correct this anomaly starts now!!!! AKANS MUST COME TOGETHER AND PRACTICE THEIR OWN BROTHER(SISTER)HOOD; OTHERWISE THEY WILL PERISH IN SHAME!!!!!
Khosas(Xhosas) and Zulu inter-marry. In fact S Africans marry across the tribal spectrum. I should know it's my home of 28yeard and my 4 children have SA mother