Introduction
From 1966 to 1972, Ghana underwent considerable political change. In February 1966 the one-party state with a centralized government under President Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party (CPP) was overthrown by the National Liberation Council (NLC) in a coup led by the military. The NLC oversaw constitutional reform, the multiparty elections held in August 1969, and the transition to representative democracy, when the military handed power over to Kofi Busia and the Progress Party. In January 1972 Busia himself was ousted in a second coup led by Colonel I. K. Acheampong of the NLC, which later became the Supreme Military Council (SMC). In its turn the SMC was deposed by Flight Lieutenant J. J. Rawlings and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) in June 1979.
The historiography of the period 1966–79 foregrounds political crisis, state weakness, rupture, and the triumph of neopatrimonialism over democratization. Footnote 1 The focus on state institutions is evident in research that divides the period into distinct types of rule and government and concentrates on such themes as the capturing of the state, the formation and elite composition of political parties, the restructuring of public administration, and the ethnic voting patterns in the 1969 elections. Footnote 2 This political science approach is also evident in the tendency to characterize the epoch as a “revival” of chieftaincy because of the pro-chief provisions in the 1969 Constitution that revoked the anti-chief stance of Nkrumah. Footnote 3 Today, however, these political science–inspired studies appear dated, locked in a state-centered frame of reference that sees the period as a series of jarring critical junctures. What they often neglect is the interactive processes that shape relationships between state and society. They disregard the mechanisms that allow powerful institutions to persist during relatively stable in-between periods, and simplify the dynamics of neopatrimonial configurations (see Weir Reference Weir, Shapiro, Skowronek and Galvin2006). As Catherine Boone (Reference Boone2014) points out, the persistence of the state in rural areas, together with the long-term historical process of state formation as a product of a society’s ability to appropriate and penetrate the state, is often overlooked.
The seminal work of Richard Rathbone (Reference Rathbone2000) provided new and valuable insights into the dynamic relationships between the state and chiefs in Ghana from the late colonial period to the early years of independence. In this setting, the general demise, subjection, and ultimate incorporation of chieftaincy into state institutions after independence was not, as is often claimed, due to political modernization and the emergence of new forms of citizenship, but was grounded in nationalistic politics and the “localization of national politics” with the aim of disciplining chiefs to follow national political agendas (2000:93). As many studies of chieftaincy in French and British West Africa show, national versus local power dynamics varied in different regions in the decade following independence: there were attempts to abolish, mobilize, politicize, or incorporate the institution of chieftaincy, and there also were attempts to vest it with a relatively high degree of autonomy (see Miles Reference Miles1993).
This article contributes to uncovering the dynamics of state formation in this important period of Ghanaian political history by emphasizing the strong and active involvement of the state in local affairs. The examination of a complex local dispute that endured the numerous changes in rule at the center rejects conceptualizations of state crisis, state centrism, and weakness. The contest in question was between, on the one hand, central government and statutory institutions, and on the other, rural groups and local customary authorities. In general, competition over jurisdiction often provides evidence of the ways in which multiple institutions regulate societal organization and how positions of authority—with access to and control over resources—are contested by shifting configurations of powerful state and social interests. Footnote 4 This case in particular shows the mutually constitutive character and relatively porous boundaries of state and society as they shape each other through social action and discursive strategies to legitimize jurisdictions (see Hagmann & Peclard Reference Hagmann and Péclard2010). In this way, the article seeks to shed new conceptual light on this period of state upheaval.
The article also contributes to understandings of the development of chieftaincy in this era. The historiographical framing tends to foreground developing relations between the state and chiefs as they alternated between contestation and consensus, eventually resulting in a revival of chieftaincy. But this emphasis has diverted attention from durable underlying currents of exclusion, specifically the plight of groups whose traditional claims were ignored by successive governments throughout the period. The article looks at one case in particular, that of East Gonja, in which the insistent playing out of national political agendas did not result in the submission, incorporation, or revival of locally legitimate chiefs into state institutions, but instead proved self-defeating.
The chronicling of the dispute thus provides a reminder of the multiplicity of relations between the state and chiefs and widens our understanding of chieftaincy in Ghana more generally. It illuminates a process of continuity whereby both colonial and postcolonial state formation demanded the persistent exclusion of particular social groups that were organized around chieftaincies. The dismissed groups formed their own traditional leaders and reacted against state recognition of other chiefs and traditional claims. The excluded groups thereby shaped local authority by producing their own traditional leaders, which government could neither govern nor dominate. The case of East Gonja defies the received interpretation, according to which the emerging nationalist movement personified by Nkrumah and the CPP stripped chiefs of the privileges they had gained under colonial rule, and chiefly rule was consequently “severely compromised” and “radically altered” through reform (J. K. Adjaye Reference Adjaye2004:1021)—only to be revived and restored by the NLC in the post-coup period. Footnote 5 East Gonja tells instead of a contrasting trajectory of state–chief relations that has escaped investigation, in which the process of shaping a social contract between the state and the chiefs was defined not by state proclivities toward incorporation, but by the state’s persistent, durable exclusion of local chiefs. Footnote 6 This produced a category of chiefs that was dismissed by statutory institutions and was outside the reach of the state, but all the same endured through the period and was legitimized by local minority groups. Overall, the case consequently invites a rethinking of the political science paradigm of a weak state, and adds nuance to our understandings of interactions between the central state and local chiefs in terms of an emerging consensus arising through contestation.
The so-called “Kanankulai skin affair,” a chieftaincy dispute involving mainly the Gonja and Nawuri ethnic groups, broke out in rural Kpandai, East Gonja, in 1968 and remained unresolved in 1974. Footnote 7 It began as a contest among individuals, groups, and institutions over defining the traditional right to select and appoint an influential position of public authority, the Chief of Kpandai, who in the recent past had the right to sit as chairman of the local council and enjoyed government recognition as the highest customary authority over land in the area. In a broader perspective the dispute exemplified a number of significant and overlapping challenges that played out in the post-Nkrumah period, as the reorganization of state institutions was taking place. These included questions of how relations between national and local polities should be shaped; the role, if any, that ethnically defined institutions should play in national development; the extent to which such positions of local authority should be legitimized from above or below; and whether constitutional reform with a return to ballot box logic should influence a government’s standing in traditional disputes.
The article is based primarily on archival research aimed at identifying the processes of agency vested by governments in traditional institutions and related episodes of social contention. Footnote 8 Specific attention was given to uncovering how the legitimization of authority based on tradition and ethnicity enabled the securing of political-economic benefits by recognized groups. For example, state recognition of ethnic Gonja traditional institutions enabled this group to secure a range of tangible benefits. These included employment opportunities, access to powerful institutions of government, control over the flow of agricultural products and the movement of people, the channeling of tax revenues, the defining and awarding of developmental contracts, control over opportunities offered by new political institutions, and the substantiation of land claims to extract rent and tribute from nonrecognized groups. The archival research was supplemented by semistructured interviews with contemporary ethnic leaders in Kpandai and East Gonja. Footnote 9 Interviews focused on the strategic use of tradition by different actors and institutions, the significance of chieftaincy for community organization, local recollections of the dispute, and the role of government.
The first section frames emerging relations between Gonja, Nawuri, and the state in the colonial period and serves as a background for understanding the dispute. The next section outlines national political developments through the period and changes to government-recognized traditional institutions. This traces contentions centered on local government institutions and tangible benefits associated with state recognition of traditional jurisdictions under Nkrumah’s rule. The article then focuses on the dispute itself, the developing divide among state institutions, and the professed solution to the dispute in relation to national political agendas.
Emerging Relations among the Gonja, Nawuri, and the State
East Gonja came under British rule and the jurisdiction of the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast in 1919 following the loss of Germany’s overseas territories at the Treaty of Versailles (see Staniland Reference Staniland1975). The policy of Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg, the British governor, was to incorporate the numerous minority groups in the area into large native states under the rule of majority groups. Such a scheme befitted the colonial model of a historically stratified society ruled by a set of chief-based institutions with clear rules of appointment and succession, and also the politically convenient assumptions that social organization was hierarchical, and that fixed traditions provided for tribal cohesion and social equilibrium. This policy also legitimized Gonja versions of area history. Accordingly, from the early 1930s the administering authority created and supported a Gonja Native Authority and granted Gonja chiefs jurisdiction over a newly named East Gonja District that covered the Kpandai area and included Nawuri and Nchrumbru residents. In this manner authority over East Gonja was produced less by means of newly invented “traditions” and more through an interactive process involving privileged Africans and colonial officers. Gonja land claims and authority were recognized on the basis of historical conquest and superior status, while Nawuri and Nchrumbru versions of history were dismissed (see Ampiah Reference Ampiah1991). Recognition given to Gonja claims meant the colonial state recognized Nawuri and Nchrumbru as Gonja traditional subjects and the status of their own chiefs was negated: they were not incorporated into the colonial order as middlemen to communities, nor did they fulfill any colonial duties. Footnote 10 The result, to use Charles Tilly’s phrase (2005:6), was a situation of “contentious politics.” In the decade before independence in 1957, for example, the Nawuri produced their own chiefs in defiance of their professed traditional ties to the Gonja, and their struggle for autonomy became enmeshed with the international question of the future status of Togoland (Stacey Reference Stacey2014).
National Political Developments and Customary Authority
On February 22, 1966, the National Liberation Council (NLC) declared itself the new government of Ghana and ousted Kwame Nkrumah in the country’s first corrective-reformist coup (Biswal Reference Biswal1992; Owusu Reference Owusu1989). The NLC embarked on reversing the rules of the previous fifteen years of CPP government—banning the CPP party, revoking the 1960 Constitution and its amendments, and dissolving the National Assembly. In the course of 1967, paramount chiefs promoted by Nkrumah were reduced to their previous status or removed, and chiefs who had been removed by Nkrumah were reinstalled. Footnote 11 Nonetheless, the NLC’s public stance was not to interfere with customary affairs, and a constitutional commission under Justice Edward Akufo-Addo later proposed that issues of chieftaincy should be separated entirely from party politics (Mensah-Brown Reference Mensah-Brown1969).
At the same time, the presidency was reduced to a ceremonial role, its powers lost to a prime minister and cabinet, and a newly created institution, the Chieftaincy Secretariat, became the national institution advising the presidency on chiefly affairs (Biswal Reference Biswal1992:101). The spirit of the times was reflected in the preamble to the 1969 Constitution, which reversed the anti-chief sentiment of the Nkrumah era: “We the Chiefs and the people of Ghana have experienced a regime of tyranny. . . .” Significantly, Article 18 (1) stated that “the institution of chieftaincy together with its traditional councils as established by customary law and usage is hereby guaranteed. . . .” All local chiefs had to apply to the Chieftaincy Secretariat for recognition of their status in accordance with customary law procedures (Mensah-Brown Reference Mensah-Brown1969), and in practice the president rubber-stamped the secretariat’s determinations. These changes were intended to isolate chiefly appointments and removals from direct political interference, factionalism, and politicization. Locally, matters concerning the appointment and removal of chiefs came under the jurisdiction of traditional councils, where a paramount chief of a traditional area sat as president. The 1969 Constitution also provided for two judicial bodies: Regional Houses of Chiefs (one for each region), which had original jurisdiction, and a National House of Chiefs, the highest traditional institution with appellate jurisdiction in all chieftaincy affairs (Boafo-Arthur Reference Boafo-Arthur2001). Decisions here could be appealed in the last resort to the Supreme Court.
Initially the NLC abolished the local government institutions of regional- and district-level councils with commissioners in favor of professional management committees, Footnote 12 but the 1969 Constitution provided for the establishment of new local, district, and regional councils. While the ultimate goal was for a new government and Parliament to define local government authority (Brempong Reference Brempong2001), the new provisions actually revived local government reforms from the 1950s. These stipulated that traditional authorities should constitute one-third of the district council’s membership while the other two-thirds would be made up of local officials elected on the basis of adult suffrage (Boafo-Arthur Reference Boafo-Arthur2001). The CPP ban on the formation of political parties was lifted in May 1969, paving the way for parliamentary elections completed in early September 1969. These gave a landslide victory to Kofi Busia’s Progress Party (PP) based on clear ethnic voting patterns (Biswal Reference Biswal1992). The PP had strong support among the Akan and influential northern ethnic groups, while the largest opposition party, the National Alliance of Liberals (NAL), enjoyed backing from northern minority groups and from Ewe in the Volta region. Footnote 13 East Gonja voting reflected the national trend, with Gonja supporting the PP and minority ethnic groups supporting the NAL. Kpandai District in East Gonja was won for the NAL by a Nawuri campaigner, Joseph K. E. Mbimgadong (later Nana Obimpeh I), though this one victory was not significant enough to fulfill the principal objective of overturning Nawuri and Nchrumbru status as traditional subjects of the Gonja.
On January 13, 1972, against a background of national near-bankruptcy caused by plummeting cocoa prices, the country experienced a second coup led by the military leader Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, and Prime Minster Busia was removed from office. Footnote 14 Politically, Busia had garnered a great deal of disapproval because of his hesitancy to pursue the decentralization of power as formulated in the constitution. For example Busia’s 1970 Local Administration Bill had vested power in the executive branch of government, with the Office of the Prime Minister appointing the chairpersons of the regional councils (the Regional Chief Executives) and district councils. Footnote 15 Following the coup the 1969 Constitution was withdrawn, the president and leader of the opposition were removed along with Busia, and Parliament and the political parties were dissolved once again. Until June 1979 Ghana was ruled by Acheampong and the Supreme Military Council, and the country’s democratic experiment was perceived to be over. The power to bestow recognition on chiefs, and thereby providing legal protection for a community’s customary laws and validating chiefs’ traditional jurisdiction, was retained by the head of state. In return, chiefs from traditional councils, the Regional House of Chiefs, or the National House of Chiefs were required to provide the ruling regime with political support and land for development (Boafo-Arthur Reference Boafo-Arthur2001). Footnote 16
A central figure in the Kanankulai affair was J. A. Braimah. Braimah became a Gonja Chief (Kabachewura) in 1942, and was appointed to the Gold Coast Legislative Council in 1950. He was secretary for the Gonja Traditional Council, and as a member of the Northern Territories Committee helped ensure that the 1950s local government reforms in Kpandai largely retained the privileges of the Native Authority system of rule. He was Minister of Communications and Works from 1951 to 1953, and in 1954, having left the CPP, was a founding member of the pro-chief Northern Peoples Party (NPP), for whom he won the Gonja East constituency. Braimah was removed as chief by Nkrumah and the Gonja Traditional Council in 1956, but following the ousting of Nkrumah in 1966 he was the only northern chief to be restored to his former position when the NLC ruled that his removal had been politically motivated. Footnote 17 Braimah became a member of the NLC’s new Chieftaincy Secretariat, and was appointed to the constitutional commission (Owusu-Ansah Reference Owusu-Ansah2014). After the 1969 election he was appointed by Busia as the Regional Chief Executive (RCE) of the Northern Region, which was equivalent to a ministerial position, and from where he effectively blocked minority group calls for recognition and improved representation in East Gonja and Kpandai. He returned to traditional affairs and was elevated to Gonja Paramount Chief in 1982 and was Vice Chairman of the Ghana National House of Chiefs until his death in 1987.
In this case of an important local chieftaincy dispute Braimah was successful, as we shall see, in employing his status as an expert on native affairs to reject the demands of civil administration for a locally legitimate solution to the dispute. This is because a locally legitimate solution would favor the Nawuri and thus undermine Gonja traditional institutions he had key interests in safeguarding. He similarly used his political status in statutory institutions to safeguard the sovereignty of Gonja traditional institutions. Braimah’s position as a key actor in the contest, with the ability to bridge customary and formal state institutions, thereby exemplifies the penetration of state institutions into everyday rural affairs in this important period.
The Continuation of Tangible Benefits for Recognized Traditional Jurisdictions
The Kanankulai affair occurred during a period of general contentiousness involving traditional and local government institutions in Kpandai. In 1964 there were numerous allegations of extortion against the incumbent Gonja Chief of Kpandai (Kanankulaiwura Sanda), who sat as chairman of the Kpandai local council and was a stalwart of the CPP. Settler farmers, for example, complained of having to pay a fee of “£10 and over [for] a lorry load of yam” for “export” from the local council area while the “money collected is not accounted for,” and they reported that council vehicles were taken for private use (NRG 8/2/161). Nawuri leaders protested that “the [Chief of Kpandai] deteriorates the social progress of the area [and is] only determined to amass wealth at the expense of others [as] he and his family are managing the council” and expelling people from the area, demolishing houses and erecting new ones on plots (NRG 8/2/161). In less than two months in 1964 some fourteen separate cases of extortion were reported to police and visiting civil servants. The district commissioner reported the maladministration of the local council, which allegedly was controlled nepotistically by one family, the Jawula family:
The cause of troubles in Kpandai is the unlawful arbitrations [held] to extort the masses heavily. . . [,] the misuse of Council property such as iron sheets and asbestos sheets which [are sold] publicly . . . and doors, windows etc. [together with] . . . the practice of charging people £1 each before being employed as labourers . . . [and] threatening revenue officers and other workers with dismissal [who are] compelled to pay money to the Chairman on pay-days. [This has] compelled many Konkombas to migrate last year and this year and some are prepared to migrate enbloc from the District, to the detriment of the Kpandai Local Council [where there is] complete nepotism [and] taxation etc. for the welfare of a single family. (NRG 8/2/161)
Despite no formal charges being brought, £300 was repaid to sixteen people by the Kpandai local council in response to pressure from the regional administration, with estimates of “upwards of £1000” still outstanding (NRG 8/2/161). The awarding of contracts to the council chairman’s family members for the renovations of schools was met with calls to dissolve the council and hold fresh elections (NRG 8/2/223). It was eventually dissolved by the NLC in 1967 when the Kpandai area came under Salaga District Council, but Gonja ethnic dominance continued. For example, Konkomba were warned that they could not perform funeral rites for ten Konkomba who had died without the presence of a Gonja chief because, as Gonja subjects, they had to offer “a hind leg of [an] animal killed . . . to the Chief’s messengers for their food [and a cow’s leg should be] taken to the Chief personally.” Gonja traditional institutions also imposed fines “on any person who failed to notify the funeral ceremony of any relation” (NRG 8/2/188). In 1973 a contract between Gonja and state institutions intensified the existence of unequal social relations at the local level. In that year the government paid compensation through the Volta River Authority to the Kpembewura (the Gonja divisional Chief of Kpembe) for the loss of farmland in East Gonja following the building of the Akosombo dam. In turn, the Gonja Traditional Council declared in April 1974 that “all Gonja citizens are entitled to build houses or cultivate farms free of charge,” while settlers had to “first obtain the permission of the chief having jurisdiction over that piece of land on terms other than outright sale” (NRG 8/2/188). In October 1975, as the Supreme Military Council (SMC) replaced the NRC, the Gonja Paramount Chief thanked General Acheampong for the “the enviable presents given me” and made it clear that “I and my Traditional Council are ever pleased to grant serious Firms or Companies any amount of land when approached” (NRG 8/2/179).
It is important to note that traditional councils (unlike local government councils) had no revenue of their own—and the salaries of chiefs and their subsidies, along with the state car allowance for paramount chiefs, had to be channeled from local council coffers and extracted from court fees and tax payments. Footnote 18 To raise revenue the Gonja Traditional Council thus resolved in July 1973 that the Gonja chief in every village would collect 50p “[to] be paid on every newly married women by the husband to the Traditional Council,” and that hunting groups must first get the village chief’s consent in order to hunt. In the same year an individual was imprisoned for three months for not surrendering the tusks of an elephant killed in East Gonja (NRG 8/2/188). And in August 1975 the regional commissioner ruled that the Gonja Chief of Damongo “should receive Ȼ3,085 paid for loss of economic trees” caused by the construction of a factory. Meanwhile, a dispute revealing contentions between statutory and Gonja traditional institutions surfaced following the death of the Gonja Paramount Chief in October 1975, when the Nanjurowura, an unrecognized chief of the minority subject group of Nchrumbru in Kpandai, was summoned by the Gonja Traditional Council on a charge of “insubordination” for failing to raise satisfactory funds for the chief’s funeral. The Traditional Council endeavored to prosecute him under the 1971 Chieftaincy Act, which made it unlawful for a person not to comply with “any specific duty when so required by the appropriate Traditional Council” (NRG 8/2/188). Still, it was reasoned that “the already explosive matter [i.e., hostile relations between the minority groups and Gonja] is going to be worsened” in the event of the statute section being invoked (NRG 8/2/188).
The dissenting Nchrumbru chief introduced a motion calling for the demarcation of autonomous Nchrumbru and Nawuri traditional areas. In reply, the Traditional Council reasoned that such a move would “dismember [several Gonja] sub-divisions of the Kpembe Division and will in effect amount to the [disintegration] of [several chiefs] and their sub-chiefs” and ruled that the chief (one Nana Kojo Kumah) be deported from the Gonja state for his insubordination. Footnote 19 Civil administration was unwilling to carry out the Traditional Council’s decision, however, and by 1978 the Gonja Traditional Council was still demanding that the government-appointed district chief executive stop paying the salary collected by Nanjurowura as a member of the East Gonja District Council (Ampiah Reference Ampiah1991).
These episodes tell us that political structure was grounded in a configuration of modern and traditional institutions that produced ethnically defined social, economic, and political inequalities that were actively supported by successive governments across the period. In this way the state and society shaped each other to produce ethnically defined jurisdictions that enabled the hoarding of opportunities and economic extraction from subject groups. Thus, from the local to the central level, the vesting of agency in social categories and discursive strategies of state institutions legitimized unequal relations and institutionalized the exclusion of the minority groups. Nevertheless, the reluctance of governments to interfere with issues of tradition could inadvertently weaken the traditional institutions they professed to safeguard.
Producing and Contesting Traditions
The Kanankulai affair commenced with the death of the Gonja Chief of Kpandai, Kanankulaiwura Sanda, in February 1968. On the advice of the Yagbumwura (the Gonja Paramount Chief), the Gonja divisional chief (Kpembewura Abudulai Jawula Ababio II) installed his younger brother, Alhassan Jawula, as the new Chief of Kpandai on February 28. The selection was rejected by Nawuri leaders because of historical animosity against members of the Jawula family. Nawuri argued that their “customary” right to influence the selection had been breached, and they chose instead Alhaji Haruna, who was also an ethnic Gonja and cousin of the Kpembewura, but from another family (NRG 8/2/171).
Public servants reasoned that the authority to select and appoint the chief must lie with Gonja institutions, but they were unable to locate colonial records to verify the paramount chief’s claim that this was indeed the case and that Nawuri had no say in the matter. The uncertainty about the “correct” custom led the regional office of administration to refer Haruna’s complaint against the selection of Jawula to the Gonja Traditional Council. In turn, supporters of Haruna responded that the Traditional Council, as a Gonja institution, was inherently biased, and would always negate Nawuri claims of influence (NRG 8/2/171). As opponents of Jawula had warned, the Traditional Council rejected Nawuri claims of influence and reaffirmed the decision of the Kpembewura. Still, to increase local legitimacy the regional office of administration pressured the Traditional Council to incorporate Nawuri leaders’ views in the selection process—and so two Nawuri leaders attended a Traditional Council meeting to resolve the disagreement. To the surprise of the Jawula camp, at the meeting the Traditional Council went against the Yagbumwura and the Kpembewura, who had chosen Jawula, and instead ruled that Haruna should be elevated to Kanankulaiwura, with Jawula demoted to a lesser chiefship.
Afterward the district office of government recorded that all parties appeared satisfied, although the Nawuri in attendance “were made to understand, quite clearly, that their petitions did not in any way influence the decision—they are ‘Nyamsis’ [indigenous people] and as such have nothing to do with Gonja chieftaincy affairs” (NRG 8/2/171). In this manner, it appeared that the Nawuri presence was appreciated but their inferior social status was affirmed anew, as by definition they had no right to influence the selection process. In effect, Gonja institutions, although in disagreement, were confirmed as unaccountable to Nawuri, since sovereignty was not delegated across the unequal ethnic categories. Nevertheless, in defiance of the assertion that they had not influenced the outcome, the Nawuri supporters of Haruna held their own “appointment” ceremony in Kpandai, where they heckled supporters of Jawula and boasted of pressuring the Gonja Traditional Council into choosing “their chief” (NRG 8/2/171). Thus, Nawuri used their attendance at the meeting to create their own traditional jurisdiction in defiance of government-recognized traditional authorities. After the Nawuri appointed Haruna in the parallel ceremony there were now two competing Gonja Chiefs of Kpandai. This prompted the Kpembewura and ten other Gonja chiefs to lodge an appeal with the state institution for traditional affairs, the Chieftaincy Secretariat, stating that the Kpembewura’s jurisdiction had been violated by the Gonja Traditional Council and that Nawuri had no right in the selection. This group even threatened to break off from the Gonja Traditional Council and form a new traditional area if the decision in favor of Haruna was not retracted (NRG 8/2/171).
Here we see how, on one side, the decisions of state institutions penetrated the local level and sparked social action and reorganization, causing inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic contentions. On the other side, meanwhile, relatively trivial forms of social action by small groups demanded the reaffirmation of state policy. Local reinterpretations of the decisions of state institutions thus forced an increased involvement of these institutions in rural affairs (see Moore Reference Moore1998). Furthermore, state institutions were unwillingly drawn into the dispute because there was no consensus about the procedures to be followed when selecting the chief, about the boundaries of the competing Gonja traditional institutions, or about the procedures to be followed to resolve such disagreements. As the next section shows, these issues created divisions among the different state institutions as well, and had consequences for the creation of traditional jurisdictions outside of government reach.
The Divisions of State Institutions and Local Reactions
After the appeal by the Gonja chiefs was lodged with the Chieftaincy Secretariat, a divide opened between the regional office of administration and the secretariat over their respective areas of jurisdiction. In contrast with the approach of the CPP era, both institutions followed the NLC line of safeguarding traditional institutions. Nevertheless, the state institutions had opposing views of how the dispute should be handled, and their contradictory actions and strong local presence triggered the production of alternative traditional authorities.
The regional administration comprised professional civil servants who leaned toward the Nawuri cause, as this appeared the most locally legitimate solution and hence least likely to cause unrest. The position of the Chieftaincy Secretariat, however, was made more complex by the multiple roles played by J. A. Braimah, who was the former MP of the East Gonja constituency and was currently the Gonja Chief of Kenyase (Kenyasewura), and an advisor to the government on Gonja affairs as a member of the secretariat. Importantly, he was also a potential heir to the Kpembe chiefship. This meant he had an obligation to support the office that he one day might occupy, and whose present incumbent had lodged the appeal against the Traditional Council and the Nawuri. Finally, there was a history of animosity between Braimah and members of the Traditional Council, based on the removal of Braimah by Nkrumah. A configuration of members of the regional office of administration and traditional and political opponents alike found therefore that Braimah had conflicts of interest, and argued that the Chieftaincy Secretariat should not handle the Kpembewura’s appeal. The rift inadvertently produced a series of contradictory communications about who had the right to the chiefship. Given this broader perspective, the local contest over authority quickly drew in more powerful state institutions. These vied over defining the local polity in line with national political agendas and created space for the production of nonstate traditional authorities.
Initially the regional office of administration ruled that Jawula should be regarded as the “legally constituted” chief, based on the 1961 Chieftaincy Act that allowed for a suspension of the Traditional Council’s decision in favor of Haruna, pending the appeal. Although both candidates were formally banned from partaking in chiefly functions such as hearing cases, performing rites, and allocating land, the term “legally constituted” was erroneously interpreted locally to mean that government now recognized Jawula as the Chief of Kpandai (NRG 8/2/171). The Haruna camp countered by protesting that the decision to legally constitute the chief undermined the jurisdiction of the Gonja Traditional Council, which had ruled that Haruna was, indeed, the rightful chief (NRG 8/2/171).
The opposing views revealed different convictions as to whether local authority, and people’s obligation to obey, should be legitimated with reference to judicial-legal principles, to the decisions of government-recognized traditional institutions, or to local interests. This uncertainty continued when, some two months later, the decision of the Traditional Council was validated and Jawula’s status as the “legally constituted” chief was withdrawn by the regional office of administration. This was based on doubt as to whether a legal requirement to obtain ministerial permission to lodge the appeal had actually been obtained within a fixed time limit. The withdrawal meant that the Traditional Council’s original decision still stood, and the regional office thereafter circulated news that Alhaji Haruna was “to be recognized as the Kanankulaiwura” with “all customary rights and privileges pertaining to the skin” (NRG 8/2/171). Although the pronouncement was grounded in judicial procedures, it was popularly interpreted by the Haruna camp as a victory for local democracy in a new era, and of government recognition given to Nawuri to influence the selection. The contradictory messages and the rival interpretations they generated hardened divisions between communities, and reports from the district office in December 1968 described Kpandai as “explosive” (NRG 8/2/171).
On the understanding that the appeal had failed due to procedural mistakes, the Kpembewura begrudgingly communicated support for the Traditional Council and Haruna. Nonetheless, some ten days later the tables were turned again, when the Chieftaincy Secretariat announced that the appeal had after all been lodged correctly. Subsequently, the original decision of the Kpembewura in favor of Jawula was upheld, and the Gonja Traditional Council’s decision in favor of Haruna was revoked (NRG 8/2/171). However, the chairman of the regional office of administration rejected the Chieftaincy Secretariat’s decision that the appeal could go ahead, and maintained it was “abundantly clear that the Chieftaincy Office is arrogating to itself the functions of the Minister” (NRG 8/2/171). Countering, Braimah emphasized the importance of an appeal to ensure that the correct customs were followed.
I am bound to discharge the duties and responsibilities entrusted to me according to custom . . . . I must say that I am not writing this letter as a member of the Chieftaincy Secretariat but as Kanyasewura and Councillor to the Kpembewura [and as] one who had served the Gonja Native Administration from 1934–1950. . . [and who knows the] customs and people [better than the] non-natives [of the regional administration]. . . . I have never discussed this matter with the Chairman of the Chieftaincy Secretariat [and the officers’ of the regional office of administration] lay themselves open to charges of bribery and corruption [if the appeal is blocked]. (NRG 8/2/171)
Here we see how the case for an appeal was made with reference to the superiority of Gonja traditional institutions over civil administrators, who were dismissed as “non-natives” with no knowledge of or right to pass judgment on traditional matters. In this manner, although the competing state institutions endeavored to define one another’s judicial boundaries and were divided over which Gonja institutions should take precedence, the overall issue of the sovereignty of Gonja institutions in regulating social organization at the local level, and the related subjugation of Nawuri claims, was never in doubt. The debate between the state institutions consequently reproduced a political structure grounded in the colonial period that recognized Gonja traditional institutions and negated Nawuri claims.
The Outcome
After the lifting of the ban on political parties in May 1969, the Kpembewura, Alhassan Jawula, and the Braimah faction aligned with Busia’s pro-chief Progress Party, and the Nawuri and Haruna groupings rallied around the National Alliance of Liberals (NAL). Following Busia’s victory, the so-called Mate Kole Committee finally heard the case. The key issues were whether the Kpembewura had “absolute jurisdiction” in selecting the Chief of Kpandai, or whether Nawuri, the Gonja Traditional Council, and the Gonja Paramount Chief had legitimate claims of influence (NRG 8/2/171). The committee ruled in principle in favor of Haruna, but found this could not stand due to serious judicial improprieties made by the Traditional Council when it overturned the appointment of Jawula. Footnote 20 On this basis, the whole affair was handed over to the Regional House of Chiefs. In effect, however, this maneuver amounted to an awkward but convenient postponement of the decision because the regional houses of chiefs, as traditional institutions resurrected in the new 1969 Constitution, were not yet formed (NRG 8/2/171).
The Mate Kole Committee report was not made public because Busia’s government was understandably hesitant about whether it should “confirm or reject” its findings (NRG 8/2/171). Unfortunately for the government, the committee’s unclear conclusion meant it was not possible to use the election result to support any particular side in the dispute. This was because a pronouncement in favor of Haruna would undermine the status of the pro-Progress Party traditional figures like the Kpembewura and Braimah, and would be interpreted, moreover, as a vindication of Nawuri claims of influence. It would thus appear that government had bowed to the NAL, which had won the constituency. Conversely, rejecting the findings was problematic as there was no end in sight to the dispute, not least because of the dismantling of the Chieftaincy Secretariat after the election and the fact that the Northern Region House of Chiefs was not yet operating, despite having the report “for consideration and appropriate action” (NRG 8/2/171).
The uncertainty continued until November 1970 when the affair took an unexpected turn with the sudden death of Haruna. This led Braimah to pressure the Attorney General to allow Jawula to become the Chief of Kpandai, and he eventually was unanimously elected by the Traditional Council. Following Jawula’s appointment, Nawuri leaders petitioned the Traditional Council to acknowledge their influence in the appointment of Haruna but were firmly rebuked by the Yagbumwura. Afterward Braimah, as regional chief executive, informed the Prime Minister that the dispute had been solved satisfactorily and emphasized that “the Nawuris were in no way connected with the case [sic]” (NRG 8/2/171). Local debate over the role Nawuri played in the selection process, and whether either of the two chiefs was selected and appointed according to the appropriate custom, continued after the death of Jawula in October 1974. A combination of legal procedures and understandings of seamless Gonja traditions was utilized by the state institutions to depoliticize the dispute and pave the way for the incorporation of sovereign Gonja institutions into the planned (though ill-fated) new local government system.
Throughout the dispute supporters of Haruna challenged and renegotiated the decisions of state institutions. He was established as the legitimate Chief of Kpandai, carried out numerous customary functions, and ruled until his untimely death with the backing of local police (an inspector and a corporal), who refused to acknowledge the decisions of state institutions that favored Jawula, on the grounds that compliance would result in a major security breach. Meanwhile, Jawula himself could not reside in the town due to opposition to his claim. The Haruna group produced their own local understandings of chieftaincy outside the reach of government as the political environment shut off formalized avenues of representation and recognition and defined them as unequal. Despite the intervals when Jawula appeared to have legal recognition as the “correct” chief, he risked arrest if he attempted to assert authority. Meanwhile, Haruna was able to exercise coercive powers with apparent impunity and threatened settlers who supported Jawula with expulsion from the area should the Mate Kole Commission decide in Haruna’s favor (NRG 8/2/171). Hostilities continued after Haruna’s death and the district office reported that, despite government backing, Jawula “command[ed] neither the respect nor loyalty and his actual support in the areas is minimal” (NRG 8/2/171). After government recognition of Jawula, complaints arose that settlers who had supported Haruna were similarly threatened with deportation, and the police who had supported Haruna were relocated (NRG 8/2/171).
Conclusion
This article attempts to add nuance to studies of Ghana’s political history in the decade following the overthrow of Nkrumah in two ways. It rejects descriptions of the period in terms of failing institutions, state weakness, and state-centrist conceptualizations, and it refines interpretations of the period in terms of rupture and abrupt change. The case of East Gonja demonstrates a strong, active, and persistent presence of state actors and institutions, which, despite internal contests, exercised an ability to penetrate rural society and influence societal action and organization through the period. The otherwise discordant state institutions shared an overarching objective, which by and large they successfully achieved, of rationalizing fluid social practices, delimiting the ability of communities to negotiate public policy, and defining clearly the avenues to positions of authority (see Scott Reference Scott1998). This shows how social contests enable state actors and institutions to shape and influence societal organization, while social actions contribute to the defining of state institutions, their jurisdictions, and the reach of powerful state actors.
Amidst significant political changes, important undercurrents of very durable state institutions persisted across the period, particularly in regard to state recognition of ethnically defined traditional institutions. Constitutional reform thereby provided for the reproduction of historical forms of social closure as superior groups remained unaccountable to subjugated groups. For Mamdani (Reference Mamdani1996) the colonial production of customary institutions contributed distinctly to the democratic deficit of African countries on independence. However, this study exemplifies a dynamic between the state and a rural locality in which local chiefs were not undemocratic as such, but did not gain any meaningful institutional advantages from professed democratic reforms. This process occurred as institutions such as state-recognized traditional councils created by earlier governments influenced the decisions of later governments regarding professedly traditional affairs. This provided a trajectory to the decision-making process in which dominant configurations of traditional and secular institutions upheld the sovereignty of Gonja institutions regarding positions of traditional public authority and dismissed other models as untraditional. In this light, the configuration of chieftaincy in East Gonja provides an interesting contrast with dominant understandings of chieftaincy under Nkrumrah in terms of rupture and breach, when, as Jean Allman writes, “chiefs [were brought] to their knees through processes that rendered their income and their legitimacy completely dependent upon the central government” (2001:116). This article has shown that in East Gonja chiefs did not experience such reductive fates, since in the first place they never enjoyed revenue, status, or legitimacy from governments that could be taken away from them or restored to them. Theirs was a localized traditional jurisdiction carved out in defiance of statutory logic and government-recognized traditions that they vehemently opposed.
The actions and multiple positions of powerful actors such as J. A. Braimah exemplify the strength of state institutions in reducing authority to prescriptions that elided the expectations and ambitions of the local polity, which were untiringly dismissed. In this way, influential actors utilized their own positions in secular and traditional institutions to maintain the right to define access to ethnically defined positions of authority and satisfy government that political development dovetailed with their own understandings of older allegiances. Thereby, and as a direct continuation of a political structure established in the colonial period, the conditions by which locals could produce their own chiefs were strictly regulated lest already recognized “traditions” vested with authority be undermined. So in East Gonja, the multiple mechanisms of exclusion meant that new government policies recreated old polities regardless of their regime type (see Weir Reference Weir, Shapiro, Skowronek and Galvin2006). In practice, the efforts to consolidate a representative democracy were discursively separated from the protests to end an inferior social status that was legitimized with reference to tradition. From the perspective of the state, therefore, traditional institutions in East Gonja experienced a continuation, rather than a revival, following constitutional change. Furthermore, the creation of powerful traditional jurisdictions outside the reach of government at this juncture demonstrates that the revival of chieftaincy was not always the direct result of political change at the center (as was the case with Braimah’s revival), but was a reaction by outsiders to overturn an unfavorable incorporation into the state. There were no universally legitimate procedures for handling discord and no clear division of jurisdictions. This meant the efforts of state institutions to rule on the process of appointment merged with local reinterpretations into new, conflicting versions of statutory and traditional jurisdictions.
Still, as Christian Lund (Reference Lund2003) points out, social groups looked to the state to improve their level of influence and representation, and it was through interactions with powerful state institutions that they sought validation of their claims. The dilemma for any government was that recognition given to particular traditional institutions fulfilled the objective of increasing local-level legitimacy, but it also risked the rejection of alternative, locally legitimate traditional leaders. In East Gonja this situation inadvertently produced social fault lines along traditional registers, and contests about the jurisdictional meaning of social relations. Competing traditional jurisdictions were made and unmade as groups either affirmed, defied, interpreted, or renegotiated formal state law, and parties divided themselves into disparate social and political identities with unequal rights (see Tilly Reference Tilly2005). The result was a blurring of lines over what was legal and what was legitimate, and between government-recognized arenas of traditional authority and nonrecognized arenas. Affirming the “correct” version of tradition was essential because it meant that social groups could gain positions of authority, secure the flow of economic resources, and attain leverage over planned local government institutions. The most substantial legacy of the dispute was that successive governments continued to recognize traditional institutions that harked back to colonial rule and reproduced sharp lines of ethnic division. These eventually erupted into conflict in East Gonja in the early 1990s.
Acknowledgments
I am thankful to Christian Lund and Catherine Boone for valuable insights given on earlier drafts, the three anonymous reviewers for providing very useful comments, and Ella Kusnetz at ASR and Mike Kirkwood for improving the text. Any factual errors are the sole responsibility of the author. Research was kindly financed by the Consultative Research Committee for Development Research (FFU), under DANIDA (Danish International Development Agency).
