Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality

Politics of Social Change in Ghana The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality

Benjamin Talton

POLITICS OF SOCIAL CHANGE IN GHANA

Copyright © Benjamin Talton, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States - a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the World, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–62278–4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Talton, Benjamin Politics of social change in Ghana : the Konkomba struggle for political equality / Benjamin Talton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–62278–4 1. Konkomba (African people)—Ghana—Politics and government. 2. Ghana—Ethnic relations—Political aspects. 3. Social change—Political aspects—Ghana. 4. Ghana—Politics and government. 5. Ghana—History—1957– I. Title. DT510.43.K65T35 2010 2009022321 323.1196 35—dc22 Design by Integra Software Services First edition: January 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America

Karen Louise Talton

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C o n t e n ts

List of Maps

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Power and Social Change in African History

1

1 “Their Power Will Be Uniformly Supported”—Power and Memory

19

2 “This Wild but Interesting Tribe”—Konkomba Feuds and Obstacles to British Rule, 1914–1930

47

3 “A Festering Sore On an Otherwise Healthy Administrative Body”—Konkomba Political Agency and British Authority, 1929–1951

77

4 “Down with Black Imperialism in the North!”—Education, Local Politics, and Self-Help Initiatives, 1945–1972

109

5 “That all Konkomba Should Henceforth Unite”—Ethnic Politics and the Use of Violence in Northern Ghana, 1977–1994

143

Conclusion: “We Even Dance Together”—Social Relations in Post-Conflict Northern Ghana

183

Notes

195

Bibliography

215

Index

235

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List of Maps

1 Ghana’s Major Towns and cities 2 Ghana’s Regions 3 1947 Colonial Map of Dagomba Chieftaincies among Konkomba 4 1947 Colonial Map of Major Konkomba Clans and Subclans

xi xii xiii xiv

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A c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

While working on this project, I benefitted from the kindness and wisdom of many individuals and institutions. I am particularly grateful to Ralph Austen, my advisor and friend at the University of Chicago, who guided me through the early stages of this project. Sandra Greene and Thomas Holt have continued to lend their support throughout the years. I am also indebted to Carola Lentz, Jean Allman, and Thomas Spears for their very helpful comments, insights, and patience. I learned so much and made many friends at the archives and libraries of the African Studies Centre at the University of Ghana, Legon; Public Record Office, Kew, England; and Ghana National and Regional Archives in Accra and Tamale. I am also grateful to Donkor, Allan Dawson, and Joseph Naabu for facilitating my first trip to the north. In Saboba and nearby towns and villages I would have been lost without Thomas Mbui and his family. I also benefitted from the guidance and friendship of Ishmael (Saboba), Mark Mawan, the Bukari family, and Daniel Neina Jobor. My Accra family—the Crentsils, John and Mary Ellen Ray, Julius Fobil, Samuel Dowuona, and the Shamo family—made me feel at home and at ease. I am also extremely grateful for the kindness of Ivor Wilks, for pointing me to the Konkomba in the first place; Cecily Broderock y Guerra; Bishop Orris Walker; Natalie Moore; Chana Garcia; Quincy Mills; Ta-Nehisi Coates; Thomas Fisher; Illya Davis; Marita Gladson; Yuusuf Caruso; Linda Heywood; Susan Yohn; Stan Pugliese; and my colleagues in the Department of History at Hofstra University, Faculty of Social Science at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and the Department of History at Temple University. There are no words to express my gratitude to Chester and Karen Talton, my father and late mother, for raising me in a world filled with books and boundless love. To Janai—my chief editor, critic, psychologist, best friend, and wife—thank you for your relentless enthusiasm, support, and love throughout this journey. The product is as much yours as it is mine; except, of course, any and all errors.

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xi

Map 1

Ghana’s Major Towns and cities

xii

Map 2

Ghana’s Regions

xiii

Map 3

1947 Colonial Map of Dagomba Chieftaincies among Konkomba

xiv

Map 4

1947 Colonial Map of Major Konkomba Clans and Subclans

Introduction

P ow e r a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e i n A f r i c a n H i s to ry

The communal violence that shook Northern Ghana in 1981 and

again in 1994 contrasted sharply with Ghana’s legacy of relatively strong national unity and ethnic harmony. The country had maintained this social stability, with some challenge, throughout its colonial and postcolonial history. Beyond the seeming spontaneity of the unprecedented violence, what was striking about these two events was the central role played by the historically noncentralized and politically marginal Konkomba. In 1981 the conflict took place primarily in the Bimbilla District of Ghana’s Northern Region, with fighting between Konkomba and their neighbors and “traditional” overlords, Nanumba. In the preceding years political competition and tension grew out of debates between Konkomba and Nanumba leaders over notions of custom, traditional political representation, and traditional rights. The four months of fighting, which left over 1,000 dead, was the most large-scale ethnic conflict in Ghana’s history. For Konkomba, the 1981 conflict was the culmination of a dramatic process of social change out of which they emerged with a strong sense of Konkomba as a political community that possessed common social, political, and economic interests. The unity they exhibited reflected the extent to which their political identity had evolved to exhibit the “effective glue” of a community of belonging1 and stood in stark contrast to the protracted feuding that characterized internal Konkomba relations well into the 1960s. From the outset, the Konkomba physically outmatched Nanumba, who evidently grossly underestimated both the Konkomba capacity to

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Politics of Social Change in Ghana

unify against their “traditional” overlords and the speed with which they could do so. It was only after the government belatedly intervened that the violence came to an end. Jerry John Rawlings, who came to power twice through coup d’etat in Ghana, first in 1979 and then again in 1981, managed to assert sufficient authority to quell the violence and for over a decade contain the palpable tension between Konkomba and Nanumba. Yet Rawlings’s efforts to maintain the peace and rule of law through military strength, without a real social and political solution to the inequality within traditional politics, allowed grievances on both sides to remain and fester. In the run up to the more large-scale and far more socially disruptive 1994 conflict, popularly referred to as “the Guinea Fowl War,” the Konkomba Youth Association (KOYA) under Kenneth Wujangi, its newly elected president,2 petitioned Rawlings and the National House of Chiefs to recognize a Konkomba paramount chief. If the state had supported KOYA’s petition, it would have radically altered Northern Ghana’s political terrain, freeing Konkomba to operate traditional courts of their own, exercise authority over land, and appoint divisional, or subordinate, chiefs. Most significantly, a Konkomba paramount ruler would have a seat in the Regional and National Houses of Chiefs and with it the capacity to participate as an equal to the chiefs of historically centralized societies such as Dagbon, Asante, and Gonja and exercise influence over customary and traditional policies in Ghana. Naturally, the dominant, historically centralized communities of Northern Ghana—Gonja, Nanumba, Mamprusi, and, particularly, Dagomba—vehemently protested the KOYA petition and declared KOYA’s actions to have been in gross and deliberate violation of established political custom and a threat to the historically centralized polities’ traditional authority. With political tension between Konkomba and their historically centralized neighbors running extremely high, it only took a marketplace fight between a Nanumba and a Konkomba to ignite violence that rapidly burgeoned into another deadly conflict. Fighting was initially between Konkomba and Nanumba but expanded to include Dagomba, Gonja, and three additional ethnic groups that outmatched Konkomba and led to over 3,000 officially reported deaths.3 In 1981 Konkomba had maintained the upper hand against their Nanumba rivals but in 1994 they found themselves at a distinct disadvantage, despite support from neighboring Bimoba, another historically chiefless society in the region. Thousands of Konkomba families fled northern towns such as Tamale, Damango, Yendi, and Bimbilla, where generations of Konkomba had migrated for jobs and better farmland.

Introduction

3

This book presents a new, more local perspective on the intersection of tradition, ethnicity, and local power. It rejects the usual, more simplistic explanations of ethnicity to examine the intersection of tradition, ethnicity, and political status over the long term, which allows us to observe the ongoing development of political consciousness and notions of belonging from the precolonial to the postcolonial period. Doing so also breaks out of the constructivist “invention of ethnicity” trap to view tradition, ethnicity, and political consciousness as continually reconstructed and reinterpreted within cultural and historical limits. Through the experiences of rural Africans under European colonial rule, this book presents the role of Africans in defining the substance of ethnicity and the discourse on power and authority that surrounded it. This long-term, local view adds a new dimension to discussions of the changing nature of social and political consciousness and belonging in Ghana and in Africa, more generally, that have been defined by such scholars as Carola Lentz and Mahmood Mamdani. In addition to these scholars, the analyses of communal politics and relations between marginalized communities and the state in this book have been influenced by the interdisciplinary scholarship of James Scott, Patrick Chabal, Jeffrey Herbst, and Partha Chatterjee, each of which forced a rethinking of power, political consciousness, and social change in the colonial and postcolonial world.4 In The Nation and Its Fragments, Partha Chatterjee presents dominators and peasants as a relational opposition of power. Despite peasants’ weak political position, they necessarily operated within an autonomous domain, from which they challenged authority and protected their interests. In the absence of an autonomous domain, Chatterjee suggests, peasants’ politically dominant neighbors would obliterate them. Resistance, therefore, is a highly viable issue to use as a means to explore the notions of belonging and power among politically subordinate and marginalized societies and in the social and political spaces in which they exercised the political autonomy necessary to challenge their exclusion. “Where was one to locate this domain?” Chatterjee asks. “If domination is one aspect of this relation of power, its opposed aspect must be resistance. The dialectical opposition of the two gives this relation its unity. This opposition also creates the possibility for a movement within that relation, and thus enables a history of the relation of dominance and subordination.”5 Sources to reconstruct this history, as Chatterjee explains, lie in the material on peasant insurgency, “where the insurgent consciousness left its imprint on that of its dominator, and where the dominator was forced expressly to ‘recognize’ its other.”6

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Politics of Social Change in Ghana

Through a reconstruction of the history of dominance and subordination in colonial and postcolonial Northern Ghana, the focus here is on the autonomous domains beneath the state in which local political actors defined their relations, political identities, and interests through assertions of power and opposition. Konkomba political consciousness developed and evolved in a manner similar to that seen among other insurgent peasant communities. It was limited by that fact that it was not formed out of Konkomba culture but in opposition to Dagomba, and to a lesser extent Nanumba, culture and constructs of tradition. Throughout this history, there is a continual shift in what constitutes the “other.” During the early period of British colonial rule over Konkomba areas, from 1914 to 1930, Konkomba clans focused on internal relations. Political alliances and social bonds defined groups of “others” and kin among Konkomba clans and subclans. British colonial policies of the 1940s and 1950s pushed the dominant perspective among Konkomba leaders beyond lineage and clan politics toward an interpretation of neighboring historically centralized societies, particularly Dagomba, as the most significant “other.” From the 1950s to the 1970s the focus on the “other” within Konkomba political awareness reflected their insurgent consciousness, which was a “negative consciousness” in the sense that they expressed it exclusively in opposition to their politically dominant neighbors. Similar to Chatterjee’s description of insurgent consciousness among peasants in India, Konkomba resistance was ambiguous and, particularly in the colonial period, continually misinterpreted. As Chatterjee says, among insurgent peasants, “precisely because relations of domination were inverted at the moment of insurgency, the signs of rebellion were liable to be misread by the rulers who would fail to distinguish them from such ‘normal’ signs of aberrant behavior as crime.”7 The British continually attributed Konkomba challenges to Dagomba authority and other intrusions by outsiders as a reflection of Konkomba primitiveness and savagery, particularly when Konkomba employed violence. In both the colonial and postcolonial periods, the state assumed the reality of Konkomba political subordination and therefore continuously misread expressions of Konkomba social change, political consciousness, and autonomy. Despite Frederick Cooper’s call to avoid exploring societies through identity politics,8 this book argues that grappling with specific identities, such as ethnicity and all of its complexity and ambiguity, is a necessary step toward understanding local constructions and perceptions of power, custom, and belonging in much of Africa. Ethnicity

Introduction

5

was embedded in the structure of power and disempowerment in colonial and postcolonial African society; yet local communities did not lack significant influence over its content and character. Mamdani shows ethnicity not only as a tool wielded by African political elites, as other scholars have argued,9 but as the form of rule imposed by European colonial administrations and ultimately the form of resistance that Africans mounted against it, as ethnic identities were tied to political legitimacy and access to resources—or the lack thereof.10 Mamdani pushes for more nuanced perspectives of colonial rule that reflect the frailties and limits of colonial power. Highlighting these weaknesses is essential because the frailty of colonial power fostered disorder and fomented resistance among Africans through ethnic-based local political structures and notions of tradition. At the same time, ethnicity both preserved a social order and challenged it, making it both oppressive and potentially liberating.11 Colonialism introduced new sources of wealth and power and undermined or abolished old ones in societies already internally divided. These were societies in which culture, custom, and social identities were by no means fixed and univocal, but were instead, as Bruce Berman argues, “intensely debated collective fictions” in fluid and flexible communities. Under the circumstances, former perceptions of moral economy and political legitimacy, which defined the reciprocal relations of rulers and commoners, rich and poor, elders and young, men and women, were all called into question and became the focus of new challenges and struggles.12 Bill Bravman, for example, has shown that among the Taita of Kenya, ethnicity was neither imposed nor constructed from the outside but, rather, evolved from internal dynamics and struggles to control what constituted a “Taita” community of belonging. The social construction of modern ethnicities took place, then, out of the disorder brought by conflicts over economic and political power at particular moments, which shaped social transactions among Africans. Community formation among Taita illustrates this process. Their sense of their own unique community of belonging emerged at a particular period and continued to evolve and be redefined by Taita and non-Taita alike.13 Given the challenges that African societies faced as they adjusted to the rapid social and political change taking place around them, what level of control did they exercise over their responses to these changes? For Berman, the colonial state authoritatively defined rules that “specified for Africans what was required, prohibited, and permitted, [and] structured the choices of individuals by constructing social, economic and political situations. . . . In so doing,” from his standpoint, “the

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Politics of Social Change in Ghana

state delineated the strategic contexts in which ethnicity was or was not salient.” However, it is imperative that we remain cognizant of the events that Europeans encountered and the informants they relied on to shape their interpretation of and policies toward local societies. Africans did not simply remain passive participants in colonial affairs until circumstances grew unbearable or self-interested leaders incited their followers to protest. Yet for Berman, the forces of colonial rule, not African interests, “moulded the choices of political actors with regard to both the ascriptive markers of ethnicity and the organizational forms in which it was expressed.”14 Analyses that emphasize colonialism’s broad and overarching sway, to the neglect of local responses, overstate European power and influence and undermine the reality of African agency as a core element that defined the colonial experience for Africans and Europeans. Sean Hawkins argues that the previously unknown disjuncture and discontinuities that colonialism wrought necessitated reinterpreting the past, because there was “the psychological need to create a sense of continuity with the past in the face of unprecedented changes. . . . Traditions were invented not only to legitimate changes but also to minimize the sense of temporal dislocation.”15 But who is doing the inventing and reinterpreting of tradition? African agency, particularly as it relates to competition between African societies, is too often a neglected factor in reconstructions of the discourse on power during the colonial period. Again, to fully understand the African experience under colonial rule, we must move beyond constructions of African agency as merely the capacity to cope with or resist the colonial encounter to the neglect of Africans’ capacity to engage and shape it. Scrutiny of relationships between African societies under colonial rule reveals the ways in which Africans invented traditions and reinterpreted the past to secure positions of privilege and compete politically and economically within the colonial state. Hawkins’s description of African societies as “victims of invented traditions” only captures a part of the colonial experience and fails to account for the ways in which chiefs purposefully constructed and asserted tradition to undermine the political status of neighboring ethnic groups and political rivals. It overstates the efficacy of state intervention. As Berman himself has argued, it has been most common to present British officials as molders of rigid, unchanging African political identities and tradition. However, this rigidity was only the European perception of African identity and culture and the basis upon which they crafted local policies. The reality was that prior to the onset of European

Introduction

7

colonial rule, and throughout much of the colonial period, African political identities were ambiguous, continuously evolving, constantly contested.16 A common view among groups engaged in political competition is that their current interethnic relationship has relatively recent origins. Events of the nineteenth century “retain a sense of immediate relevance for social relations in the present-day.”17 Popular historical memory was one of the tools that chiefs employed to define custom and became an enduring means for centralized societies to maintain their positions of privilege within the colonial state.18 Yet chiefs and their emboldened authority, backed by the colonial state, did not go unchallenged. The British introduced new sources of wealth and forms of power, which among Africans were most beneficial to members of historically centralized societies. With these changes, however, the British undermined older sources of wealth and power, which fueled social instability, competition, and, in some instances, conflict.19 Moreover, these changes accentuated social differences and strengthened links between ethnicity and patronage.20 Indeed debates that stemmed from interpretations of power, authority, and custom within and between African communities served, as Sara Berry contends, “as a mechanism for generating factional struggle rather than eliminating it.”21 Exploring the links between colonial policy and political instability highlights three aspects of European colonial rule that are central to an analysis of Konkomba history. One, British colonial rule in Africa was, as Mamdani illustrates, frail and dependent upon African proxies for its survival and success. Two, Africans played a central role—through internal and external debates over power, identity, and custom—in shaping the contours of the colonial state and their colonial experience. Three, “tradition” was employed by individuals, societies, and the state to define particular groups as either politically legitimate or illegitimate and therefore has been a primary basis for political inequality within African societies and states. The relationship between Konkomba, their historically centralized neighbors, and the state was reflective of the political competition between African communities that was a critical influence behind local constructions and interpretations of power, tradition, and communal identity. This was particularly true with regard to prevailing notions of exclusive and inclusive strategies for social mobilization and resource control. British policies that addressed custom and traditional authority were significantly shaped by the interests of chiefs whose flexible interpretations of custom, although heavily influenced by European interpretations, allowed them to adjust to social change and stifle

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Politics of Social Change in Ghana

noncentralized societies’ and other ethnic minorities’ efforts to gain greater access to political power, resources, and land.22 During the colonial period many historically centralized rulers served as extensions of, or proxies for, the state. Therefore, what appears to have been resistance or challenges to the power and authority of one’s neighbors often indirectly challenged state policies and authority. As Africans challenged European policy, they confronted a European political hierarchy that included African proxies. The dominant power was European, but its face at the local level was quite often African. As a result of these seeming contradictions, it remains insufficient to speak of the construction of African political identities and the imposition of a European discourse on power and authority as simple binaries. Colonial rule was more than a EuropeanAfrican dichotomy. Viewing it as such underestimates the complex and strategic thinking that Africans commonly employed as they sought to protect their interests and compete with neighboring communities economically and politically. Customary land rights were commonly constituted by relations between migrants, citizens, and chiefs, but such a structure failed to provide a basis for security and stability. In fact, the colonial administration’s focus on tradition and chieftaincy undermined the rights of the rural poor and perpetuated inequality and ethnic differentiation,23 laying bare the inequities of citizenship within African states.24 The broad context among colonial subjects and later the interpersonal interactions, state policies, economic factors, cultural forces, and general social forces that shaped ethnic identities is essential for understanding ethnic identity construction.25 By presenting the myriad factors that precipitated social and political change and defined notions of tradition, power, and belonging, it becomes clear that these changes and perspectives were not simply imposed upon Africans by European colonial officials and policies. Rather, Africans interchangeably adopted and rejected colonial definitions of tribe and authority to suit their social, economic, and political interests. Indeed, British officials lacked the capacity to consistently and effectively impose identities and ideologies over the populations that they ruled without the participation of Africans in the processes and structures of control. The ambiguity of political authority and political identity in Northern Ghana during the colonial and postcolonial periods makes it highly effective for demonstrating that Africans played a central role in shaping the colonial experience. The British governed the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast from Accra and regarded the region as politically and economically marginal to British political and economic

Introduction

9

interests.26 With few exceptions, British officers stationed in the north simply focused their efforts on maintaining law and order. From their standpoint, order was best maintained through the peoples’ “traditional” tribal political structures, each headed by a chief. As Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent suggest, “the British laid the foundation for today’s ethnic identities when they imposed a number of ‘native states,’ which they imagined corresponded with established tribal boundaries.”27 The makeup of each state rested on the British administration’s “tribal model,” which defined the characteristics of each “tribe” and determined its political status. The British incorporated groups lacking a formal chieftaincy system, such as Konkomba, and those that had chiefs but did not have a large enough population to satisfy British officials, such as Chakosi, into the authority of a neighboring, centralized polity. Subsequently, the British labeled noncentralized and less populous societies as politically illegitimate, as opposed to the “real,” chief-centered “tribes” such as Dagomba, Nanumba, and Gonja. Membership within an ethnic community began to define an individual’s political status—that is, his or her relationship with the government and relative control over political and economic resources—vis-à-vis his or her neighbors. One of the direct ways that Europeans sought to utilize their invented traditions in Africa, as Terrence Ranger explains, “was the acceptance of the idea that some Africans could become members of the governing class of colonial Africa, and hence the extension to such Africans of training in a neo-traditional context.”28 This phenomenon created individual ethnic citizens, as their membership within an ethnic community determined their social, economic, and political rights.29 However, the fact that Konkomba and similar societies did not fit the tribal model soon became impossible for the British to ignore. For the British, Konkomba resembled what Igor Kopytoff has described as “ethnically ambiguous marginal societies.” Their “ambiguity” stemmed to a great extent from British officials’ preconceived notion of what an African “tribe” should be. As Kopytoff suggests, ethnically ambiguous marginal societies are “apt to annoy the administrator for whom the tribal model—with its essential unity, clear body of customary law, and unambiguous legitimacies—is better suited to the task of maintaining public tranquility.”30 The Konkomba in fact became a constant source of anxiety for British officials and ultimately forced them to consider possible alternatives to the tribal model, although they never implemented full reforms. The British were generally aware that what they called a tribe

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Politics of Social Change in Ghana

did not reflect the political and social realities they encountered. Yet they aggressively sought to use local histories to justify their political strategy of incorporating such groups into the political structure of their centralized neighbors.31 Dagomba nas, for their own political benefit as well as that of the colonial government, provided British officials with a historical narrative of political relations in the region that aligned with British political interests. The colonial government’s limited personnel and resources made these simplified renderings of an African political framework that centered on the institution of chieftaincy politically expedient. Consequently, noncentralized societies grew increasingly marginalized within an already marginal region. Ultimately, the British failed to overcome the lack of strong and consistent Dagomba authority over Konkomba clans; yet they successfully made Dagomba power a reality within British policy and a reflection of officials’ preconceived conceptions of political relations among ethnic groups in Africa. The ethnic boundaries that the British outlined were embedded in official policy, despite the patterns of shifting settlement among Konkomba. These tribal maps defined Dagomba political power within Konkomba social space, and gave British officials, as Eric Worby states, a hidden vantage point in relation to the subjects over whom they claimed authority.32 These maps also provided the communities that the British privileged an advantage over their neighbors. In challenging the ways in which the British defined Dagomba authority and the content of local identities in relation to that authority, Konkomba exercised a particular practice of ethnicity through which they refused to be named by and for an “other.”33 Several historical texts, including a broad study of civil society during the colonial period by Jeff Grischow, a history of the Tongnaab god of the Talensi by Jean Allman and John Parker, and Carola Lentz’s exploration of ethnic distinctions and social change in northwestern Ghana, demonstrate Europeans’ limited capacity to impose tribal categories and characteristics on societies absent of African assistance. Hawkins’s valuable study on the Lodagaa of Northern Ghana examines the ways in which writing subverted the African worldview and forced Lodagaa to accept European power structures and social categories. But goals, strategies, and assumptions written on paper, as Hawkins acknowledges, did not always translate into political reality.34 Among existing studies of Konkomba history, politics, and culture, Jay Oelbaum’s is unique in that he does not seek a primary cause of the conflicts between Konkomba and their neighbors.35 Other studies see the 1981 and 1994 conflicts as the failure of the Western political

Introduction

11

model to accommodate “traditional” African systems that define local politics, particularly “the regulated anarchy of kinship and locality of the Konkombas.”36 From this perspective ethnicity is a consequence of the postcolonial state’s inability to respond to the needs of all citizens. Oelbaum, on the other hand, analyzes the economic and social structures that shaped debates over custom and authority in the years that immediately preceded the conflicts. Other scholars have presented the conflicts as rooted in struggles over social inequalities and in tensions over land control, but do so without a proper historical context for these debates. They have also placed Konkomba’s noncentralized political structure and their neighbors’ centralized structure in conflict,37 again with limited context, and, consequently, fail to capture the dynamics of Konkomba social transformation and the myriad issues that defined their relationships with their centralized neighbors. Conflicts between these groups may seemingly result from one overt issue, which in reality were several factors conflated into a single underlying supposition.38 The power of chieftaincy was enhanced by a colonial state defined by an apparatus of authoritarian bureaucratic control and a colonial economy by cash crops and wage labor in capitalist commodity and labor markets.39 Within this system, chieftaincy and “custom” were central to constructing and asserting difference. The more the colonial state enforced custom, Mamdani argues, the more it restructured and conserved “tribe” as a more or less self-contained community.40 The political restructuring of African societies ran counter to the complex social and political arrangements and loyalties that actually defined local African society. Yet it was necessary for British officials to trust their social constructions of African tribes, because, as Grischow explains, in the British colonial imagination “authentic development”—one consistent with what they claimed to be traditional African political practices—required a tribal foundation.41 This was the essence of indirect rule, what Cooper describes as “coercive incorporation into an expansionist state and invidious distinction.”42 While law and order were the cornerstones of British colonial rule, the Konkomba relationship with the British and neighboring, historically centralized ethnic groups reveals how ad hoc and frequently ineffective colonial officials’ strategies for bringing local communities under the broad and consistent control of the British colonial administration actually were. To accomplish their political goals with the diverse, ambiguous, and continually shifting political identities, loyalties, and affiliations that were the political reality in the Northern Territories would have called for an immense devotion of labor

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Politics of Social Change in Ghana

and resources. Instead, British colonial officials worked to fit chiefless and centralized societies, and their overlapping pieces, neatly together in tribal boxes ruled by chiefs. Much of the weakness of European colonial power, particularly in its early decades, rested on the fact that colonial officials depended to a great extent on African acquiescence and the capacity of African proxies to exercise consistent and broad authority.43 If colonial officials imposed too much structure, they risked undermining local authority and, subsequently, the basis for colonial control. In their effort to bring about political transformation with no social change, British officials inadvertently created challenges for themselves and built a strategy for control that centered on the retention of communal identities and wanted to avoid the threats to the colonial order of civil society and nationalism, which by their very definitions transcended community interest and local identity. The British faced challenges from civil society groups and nationalism in the south—the Gold Coast Colony and, to a lesser extent, Ashanti—during the closing decades of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth centuries and wanted to avoid them in the north.44 Konkomba history bears further witness to African communities defining their own interests, motivations, and conceptions of power even as their responses to colonial domination were provoked by a political space outlined by British rule. The so-called Igbo, or Aba, Women’s War of 1928 reflects the power of local Africans to define and challenge authority and the limits on British influence. Igbo women directed their anger and resistance to the threat of direct taxation, which they believed violated their historical economic autonomy, at the British-appointed Warrant Chiefs rather than local British administrators. Similar to other local challenges to the authority of chiefs, this was not misguided agitation on the part of local African political actors; it was a pragmatic response to the flow of power under what Mamdani describes as the decentralized despotism of indirect rule.45 In presenting their challenge, the women contributed to limiting the authority and overall influence and credibility of the Warrant Chiefs in southeastern Nigeria.46 Not only were commoner anticolonial protests such as this frequently directed toward chiefs and chiefs’ influence over local communities, they were motivated by economic interests and were part of the broader debate over custom. In addition to offering a new perspective on power and authority under colonial rule and its consequences for access to land and political resources, The Politics of Social Change analyzes popular historical

Introduction

13

memory as central to local African politics, not simply as a means to reconstruct events, but rather as a source of political agency with serious implications for the content of local political status, national citizenship, and the capacity of individuals and groups to advance social and political change. Mirroring the dialectic of social change and political stagnation that many historically noncentralized communities have experienced, in “A Slow Emancipation” Anthony Appiah writes of the complex ways in which the legacy of slavery has influenced Asante social structure in Kumasi, Ghana. He illustrates the power of popular historical memory to fix the identity of individuals and groups who are the descendents of local slaves as both subordinate and enduring within the families and communities in which their forbearers labored, even as the social context that gave rise to such positions evolved and those individuals of slave descent are outwardly accepted as full and equal members of society.47 Although slavery is no longer part of Ghana’s legal framework and is not an acknowledged part of its social fabric, as Appiah suggests, members of Ghana’s dominant social classes have commonly invoked the popular historical memory of slavery when economic or political issues seem to necessitate sharp distinctions between “legitimate” members of the clan, lineage, or community and descendents of slaves, both putative and real. Although, as Appiah explains, “one must never inquire after people’s ancestry in public,” in Kumasi and many villages, towns, and cities throughout Africa, distinctions between former slaves or descendents of slaves and “free” members of the community remain palpable and central to the ways in which people interact, perceive of each other, define positions of power, and protect their interests. Similarly, historically noncentralized and political minority communities acquired the enduring status of political subordination and dependence during the colonial period that have proven difficult to shed. Among Konkomba, successful accumulation of wealth and communal mobilization created dissonance in their imposed identity and the ethnic-based and chief-centered social hierarchy of Northern Ghana. Commercial yam farming had developed gradually among Konkomba since the 1920s and accelerated during Ghana’s economic adjustments of the 1970s and 1980s. Konkomba leaders regarded the disparity between Konkomba social status and their economic and political achievement as evidence of their permanent exclusion from local power, which deprived Konkomba of land rights and obligated them to pay tribute to the chiefs of their historically centralized neighbors. Konkomba leaders’ focus on securing a paramount chief illustrates a

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Politics of Social Change in Ghana

unique variant of African ethnic nationalism, wherein a subordinated group seeks autonomy within a framework laid down by colonialism and appropriated by dominant African groups. In the process, ethnicity is transformed over time, defined and redefined at particular historical moments with reference to the discourse of the dominant groups. This process represents African agency, but it is limited in its potential for achieving autonomy. While Konkomba social change is remarkable for its scale, rapidity, and pragmatism, it reflects the failure of disfranchised and marginalized communities to seek to truly alter the social and political structures that disadvantage them. Konkomba are unique among historically subordinate communities in Ghana with respect to the level of success they have achieved toward their own economic and political autonomy, but they are typical of societies undergoing political change with respect to their efforts to use their advances to argue for inclusion as equals within the established political structure. Konkomba businessmen, teachers, ex-servicemen, and government clerks asserted a Konkomba ethnic identity that contained the British prescriptions for political legitimacy—centralization, chieftaincy, and custom—to gain economic and political autonomy and compete with Konkomba’s historically centralized neighbors economically and politically, but did not challenge the construction of power that substantiated their exclusion. Rather than present new paradigms of traditional representation to gain equality, Konkomba leaders fought for acceptance within the existing political framework. In this regard, they are but one example of the ways in which resistance in Africa has been conservative and shaped by the very structure of power that they challenge.48 Rarely have former slaves, the descendents of slaves, or politically marginalized communities embraced their legacy or social structure to argue for social and political equality in spite of it. Such a strategy has been perceived as politically imprudent and limited in terms of short-term benefits. Rather, individuals and communities have challenged their subordinate status through the politics of disassociation, whereby they altered or eliminated practices, symbols, and history that linked them to a legacy of slavery and political subordination. As Konkomba history demonstrates, rather than subvert the power paradigm, it was often most pragmatic and expedient to challenge authority through readily recognizable power motifs and tools. Yet doing so lent credence to arguments that justified discrimination based on particular social characteristics and purported historical “facts,” and, therefore, possessed limited capacity to reform political structures or social norms.

Introduction

15

Zanzibar offers a useful example to further illustrate this point. In the immediate post-abolition years, former slaves, who were originally from the mainland interior, sought to shed their slave identity by identifying themselves as Swahili. Over time, however, as increasing numbers of former slaves became “Swahili,” it became associated with former slaves, which later motivated their descendents to shift from Swahili toward identification with one of Zanzibar’s local ethnic identities and, therefore, again, avoid the stigma of slavery.49 The experience of former slaves and the descendents of slaves in Zanzibar and Ghana illustrate the level of intransigence of popular perceptions of the link between a politically subordinate status and social identity. Konkomba did not appropriate new identities, but they did adopt the practices, symbols, and institutions of the dominant communities to compete with them economically and politically, thereby illustrating the politics of social change.

Cultural and Geographic Context A politically marginalized people in a politically marginal region, the Konkomba struggle for political equality mirrors that of the region from which they originated. Northern Ghana is a creation of British colonial rule, although there are natural features that make it distinct. It falls within the savannah belt of West Africa, characterized by widely spaced low trees and shrubs. The single rainy season, which normally spans from April to September, causes many of its rivers and streams to flood. These physical characteristics surely contributed to the sense of separateness and difference that many northerners feel with respect to Southern Ghana and vice versa. More significant, however, has been the lack economic and political development that colonial and postcolonial governments directed toward Northern Ghana. The British carried out an explicit program to isolate the north from the south. They turned the north into a vast “labor reserve,” because manpower was the only exportable commodity that the British immediately recognized.50 This translated into northerners traveling south for work in mines, on farms, and as urban laborers. Yet, until relatively recently, northerners were perhaps most well known for their predominance in the colonial security services. The British targeted the peoples north of the kingdom of Asante as “martial tribes,” best suited for the military and constabulary. As early as 1897, the governor of the Gold Coast proposed a program to recruit young men from among the Gonja, Dagomba, Kasena, Builsa, and other northern groups to the services. By 1917 over 90 percent of the rank

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Politics of Social Change in Ghana

and file of the Gold Coast Regiment were northerners deployed for domestic security and abroad, particularly during World War I. The region’s disproportionate representation speaks to the relative dearth of economic opportunities in the north, which remains an issue. To identify these groups as simply northerners truly misrepresents the region’s ethnic and linguistic diversity. There are over 30 ethnic groups in Northern Ghana. Only four would be considered truly centralized—Dagomba, Nanumba, Gonja, and Wala—although smaller societies such as the Chakosi have historically had a chieftaincy system. Most of Northern Ghana’s languages are part of the GUR language family, the Oti-Volta and Grusi language groups in particular. Oti-Volta can be further divided into Moore-Dagbani and Gurma. The former includes Dagbani, Mamprusi, and Nanuni, while Kikpakpaaln belongs to the Gurma languages along with Bimoba and Bassare. Unlike Moore-Dagbani, Gurma languages seem to exhibit little linguistic cohesiveness.51 The noncentralized political structure that has historically characterized Konkomba clans predominates in Northern Ghana. Centralized political systems, such as those of Wa, Dagbon, Mamprugu, and Nanun, were the exception, although in terms of population and political influence, they are far from insignificant. Scholars have erroneously labeled noncentralized societies chiefless. Chieftaincy, as it came to be defined under British colonial rule, existed among a number of noncentralized societies during the precolonial period and increased under colonial rule. Precolonial Konkomba clans possessed religious and secular authorities. Secular authority was wholly vested in the uninkpel, the oldest village inhabitant or clan member.52 As a religious authority, the tendana—untindaan among Konkomba—was commonly a central figure in northern societies, including centralized ones. The tendana was the custodian of the earth shrines. He was not a political authority, although certainly not without influence in political matters, particularly those pertaining to land and settlement. The tendana’s authority extended from his ritualistic and moral role as intermediary between the society and the earth. It was not until the fifteenth century that the large centralized polities transformed the general political dynamics of the region.

Konkomba and Social Change in Context To present the fullness and complexity of Konkomba change and the myriad factors that shaped it over the course of the colonial and postcolonial periods, this book is organized chronologically into six

Introduction

17

chapters. It begins with an analysis of the political currency of popular historical memory of the precolonial past among economically and politically competing communities during British colonial rule in Northern Ghana and the ways in which the details of their historical narratives evolved according to the political interests of the stakeholders and British officials. It presents examples that demonstrate that popular historical memory, in contrast with oral traditions, was most useful as a means to gain insight into local perceptions of the past and its relevance to the present rather than as data to reconstruct past events. Chapter 2 discusses British perceptions of “tribes” and tribal structure and the consequence of British views for economic and political relationships between Konkomba and Dagomba during the early years of colonial rule. Chapter 3 considers the consequences of indirect rule during the 1930s and 1940s for African constructions of authority and resistance to it. It focuses on Konkomba resistance to emboldened Dagomba political power that followed the formal introduction of indirect rule. Chapter 4 examines the beginnings of rapid social and political change among Konkomba as Western education and Ghanaian independence in 1957 brought greater economic and political opportunities. Chapter 5 explores Konkomba efforts to adopt the symbols and institutions of neighboring, historically dominant societies and local government offices to gain political equality and compete for control over local resources. It reconstructs disputes over Konkomba economic and political developments during the 1970s and 1980s and the subsequent 1981 and 1994 conflicts between Konkomba and their historically centralized neighbors. The conclusion returns to a broader analysis of dissonance in the identities and status that are ascribed to communities through historical memory, custom, and preconceived notions of their social and cultural characteristics and its implications for political stability and social inequality in Africa. The extent to which British colonial officials recorded their interactions with Konkomba and affairs between Konkomba and neighboring communities is striking. They had to force Konkomba to the political margins. They carefully recorded their efforts in memos, letters, and diaries, and these are available, in a surprisingly sizable collection, in the Ghana archives in Accra and Tamale. District and regional officials frequently toured Kekpakpaan, or Konkomba country, and kept detailed records of their conversations with Konkomba leaders and events between Konkomba villages and between Konkomba and

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Dagomba. Yet these printed words were not instrumental in defining Konkomba custom and political status as much as they were careful records of African agency and British attempts to reconcile with it. With the personal diaries, correspondence, and official reports of colonial officials, oral data revealed the “local categories of tension and friction” not only within Konkomba communities and between Konkomba and their neighbors but within the entire colonial sphere.53 Generally, oral data aid our effort to understand the colonial experience as not simply the relationship between colonized Africans and colonizing Europeans, but between Africans as well. The intention of this book has been to present collective Konkomba social and political action between 1914 and 1994 as they challenged Dagomba authority, avoided punishment from British officials, organized as students in colonial schools, worked with missionaries to end Konkomba social practices that Western-educated leaders deemed impediments to Konkomba unity, and ultimately advocated for state and local recognition as social and political equals. The focus here is on the Konkomba clans of the Oti plain, which stretches from the Gambaga escarpment in the north down to the northern edge of the Volta Region and is a part of an environment prone to extreme floods during the wet season and severe drought in the dry season. Like the Konkomba clans that have historically occupied it, the Oti plain straddles the border between Togo and Ghana, which added to the challenges that French and British colonial officials experienced as they worked to bring Konkomba clans under the control of the colonial state.

Chapter

1

“ T h e i r P ow e r W i l l B e U n i f o r m ly S u p p o r t e d” — P ow e r and Memory

In one of many interviews that A.W. Cardinall conducted among

Dagomba during his tenure as Yendi district commissioner, a Dagomba na told him a story to convey the extent of precolonial Dagomba political influence over neighboring Konkomba clans. The story depicted Konkomba from the village of Kpalba running toward the Oti River to escape from Dagomba slave raiders. When the Konkomba reached the river, as the na describes, “there was no means of crossing until a crocodile came out of the water and asked what all their cries were about. Once informed, he at once offered his back as a raft, and thus the Konkomba were saved.” When the Dagomba arrived at the water’s edge and saw their would-be slaves safely on the opposite bank, they rushed into the river to continue the chase, but the Oti’s current was too strong and the water too deep, and many of them drowned.1 Across Africa during the period of European colonial domination popular historical memory and historical narrative acquired heightened political significance. They became central to the ways in which the state and neighboring communities defined a group’s tradition and, therefore, political status and access to resources. Together with notions of custom and tradition, popular historical memory became the bedrock of local political power, particularly with regard to chieftaincy and relations between centralized and noncentralized societies. Nationalist movements and political independence did little to change this.

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Mahmood Mamdani suggests that the colonial world “set the indigenous apart from the non-indigenous in a racial sense, and then privileged the non-indigenous in a perverse way.”2 Among the Tutsi of Rwanda royal myths described two royal clans with sacred but not foreign origin. Under German and later Belgian colonial rule the mythology was extended beyond the Abanyiginya and Abeega clans to legitimate Tutsi supremacy over Hutu. To achieve their political goals, Europeans used Tutsi mythology to exacerbate differences between Tutsi and Hutu and labeled these differences racial, not ethnic, and therefore permanent. As colonial policy, Hutu/Tutsi difference was an institutional construct. Such political-institutional facts were not dismantled by intellectuals in the postcolonial period but by political-social movements.3 It has certainly been true throughout history and the world that those in positions of power invent, as Reinhold Niebuhr says, “romantic and moral interpretations of the real facts, preferring to obscure rather than reveal the true character of their collective behavior.”4 In this way, “universal self-deception and hypocrisy” characterizes politically dominant and privileged groups, because there are no rational justifications for their privileges. They, therefore, invent evidence to support the argument that general interests are served by their special privileges.5 We see in the relationship between the British, Dagomba, and Konkomba during period of British colonial rule historical narratives and popular memory as highly politicized and contested tools that enabled groups to accumulate political power. Dagomba nas presented British officials with narratives and political claims to substantiate Dagomba political legitimacy and the colonial policies that gave Dagomba nas authority over neighboring Konkomba clans. For the British, these stories were the evidence they needed to bring about effective British control over local communities through “traditional” authority. They embraced Dagomba nas as traditional and representative of a consistent pattern of political authority in the region. The relationship between the British and Dagomba demonstrates colonial powers’ link with chiefly power in producing and perpetuating a highly politicized form of tribalism. The historical narratives and the politics they describe were undergirded by a strong precolonial political dynamic. The challenge is to determine the nature of these precolonial relationships and pinpoint exaggerations and fabrications. Inconsistencies in historical narratives tend to be around issues that carried great political significance for British colonial officials. For example, questions of whether Asante held effective control over

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Dagbon in the eighteenth century were of only marginal significance to British officials, because Asante served as context for understanding precolonial Dagomba power. Questions of Dagomba power over surrounding noncentralized societies were, however, highly significant for the British capacity to construct local political structures consistent with their strategies for effective colonial rule based on custom and tradition. With so much at stake, it is little surprise that these were the issues around which there were pronounced inconsistencies in historical narratives. Generally, the relationship between Konkomba and Dagomba did not reflect a legacy of strong precolonial Dagomba political power. If Dagbon’s power had been as strong and as consistent as nas claimed to British officials, instead of internal relations functioning as the reference point for Konkomba constructions of communal, belonging and social status Dagomba nas would have served as the primary power reference. The clear sense of “insider-outsider” status that Konkomba expressed in their internal relations throughout most of the colonial period contributes to evidence that precolonial Dagbon only exercised limited influence among Konkomba, despite Dagomba claims to much broader power. Still, as a consequence of the British embracing Dagomba narratives of precolonial power over Konkomba clans, which included fallacies and exaggerations, British policies were weak, inconsistent, and continually disputed by Konkomba. It was not until the 1930s that the British achieved a consistent level of control over Konkomba clans through Dagomba nas. Consequently, Konkomba challenges to Dagomba authority shifted from threats of violence, fleeing, and ignoring Dagomba orders to appropriating Dagomba symbols of power and the broad political discourse that included their recognition that chieftaincy was the most significant local political institution among Africans. Recognizing the significance of chieftaincy was part political reality and part political tactic among Konkomba leaders. Dagomba “traditional” power was, therefore, a modern phenomenon, produced with the presentist aspect of historical narrative during the colonial period to strengthen the reins of colonial power in local society. The British approach to establishing the structures of colonial rule through existing institutions and practices reflects Mamdani’s argument that the organization and reorganization of the colonial state was a response to the question that the British faced of how best could its officials, as a foreign minority, rule over an indigenous majority. Mamdani terms the two broad answers as direct and indirect rule, of which they applied the latter throughout most of their African territories

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where it “signified a mediated—decentralizded—despotism” and produced political inequality that went alongside civic inequality.6 In the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, British officials had evidence that undermined their preconceived notions of chiefly power in the region; yet they pushed forward with their chief-centered policies arguing that their tactics aimed to restore precolonial political traditions. The pages that follow take the issues that Dagomba and the British highlighted as the basis for asserting Dagomba power as “traditional” to demonstrate the ways in which historical narratives served as political tools that significantly shaped power relations between local societies during the colonial period. The political significance of historical narratives further demonstrates the extent to which Africans significantly contributed to notions of power and authority under European colonial rule.

The History of Dagomba Political Authority and Konkomba Autonomy Under British rule in the Northern Territories, historical narratives acquired such political significance that it is difficult to sift through the hyperbole to gauge the ways in which they shaped the nature of political relationships between peoples. The goal here is not simply to question the history of Dagbon but rather the ways in which the Konkomba role in the history has been presented and used politically. The history of Dagbon is, after all, well documented. Unfortunately, the lunsi (hereditary clan of drummers that, among many significant social roles, records and performs the histories of Dagbon’s ruling clans) has little to say about noncentralized societies such as Konkomba. It describes Dagbon’s internal politics in some detail and its relationships with neighboring centralized polities. Dagbon is one of the Mossi-Dagomba states, each of which shares a historical narrative that describes them descending from a common ancestor, Gbewa. He was a hunter who migrated from northeast of the Niger River bend during Songhay’s political rise in the western Sudanic region during the fourteenth century and settled in presentday Burkina Faso, where he founded the Mossi Kingdom.7 In the 100 years that followed, Gbewa’s early descendants organized the Mamprugu Kingdom, south of the Mossi Kingdom. Mamprugu was organized around the political authority of the Nayiri, its secular political leader.8 In the early 1400s, Sitobu, a Mamprusi military

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leader, moved south from Mamprugu and organized a military settlement. Sometime after 1416, Sitobu’s son Nyagse took command of the settlement and launched a series of campaigns to conquer surrounding societies. According to both J.D. Fage and M.D. Iddi, after Nyagse successfully consolidated his control over the newly conquered area, he became the first Ya Na, or king of Dagbon,9 and built Yaa Nii10 as Dagbon’s capital 29 miles north of present-day Tamale.11 From Yaa Nii, Nyagse resumed his military activities through what the British would call Western Dagomba and eventually eastward into land occupied by Konkomba clans. During the same period Dagbon engaged in a series of conflicts with Gonja. The disputes between these two kingdoms were, among other issues, over control of the trade that passed north and south through the region from Kumasi to Jenné and westward from what is now Northern Nigeria. Gonja had an interest in diverting the trade farther west away from Dagbon and into Gonja. Excavations at Yaa Nii, or Yendi-Dabari (Ruined Yendi), revealed what appears to have been a caravanserai, including a large, rectangular structure that was likely two-stories tall. Surrounding it were similar but smaller buildings, which taken together indicate that it was a merchants’ quarter, most likely occupied by Wangara (Soninké clans that specialized in trade and Islamic law).12 The architecture would have been unusual for Dagomba. The largest structure appears to have been, as Nehemiah Levtzion describes, “markedly different from the typical Dagomba compound, where circular mud huts are built round a central courtyard.”13 The architectural remnants at Yaa Nii suggest that the town was a stopping point on the trade route from Kumasi to Jenné, which would explain the Gonja interest in sacking it. In addition to control over the trade from Kumasi to Jenné, the Dagomba conflict with Gonja coincided with an increase in the volume of Hausa traffic on the trade routes to Salaga and the salt deposits near the town of Daboya.14 In a battle at Yapei, Gonja warriors overwhelmed the Dagomba and advanced to take control of Daboya. They destroyed Yaa Nii, killed Ya Na Dariziegu, and in the political disarray among Dagomba advanced farther east. Dagomba informants explained to A.W. Cardinall, Yendi district commissioner from 1916 to 1919, that Gonja then came into conflict with Konkomba clans. The Bo, Tashi, and Bassare fled, but Konkomba clans remained to resist the Gonja warriors. Cardinall wrote that “the fighting was very furious indeed, but the tactics of Ngbanye were superior to those of

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the savages, who were routed and taken prisoners, with thousands of oxen, sheep, and goats.”15 Levtzion does not state definitively if Ngbanya (Gbanya) was the Gbanyaghe, the title given to Umar Jabaghte, who Levtzion’s informants described as a Mande who settled among Konkomba in Kuga, a village two miles east of Yendi. The Ya Na drove the Konkomba away, and Gbanyaghe stayed with the Dagomba, “but his early association with Konkomba is still remembered in the custom that a member of the Gbanyaghe family performs the ceremonial sacrifice to the Konkomba shrine at Pabo.”16 Neither Dagomba nor Gonja sources claim that Gonja ruled over Konkomba clans. Gonja retreated after they had acquired the goods they desired, because the goal was not to rule Konkomba clans. Similarly, Dagomba entered predominantly Konkomba territory not to control Konkomba but to build a new capital. In the aftermath of the battle at Yapei, Ya Na Luro, the new Dagomba ruler, built Yaa (Yendi) in the midst of Chaar, a Konkomba village.17 According to Konkomba sources, the Chaartiib clan responded by migrating east to the Oti plain to avoid overcrowding and interference in their affairs from Dagomba.18 Their move appears to have been gradual enough for a relationship between the two communities to take shape and a legacy of the Chaartiib to be established in Yendi through the office of Tsheli-Na, the title held by a Muslim elder at Yendi. Tsheli, or Chaari, is the Dagbani version of the preexisting Konkomba village. According to Levtzion’s informant, the Tsheli-Na office holder is a member of the Cisse patronymic group, among the earliest Dagomba to have settled among the Chaartiib prior to the Dagomba “conquest.”19 The Tsheli-Na is yet another institution and practice among Konkomba’s historically centralized neighbors that testifies to Konkomba autochthony in the region. Did Dagomba warriors force the Chaartiib and other Konkomba clans out of the area around Yendi, or did they migrate of their own volition? During the period of British colonial rule, it was politically advantageous for Dagomba informants to describe Dagomba warriors forcibly seizing Konkomba land so as to portray Dagomba as the conquerors and Konkomba as the conquered. Yet the actual events were far less black and white. There is little historical evidence to support claims that Dagomba nas ruled over Konkomba clans. When the British encountered Dagomba and Konkomba, there was little in their relationships beyond the fact that one group was centralized and the other noncentralized to clearly mark one as the society of rulers and the other as the ruled. Evidence suggests that the relationship between Konkomba

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and Dagomba was for the most part quite amicable, and the social and political boundaries between them were in many circumstances rather blurred. For example, according to Konkomba and Dagomba narratives, Dagomba dominance in the area around Yendi did not push all the Konkomba east of the town. Many Konkomba remained in and around Yendi, while others settled in or near surrounding Dagomba villages, and there was considerable intermarriage between Konkomba and Dagomba, as there was among all northern societies. These marriages produced complex familial and communal loyalties. Collectively Dagomba warriors were militarily superior to any fighting unit that a Konkomba clan had the capacity to assemble, although it is doubtful that Konkomba meeting Dagomba in battle was a common event. Jon Kirby describes Konkomba as “Run-People” and Dagomba as “Hit-People.” As a run-people, Konkomba avoided interfering in the affairs of others and made every effort to not allow others to interfere in their affairs as well. They retreated when they assessed that a physical response to an invasion or a conflict was too dangerous and exercised this exit option in response to Konkomba and non-Konkomba alike. The high incidence of feuding among Konkomba made them, as Kirby describes, “very sensitive to the presence of anything that upsets the balance of equitable relations.”20 Considering this common practice among Konkomba, it is likely that as Dagomba moved into the land around Yendi, Konkomba did not mount a sustained resistance. Yet it would be an exaggeration to label this as conquest. In most of precolonial Africa, people rather than land were conquered. This was due in large part to the abundance of available land. Migrations, or the “exit option,” in the wake of military advances are a common theme in precolonial African history and contributed to the difficulty marking the physical boundaries of a particular society, polity, or empire. In addition to the readily available land, rain-fed agriculture allowed for easy migration away from undesirable rulers. It was often easier to settle elsewhere than fight over land and attempt to resist an invasion.21 Most Konkomba reconstructions of events that surrounded the founding of Yendi present Konkomba as having allowed Dagomba to settle among them or having willingly migrated away. For example, the Chaartiib claim that the Dagomba capital was built on land that the Chaartiib were not using and gave as a gesture of goodwill to Ya Na Luro, who had fled into Chaartiib land after war with Gonja. They further claim that Luro showed his gratitude by marrying a Konkomba woman, which established a tradition that

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solidified the relationship between the two groups and allowed future nas to claim that the Dagomba were autochthonous in the region.22 Further demonstrating a Konkomba connection, the Ya Na’s wives wear their hair cut very low in the style of Konkomba women, and it is common for Dagomba royals to refer to the Konkomba symbolically as their mothers.23 Despite evidence of a far more complex relationship than conquerors and conquered between Dagomba and Konkomba during the colonial period, the most politically significant representation of Konkomba in Dagomba and Mamprusi historical narratives presents Konkomba as a precolonial conquered people, slaves, and warriors retained by Dagomba nas. Among the Mamprusi, R.S. Rattray recorded three elders of Naleregu relate that Zontua or Atabea “made war against the Kpemkpwamba [Konkomba] who were at that time at Naleregu. He defeated them and left Gambaga to settle at Naleregu.”24 The Konkomba then were part of the events that surrounded the Mamprugu capital’s relocation from Gambaga to Naleregu but as victims of Mamprugu’s political expansion. Konkomba had their own incentives for disassociating themselves from a history, putative and real, of having been conquered. Konkomba continue to claim Yendi as part of Kekpakpaan— Konkomba country—and, indeed, many Konkomba hamlets and villages remain in the Yendi vicinity. To support Konkomba claims to autochthony, they point to their utindaan—custodians of earth shrines—who continue to perform rites at the Daka River in Yendi and sacrifice to earth shrines there as well.25 Konkomba also present a history in which entire subclans voluntarily moved away from the area around Yendi as the Dagomba population increased. It is likely, therefore, that the Konkomba exodus was precipitated by both force and a willingness among many Konkomba to settle in less populated areas.26 According to Bichabob, their clan joined Chaartiib to fight the Dagomba who had settled in Yendi.27 The Konkomba preference for small, widely scattered settlements that allowed them to maintain small plots around their compounds and large farms several miles away was incompatible with living among highly centralized and densely populated communities. There is little question that regardless of the veracity of Dagomba claims to broad precolonial political power, Dagomba historical narratives were central to constructing “traditional” political relationships during the colonial period that were maintained after Ghana’s independence. Historical memory and narratives were, therefore, part of the power structure that was centered on tradition, chieftaincy,

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27

and tribe, which Konkomba leaders challenged in their postcolonial quest for political equality. Had precolonial Dagomba control over Konkomba clans been as consistent as Dagomba leaders claimed to British officials, the Konkomba transformation toward political centralization in the 1960s and 1970s would have been natural rather than representing dramatic change. Well into the colonial period Dagbon remained marginal to internal Konkomba affairs. Social status among Konkomba was not defined by their putative position as Dagomba subordinates. The Konkomba postcolonial change from internal political references to a focus on Dagomba power as a common, unifying problem reflects the limited influence that Dagomba nas exercised until the British introduced indirect rule in the 1930s. Dagomba power was, therefore, modern and colonial, and continuously evolving along with Konkomba responses to it. Intra-Konkomba relations remained the strongest influence on Konkomba politics until the British arrived and imposed their policies of political incorporation. Between the Dagomba incursions into the middle Volta basin and the arrival of the British and the Germans, political relationships between Konkomba subclans were most significant. Time and place of settlement significantly shaped precolonial Konkomba “we-they” relations, which changed as the social and political environment changed. Historically, among Konkomba a group’s genealogical relationship to the earliest settlers within a particular locale or of a particular clan, along with age and gender, defined social status and difference within clans. The primacy of Konkomba traditions that tell of the genesis of a clan, subclan, or village and their preoccupation with defining genealogical relationships between groups meant that political identity and notions of social and political difference continually evolved as fission occurred, groups moved to new areas to farm, and marriages created new alliances. One example is the narratives of the Sambultiib and Sangultiib, both subclans of the Bimokpem clan and descendants of migrants from the former Konkomba town of Sambuli, east of Yendi. Bimokpem narratives suggest that Dagbon was significant to the extent that its political expansion precipitated large-scale Konkomba migrations eastward into the Oti plain. But these settlers organized their societies on the basis of their own interests not in response to the Ya Na’s demands. For example, Bimokpem explain that their ancestors fought off the residents of the Oti plain and founded Sambuli.28 In the course of the Bimokpem’s struggle to take control of the land, they made alliances with other Konkomba clans such as the Kpalbtiib.29 As the population of Sambuli increased, a subgroup migrated northward

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in search of available farmland and founded Sanguli. Although Sambuli and Sanguli were divided by land occupied by several different clans, the two villages maintained ritual familial bonds that have continued to the present.30 In addition to narratives that describe the genesis of new villages and subclans, a number of Konkomba historical traditions depict Konkomba migrations into established settlements. Historically, however, migration away from existing groups through fission was most common. Evidence of a reverse trend in early Konkomba history on the Oti plain suggests that these were not simply subclans that migrated in search of farmland but whole societies that sought resettlement. The Kpalbtiib and the Bichabob, a large clan that has historically settled around Saboba (Chabob), are two Konkomba clans whose traditions strongly illustrate this trend. In both cases, preexisting groups allowed outsiders to settle within or near them. The apical subclan initially recognized the outsiders as strangers, but within a relatively short period accepted them as “insiders.” Kpalbtiib traditions explain that the Kaasiitiib subclan comprised part of Kpalba’s original inhabitants and, therefore, formed the apical subgroup. Within an unspecified period of time, groups of outsiders went to Kpalba seeking settlement, and in time, these groups formed additional Kpalbtiib subclans. The names of the descendants of these groups reflect the areas of Kpalba that they settled in and depict their primary activity as the basis for settlement in these places. The Taatiib, “lower people”, were reportedly a combination of Gonja (Bikpanja) fishermen, who sought settlement near the river, and Konkomba trappers of an unspecified clan, who wanted to take advantage of the tall reeds that grew along the river because they hid large rodents. The Kpalba Paab Yaab, “upper people” of Kpalba, who settled near the forest, were originally hunters. Finally, the Kaasiitiib, “middle people”, were descendents of the apical subgroup of Kpalba. Each group stayed in Kpalba long enough to become Konkomba and Kpalbtiib. Kaasiitiib accepting outsiders as part of Kpalbtiib offers an additional example of the elasticity of autochthony. Descent from an outsider group, although accepted as a part of the clan, conferred the distinction of not descending from the ancestors. The fact that a member of the Kpalba Paab Yaab eventually became clan elder indicates that the Kaasiitiib fully accepted them as Kpalbtiib, while other Kpalbtiib recognized the Kaasiitiib as descendents of the original inhabitants and, therefore, their eldest member was always utindaan because of their descent from the first utindaan of Kpalba.31 In addition, Kpalbtiib traditions demonstrate the complexity

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of insider-outsider status within Konkomba clans. For example, when Kpalba became heavily populated, a section of the Kaasiitiib moved away from Kpalba and over time developed a separate identity as Chagbaantiib. The Chagbaantiib settled at the forest’s edge, which is, reportedly, how their subclan received its name, meaning “of the forest’s edge.”32 The Kaasiitiib and the Chagbaantiib maintained a ritual relationship, and other Kpalbtiib subclans recognized the Chagbaantiib as part of the apical subgroup, even though they were no longer perceived as Kpalbtiib. The Bichabob offer a different example of the relationship between settlement and insider-outsider status and, by extension, of the complexity of precolonial social identities. Some Bichabob narratives describe large-scale settlement around Chabob that began with a hunter who roamed the area for game. The thick forest well endowed with large animals attracted him, and he settled there. It is common among Konkomba clans for the first settler to be remembered as a hunter who has found new, fertile hunting ground. After some time, “strangers” settled near the hunter. Their population quickly grew so large that they came to dominate the area and the name ascribed to them, Bichabob—which reportedly evolved from a statement that referred to people from the “outside.”33 Clearly, in this example, the apical group among the Bichabob had a well-defined notion of insider and outsider status because the presence of “strangers” was marked enough to leave its imprint on the name of the clan. Carola Lentz has also described this narrative trope, specifically among the Dagara of northwest Ghana. Although they may give the point of departure and the different stages of the ancestor’s migration, these stories are mainly concerned with arrival and settlement, thus providing a charter for present land boundaries and for social relations among villagers and with their neighbors.34 Konkomba traditions provide insight into the ways in which Konkomba notions of difference developed and changed over time. Through Konkomba historical narratives we can measure social and political change during the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods. Before the British arrived with their strategy to incorporate small and noncentralized communities within the centralized kingdoms, political relationships between Konkomba subclans were the only relationships of significance. In addition, place and time of settlement were significant facts that shaped Konkomba notions of we-they, which evolved as relationships transformed. Examining these processes of community organization as they encountered and engaged British colonial rule illustrates the gradual shift in notions of difference as

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they confronted the accompanying layers of British power. Some of these narratives portray neighboring Konkomba communities as the reference point by which Konkomba defined their political identities and notions of belonging. Dagomba and other neighboring nonKonkomba societies were only of marginal significance to Konkomba day-to-day affairs. This is not to suggest that Dagomba were not a factor in precolonial Konkomba history. Evidence—both precolonial and colonial—points to a relationship between Dagomba and Konkomba that was far less centered on dominate-subordinate power dynamics than Dagomba popular historical memory, as it was expressed to the British. Moreover, as communities within Konkomba society defined and redefined themselves, they did not live in complete isolation. There was intermarriage between all Konkomba clans and between Konkomba and their centralized and noncentralized neighbors alike. Konkomba were not confined within closed boundaries. Well into the colonial period it remained difficult to assign an individual to a single group or category. The ways in which popular historical memory is invoked to support a particular claim or dispute a particular charge reveals a great deal more about the current conflict than the group’s past. The same is true of what is collectively “forgotten” or left unspoken. The following section explores debates over a second major Dagomba claim: Konkomba conquest and enslavement during the period of Asante’s political expansion. The issue of Dagomba enslavement of Konkomba became highly political during the early years of British rule, but it was not until the late 1940s that Konkomba actively presented a counternarrative to claims of their conquest and enslavement. By then, however, Dagomba versions had already become part of the dominant historical narrative.

Konkomba in the Age of Asante Expansion Dagomba claimed to British officials that they and other centralized polities enslaved Konkomba and sold them to Asante and the coast. Similar to Dagomba claims to have conquered and ruled Konkomba, enslavement connoted Konkomba political illegitimacy and weakness. British officials took for granted that as rulers Dagomba would also have traded Konkomba slaves. However, there is no substantial evidence of large-scale raids among Konkomba villages by outside groups. For British officials historical evidence lay in political structures and assertions of tradition and custom. The ways in which slavery

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was asserted as a tool to cast noncentralized societies as politically illegitimate illustrates its political currency. During the colonial period the descendents of putative and real slave raiders acquired a higher political stock than the descendents of the raided. There was, therefore, an incentive for communities to disassociate from a history of enslavement, real or otherwise. It is likely that some Konkomba were victims of slave raids; yet the question remains whether Dagomba had systematically raided Konkomba villages and hamlets and, if so, on what grounds did such a history translate into forms of colonial power. The history of slave raiding and enslaving that Dagomba nas claimed helped substantiate British policies of Dagomba political authority over Konkomba. Considering the history of slave raiding in the region, particularly as it relates to the histories of Babatu and Samori Toure, two large-scale enslavers, and the relationship in precolonial Africa between conquest and enslavement, it is natural that Dagomba nas would have made such claims. Yet the veracity of these historical claims is questionable. For one, Konkomba, as a group, did not exhibit the behavior of societies that were frequently targeted by regular slave raids and military attacks. The most common response among communities that faced the threat of regular slave raiding was to either flee or build walls around their villages. Walls were effective because African armies lacked artillery to overtake a well-entrenched defensive position.35 Such walled communities remain to the north of Kekpakpaan in Ghana’s Upper East and Upper West Regions, such as Gwolu where Babatu carried out much of his slave raiding.36 Konkomba, on the other hand, have maintained dispersed, unfortified compounds uncommon among communities systematically targeted by slave raiders, such as the Lobi of Ghana’s Upper West Region. The absence of walled compounds and the Konkomba presence in such close proximity to both Dagbon and Mamprugu—not to mention the existence of many ethnically mixed villages—suggest that Konkomba were not victims of regular and systematic attacks. Nas in Dagomba villages within Kekpakpaan east of Yendi exercised limited influence among surrounding Konkomba and would not have been effective bases for slave raids. These permanent Dagomba settlements would have had to contend with aggressive Konkomba retaliation against slave raids, which would have subjected these relatively unprotected villages to Konkomba attacks. Dagomba political control and slave raiding, such as it was, was on a very limited scale. Moreover, prior to 1745 Dagbon had no real incentive to control firmly and consistently non-Dagomba areas such as Kekpakpaan;

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its military superiority gave it the capacity to raid the westernmost Konkomba for revenue and resources whenever it deemed necessary. There was in fact little that Dagbon would have gained by incorporating Kekpakpaan even if Dagomba nas possessed the capacity to do so. There were no major markets within Kekpakpaan, and there is no evidence that Konkomba interfered with the one major trade route that passed along its southern edge, which originated in Katsina, present-day Northern Nigeria, and passed southwest to Nikki on to Djougou, into Kotokoli in present-day Togo, and through Konkomba territory on to Yendi, terminating at Daboya. The small and scattered Konkomba settlements would have produced little to make Dagomba raids worthwhile and would have proven difficult if not impossible to control for any significant time. Above all, Dagbon lacked the political and military infrastructure to physically control large non-Dagomba areas. Although it occasionally raided neighboring states and noncentralized neighbors for slaves, Dagbon was not heavily engaged in the slave trade south to the Atlantic or north through the Sahara to any significant degree.37 The slave trade as it existed within Dagbon was closely tied to the Asante Kingdom’s political expansion during the eighteenth century. Asante began a series of raids into Dagbon in 1745 to take control of the trade from the north through Dagbon to Salaga. During one of these raids, Asante captured Gariba, the Ya Na, and prepared to take him as a prisoner to Kumasi, the Asante capital, but released him en route following an appeal by Dagomba nas. In return, the Asantehene demanded that the Ya Na annually send a fixed number of slaves, cattle, sheep, and cloth to Kumasi.38 The extent to which Dagomba acquired Konkomba captives or even made a significant attempt is subject to debate. Few scholars have questioned claims that Dagbon delivered thousands of slaves annually to Asante. Most have presented noncentralized societies as a reservoir for slaves taken by their centralized and militarily superior neighbors. From this perspective, the major source of slaves shipped to the Americas came from noncentralized societies, as a result of the large transfer in population during this period from noncentralized to centralized societies.39 Asante’s demand would likely have caused considerable social turmoil in the north as Dagbon and neighboring centralized polities raided the Konkomba and Grunshi for captives.40 It is evident, however, that any estimate of the number of slaves sent to Kumasi is based on conjecture.41 Other scholars suggest a more complex relationship between Dagbon and Asante. R.O.G. Marville, for example, argues that because Asante was almost continuously at war, it was rarely in a position to

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force Dagbon to make a payment, which symbolized Asante control in the northeast.42 E.F. Tamakloe suggests that Dagbon only made limited attempts to pay Asante until the reign of Ya Na Abdulai I (1864–1876) nearly 100 years after Asante first demanded payment. The change came as a result of threats of a punitive expedition that Asante soldiers carried out against Yendi. According to Tamakloe, who incidentally does not name the Konkomba as a source for Dagomba captives, Ya Na Abdulai I immediately made preparations for war against Grunshi and Bassare to obtain captives to send to Asante.43 In one of his interviews with Dagomba nas and elders, M.D. Iddi asked if Dagbon even incurred a debt likely to be labeled a “skin debt” (a debt owed by the Ya Na). The informant responded that only one such debt has ever come about: “The Asante imposed the ‘Kambon daba’ on the Dagomba, and we paid them yearly in slaves. We used to raid Grunshi in the present day Upper Region and paid them to the Kambonsi (Asante). That is the only case of ‘skin debt’ in Dagbon.”44 Dagomba villages within Kekpakpaan, not slavery, were the critical evidence for Dagomba claims to political authority over Konkomba clans during British colonial rule and paved the way for claims to legal rights over Konkomba land in the postindependence period. According to Dagomba accounts, Konkomba did not mount a resistance when the Dagomba established outpost villages in Kekpakpaan. The Dagomba related that “the Konkomba could not stand the Dagomba so as we moved in, they retreated and we occupied all the abandoned land.”45 Similarly, David Tait quoted a Konkomba elder who explained that the Dagomba “rose and mounted their horses, that is why we rose up and gave the land to the Dagomba. We rose up and got here with the Bikwom [sic]. The Bikwom rose up and went across the [Oti] river.”46 Zabzugu, Sunson, Demon, and Gushiego were the most important divisions that Dagbon established in Kekpakpaan,47 in addition to smaller divisions such as Kworli and Zegbeli (Jagbel).48 There is tangible evidence of political influence among Konkomba villages and hamlets closest to the Dagomba settlements. Kpalbtiib even admit to having been heavily influenced by the nearby Dagomba town of Demon. For example, it is said that when a Kpalbtiib child learned to speak Likpakpaaln (the Konkomba language), he or she also began to speak Dagbani (Dagomba).49 In addition, Kpalbtiib have a long tradition of recognizing an ubor (pl. biborb) , or headman, as the senior most political office among the clan. On the other hand, farther west, Bichabob, whose settlements were far from Dagomba villages, were not influenced by Dagomba in the same way as the Kpalbtiib and the Binafeb.

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Konkomba developed narratives to explain the origins of Dagomba settlements in Kekpakpaan and the reasons that some Konkomba paid tribute to them. Sources neither support nor contradict Konkomba claims, but these explanations seem to reflect colonial and postcolonial political perspectives more than provide a plausible basis for the unbalanced precolonial political relationship between Konkomba and Dagomba. According to a Konkomba narrative, there were occasions in which Konkomba offered tribute to Dagomba nas, but it was not out of a sense of obligation. Rather, the Konkomba in the villages around Yendi recognized that Dagomba were better organized than most Konkomba subclans.50 One year, according to the narrative, a drought nearly destroyed all Konkomba crops. The utindaan made sacrifices to the earth shrines, but there was still no rain. As a last resort, Konkomba consulted the Ya Na, who told the Konkomba to bring him each kind of fowl. When the Konkomba returned with fowl, the Ya Na proclaimed the rain and the harvest was saved. Konkomba continued to bring the Ya Na food as a sign of their appreciation, but soon this practice became burdensome. They decided to make a farm for the Ya Na, which they agreed to tend for him. Out of this practice, Konkomba claim, came the tradition of Konkomba performing tribute labor on the Ya Na’s farm.51 Other narratives explain the origins of the Konkomba practice of providing the Ya Na with a cow’s hind leg and a pot of pito as tribute to the local na during funeral rites.52 Similar to the stories of Konkomba labor on the Ya Na’s farm, these narratives explain the basis of Konkomba tribute as a practice that began as a gesture of goodwill, which Dagomba later turned into a customary obligation. One in particular suggests that the practice originated at Kpalba with a man named Mbuni who was exiled for using magic, but the Demon Na gave him sanctuary. When the head of Mbuni’s family passed away, the responsibility to perform the funeral fell to him. During the funeral he gave the hind leg of the cow that he slaughtered for the funeral and a pot of pito to the Demon Na as a gesture of gratitude. In return, the Demon Na sent Mbuni gunpowder, 100 kola nuts, and a bag of salt. Others who saw this were amazed and imitated Mbuni during funerals so that they might be similarly rewarded,53 which became a Konkomba funerary custom. Clearly, these narratives reflect uneasiness with the practice and an attempt to position Konkomba as in control of their relationships with Dagomba nas. After the British defeated Asante forces in 1874 in the AngloAsante War, Gonja and Dagbon asserted their autonomy from the Asantehene in Kumasi and eliminate Dagbon’s incentive for influence

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to raid surrounding societies to send to Kumasi as slaves. Gonja, Mamprugu, and Dagbon’s role as slave raiders was gradually taken over by the Zabarima, who were related to the Songhai of the region around Niamey in modern Niger. In the 1860s the Zabarima invaded the middle Volta basin from the north under the leadership of Alfa Hanno during the reign of Ya Na Abdulai I, who enlisted them as mercenaries against neighboring Grunshi. With few exceptions, Konkomba in the villages and hamlets beyond these Dagomba settlements maintained their social and political autonomy, because Dagomba lacked the political and military infrastructure, and perhaps the political will, to assert political authority beyond their outposts. It is likely that the nas claimed Konkomba territory beyond Dagomba villages within Kekpakpaan before the British arrived, although they evidently exercised no real authority over them. Dagomba cultural and political influence among some Konkomba clans does not necessarily translate to broad and consistent authority. Contrary to British understanding of political power in Africa, precolonial Dagbon’s influence had little to do with maintaining physical control over a territory. It centered more on sustaining the military capacity to have access to political and natural resources whenever necessary.54 The limited nature of political control is a consequence of what Igor Kopytoff calls the centralized states’ lack of a “technology of reach.”55 Dagbon did not have the material and administrative technology to extend control over its peripheries. Peripheral societies’ mobility, facilitated by the availability of land and the simplicity of agrarian practices, contributed to the limits of Dagbon’s political power.56 Beyond a certain point, physical control was erratic, ineffective, and, ultimately, impossible. R.S. Rattray, the colonial anthropologist who conducted ethnographic research in the Northern Territories during the 1920s, argued that prior to European colonial rule conquest had little effect on the daily lives of the conquered. Indeed, the nature of state building fostered conquests without occupation. Among centralized polities, Rattray explains, “a band of a score or less of well-armed and determined fighting men could, and often did, alter the political face of the map.”57 He warned against exaggerating the real significance of conquests as one examines the historical relationships between conquerors and the conquered. If Dagbon had established formal control over Konkomba areas, its administrative framework would have been quite precarious. Only under the aegis of European colonial rule were centralized polities able to increase their actual physical control over their noncentralized neighbors. However, the British colonial regime

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was low on legitimacy and deficient in ability to implement policies throughout the territory consistently.58 Consequently, political stability on the margins of centralized polities remained tenuous. Dagomba efforts to associate Konkomba with a history in the region as conquered and enslaved peoples reflects the political weight that these labels acquired under colonial rule. British interest in building local policies around historically centralized polities led them to embrace historical claims as fact. Even when officials second guessed or doubted the veracity of Dagomba claims, they incorporated them into the official colonial version of local historical relationships between Konkomba and their neighbors. During the late colonial period Konkomba leaders worked to discredit Dagomba historical claims, but throughout much of British rule colonial officials did not consult Konkomba historical narratives. Dagomba characterizations heavily influenced British constructions of Konkomba ethnic identity and political traditions with implications for Konkomba political status and the strength of British political authority in the area.

British Rule and the Efficacy of Historical Memory The British defeat of Asante in 1874 cleared the way for British officials to explore the region to the kingdom’s north. They described the years 1898–1910 as the period of pacification of the Northern Territories and claimed that their motivation was scientific curiosity and the desire to collect data that they might use for future trade, missionary enterprises, and military conquest.59 British colonists assumed that there was a clear line of political authority from kings down through chiefs to compounds and that every tribe possessed a chief. Yet, when they began to explore the territories they claimed, there were numerous societies that had a political class that did not fit their preconceived notion of ruling elites, let alone a chief.60 In his 1892 and 1894 report to the colonial government in Accra about his missions to areas north of the Asante Kingdom, George Ekem Ferguson was among the first to draw a clear distinction between “countries with an organized government,” such as Dagbon, Gonja, and Mamprugu, and “wild tribes, naked and living in independent family communities,” such as the Lobi, Grussi, Dagarti, Kusasi, and Konkomba. The Konkomba political structure has always contrasted with those of Mamprugu, Nanun, Dagbon, Gonja, and the Chakosi,61 each of which had a clearly defined political structure and history of expansion. These centralized polities’ comparatively

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well-organized administrative and military framework gave them an advantage over their noncentralized neighbors. Ferguson classified “the people of the Hinterland,” or those living north of the Asante Kingdom, “according to their various degrees of capacity for political negotiations.”62 In this way, Ferguson began to define for the British what constituted a “tribe.”63 As Lentz explains, “Ferguson was not describing an isolated juxtaposition of acephalous and centralized societies, but a complex network of alliances and enmities between political units of differing ranges and various degrees of internal empowerment.”64 Between 1890 and 1897, Ferguson, the son of a Fanti mother and a British father, concluded treaties with northern rulers that made it possible for the British to claim control over large areas north of Asante. Ferguson drew much of his information from interpreters recruited from the political elite of the centralized polities and not from among the noncentralized communities. Notions of otherness and prejudice that Ferguson’s interpreters carried shaped his impressions of people and their social and political characteristics. These examples of local influences vividly illustrate the ways in which an African discourse and characterization of other African societies shaped European ideas of African people, politics, and social categories.65 There is, however, a distinction between Ferguson and his contemporaries of the 1890s and the administrators who created British colonial policy. Ferguson worked to build a relationship between the Gold Coast Colony and the polities north of Asante. He, therefore, paid close attention to African political structures and the nature of social relationships. Ferguson did not live to see formal British control established over what would become the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast because he was killed during a fight between British soldiers and Samori Toure’s Sofa warriors in a dispute over food. Despite the foundation for extending British hegemony that Ferguson planted, a decade later British officials were fixated on defining the political boundaries of centralized polities and incorporating them into the colonial political structure. British tactics for political control in the Northern Territories, particularly in the Mandated Territory, were shaped with frequent reference to the administrative strategies and culture of their German predecessors. The German colonial administration divided northern Togo into two districts: Sokode-Bassar and Sansanne-Mangu Yendi. With few exceptions, the German district commissioners interacted directly with the villages placed under their charge. In the case of Konkomba, German officials passed orders through the uninkpel or

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an assigned headman who relayed the information to the hamlet or village. The district commissioner gave this individual a walking stick and a hat to represent his position and signify his relationship with the German administration. There were claims among the Sambultiib that Labal, whom the Germans met when they first entered Kekpakpaan, had a special relationship with the German administrators and that they gave him the responsibility of selecting which Konkomba would be named headmen. Others, however, denied that this was true.66 Konkomba did not consider these headmen to be chiefs. Rather, they served as spokesmen for the Germans, and, unless they were uninkpel, their authority did not extend beyond that role. When the colonial official issued orders, it was their responsibility to organize labor groups. This communal, or forced, labor of Konkomba villages built the first major roads connecting Kekpakpaan to Yendi and the main road from Yendi toward Saboba that passes through Demon and Kpalba. Some Konkomba escaped forced labor by running away, while others fought and faced the response of German military force.67 However, there was little interaction overall between the Konkomba and their German administrators. During 1897 and part of 1898, according to Police Commandant Heinrich Klose’s report, several Konkomba subclans launched an armed resistance against German rule. The assault centered on the German station at Sansanne-Mangu. This Konkomba revolt, coupled with Dagomba recalcitrance in the neutral zone between German and British territories, completely isolated Sansanne-Mangu. The Dagomba refused to allow German personnel or supplies to pass through their territory to Sansanne-Mangu from the coast, and the alternative route that came north through Kete-Krachi was also blocked. Gruner, stationed at Sansanne-Mangu, traveled to Bapure, a nearby Konkomba village. From there he sent word of his desperate need for a force of 30 “black policemen” and several “native horsemen” to pacify the Konkomba.68 In the meantime, Konkomba attacked members of Gruner’s guard, killing several soldiers with poisonous arrows while they patrolled the outskirts of Bapure. Fearing that he was no longer safe in Bapure, Gruner set up camp beyond the village limits. He was soon forced to relocate once more because Konkomba warriors were seen circling Bapure. Gruner and his men retreated to the village of Banyeli. Konkomba tactics had thoroughly frustrated Gruner and left him momentarily helpless. Konkomba scouts tracked his location at all times, following him in a wide formation. Gruner was aware of this because of the signals Konkomba sent to each other through tapping the thimbles that they wore on their thumbs and forefingers against

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the wood of their bows. The tapping allowed the Konkomba warriors to know the exact location of their compatriots, and these thimbles also aided their use of bow and arrows. A small group of African soldiers with four white men made it through to Dr. Gruner. After a brief fight with the Konkomba, they broke through the Konkomba line and returned to Sansanne-Mangu. The Konkomba warriors seemed determined to launch a successful attack against Gruner and his Sansanne-Mangu headquarters. As Klose explains, “Now and again the Konkomba slides right up to Bassari [SansanneMangu] in order to see the situation for themselves. As soon as the soldiers recognized them they would seize them and it was only through drastic steps taken by the whites that their lives could be saved. I could see for myself the incredible agility of the Konkomba people. Again and again they freed themselves from the grips of our soldiers until, in they end, they were brought to the station in chains.”69 Continual Konkomba challenges forced the Germans to remain on guard. They were alarmed by reports of Konkomba advances. In the days following the Konkomba attacks, Klose, reflecting the popular German belief in the efficacy of brute force, stated, “Our situation would not have seemed as bad as it did at first, especially if we had ourselves been resolute and firm.”70 In their response to the Konkomba, German forces used their military advantage and succeeded in exacting enough physical punishment among Konkomba villages that Konkomba resistance to German rule came to an abrupt end. Writing in 1898, Valentin von Massow reported, “A breakthrough has been achieved at last. . . . Not only the tribes involved, but also those in the neighboring areas have been given a taste of German power.”71 German practices established a precedent for European occupation in the eyes of Africans that allowed the British to establish their authority with very little physical opposition, because, as in the case of Western Togo, they simply moved into the German position of authority. In 1897 Governor Frederick Mitchell Hodgson, acting governor of the British Gold Coast, (1898–1900) appointed Lieutenant-Colonel H.P. Northcott as the first chief commissioner of the Northern Territories, a post that he held until 1899. In acquiring the territory the British sought to limit the influence of rival European powers along the trade routes north of Kumasi, the Asante capital. Claiming control proved to be much easier than actually governing the people who lived there. Northcott’s principal task was to examine the local political structures and develop strategies for incorporating the newly acquired territory into the Gold Coast Colony.

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The challenge that Northcott and other colonial officials faced as they sought to gather information on political and spiritual institutions in the region was that there were few notions of custom, authority, and political boundaries that were fixed and broadly accepted throughout a region. Europeans entered a political terrain in which power and social affiliations were continuously realigned, debated, and reinterpreted. As Sara Berry describes, “Colonial administrators who set out to gather information on local laws and customs were told multiple, often conflicting stories. Whichever version of customary rights and practices an official chose to believe, people were sure to challenge it—both because the past was in fact complex and changing, and because Africans took advantage of officials’ interest in tradition to offer evidence favorable to their own interests.”72 The British colonial experience in the Gold Coast and Nigeria during the closing decades of the nineteenth century convinced them that if they incorporated local rulers into the colonial administrative structure, it would check the rise of assertive, educated African leaders. Rather than incorporate Africans into the colonial leadership, the British set out to impose a separate African political sphere and confine Africans to it as politically distinct tribes.73 Northcott began his investigation confident in the British strategy to control local societies through the authority of existing rulers. He had preconceived ideas of the local institutions that would best serve as the foundation for the relationship between African societies and the colonial state. His prejudices were aligned with the agenda of the colonial administration: chiefs were the center of power for all tribal groups, and each individual and community was part of a tribe. Even before he acquired sufficient information about the people in the territory, he had no other plan than to plant chieftaincy as the center of British policy in local areas. Northcott anticipated encountering rulers and tribes that resembled the Asantehene and Asante to the south and the Sokoto Caliphate of northern Nigeria. “In every district,” he wrote, “the agency employed will be that of the native chiefs, and their power will, during good behaviour be uniformly supported, except in matters of their relationship with neighboring chiefs and of offences of a capital nature.”74 What constituted “good behaviour” was left to the local administrators’ discretion. Northcott’s first tours through the region were dedicated to locating these tribes that he believed were integral to firmly establishing effective rule and concluding treaties with them. Yet Northcott discovered that the Northern Territories where quite different from Asante and northern Nigeria. The existing kingdoms in the Northern Territories—Wa, Dagbon, Mamprugu, and Gonja—were highly decentralized and had divisional

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chiefs who operated virtually independently of their kings. Captain Moutray Read, district commissioner of Lawra, observed that “not only were the villages [among the “Lobi” and “Dagarti”] greatly intermixed, making sketching very difficult, but the precise ethnic boundaries were also difficult to ascertain.”75 The division of Dagbon in British and German territories added to this political puzzle, with the Ya Na in Yendi on the German side and the majority of Dagomba on the British. When the two powers divided Dagbon, the Ya Na protested that he failed to comprehend how two powers would control a kingdom and reportedly said, “Two men could not ride the same donkey.”76 A fragmented Dagbon left the Nayiri of Mamprugu as the strongest king in the Northern Territories, which forced Northcott to adjust his expectations. He hoped that the Nayiri possessed enough authority over local society to serve the colonial administration’s political interests in the region. With this in mind, in early 1898 Northcott met with the Nayiri in Nalerigu, capital of Mamprugu, and was encouraged by what appeared to be the Nayiri’s geographically broad political authority. Much of what Northcott learned from the Nayiri was precisely what he desired to hear and what the king wanted the British official to believe. The Nayiri was well aware of Northcott’s interests, so he portrayed himself as possessing firm and consistent authority over neighboring Chakosi and the surrounding chiefless societies. He explained that long ago Mamprugu granted the Chakosi, who were Akan-speaking peoples originally from the south, the land that they occupied on the condition that the Nayiri confirm all future Chakosi chiefs.77 The Chakosi agreed and subsequently fell within the Nayiri’s political jurisdiction. The Nayiri also claimed that the Grunshi, Tallensi, Kusasi, and Bussanga had also historically been under Mamprugu authority until Zabarima incursions of the nineteenth century weakened the kingdom’s capacity to enforce its authority over these noncentralized groups. Northcott verified the Nayiri’s claims with the Grunshi, who confirmed the Nayiri’s descriptions of their relationship with Mamprugu, “as it relates to the sovereignty of Mamprusi over Gurunshi [sic] in former times, but stated that the [Grunshi] broke away from its allegiance and constituted itself as a collection of independent communities, on its becoming apparent that the King of Mamprusi was powerless to check the inroads of Babatu.”78 Jack Goody has suggested that the Nayiri’s claims to Sansanne-Mangu and the Chakosi were illusory, because Mamprugu possessed neither the military capacity to assert political control over the Chakosi nor the strength to repel them when they settled in the region during the eighteenth century.79 This is not to suggest that what the Nayiri told Northcott

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was completely false. Mamprugu exercised authority over the Chakosi that was more ritual control than physical. However, British notions of political authority in the early twentieth century did not accommodate constructions of ritual authority and, therefore, Northcott concluded that the Nayiri was in fact the Chakosi traditional political overlord and crafted policies accordingly in the Northern Territories. Until the 1930s brought greater respect for formal ethnography among colonial officials, Northcott and the British officials who followed him in the Northern Territories carried assumptions about African society that led them to accept eagerly any indication that the small centralized polities and noncentralized societies had originally been under the direct control of the larger centralized polities. This was particularly true during the first years of British rule in the region in the 1890s when their tours revealed political systems and relationships that contradicted their long-held assumptions of “tribal” Africa. Numerous autonomous groups complicated British efforts to implement and sustain an administrative structure centered on chiefly authority. The British could not accommodate noncentralized communities; migrant, nomadic communities; or trading communities.80 The British desired political stability, and they rationalized their strategy of political incorporation with the belief that Africans who lived in noncentralized societies were actually quite amenable to aligning themselves with centralized polities or that colonial rule was restoring “traditional” political relationships. This was the political terrain that the British constructed from their own prejudices and information from informants among the centralized polities. As they encountered challenges from newly disfranchised African communities and other factors that undermined these assumptions, British officials made little effort to adjust to these realities. The colonial administration stuck tenaciously to its chief-centered tactics even as evidence mounted that undermined what it had come to accept as African political traditions. Throughout British territories in Africa, as Henrika Kuklick explains, “even when colonial administrators admitted that the origin of the idea of political consolidation lay with British officials themselves, they took as evidence that they were only advancing inevitable evolutionary trends the enthusiasm they imputed to their subjects.”81 Moreover, the support that the kings and chiefs of the centralized polities gave to the British strategy of incorporation provided additional incentive to pursue it. Yet, neither the centralized polities’ claims nor the will of the British administrators was enough to force Africans of the noncentralized societies to acquiesce. Instead of shaping local politics around existing political systems and

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relationships, against all odds, British officials attempted to make their preconceived notions of local societies a reality. The British claimed to place a premium on political tradition and justified colonial policies as restoring tradition. The reality was that British policy continued the ongoing evolution of African communities and their social and political practices, even as it hardened “traditional” attributes and created divisions between communities where none had previously existed.82 Other events in Britain’s growing African empire prevented Northcott from personally implementing his political program for local societies in the Northern Territories. In 1899, he was killed during British efforts to conquer the Zulu kingdom in South Africa. Sir Edwin Arney served as his successor for several months before a longer tenure by Arthur Henry Morris (1899–1904). Morris, and the chief commissioners who would follow him, maintained Northcott’s overall strategy of incorporating the small polities and the noncentralized societies into the political structure of the large centralized polities and issued several ordinances to facilitate co-opting the nas. Overall, British officials were disappointed that the rulers in the Northern Territories did not wield broader power over surrounding societies. On January 1, 1902, the British formally incorporated the Northern Territories into the administrative structure of the Gold Coast Colony, and the colonial government issued the Administrative Ordinance of 1902, which gave the kings and chiefs of the Northern Territories a role in the region’s administration, most notably as the heads of native tribunals and, by extension, as agents for the British colonial government. The ordinance also stipulated that African societies maintain their traditional practices as long as they did not result in violence, involve practices repugnant to British laws, or impede the administration of the territories.83 The ordinance of 1902 was an important step in the process of defining the partnership, however unequal, between chiefs and the colonial administration. But in drafting the ordinance the colonial administration failed to anticipate the chiefs’ inability to fulfill the role that the British intended for them, specifically, to exercise broad and consistent authority over neighboring noncentralized societies. British officials appeared to have assumed that the relatively well-organized centralized polities, backed by British power, would successfully assert themselves over their less organized and largely noncentralized neighbors. Annual reports for the Northern Territories, particularly in the early years of British colonial rule, praised the chiefs for fulfilling their obligation of bringing criminal offenders to justice and maintaining general order in their districts. In many areas, however, it was only when the district commissioners

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provided the chiefs with support that Dagomba nas successfully exercised control beyond their own villages. The fullness of Dagomba nas’ influences as colonial proxies among Konkomba clans slowly took hold on many administrators. Yet when they openly acknowledged the general weakness of Dagomba nas in Kekpakpaan, few called for a change in tactic. The British willfully ignored political realities to stay the course even though doing so added to their administrative responsibilities. Colonial administrators became active in local affairs at a level that far exceeded their initial expectations. Konkomba made an already arduous assignment less attractive for Yendi district commissioners. Throughout the Northern Territories the life of a British official was a demanding one, even in districts less challenging than Yendi. Most officials remained in their positions for several years before the colonial government in Accra transferred them to a new, less physically and mentally taxing post. Before the administration established Native Authorities in the 1930s, it established protocols that demanded that district officials remain an active presence in local affairs. District commissioners continually toured their districts, made frequent contact with local political authorities and their constituents, and sat in judgment upon minor offenses. In the Northern Territories the district commissioner was often the only European in the district and was generally a jack-of-all-trades. Martin Klein quotes a British administrator writing home: “I am the Censor as well as the Builder, Surveyor, Road Constructor, Police Inspector, Assessor and Collector of Taxes, Magistrate, Meteorologist and Doctor.”84 At times, the district commissioners had the help of a medical officer, who in the district commissioner’s absence served as acting district commissioner.85 To add to these duties, Hugh Charles Clifford, governor of the Gold Coast (1912–1919), made it obligatory that the chief commissioner, provincial and district commissioners keep a formal diary, the contents of which varied from short notes written daily to detailed analyses of events. Today the diaries remain among the most significant sources of information on local affairs during British colonial rule in Northern Ghana and valuable for their early ethnography of the religion, culture, social structure of the people in their districts. From the outset, when viewed from below, British political tactics in the Northern Territories were sharply divisive for local communities and insufficient to accomplish their intended goals. As colonial rule progressed and the weaknesses of chieftaincy became increasingly obstructive and distracting to the British agenda, instead of exploring alternatives the British worked to strengthen chieftaincies. The British

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did not fully reassess the practicality of their strategy or the relationships between local the societies that they affected. In this respect, the British demonstrated what Jeffrey Herbst describes as the hallmark of colonial practices, “their extreme inflexibility at the expense of theory.”86 After 1916, in an effort to assert the Ya Na’s restored power over a reunited Dagbon and neighboring Konkomba clans, the British demonstrated this characteristic in a more extreme manner. Throughout Africa, British colonial officials set out to invent new communities by combining and redefining existing ones and in the process transformed the meaning of power. The project of constructing communities with little or no historical roots was not a process that began in Africa with the British. Even before the onset of European colonial rule, communities had been invented and reinvented according to the dictates of the conquerors or the physical environment. What was unique about the process of social and political change that Europeans initiated was that they did not allow for flexibility within and at the margins of the communities they created. Previously there had been evolution rather than revolution. As Patrick Chabal argues, “The colonial mind attempted a wholesale re-creation as though it were in its power to wipe the slate clean and write a new history.”87 European policy and colonial officials were not the only forces for change during the colonial period. Social and political change has always been part of African history. European colonial rule represented only a new type of change—one that would, however, have lasting implications. Africans were cognizant of European political interests in Africa and presented custom and tradition in ways that aligned with European expectations and preconceived notions of African politics and society. In so doing, they were defining themselves, as Chabal explains, “according to the most profitable of the latest invader’s new categories.”88

Conclusion The colonial period brought a new significance for historical memory and narratives in African politics. The value of a historical narrative during the colonial period was not as data to reconstruct past events or to ensure that political institutions were constituted in ways that reflected their precolonial past. Rather, it was a political tool that substantiated a group’s claims to legitimacy and aided them in denying political legitimacy to others. The historical memory that Africans invoked during the colonial period had considerable influence on the discourse on autochthony, belonging, and power

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under British rule and was, therefore, a political tool to protect and advance group interests. Communities have used the legacy of slavery, the slave trade, and political conquest to either claim political legitimacy or deny the legitimacy of neighboring communities. In this way memory serves a presentist agenda, even though its subject is the past. Dagomba historical narratives did not resonate with the political realities that the British confronted in the relationship between Konkomba and Dagomba. Contrary to Dagomba claims, Dagomba nas had little consistent physical or territorial control over Konkomba clans. Among Konkomba, in addition to physical space and language serving as significant markers of Konkomba community and political consciousness, historical memory, and its lack of a specific cultural role in Konkomba society prior to the mid-twentieth century, also served as a defining force within their society. They lacked a tradition of recording past events, while Dagbon’s lunsi maintained a long tradition of recording and performing Dagomba political history. Therefore, Dagomba nas were able to present British officials with a history in which they were Konkombas’ overlords. Konkomba, meanwhile, lacked cultural and political institutions through which to counter such claims. In seeking to establish a precedent for Dagomba authority over Konkomba and other noncentralized societies, British officers adopted the Dagomba historical narrative that presented Dagomba nas as the overlords of neighboring groups, including Konkomba. In this way, the historical memory that Dagomba presented to the British became highly political as it shaped the political status of groups in the region, particularly their own and provided the content for what came to be accepted as political customs and traditions. As the following chapter illustrates, Dagomba political claims privileged them within British political policy but did not translate into actual control over Konkomba. The British established a system that was convenient for their political goals and local administrators, but it upset political relations among local peoples and created opposition between centralized and noncentralized people with the imposition and strengthening of chiefs. The general weakness of the British colonial state to impose clearly redefined political relationships and identities within local society does not mean that it did not possess far greater power within the colonial encounter than African societies. These examples run counter to analyses of European power that neglect the significance of African agency, which significantly shaped the nature of the encounter between Europeans and Africans and between African societies during the colonial period.89

Chapter

2

“ Th i s Wi l d bu t I n t e re s t i n g T r i b e” — K o n k o m b a F e u d s a n d O b s tac l e s to B r i t i s h Rule, 1914–1930

In April 1926 a man from the village of Kugnau was fishing in the Oti

River when he was confronted by a man from neighboring Kuntcha who declared that that particular area of the Oti was the preserve of the Kuntchatiib. The Kugnau man ignored him and continued fishing. It is not clear whether he ignored him as a challenge, in some other way dispute the Kuntcha man’s claim, or because of an existing grievance or dispute between the two villages. In any case, there was no room for either man to back off, so their standoff quickly became a physical fight. As this was 1926 both men would have carried a hoe and bow and arrows, without which Konkomba rarely traveled outside their villages. At the very least, they both would have had an axe. Most often these were tools for hunting and farming rather than fighting. Frequently, however, particularly among the Bimokpem—which included the villagers of Kugnau, Kuntcha, Butun, Kuntuli, Chagbaan, and Sambuli—axes were used to fight. The man from Kuntcha stabbed the Kugnau man, who, although injured, fled to his village. The next day he went to Kuntcha to obtain a more favorable end to the fight. As he entered the village, he was not molested until he reached his adversary’s compound where he was struck by arrows from a neighboring compound and died.1 Had he not died from arrow

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wounds, he certainly would have from the poisonous strophanthus on the arrowheads. With his death, a long-standing feud between Kuntcha and Kugnau was rekindled. Common Konkomba social practices dictated that the Kugnautiib were obligated to avenge their kinsman’s death. Failure to do so and remove the stain of the transgression committed against the group, it was believed, might leave them vulnerable to future attacks. A group had to demonstrate that they would act to protect their interests. Doing so not only addressed existing grievances but served as a preemptive strike against future offenses. Therefore, after they had laid their kinsman to rest, Kugnautiib men set off for Kuntcha determined to reestablish the social balance that had been upset by the murder. But when they entered the village, they too met a barrage of arrows, which forced them to make a swift retreat, but not before several of them were wounded.2 In A.H. Walker-Leigh’s first two years as chief commissioner of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (1924–1930), he grew accustomed to reports of Konkomba feuds; yet all of his efforts to end them had failed. His typical response was to seek to capture and punish the perpetrators. The colonial administration did not invest the time to develop a more dynamic response to Konkomba disputes. The British viewed feuding as a crime and an impediment to law and order and treated it as such. Six months after the most serious fighting between Kugnau and Kuntcha, Walker-Leigh and W.E. Gilbert, district commissioner of Yendi (1926–1930), prepared to visit Kekpakpaan to inquire about the source of the conflict and make any possible arrests. For his visit to Kugnau, Walker-Leigh called on the Demon Na (Dagomba chief of Demon) to accompany them. When the British gained authority over the Mandated Territory of British Togoland in 1916, the Demon Na claimed to have jurisdiction over both Kugnau and Kuntcha. In the ensuing years, Dagomba nas’ lack of real authority among Konkomba clans tested the credibility of their claims and British officials’ patience. In fact nas avoided situations that might bring them into conflict with Konkomba. It is not surprising that when Walker-Leigh approached the Demon Na about going to Kugnau, the Demon Na “suddenly remembered a pain in his hip which he said would prevent his coming—as he walks without suspicion of a limp I told him I was afraid he would have to follow me pain or no pain.” The Demon Na reluctantly traveled with WalkerLeigh, Gilbert, and ten constables to Kugnau where they gathered information about the conflict but failed to apprehend any suspected combatants.3

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The myriad confrontations and conflicts within and between African societies during the period of European colonial rule reflect the constraints of limiting European political expansion to the binaries of colonizer and colonized. Such a narrow perception of European power, as Frederick Cooper argues, constrains “the search for precise ways in which power is deployed, engaged and contested.”4 The question of power must not only be thought of in terms of European power and African cooperation or resistance. The pages that follow present examples of Konkomba feuds and British tactics to end them, to illustrate the weakness of the colonial state and British officials’ failure to establish social and political order at the local level through the imposition of what they deemed to be local custom and tradition. Examining the dynamic encounters that shaped the Konkomba colonial experience—Konkomba-Konkomba, Konkomba-Dagomba, Dagomba-British, Konkomba-British, British-French—each around the issues of Konkomba feuds broadens the scope of African resistance, agency, and cooperation under colonial rule and, more generally, illustrates the factors that shaped African colonial experiences. There were a number of ways in which Konkomba responded to the political changes that the British introduced. Until the 1930s, the British presence and increased Dagomba political authority over Konkomba villages were marginal to Konkomba compared to the internal disputes and alliances that were central to Konkomba society. In addition, Konkomba feuds reveal the factors around which Konkomba continued to identify themselves and their relations with others in spite of the British political agenda, which sought to establish Konkomba as subordinate within the Dagomba tribe. Throughout the colonial period and Konkomba continued to shape their own political identifications, alliances. Well into the 1930s the British failed in their effort to redefine African notions of right, wrong, and injustice. The continued prevalence of feuding among Konkomba, despite British efforts to impose their own standards of law and order, demonstrates Konkomba violence as an instrumental means to establish and maintain social balance and harmony and, therefore, the weakness of British social and cultural influence. The breadth and frequency of Konkomba feuds disrupted British affairs in the Yendi District, not only with regard to the rule of law but also their efforts to assert Dagomba chieftaincy broadly, which was the centerpiece of the British administration’s political program. In their responses to Konkomba feuds between 1914 and 1930, the British failed to see beyond the goal of the political incorporation of independent communities into neighboring centralized polities’

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political structures. They sought to avoid addressing the social and political complexity and diversity of the African societies they ruled. Instead, the British planted a system of control through Dagomba nas, the constabulary, and the courts. Although asserted as tradition and in keeping with customary law, in all but few respects, these were wholly incompatible with Konkomba practices for maintaining social stability and resolving disputes. The construction of custom had to be perceived as legitimate to be effective; but Konkomba perceived Dagomba and British power as alien and, therefore, illegitimate. In addition to buttressing Dagomba political power over Konkomba clans, British tactics to end Konkomba feuds influenced Konkomba to begin to identify themselves as part of a broader Konkomba community of belonging forged in opposition to Dagomba hegemony. However, true ethnic unity remained impossible while Konkomba feuds continued to significantly define intraKonkomba alliances and social relations. British failure to understand the social context for Konkomba feuds and their efforts to suppress them through force and the supposed power of Dagomba nas doomed British tactics to fail and allowed Konkomba to maintain political autonomy for much of the colonial period. Yet the elevated political status that Dagomba gained from the British bolstered Dagomba ethnic nationalism and would later inspire Konkomba political leaders to end Konkomba feuds and achieve greater unity to counter increasing Dagomba influence.

C.H. Armitage and Efforts to Police the Konkomba On August 6, 1914, four years into C.H. Armitage’s (1910–1920) tenure as chief commissioner of the Northern Territories, British and French troops entered and fully occupied German Togoland, with the minor exception of the Kamina radio station near Atakpame. The two governments agreed on a provisional partition of the territory: Britain took control of the western sector, which originally included the town and port of Lomé, until they agreed to transfer it to France, and the French, control of the east. A number of African societies subsequently came under British domination, including the Konkomba, Chakosi, Nanumba, and the eastern Dagomba villages, including Yendi. The northern sphere of British Togoland came within the newly created Eastern Dagomba District—soon to be renamed Yendi District—which included the whole of Nanun, Yendi, and the greater part of Kekpakpaan.5 Official distribution of German colonies

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came three years later on May 7, 1919, and was signed into international law as the Milner-Simon Agreement of July 10, 1919, at Versailles following formal German surrender. The treaty confirmed the international boundary and stipulated that Germany would relinquish all rights and claims to overseas possessions in favor of the major Allied and associated powers. In addition to part of Togoland, which the League of Nations officially designated as the Mandated Territory of British Togoland, Britain took possession of the greater part of German East Africa (present-day Tanzania) and part of northern Cameroon.6 British officials did not believe that the increased size of the Northern Territories with their large Konkomba population and a newly reunited Dagbon warranted a reassessment of their strategy with regard to chieftaincy and political incorporation. Their focus in local politics remained on chiefs and the power, or potential power, they wielded. Governor Guggisberg wrote in 1921 that there was “a tendency for the bigger states to break up to the detriment of development and trade . . . . Our policy must be to maintain any paramount chiefs that exist and gradually absorb under these any small communities scattered about. What we should aim at is that some day the Dagombas, Gonjas and Mamprusis should become strong native states. Each will have its own little Public Works Department and carry on its own business, with the [European] Political Officer as Resident and Advisor. Each state will be more or less self-contained.”7 However, the new international boundary between British and French territory left many Konkomba clans straddling the two zones. For Konkomba and other communities divided between French and British territory, the border was socially irrelevant but created challenges for British officials trying to tie Konkomba tribal identity to a clearly demarcated physical space. Two main challenges were that Konkomba lived in relatively small, widely dispersed hamlets and the porous border gave Konkomba clans an advantage as they sought to maintain their social and political autonomy. Even more significant were Konkomba clans’ incessant feuds and lack of respect for Dagomba nas’ authority. Each of these issues were obstacles to the British objective to oversee the administration of the Northern Territories with minimum investment of time and resources. British officials blamed the persistent Konkomba feuding on their German predecessors, whose weak administration, they argued, did not support Dagomba authority over the Konkomba and allowed their feuds to flourish. From a policy standpoint, after 1916 the British regarded Dagomba political authority as the traditional power

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in the Yendi District, and much of the Northern Territories. District Commissioner Short of Yendi described the “restoration” of unified Dagomba authority in the region as simply an act of restoring political tradition in the region to its state prior to the political disruptions of the late nineteenth century and the imposition of German rule.8 Four years later the new Yendi district commissioner, P.C. Moreton (1919–1920), would describe Konkomba feuds as a relic of the chaos of the nineteenth century that the Germans allowed to persist into the twentieth century. Ironically, Short suggested a return to the purported Dagomba political dominance and subsequent stability of the nineteenth century as the most viable solution for Konkomba feuds. “The District is quiet and the Natives are peaceful and contented,” he said. “The population of the District is composed of Dagombas and Konkomba and the latter are very numerous in the North, Northeast, and East. They are under the following chiefs: Gushiego, Sunson and Demong [sic]. Since the German occupation of the country, the authority of these chiefs has not been upheld. Every endeavor is now being made to restore this authority.”9 Short’s assessment failed to account for the palpable fear among Dagomba nas and their general inability to carry out the responsibilities that the British had bestowed upon them. Dagomba and their nas benefited from their privileged position in terms of access to resources, but most nas in fact dared not enter Konkomba villages for fear of Konkomba violence. Konkomba threats directed at Dagomba nas were not uncommon. In one example from January 1916, District Commissioner Short requested that the Sunson Na investigate reports of Konkomba vandalizing telegraph wire near the Konkomba village of Wapuli. When the Sunson Na, who was accompanied by a constable, approached the village, Konkomba shot arrows toward him. The Sunson Na and the constable returned to Yendi rather than continue their investigation.10 Mounting evidence of Konkomba aggression toward Dagomba undermined what initially was a common belief among British officials: they would only have to “teach the Konkomba for them to recognize and respect the nas’ authority.”11 Dagomba nas could not substantiate their political claims with consistent control over Konkomba. It soon became evident to Chief Commissioner Armitage and most other British officials that the recalcitrance of “this wild but interesting tribe,” as he called Konkomba, was not simply the product of an inefficient German administration.12 To reconcile the power that Dagomba claimed and what they exercised, in February 1916 Armitage and Short organized a meeting with

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Ya Na Alhassan during which Armitage asked him for a full accounting of the Dagomba political structure in Konkomba territory. With great confidence Alhassan explained that the Konkomba in the district were divided between the Gushiego Na, the Sunson Na, Demon Na, and the Zabzugu Na. Each na answered directly to the Ya Na, and several divisional nas, such as the Zegbeli Na and the Wapuli Na, exercised authority over surrounding Konkomba under the aegis of the Sunson Na. This was the explanation that Armitage desired; he said that he was pleased with the Dagomba political structure so long as the nas demonstrated a capacity for real authority.13 In the months that followed, the Dagomba nas failed to demonstrate that they could manage Konkomba affairs or that they really were making an effort to do so. Armitage arranged a second formal meeting with the Ya Na for June 30, 1916. For this meeting, Alhassan was accompanied by all his divisional nas and elders, and Armitage questioned them on their inability to exercise any degree of influence over their Konkomba subjects. He was particularly distressed to learn that far from Konkomba rebuffing Dagomba initiatives, most nas had never visited the areas of Kekpakpaan they claimed as part of their jurisdiction. One na even admitted that he dared not enter a Konkomba village because he was afraid of being attacked.14 Even as Armitage was confronted with the reality of limited Dagomba political authority, he remained committed to a chiefcentered strategy among Konkomba clans and continued to advocate Dagomba over-rule as the most effective strategy for British control in the area. Armitage shifted from encouraging Dagomba nas to assert their authority to working with nas to gain authority and respect among Konkomba. He instructed nas to accompany the Yendi district commissioner on his tours of Konkomba villages. The hope was that Konkomba would begin to associate the nas with British political power.15 In a letter dated October 23, 1916, to District Commissioner Short, Armitage made it clear that there must be no Konkomba alternatives to Dagomba authority. “When traveling in the Konkomba District,” he instructed, “you should be accompanied by the Dagomba Chiefs who have been placed over the various villages, and, while encouraging the natives to elect reliable headmen, you must on no account allow them to think that it is our intention to permit them to throw off their allegiance to the Dagombas, by electing a Konkomba Head Chief.”16 In October 1916 A.W. Cardinall replaced Short as Yendi district commissioner and almost immediately Armitage sent him to tour the Dagomba villages in Kekpakpaan to interview each of the

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divisional nas for a detailed description of their political relationships with neighboring Konkomba clans.17 Each na unequivocally testified to Cardinall that they maintained control over surrounding Konkomba villages. At the same time, what he witnessed during his inspection of Konkomba villages and hamlets made it evident to Cardinall that Konkomba actually held Dagomba nas in very low regard and had very little respect for their authority. Cardinall returned to Yendi convinced that a new strategy toward Konkomba clans was in order. He believed that a more Konkomba-centered political approach would be far more effective in ruling Konkomba than employing Dagomba nas as proxies. In a May 1917 letter to Armitage, Cardinall presented his conclusions and proposed a Konkomba council of elders—independent of Dagomba political authority—that would report directly to the Yendi district commissioner. Such an arrangement, he argued, would develop a functional, stable relationship between Konkomba and the colonial administration. The changes that Cardinall recommended did not sway Armitage’s views on local administration. It is clear from Armitage’s reports and his repeated tours through Kekpakpaan that he was frustrated by the Dagomba nas’ inability to act as effective chiefs in Kekpakpaan, but he remained committed to asserting British control over local society through Dagomba chieftaincy, adjustments to which had potential ramifications for chiefs’ authority throughout Dagbon. Armitage was particularly careful not to undermine what the British administration had defined as the Ya Na’s political authority. Although fully aware of its shortcomings, Armitage regarded any alternatives to Dagomba authority as impractical.18 His position reflects the common British practice of making African society fit British policy as opposed to adjusting policy to better reflect what colonial officials actually encountered in the Northern Territories, which in the case of Konkomba was clearly not leading to more effective British rule. While Armitage developed new tactics to earn respect for nas against Cardinall’s better judgment, internal feuds among Konkomba drew Armitage and Cardinall deeper into Konkomba day-to-day affairs at a time when British tactics were moving toward less involvement in local affairs. Armitage was directly involved in efforts to bring Konkomba under Dagomba authority. He toured Konkomba and Dagomba villages, interviewed nas, and investigated the source of feuds. These tactics suggest that he believed that it was because Konkomba were obstinate that they rejected Dagomba political authority. This, again, highlights a common feature of European colonial rule—their failure to

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see beyond their preconceived political goals to consider alternatives. From their perspective, Konkomba self-interest could not be the basis for Konkomba rejection of Dagomba authority. Rather, the British maintained that Konkomba needed only to be persuaded of the benefits of political incorporation, the desirability of Dagomba rule, and the need to end feuding. Armitage was confident that he would successfully disabuse Konkomba of their notions of political autonomy’s benefits. In May 1919 Armitage and Cardinall traveled to the Bimopkem villages to meet with Konkomba elders and impress upon them, as Cardinall reported in his diary, the seriousness of the offenses that they committed through their feuds and the punishment that awaited them if they failed to end the practice.19 Cardinall described Armitage leaving each village confident that he had made a positive impression and that progress would be made.20 Despite the chief commissioner’s effort, the fighting continued. Moral suasion by British officials and Dagomba political authority were matched in futility by the use of colonial courts and policing as methods to resolve Konkomba disputes and ending Konkomba feuding. Armitage attempted to persuade Konkomba to bring their grievances to local Dagomba chiefs or the Yendi district commissioner. Yet these alien methods of conflict resolution were discordant with the networks and sense of mutual obligation that maintained what Konkomba accepted as order and stability, binding them in a web of kinship, alliances, and vendettas. Moreover, feuds, linked as they were to farming, marriage, and kinship alliances, bridged precolonial and colonial Africa. The pervasiveness of Konkomba feuds and the British colonial administration’s inability to control them provided Konkomba clans with relative social and political autonomy well into the colonial period that undermined British power, forcing them to repeatedly stray from their stated political strategy.

Feuds and the Konkomba Social Framework During David Tait’s research in the 1950s on Konkomba culture and cosmology, a young Konkomba man explained to him that “the kin of a man who has been killed in a fight will kill any man of the clan of the killer.” Tait states, however, that feuds rarely evolved in such a straightforward and simple fashion. The first response to an offense committed against a lineage or any one of its members came commonly from the victim’s brother, who was obligated to either kill the perpetrator or one of his agnates. If there were reprisals, the feud evolved with the potential to include an entire subclan. Mantotiib,

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or the obligatory support on the part of relatives and allied individuals and groups, was an essential part of the Konkomba social infrastructure.21 For one to fail to support one’s kinsmen or allied clansmen in a feud placed the lineage in danger of not having the necessary support in a future conflict.22 Mantotiib drew upon specific forms of social and familial bonds when there was a need to coordinate defense against group violence and to be able to respond with violence to a perceived offense. Anthropologists have described these relationships that center on mutual aid as “self-help,” most commonly exhibited among politically noncentralized groups as a means to prevent disputes from escalating into violent conflicts.23 These networks were both sources of violence and a means of enforcing peace and stability. Members of society understood that individuals and groups would respond to an offense with violence aimed at any member of the offender’s lineage. It was most often the binatshikpem, the young, unmarried men, who represented the lineage, subclan, or clan in a feud.24 This role gave the binatshikpem, as the primary actors in a conflict, a clearly defined position in the social hierarchy of the lineage and subclan. Carrying out specific vendettas, however, was by no means the preserve of the binatshikpem. In fact, all male members of a kin group had an obligation to avenge violence committed against another member. Yet the large, extended fights with neighboring communities were undertaken primarily by the binatshikpem. Similarly, the uninkpel were the only communal members with the position to bring an end to feuds that extended beyond the limit for both sides. To bring about an end that was agreeable to both sides, the uninkpel of both sides had to perform a rite called bi sub kedza, “we bury the fight.” The elders of both groups met in the presence of elders from a third, neutral group, who performed a rite that involved both sides burying their arrows. This method of conflict resolution was only practiced among subclans of the same clan. Konkomba feuds began as disputes between villages or subclans over farming or fishing rights, but women were invariably linked to feuds in some way, usually as either disputed objects or instigators who fanned insults into violence. Women played three basic roles in Konkomba feuds. First, women motivated men to fight. “Curiously enough” wrote Cardinall, “the wars are revived by the womenfolk, who will taunt a man in public at the markets with leaving the blood of some relative unavenged.”25 Women carried a large arsenal of insults for men they perceived as not fighting aggressively or bravely enough.26 It did not suffice for a man simply to participate

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in a fight. If he displayed timidity or weakness, his wife might call him a “woman,” which motivated a more aggressive response. If men returned defeated, wives were known to declare, “You have become women!”27 Male members of a lineage were motivated to demonstrate the strength of the lineage or subclan and thereby deter future threats from neighboring communities. But motivation also came from women who sought to ensure that their husbands were perceived as willing to fulfill their kinship obligations energetically and help protect the interests of the larger group. Needless to say wives and mothers encouraged their husbands and sons to defend the social interests of the lineage through actively engaging in feuds.28 A second role that women played during feuds was as auxiliary units. Women were at the heart of internal Konkomba disputes, but they did not engage directly in fighting. By practice, women and children were exempt from blood feud obligations, and it was taboo to target them. With little threat of physical harm during feuds, women were free to carry weapons, water, and pito to their fighting kinsmen in large, protracted battles.29 Women played similar roles in violent conflict throughout Africa. For example, during the Herero conflicts with the Germans in Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia, German officials wrongly believed that Herero women engaged in fighting along with men. Much like their Konkomba counterparts, Herero women actually remained concealed in the surrounding bush and encouraged their men with chants and helped sustain them with water.30 A third role that women played was as sources of conflict was as a result of extramarital affairs. Women who engaged in affairs with or who were pursued by men other than their husbands risked igniting violent conflict between lineages or villages. As Tait explained, among adolescent Konkomba sexual relations were common, and these affairs frequently continued after the women began to live with their husbands. With both the first and second role women incited protracted feuds and ensured the fighting would have active participants. The very nature of Konkomba marriage practices, as they existed until the 1960s, challenged women’s fidelity to an arrangement made for them at birth. Historically, most Konkomba clans practiced infant betrothal, which involved a contract between the newborn girl’s parents and a grown man or his lineage that made her obligated to join his compound when she reached the appropriate age. Until that time, the suitor worked for a number of days during each year on his in-law’s farm. In addition, he periodically brought gifts

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to the girl’s compound. Over time, this amounted to a considerable commitment for the man, in terms of time, energy, and resources. The girl’s commitment was of a different sort but no less significant. By the time the two finally began to live as husband and wife, their significant age difference, her lack of choice in the arrangement, and the likelihood that she was engaged in an affair with a man her own age and of her own choosing, created the potential for a tenuous start to the relationship. Evidence of this tension, or at the least the girls’ unhappiness, is the many examples of girls running away with their boyfriends shortly before they were due to join their husbands. Events in the hamlet of Lewalugu in March 1922 present one such example and demonstrate the ways that Konkomba marriage practices were fertile ground for conflict because of the numerous variables associated with them. In Lewalugu, a girl was betrothed at birth to a man from Nagban, but when the time arrived for her to move into her husband’s compound, she ran away with her boyfriend. The husband doubted that the girl could have acted without help from her family and believed that they conspired to cheat him and his family of the labor and the arrangement of gifts that the two families agreed on. If he and his family did not respond to this perceived transgression, they risked having other families view them as lenient and easily swindled. On March 9, 1922, the jilted husband went to Lewalugu with ten companions to seek restitution for the loss of his betrothed wife. They entered the hamlet and burned down a compound that belonged to the girl’s family, who responded in kind with a barrage of arrows that drove the men back to Nagban.31 Five men from Lewalugu were wounded in the attack, “probably,” Yendi district commissioner W.E. Gilbert (1922–1927) suspected, “by their own men’s arrows.”32 The following August, three men from Nagban murdered the brother of the girl’s lover, which led Gilbert to surmise, wrongly it appears, that men from Nagban “probably mistook him for the real offender who is believed to be in Kumasi.”33 It is more likely that the perpetrators were well aware that they had not killed the girl’s lover. Konkomba social practices allowed for an aggrieved party to attack any kinsman of an offender in response to murder. Konkomba feuds and women’s role in them are part of the precolonial African social practices that defined notions of justice and belonging that continued well into the colonial period even as Europeans mounted an aggressive program to transform these practices. British officials’ inability to do so reflects the general weakness of the colonial state with regard to local politics and the social and

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political agency through which, until the British introduced indirect rule, significant aspects of the Konkomba colonial experience was only indirectly shaped by British policy. For the first 15 years of British rule in Yendi and Kekpakpaan, in no significant way did Konkomba adjust their social and political practices to accommodate the changes that British colonial rule brought to the region. Yet Konkomba feuds and forms of direct resistance to Dagomba political authority forced the British to make countless changes in tactics to gain leverage over Konkomba clans, although their overall strategy remained largely unchanged. Throughout the colonial period, British officials responded to Konkomba feuds with confused paternalism and misguided policing tactics. Beginning in January 1918, Armitage pursued three tactics to make feuding more difficult for the Konkomba. The first was increasing the police presence in Konkomba villages, the second, banning public displays of bows and arrows, and the third, restricting Konkomba mobility along the British frontier with French Togoland. Each tactic brought the British deeper into the everyday lives of Konkomba, despite British efforts to sustain Dagomba authority as a proxy for British power. The administration stationed police in Konkomba areas that had seen the most frequent and heaviest feuds. G.A. Poole, acting district commissioner for Yendi, stationed a minimum of three police constables in the larger Konkomba villages during the guinea corn harvest.34 As he prepared to leave his position in December 1920, Poole warned Harold Branch, the incoming district commissioner (1920–1922), of the importance of a strong police presence among the Konkomba. This was essential, Poole said, particularly during the harvest, when the Konkomba were “prone to drink too much peto [sic] and then resort to the Irish methods of settling their differences.”35 The ban on bows and arrows was meant to cut down on violence among Konkomba and curb the number of deaths from poison-tipped arrows. The poison for Konkomba arrows was extracted from strophanthus, a plant that grew wild on the Oti plain and was deadly when it entered the bloodstream. District Commissioner Branch ordered the destruction of all wild-growing strophanthus. Perhaps the most significant component of the ban on bows and arrows was that Chief Commissioner Armitage gave Dagomba nas a central role in its enforcement. He made the nas, with police support, responsible for collecting Konkomba weapons and imposing fines on all culprits. For the first time, Dagomba nas obtained a mandate to assert their authority over Konkomba clans. With the power to search

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for and confiscate Konkomba weapons, Dagomba nas acquired a basis to demand Konkomba respect. This was a major turning point in the relationship between Konkomba and Dagomba. As the British pursued tactics to end Konkomba feuds, the social contexts were lost on them. Little that they did provided Konkomba with a disincentive for feuding. By the 1920s, Konkomba were well aware that the district commissioner, and perhaps the regional commissioner, along with a cadre of constables would arrive in their village soon after a large communal fight. Yet feuding continued. Colonial courts and British punishments could neither perform this social function nor adequately address Konkomba grievances and the obligation to seek revenge that lay at the heart of Konkomba communal conflicts. Few social responsibilities were more important in Konkomba society than maintaining alliances and protecting the interests of kin. Beyond their lack of understanding for the social context of feuds, the British challenge to ending them was compounded by the lack of regard among Konkomba for the rather porous border between French and British Togoland. International borders during the colonial period are examples of the disconnection between European political interests and the lived experiences and political realities of Africans prior to the imposition of colonial rule.Borders were where colonial law broke down in the most explicit manner. As A.I. Asijawu explains, “Arising directly from their nature and character as bifurcated constituencies, border regions post intractable problems primarily because they are ill adapted to the application of national determined laws.”36 Borders were where colonial law collided with precolonial social and political systems. However, borders acquired meanings for Africans who lived astride them that were completely unintended by the European powers who defined the boundary and claimed the territory on either side. The international boundaries between colonial territories were not artificial lines cutting through social and political groupings. On one level, they became real demarcations between European systems of government, language, and rule of law. Flight across international boundaries was one of several strategies that Africans employed to resist colonial domination and exploitation. Borders provided refuge for those seeking asylum and were largely irrelevant as barriers to those who belonged to social and economic networks on both sides. Much like the Yoruba in Nigeria and colonial Dahomey, the Konkomba on opposite sides of the Mandated Area-Togoland border lived under very different colonial regimes.37 The international border that cut through Kekpakpaan left approximately one-third of

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all Konkomba on the French side and allowed Konkomba to escape British policies and punishments or pursue adversaries. Kekpakpaan straddles the Oti River, making it the quintessential borderland. For much of its trek through Kekpakpaan, the Oti marked the border and was among the most populous Konkomba areas. The high population density of Konkomba villages on both sides of the river, particularly among the Bimopkem clan, also made the area the site of the most frequent and protracted feuds. Konkomba also regularly crossed the border to farm and visit relatives and markets. Migration into British territory was more common than flight away from it. This was due to forced labor practices, compulsory cultivation of crops, and heavy taxation in French, Belgian, and Portuguese colonies. For example, in 1910, according to A. Adu Boahen, 14,000 people fled German Togoland for the Gold Coast. In 1916 and 1917, the Gold Coast attracted more than 2,000 people from the Ivory Coast.38 Armitage’s initial response was to flog Konkomba caught crossing back and forth over the border and confiscate bows and arrows.39 Two major factors severely limited the effectiveness of a ban on crossing the international border. First, most Konkomba of the Oti plain relied on the Oti for fishing. Second, to enforce the ban on border crossing demanded that the British closely collaborate with their French counterparts in French Togoland, which British officials found particularly onerous. Armitage disliked the tactics that the French colonial officials employed to curb Konkomba resistance, particularly their practice of burning the compounds of those whom they suspected of carrying bows and arrows. The French also occasionally shot Konkomba suspects, which Armitage described as extreme and wasteful. When he learned that the French had destroyed four Konkomba villages near the British frontier, he decried the act and insisted that “one DC with a couple of police could have done infinitely more good and would have left no bitterness behind.”40 Despite the British distaste for French practices, which propelled large numbers of Konkomba migrants into British territory, the British administration had few alternatives but to work with their French colleagues. French officials did not share their English counterparts’ distaste for international collaboration. In fact, the French expressed admiration for British officials and their relatively amicable relationship with Konkomba. In a fit of exaggeration, perhaps, one French official declared that Konkomba in the British sphere were “the finest race in Togoland” and lamented that the Konkomba on the French side of the border were not “as friendly, obedient and law abiding as their brothers in British Territory.”41 District Commissioner Gilbert

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maintained policing and Dagomba nas at the center of the British strategy to end Konkomba feuds and bring them into the colonial political structure. Considered broadly, Konkomba feuds allowed Konkomba to maintain relative autonomy from the British and their Dagomba neighbors because it was a social and political variable that the colonial administration lacked the means to contend with. Feuds distracted district and regional officials from the more mundane daily activities among Konkomba that truly defined their way of life and their political status. Consequently, with the decline of Konkomba feuds in the 1950s, Konkomba leaders were forced to identify an alternative means to assert Konkomba autonomy. However, British policies related to indirect rule during the 1930s and 1940s and ongoing Konkomba feuds provided Dagomba nas with the means to exercise greater authority over the Konkomba clans of the Oti plain. Indirect rule redefined the relationship between African subjects and British rulers. The British intended indirect rule to provide traditional rulers with greater political autonomy and responsibility. While it lessened the direct control that British officials were required to exercise over chiefs and freed them from much of the financial and political responsibilities in local affairs, it increased the level of authority that chiefs were required to exercise over their own “subjects” and neighboring noncentralized societies that the colonial government designated as subordinate. Consequently, the notion of what constituted a “tribe” was broadened to include culturally and previously politically distinct peoples. Yet within this process, the British refused to think creatively about ways to incorporate Konkomba clans effectively, and Konkomba continued to resist British and Dagomba efforts to interfere in their affairs. Although Konkomba clans officially became part of the Dagomba Native Authority in 1929, Konkomba feuds and resistance to Dagomba authority forced British officials to remain actively involved in Konkomba politics. Within this period, Konkomba not only resisted Dagomba authority but weakened British political power by asserting their own sense of justice and “right” and “wrong,” which clashed so patently with the interests of the colonial state and undermined the Dagomba nas’ capacities to adjudicate Konkomba disputes. Considering the dynamics of these particular colonial relationships, the ways in which we conceptualize agency, resistance, and authority in colonial African must account for challenges not only to the colonial state and its policies but to positions of privilege and control held by neighboring African societies as well.

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Konkomba Encounters with Indirect Rule and Colonial Courts Konkomba resistance to colonial political structures targeted Dagomba nas, not British officials. Konkomba offer a unique variation of what Terrence Ranger called “primary resistance movement.” For Ranger these early movements were significant because they involved mobilization across and beyond ethnic groups in response to the European colonial intrusion.42 During the early years of German rule, and later under the British, Konkomba did not take up a multiethnic anticolonial front. Still, aggressive Konkomba challenges to alien rule, whether British, Gonja, or Dagomba, remained steady throughout the colonial period. Western-educated Konkomba leaders took up the struggle in the postcolonial period in their movement for social and political equality. To identify links between early anticolonialism and modern mass nationalism, as Ranger presents, one need not focus on European colonialism and African political elites. The social and political inequities within African societies are indicative of African colonial experiences. Regardless of their emphasis, studies of colonial era resistance have shown, as Cooper states, “that colonial conquests and heavy-handed interventions into African life were vigorously challenged, that guerrilla warfare within decentralized polities was as important as the fielding of armies by African states, that women as well as men engaged in acts of resistance, and that individual action— moving away from the tax collector or labor recruiter, ignoring orders, speaking insolently, and criticizing the claims of missionaries, doctors, and educators—complemented collective actions.”43 When the British introduced indirect rule in the Northern Territories in 1929, it marked a turning point in the relationship between Konkomba and Dagomba. As part of implementing indirect rule, colonial officials recasted African traditions, which led to the construction of customary law, a stronger chieftaincy, and finally courts.44 The British reconstituted chieftaincies as Native Authorities, empowered— or required—to raise revenue for their Native Administration; spend money on development projects, such as roads, latrines, and clinics; and operate courts to adjudicate cases according to customary law.45 Although British officials organized each Native Authority according to a general model, there were particular characteristics to each that were peculiar to its customary laws. The reality, as Mamdani describes, was that “customary law consolidated the non-customary power of chiefs in the colonial administration . . . For the first time . . . any

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challenge to chiefly power would now have to reckon with a wider systemic response. The Native Authority was backed up by the armed might of the modern state at the center.”46 Furthermore, indirect rule enforced the racialization of colonial rule through the imposition of separate political systems with differing principles of political accountability. Although indirect rule was supposed to create an independent African citizenry under the aegis of British colonial rule, it ossified British constructed tribal identities that grew out of the ways in which British officials conveniently misperceived Africans and their societies. With indirect rule Europeans simultaneously enforced their preconceived notions of race and tribe that were not only divisive but created profound political inequality among African communities. Indirect rule also altered the nature of Konkomba resistance to Dagomba political control, because the nature of Dagomba political power and British support for it changed. British officials worked to incorporate Africans into the colonial power structure through the Native Authority, which became the basis for law and order among those living within what Mahmood Mamdani terms “the territory of the tribe.”47 British perceptions of local institutions and identities, shaped as they were by politically dominant Africans’ and British officials’ own prejudices and stubborn reliance on the chiefs of historically centralized societies, were molded into Native Administrations in highly static and inflexible forms. The British associated their political agenda with “traditional” social institutions, as a means to lend it legitimacy and local support.48 Under indirect rule, Dagomba nas acquired authority over Native Authority schools, courts, and tax collection within their jurisdictions. They also gained authority over Native Authority police. Gilbert demonstrated his faith in both through words and deeds: “I have always administered the Konkomba area indirectly through the Dagomba Chiefs concerned,” he explained in 1930. “And in my opinion within a few years they will not settle their own little disputes as they do now. It is only civilization and punishment that will prevent force of arms.”49 British use of Native Authority and colonial courts to adjudicate and punish Konkomba feuds demonstrates the extent to which custom, tradition, and authority remained contested categories well into the period of British colonial rule. Custom was shrouded in contradictions. As Thomas Spear argues, the ways in which the British developed it, customary law preserved the past and protected Africans from the traumas of modernity. In reality, the British sought to facilitate administration and protect themselves, not Africans, from “detribalized” Africans.50 The example of Konkomba experiences in

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the colonial court system demonstrates the conflict between a system based on an idea of African practices as immutable with the processes of change and conflict that were inherent in African societies. Contrary to notions of static indigenous traditions in Africa and elsewhere in the world, social practices were, as Kristin Mann and Richard Roberts’ state, “clusters of rules, moralities, expectations, and conflicts, which gave rise to changing regulatory practices.”51 African societies depended upon the flexibility of norms and relationships to adjust to change. In the densely populated areas around the Bimokpem villages of Sambuli, Kuntcha, and Butun where groups often maintained claims to traditional rights over land they no longer physically occupied, boundaries blurred and conflicts over land rights were common. In the absence of an ongoing feud, communities would rarely seek to assert their control over an area and prevent others from using it. Therefore, land served as the basis for violence between communities when there were existing issues under contention. When we examine such conflicts, particularly among the Bimokpem, who are disproportionately represented in the colonial record, we see the extent to which Konkomba regarded asserting their control over land as a particularly viable means to demonstrate political power. In the midst of conflict, to control a valuable resource was an additional way to seek redress for a putative or real offense. Among the Bimokpem in January 1927, a violent dispute erupted between the villages of Chagbaan and Kuntuli. According to the Yendi district commissioner, the fight began with a man from Chagbaan digging for ants near Kuntuli. Men from Kuntuli forced him to flee, but both villages still met in full battle during which two men from Chagbaan were killed and ten wounded.52 In another example, on May 19, 1945, men from the Gbanga section of Sambuli attacked Butun men while they fished in the Oti River. Two Butuntiib were killed and several others wounded by the shower of arrows from more than 30 Sambultiib who lined the river banks. The Butuntiib were unarmed and caught unaware. Their only defense was to flee to the bush along the opposite bank. Although there is no record of an immediate response, Butun most likely retaliated in some manner to the Sambultiib attack. British officials became aware of the Sambultiib’s attack through Bilaba, an uninkpel from Butun, who was at the river when the attack occurred and made a formal complaint to Major Charles, assistant district commissioner for Yendi. His complaint, however, was not that Butuntiib had been attacked but that the Sambultiib continued to fish in a section of the Oti that belonged to Butun, despite their

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repeated protests.53 Bilaba’s effort to seek recourse through the district administration suggests that there was a willingness among some Konkomba to utilize the British to resolve disputes. Bilaba’s exact motivations are not evident. It is likely that the size of the Sambultiib’s attack and their willful disregard for Butun claims over this particular section of the Oti inspired the opinion among the Butun uninkpel that assistance from British officials was the best means of protecting their interests. In response to Bilaba’s complaint, on August 3 the police arrested 31 Sambultiib suspects, initially for carrying bows and arrows in violation of native authority law, but ultimately for taking part in a riot. On August 6, all 31 were tried before A.W. Davies, district commissioner and magistrate for Yendi. Each of the suspects pleaded innocent of the charges against them, with the common defense simply that they had not been at the river that day. The Native Tribunal Ordinance of 1932, which became the foundation for the African courts in the Northern Territories, gave the chief commissioner power to “establish for any area constituted under the Native Authority Ordinance, 1932 a native tribunal” and encoded British interpretations of the centralized polities’ social practices as customary laws.54 The British established native tribunals to operate along with magistrate courts. They did not base their concept of Native Authority on historical and empirical realities. Rather, they perceived the political realities that they confronted as aberrations of what ought to exist, while real customary conditions, as Kojo Amanor argues, were constructed in London.55 These courts subjected noncentralized societies, such as Konkomba, to rules and regulations that in all but a few instances had little relationship to their own conceptions of right and wrong. Nonetheless, the British invested the “native tribunals’ with the responsibility of “customary issues”—matters concerning the daily lives of Africans such as marriage, inheritance, and petty criminal offenses. Some tribunals were made responsible for dealing with criminal offenses as well. The magistrate and the Native Authority courts became part of the British tactic to bring the Konkomba under greater British control and to end Konkomba feuds. Officials promoted courts as an alternative means for Konkomba to resolve communal conflicts. Most Konkomba who had their cases adjudicated in colonial courts did so against their will. Once arrested for feuding, fighting, theft, or carrying a bow and arrows in a marketplace, Konkomba were brought to the magistrate court. The British brought Konkomba accused of participating in feuds into colonial courts and, consequently, deeper under the sway of colonial authority—both British and Dagomba. The British officially

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recognized the Konkomba as part of Dagbon and therefore Konkomba feuds had to be an offence punishable under Dagomba customary law. The British applied a very thin definition of customary law. It involved all practices “in so far as it was not repugnant to the general principles of humanity observed throughout the civilized world.”56 British colonists observed this application throughout the British colonies of Kenya, Malawi, Southern Rhodesia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and the Gold Coast, including Ashanti and the Northern Territories.57 The British developed indirect rule around their constructions of native law and customs; yet there were no clearly defined Dagomba laws. For the British, the lack of applicable laws increased the difficulty of incorporating the various societies in the region under indirect rule. Prohibitions against theft and adultery were possible exceptions. The Ya Na regarded adultery as a true offense only if the wife in question was one of his or that of a divisional na.58 Defining customary was not the only obstacle to the courts functioning as an effective check on Konkomba recalcitrance. The courts proved to be a woefully ineffective institution to address Konkomba grievances and deter Konkomba violence. Furthermore, few Konkomba had a clear understanding of the general function or operation of courts. Courts became yet an additional obstacle to Konkomba carrying on their usual lives, which included feuding. Despite the ineffectiveness of colonial courts for resolving Konkomba conflicts, they produced records that provide a window into Konkomba society during the colonial period. These testimonies describe Konkomba disputes and present firsthand accounts of Konkomba women describing their interactions with men during the colonial period. It is important to keep in mind that these records are not the definitive accounts of the violent disputes they purport to describe. As Sean Hawkins argues, colonial documents in general are best treated as “events of articulation”; it is necessary to look for broader issues within local communities that precipitated disputes.59 This is not to suggest that the colonial courts had no effect on the ways Konkomba articulated their conflicts. Yet a central problem with the British courts was that the administration imposed them to punish Konkomba for engaging in forms of communal violence, which officials believed would dissuade Konkomba from resorting to violent means of resolving conflicts. Truly ending the practice, however, called for far greater involvement in Konkomba affairs than the British had the interest or the capacity to carry out. The most officials did to establish an alternative to feuds was to encourage Konkomba to take their

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disputes to the Ya Na, his divisional nas, or, ultimately, to the district commissioner. This strategy ignored the extent to which Konkomba feuds were built into their social structure and the lack of respect most Konkomba afforded Dagomba nas. Historically, in Konkomba violent disputes there would be no place for individuals to state their side of the story unless uninkpel from both sides intervened. The potential for falsehoods in the court and the fact that most cases only stalled rather than resolved conflicts demonstrates the extent to which colonial courts were an insufficient replacement for Konkomba social practices centered on justice. Moreover, the punishment that the court recommended did not eliminate the sense of obligation on the part of victims and their kin to respond to the offense nor was punishment adequate compensation. Courts also failed to appreciate individual acts of violence within the broader context of an ongoing feud. It was common for relatives of aggrieved kinsmen who were arrested for fighting to carry out the vendetta on his behalf. To have arrested the Konkomba for such “infractions” as feuding, theft, homicide and imposing specific penalties on them did little for the aggrieved party. The court’s decisions, moreover, clearly defined an end to the dispute with winners and losers, whereas historically lineages and subclans had decided when they felt adequately compensated and therefore when to end a vendetta or feud. British efforts to punish what officials defined as crimes did not satisfy their larger goal to end conflicts, particularly feuds, because the need for vengeance remained. Consequently, the spark behind most Konkomba vendettas remained as well. This is demonstrated in the following four examples of Konkomba conflicts and court cases. The first example is the case of the kidnap and rape of Twumalam Konkomba near Bimbilla in 1951. The trial that began on November 29 led to a conviction of four men, Kambekye, Kokaah, Tiribii, and Bingini, who were each sentenced to two months hard labor for their assault against Twumalam on November 14. The sentence reflects the fact that Twumalam was kidnapped and held against her will, but it failed to account adequately for the three nights that Bingini raped her. Twumalam Konkomba’s experience also illustrates the extent to which Konkomba men exercised control over women’s lives and their bodies both by practice and force. She had limited control over her situation because her father died while she was young and Kokaah, her uncle, acted as her guardian. It seems likely that if British officials had not intervened her husband and his kinsmen would have retaliated for the offenses that the men committed against Twumalam. Yet there is no real evidence to support this conclusion.

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At birth, Twumalam’s father betrothed her to Kambekye. After his death, she went to live with Kokaah, her uncle. Evidently, her mother had arranged for her to marry Bawa with whom she had two children. The couple had lived in Wulensi, in the Nanumba traditional area, when she was ordered to appear before the Bimbilla Na, who ruled that Kambekye was Twumalam’s rightful husband and with whom she would live. Kambekye testified that he had followed the practice of performing duties for his mother-in-law for several years, which entitled him to marry Twumalam. Among the significant aspects of this case is Kokaah’s use of the Bimbilla Na as recourse to protect his interests. Until the 1970s, Konkomba migrants to Bimbilla and the surrounding area maintained a relationship with the Bimbilla Na that was significantly different than the relationship between Konkomba in Kekpakpaan and the Ya Na and his divisional nas. As migrants who lacked strong claims to autochthony Konkomba in Bimbilla more readily accepted the Bimbilla Na’s authority. It is also likely that Kokaah brought his case to the Bimbilla Na confident that he would render a dispassionate decision and one that would be in Kokaah’s favor. Kokaah was eager to settle the case. According to the police report, Bingini and Kambekye gave Kokaah and Tiribii, Twumalam’s brother, two girls to marry in exchange for Kokaah’s and Tiribii’s support of Kambekye’s stated claims to Twumalam. The two men did indeed support the exchange despite the fact that she was married and had children with Bawa. The problem for Kokaah and Tiribii was that Twumalam refused to leave her husband and join Kambekye, despite the Bimbilla Na’s order that Kambekye was her rightful husband because he had performed the rites and paid the required dowry. Consequently, the two men kidnapped her. They forced her onto a lorry and took her to Kambekye’s village. Twumalam told the court, in Likpakpaaln, that she had never met Kambekye or Bingini until she was summoned by the Bimbilla Na: About two weeks ago I was called to Bimbilla to the na’s court and I went and the na said I must go to 1st accused [Kambekye]. Then the 3rd [Tiribii] and 4th accused [Bingini] took me to the 1st accused and told me to walk to Nakpayili, a village south of Bimbilla. I refused. 1st and 2nd accused [Kokaah] took my cloth and my baby from me and 3rd and 4th accused put me on a lorry. When we got there 1st accused said he wanted to sleep with me, but I refused and 1st accused said it was all right as he had leprosy, but I must sleep with his son [Bingini]. I refused and he called his son and I was tied and for three days 1st accused slept with me. I was not able to get away, for they tied my legs. They left me in the room when they went to farm and took my

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baby and gave it to another woman. After the third day 1st accused told 4th accused that he could not have me as his wife. He pulled my baby from me and 4th accused slept with me for four nights against my will. I was still tied. I refused food. One day they went to the farm and I persuaded some children left in the house to cut my ropes so that I could cook for them. They released me and I ran away. My baby was still at the farm with the women to whom they gave it every day.60

Kambekye defended himself by describing the Konkomba “custom,” according to which he was acting appropriately: “Every year I went planting for the woman who was the mother of [Twumalam], and it was agreed that the child should be my wife.” He also stated that she agreed to marry his son because she refused to marry Kambekye. Bingini admitted that he slept with Twumalam but insisted that his father did not.61 Ultimately, the court found that no one was telling the truth. But the magistrate stated that he was convinced that Twumalam was held against her will and sentenced Bingini, Kambekye, and Kokaah to two months of hard labor. The second example is a large fight on April 4, 1953 that involved men from different hamlets, but only six were arrested. They were charged with disturbing the peace and fighting, but during the subsequent trial no one was able to recount exactly how the fight started. Apparently Nteh Nanumba was selling tobacco in the Wulensi market, in the Nanumba District, when Balamo Konkomba stepped over his goods. Nteh subsequently pushed Balamo, who fell on someone else, who, in turn, pushed Balamo back on to Nteh, who then struck him. Balamo responded by hitting Nteh in his face. Jakpu, Balamo’s uncle, came to his aid, and Adam Nanumba came to Nteh’s side. Bijaala and Yaw Konkomba joined in on the Konkomba side.62 While attempting to break up the fight, a native authority constable was struck in the head with one of the Konkomba’s axes. Nteh insisted that he “was only safeguarding his property.” Yaw Konkomba stated, “I was at the place where pito is brewed. I heard shouting and rushed to the scene. I stood quietly and was knocked to the ground. I do not know who hit me.” In the magistrate court, the accused and complainants cross-examined each other after being questioned by the prosecution.63 An excerpt of the cross-examination reveals the extent to which Konkomba played an active role in their trials. Most often it proved ineffective because defendants were not provided with lawyers or proper instructions on how to launch a proper defense. With few exceptions, the Konkomba lacked the experience to articulate their grievances in terms that were acceptable within the framework of the

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British judicial system, but there was no precedent for such practices among Konkomba. What follows is Balamo cross-examining Nteh: Q. A. Q. A. Q. A.

Did I not meet you running away when I came from the house? No. Did you not have no clothes? That is so, because you tore them from me. Did I go after your wife? Or owe you any money? No.

Jakpu cross-examined Adam Nanumba [2nd accused]: Q. When we were drinking pito, was it not you whom I approached to ask what was happening? A. No. Q. When you came to assault me, did I not leave my dress with you and ran away? A. No. Q. On the way to Yendi, did we not overtake you on the way to Bimbilla? A. Yes, I was coming to see the police. Q. Would your son not have been severely wounded if I and another man had not assaulted him? A. Well, you were hitting him with your hand, that was why I came to help. Q. Is not everything that you have said completely untrue? A. No, it is true. Q. Did I not run to the Chief’s house when you hit me? A. No.

Adam Nanumba claims that he was hit during the fight but claims to not have taken part; instead he ran away because “I knew Konkombas kill people. That is why I ran to the Wulensi Na.”64 The court found that Adam initially joined the fight but ran when it was joined by other Konkomba. The third example is from April 24, 1942. Three Konkomba men, Njonam, Bardouc, and Onukpuli, were charged with assaulting a Konkomba man named Kidikuri with an axe. They were sentenced to three months hard labor, which demonstrates that the British regarded such acts of seemingly random violence as a threat to social and political stability in the region. What was important to the court was the assault itself. However, for the three defendants and Konkomba society generally, their assault against Kidikuri as he passed through

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their village was acceptable or, at the least, understandable. The defendants claimed that one of “his people,” or someone from Kidikuri’s lineage or subclan, had attacked Onukpili earlier.65 Most likely, the attack against Kidikuri was only a single act of retaliation within a larger feud. Yet for the most part, the courts and colonial officials examined these incidents as isolated acts of violence, which is indeed what they appear to be, if viewed only outside of the larger feud or vendetta of which they are only a part. British views of these events were void of any consideration of the larger context. Such a perspective is necessary to examine the factors that shaped the Konkomba propensity for large-scale communal violence. They built their notions of fairness, right, and wrong on the obligation of individuals or groups to compensate the aggrieved adequately for an offense or loss to life or property. Simply to punish offenders with hard labor or fines paid to the native administration did not serve Konkomba needs. Consequently, conflicts commonly continued after the courts settled them. The fourth example, the case of Chief of Police v. Baabey Konkomba from January 6, 1951 illustrates that there was greater incentive among the Konkomba to carry out vendettas and demonstrate group loyalty through their participation in feuds than to follow British officials’ directives to end the practice and take their grievances to Dagomba nas and the magistrate court in Yendi. Retaliatory violence was too central an institution for Konkomba simply to give it up and begin to submit their disputes to arbitration. In late 1950 Bekou assaulted one of Baabey Konkomba’s relatives. Constables arrested Bekou and brought him before the Yendi Criminal Court where the chief commissioner sentenced him to one year of hard labor. When Bekou was released, he confronted Baabey and taunted him for not demonstrating greater courage by seeking revenge on behalf of his relative. In response, Baabey drew his knife and attempted to assault Bekou. The Yendi Criminal Court accused Baabey of “intentionally and unlawfully” wounding Bekou Konkomba, but it acknowledged he had done so to retaliate for Bekou’s assault on Baabey’s relative. Although the district commissioner agreed that Baabey acted “in conformity with Konkomba blood feud practices,” he fined him one month hard labor.66

The Murder of T.S. Quarshie The 1928 murder of T.S. Quarshie, a Fanti from the Gold Coast Colony and a surveyor for the colonial administration’s Eastern Boundary Survey, further illustrates the ways that the cultural codes that dictated social interaction among Konkomba carried potentially

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dangerous consequences. It also shows the ways that Konkomba exercised agency within the colonial political space and sought to protect their interests. To British officials the murder was a product of senseless violence between a Konkomba man and one of Quarshie’s employees over the price of a pig. They regarded it as an example of Konkomba lawlessness, which from their perspective characterized Kekpakpaan and frustrated British efforts to impose consistent and effective policies in the area. Yet the interaction between the Konkomba and Quarshie demonstrates the complexity of encounters between Africans under British colonial rule, the ways in which they continued to define their own codes of behavior and perceived the colonial administration as ancillary to local institutions and relations. Although Quarshie was an African he was an agent of the colonial administration. The Konkomba attack against him was not part of Konkomba resistance to British rule. As with their resistance to Dagomba authority, Konkomba referenced their own social and political framework to protect their interests and resist what they perceived to be undue outsider interference. Interaction between Quarshie and Konkomba in the community where he worked reflected Konkomba social expectations. He was to respect social and cultural norms. Although he was warned of the dangers of offending Konkomba, Quarshie does not seem to have fully appreciated the Konkomba reputation for responding to threats with violence. On December 17, 1928, a group of Konkomba felt justified in retaliating for what they perceived to have been a threat to their interests by killing him. Quarshie and his workers were in Kekpakpaan to survey the Oti River for the Eastern Boundary Survey. There were no significant incidents reported between the survey team and the northern communities in which they worked and lived as they moved along the border. District Commissioner Gilbert reported a number of complaints from people in other areas about the survey laborers’ behavior. Among Konkomba, however, the relationship appears to have been quite cordial; some villagers even provided the workers with food. Just a few days before Quarshie was murdered, villagers from Gungulebu gave Quarshie two sheep and a pig, apparently out of kindness as opposed to any sense of obligation.67 Yet the relationship between the Konkomba and the survey team changed dramatically after Quarshie and his men, who worked under the auspices of the British government but were solely under Quarshie’s direct supervision, attempted to exploit their status as employees of the colonial government. On December 16, 1928, Quarshie sent Dogo Moshi, one his employees, to the nearby village of Maoton with four shillings to purchase a pig. At the time, the Konkomba in Maoton sold pigs

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for between 15 shillings and £1, a substantially higher sum than Dogo possessed. When Dogo pressed Tschon, a man selling a pig, to agree to his substantially lower offer of four shillings, Tschon refused. Evidently, the two men did not speak one another’s language but Dogo made his interests clear through his actions. According to Gilbert, Dogo seized the pig and tied it with a rope, which Tschon promptly cut with his axe. Dogo then seized the axe from Tschon and returned to the surveyors’ camp at Gungulebu. Later, when Tschon arrived in Gungulebu to claim his axe, Dogo struck him in the head. As illustrated above, Konkomba methods of settling grievances were not unfamiliar to the colonial administration. Quarshie was aware of the Konkomba reputation for feuding among themselves and their aggressive resistance to interference from outsiders. Gilbert reported that he had “warned everyone going into the Konkomba country that on no circumstances are women and cattle to be interfered with. In nearly every case when bows and arrows have been used in this district women or cattle have been interfered with.”68 According to social practices common among the Konkomba at the time, Tschon or a member of his family was obligated to respond to Dogo’s offense or risked being offended further in the future. Indeed, at approximately noon on December 17, Tschon did just that. With three companions from the villages of Maoton and Wabine—Yayun, Falima, and Jayoni—Tschon quietly entered Gungulabu and shot their arrows into Quarshie’s tent. One arrow missed Quarshie but struck his wife in the stomach. After trying in vain to remove it, Quarshie ran out of his tent to get help from Yami Dunkwa, one of his workers, but anyone who attempted to assist him faced the threat of the four men’s arrows.69 As Quarshie ran from his assailants, he was brought down by an arrow to the left side of his chest, one to the back of his right shoulder, and the back of his lower left thigh.70 Before long the poison from the arrows ended his life, while his wife and two laborers survived their wounds.71 In the aftermath of Quarshie’s murder, the chief commissioner suggested that this incident might have occurred earlier due to his and his workers’ poor conduct among the people they worked. “Lucky for them,” Gilbert wrote after Quarshie’s death, “they have previously been amongst quieter, weaker peoples.”72 With the typical narrowness and paternalism that characterized British law and order tactics, the commissioner ordered compounds in Maoton and Wabine’s destroyed and had constables pursue all four suspects. “The corn and yams will be burnt when harvested,” he explained, “to show the owners that they must not take matters into their own hands.”73 Gilbert apparently understood that the incident had been caused by the survey

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team, but felt it best to take measures to encourage the Konkomba to work through the colonial administration to settle their grievances. He also lacked the power and influence among local communities to do much else. The murder of Quarshie and British officials’ response deepened the perceptions within the colonial administration of the Konkomba as a highly aggressive society. Without any apparent hesitation, Gilbert took action to punish the Konkomba even though it was clear to him that they were protecting their interests. Similar to their approach to addressing Konkomba resistance to the imposition of Dagomba authority, the British failed to take into account Konkomba notions of right and wrong. Gilbert understood that Quarshie and the survey team had instigated the violence, but he lacked concern for a Konkomba perspective and their efforts to protect their interests. Konkomba violence, whether directed against other Konkomba, Dagomba, or outsiders, fueled the British administration’s position that Konkomba were incapable of ruling themselves. Therefore, the lack of respect that Konkomba exhibited toward Dagomba nas and their direct challenges to Dagomba authority were not as important as the perceived need for a centralized society to exercise control over the Konkomba on behalf of the colonial government. British policy toward Konkomba centered on bolstering the Dagomba nas’ ability to assert authority in Kekpakpaan and end Konkomba feuding, which would lay the foundation for identification with a Konkomba political community constructed around challenging Dagomba political dominance and bringing an end to Konkomba feuds to allow for multi-clan Konkomba unity.

Conclusion The events of the early 1940s would force the British colonial administration to once again question the chief-centered political structure that it imposed on local societies, which so effectively cast these communities as political subordinates and weakened their access and control over resources. In the meantime, the British continued to foster social and political inequality through their ethnic-based political hierarchy and local communities, particularly Konkomba, continued to employ a variety of means to challenge it. The ebb and flow of British political sway over Konkomba, and the persistence of precolonial political disputes and alliances that continued to define Konkomba society until the 1950s, demonstrates that the imposition of colonial rule did not bring about a sharp divide between precolonial

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and colonial African society. For a full account of the African and British colonial experience one must think beyond notions of colonial rule as a one-way discourse on power. Rather, it is necessary to conceive of levels of engagement between and within African societies and between Africans and the British. Communal violence among Konkomba, together with British responses between 1914 and 1930, reveals the British administration’s limited capacity to exercise broad and consistent control over local African societies. It also shows that well into the colonial period Konkomba continued to operate within an autonomous domain. Persistent intra-Konkomba violence forced British officials to strengthen their approach to ruling the Konkomba without straying from their original, chief-centered strategy. Far from remaining consistent and well organized, however, British control was often tenuous, ad hoc, and plagued by policy built around political goals without due consideration for the histories and political realities among local societies. Although Konkomba purposefully resisted Dagomba authority, they did not mount direct resistance to the British, which illustrates the extent to which the obstacles to colonial authority that came from African societies did not only stem from conscious efforts toward direct resistance. At times, moreover, British officials created their own obstacles to political success. During the 1930s and 1940s, British officials grew more conscious of Konkomba social and political practices, which enabled them to bring the Konkomba more firmly into the colonial political structure. Yet greater Dagomba control also engendered more direct Konkomba challenges. Indirect rule increased the power of chiefs and further excluded the intelligentsia and peasants, particularly those of historically noncentralized societies.74 As the following chapter describes, political identification with a community of belonging evolved out of a growing, shared sense among Konkomba that their own subordinate political status was a consequence of their lack of unity vis-à-vis their Dagomba neighbors. The recognition of the relationship between Konkomba internal political dynamics and their collective powerlessness on the part of a small but growing segment of the Konkomba leadership sparked the advent of a collective Konkomba ethnic consciousness. This consciousness grew out of a specific political moment that began in the middle of the 1940s with the Konkomba attack on the Dagomba village of Jagbel and produced clear expression, as Chapter 4 demonstrates, during the mid-1950s, and was tied to the Konkomba experience with Dagomba chieftaincy, Western education, and Christian missionaries.

Chapter

3

“A Festering Sore On an O t h e r w i s e H e a lt h y A d m i n i s t r at i v e B o dy ” — K o n k o m b a P o l i t i c a l Agency and British A u t h o r i t y, 1 9 2 9 – 1 9 5 1

In September 1940 a group of Konkomba men raided the predom-

inantly Dagomba village of Jagbel and killed the Zegbeli Na—the Dagomba chief of Jagbel—along with Bukari Kanjara, a constable, and members of the Zegbeli Na’s household.1 During the 1930s indirect rule brought increased powers to Dagomba nas and greater means for them to reap material benefits from their authority over Konkomba villages. Part of their official responsibility was to represent Konkomba interests to the Yendi district commissioner and the Ya Na; yet the colonial government did not provide them with any incentive to do so. Consequently, Konkomba had little recourse from Dagomba political power other than to migrate out of the area, which, beginning in the 1920s, a growing number did, or resist through violent confrontation. The September 1940 attack grew out of growing Konkomba frustration with the British imposition of Dagomba authority that increased as the structures of indirect rule took hold. The attack also reflected the level of autonomy that Konkomba had maintained. Its significance does not rest with the fact that a group of Konkomba men organized a raid and killed a Dagomba na. Equally significant were the

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events that the attack set in motion, which fuelled a growing sense of collective ethnic consciousness among Konkomba and a shared sense of common political interests. Konkomba efforts to bring about social and political change as an ethnic community offer additional evidence of the strength of Konkomba autonomy and the weakness of British colonial authority during the period. Partha Chatterjee presents the notion of community as the “single unifying idea that gives to peasant insurgency its fundamental social character.”2 An evolving sense of community becomes palpable among Konkomba in the 1940s as they begin to assert a particular image of Konkomba society in response to external efforts to construct and impose specific characteristics that defined Konkomba as politically subordinate, disorganized, and backward. The British handling of the attack against Jagbel, which served their immediate political interests and further empowered Dagomba nas, motivated Konkomba to define the Konkomba community in distinction to Dagomba and the colonial government’s constructions of Konkomba. Their doing so became a highly political act, because it not only posed an argument against Konkomba political subordination under Dagomba nas but also challenged the very basis of colonial policy toward local society. Konkomba attempts to alter the ways in which traditional politics was sustained by the British and exercised through Dagomba nas during the 1940s, first through violence and then through attempts to integrate into the traditional and colonial political structures, marked a dramatic shift in Konkomba relationships with Dagomba nas and the British colonial administration. It is difficult to speak of a Konkomba community prior to 1945. Konkomba subclans and lineages remained the primary basis for defining “we” and “they” relations among Konkomba throughout most of the colonial period. This is not to argue that the British, Dagomba, and other neighboring societies were insignificant to the ways in which Konkomba perceived of themselves socially, politically, and culturally, but to present evidence to argue that there was no discernable collective Konkomba political consciousness until after the Konkomba attacked the village of Jagbel. Beginning with Djar’s efforts to unite the Bimopkem and Kpalbtiib under his leadership in 1945, a Konkomba community took shape around their opposition to Dagomba political authority and mindful of British constructs of what constituted tribal structure. The “we” gradually broadened to extend beyond lineage, subclan, and clan to embrace all Konkomba of the Oti River plain. Defining community around a collective consciousness, as Chatterjee says, gives insurgent

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action its “fundamental constitutive character as the purposive political acts of a collective consciousness.”3 This chapter presents the mid-1940s as a turning point in the relationship between Konkomba, Dagomba, and the colonial state. British policy and the Dagomba political power that accompanied it forced Konkomba leaders to seek alternatives to the existing Konkomba tribal political structure for economic development and political autonomy. Konkomba attempts to organize politically in the aftermath of the attack on Jagbel is an example of the various ways that indirect rule shaped social transactions between African societies and the relationships between Africans and the colonial administration. These events demonstrate the ways that Africans sought to redefine notions of authority and custom during the colonial period as a means to protect and advance their political interests. During the 1930s and 1940s in the Northern Territories the colonial administration brought chiefs of the historically centralized polities more formally into the colonial political structure as its proxies. In response, African communities subordinated by this strategy coalesced around the symbols of power that the British privileged: ethnic unity and chieftaincy. Ethnicity was the means through which the British and Dagomba defined and disfranchised Konkomba, and it became the means through which Konkomba challenged Dagomba power, and by extension British policies.

Toward Indirect Rule Direct and indirect rule were the two broad patterns of control that Europeans followed to assert power over parts of the non-Western world. Direct rule largely excluded local, non-European political systems in favor of absolute sovereignty and European administration. African, Asian, and Native American political practices only had real presence within this system at the local level, which undermined and in many instances destroyed them. Indirect rule, however, purportedly sustained existing political institutions and empowered local political actors to maintain control over their communities’ political affairs and institutions with minimal European oversight. The British were the earliest European power to embrace indirect rule, and they did so systematically, first in the 1850s in India, Britain’s most vital and populous colony, and later in Africa. Their political success in India with the Residency system, as Michael Fisher explains, “inspired officials in London, and in the field elsewhere in Asia and in Africa, with the idea that imperial expansion need not, and indeed should not, draw

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heavily on the limited resources of the home nation.”4 This inspiration had become a mantra for British colonial officials in Africa during the closing years of the nineteenth century and became a central aspect of British imperial thinking. The British set about vigorously applying it where compatible local political institutions existed and equally where there were no suitable institutions. In Africa, however, “indirect rule,” “native administration,” “protectorate,” and “trusteeship,” which the British used to describe the various versions of Residency, bore little resemblance in its application as it was intended by London politicians and practiced in much of India.5 In Africa, Frederick Lugard was the first British official to apply indirect rule as a formal colonial policy. He did so between 1900 and 1907 while he served as Britain’s high commissioner for Northern Nigeria. Under Lugard’s direction, indirect rule acquired its bestknown and most elaborate application.6 Subsequently, his indirect rule policy became the model for the others that followed. Lugard’s program was not only part of a strategy for effective political dominance, it was a response to the British colonial administration’s lack of political resources. For Britain, the benefit of indirect rule in Africa was that it allowed “traditional rulers” to act as the actual administrators and draw a salary from their own treasuries, and chiefs to function on behalf of British officials. In theory, with greater distance between African populations and British administrators, there was little direct friction between British officials and chiefs and society. Reduced friction meant that there was little need for the British to maintain a supporting military and police establishment. While India served as the model, indirect rule was influenced as much by its local setting as by the British colonial administration’s political agenda. It ostensibly preserved “traditional institutions”; yet political practice could not remain static in the midst of the rapid social, political, and economic change that British rule carried to the non-Western world. As Leroy Vail has highlighted, European colonial officials believed that to strengthen preexisting ethnic unity and sustain the power of respected chiefs would serve as obstacles to “the emergence of ‘detribalizd’ Africans who whites were deeply suspicious of. This, in turn, would slow the emergence of any potentially dangerous territory-wide political consciousness that might develop.”7 The expanded political rule of chieftaincy within the colonial administration under indirect rule marginalized the influences of Western-educated political elites and European missionaries. With indirect rule, race-based political separation between Europeans and Africans fostered the colonial state’s capitalist and precapitalist

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characteristics, yet only in a limited sense. Taxation, forced labor, military recruitment, and other examples of radical social and political change that came with colonial rule undermined the British goal for “tribal society” to maintain its precolonial social and political characteristics.8 Ultimately, the British “preserved” institutions that were fundamentally altered from those that they encountered when they arrived.9 Change included the level of authority that local rulers exercised. In theory, indirect rule necessarily limited the sovereignty of local rulers by stripping them of their capacity to act beyond the political borders that colonial administrators defined. In the Northern Territories indirect rule had the opposite effect for rulers’ political power. On the peripheries of the Asante Kingdom there was no single dominant political authority with broad and consistent sway over surrounding groups. Yet, the success of indirect rule depended upon the presence of large, centralized political entities. The rulers of Gonja, Dagbon, Wa, and Mamprugu saw the extent of their political sway broadened to include previously independent groups that British policies incorporated as the lower rungs of local tribal structures, transforming these polities into the political states that the British had envisaged. In 1921 Governor Gordon Guggisberg (1919–1929) was the first senior Gold Coast colonial official to articulate a vision for indirect rule in the Northern Territories. His plan divided the Northern Territories into three spheres—Gonja, Dagbon, and Mamprugu—that would absorb the noncentralized societies and the small, centralized polities—such as Nanun and Wa—as well. Yet it is clear that Guggisberg failed to consider the likelihood that noncentralized societies would challenge their political subordination and disfranchisement, which was an inevitable consequence of political incorporation. Rather, Guggisberg regarded training the chiefs—not resistance from politically subordinate groups—as the main obstacle to welldeveloped local political structures.10 After changeovers in the colonial leadership in Accra stalled plans to introduce indirect rule in the Northern Territories, Acting Governor Shenton Thomas revived them in 1928. When Governor Alexander Slater (1928–1932) took office, he adopted much of Thomas’s plan. Slater’s program had four core components. First, the government would empower each native administration to levy taxes to meet their expenses and provide the kings and chiefs with a salary in place of any traditional tribute they had formerly received from their constituents. Second, Native Authority courts would adjudicate noncriminal cases and impose fines. Appeals would be made to the

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district commissioner’s court in Yendi. Third, each Native Authority would employ literate clerks, treasurers, court registrars, and a small police force to deal with day-to-day administration. This entire operation would be overseen by the district commissioner.11 Finally, smaller, noncentralized communities would be eliminated through incorporation into one of the four large groups—Dagomba, Mamprusi, Gonja, and Nanumba.12 At the time, however, it was clear to Chief Commissioner Walker-Leigh that this program had serious limitations. In a December 1928 policy report to the chief commissioner of the Southern Province of the Northern Territories, Walker-Leigh noted that the Nayiri wielded broader power under British rule than he previously possessed, but his control remained insufficient for effective local administration. “The Na of Mamprusi,” Walker-Leigh explained, “wields sway all over Mamprusi and practically over half the Northern Province as far as Sissili River, but it was only a few years ago that he ever dared visit the outlying parts of his kingdom, and his power today is questionable.”13 Correspondence during the debate among British officials over the formal introduction of indirect rule in the Northern Territories shows that they were aware of the extent to which their policies had altered social and political relations between African communities in the region. Nonetheless, they continued to contextualize the effects of their policies as elevating chiefs to their “previous” and “rightful” position of power. “Very few changes have been made in the Mandated Area,” Walker-Leigh reported, “except that the Chiefs are again in power.”14 As officials debated the efficacy of indirect rule, there was little discussion of the possible repercussions from widespread political disfranchisement among noncentralized societies. What these memos and letters do reveal is that Northern officials objected to Slater’s proposal, as an unnecessary change and undue oversight into the affairs of the regional, district, and provincial officials. Walker-Leigh, leader of the opposition, argued that the Accrabased administration’s goals to change existing policies toward local politics in the region reflected its failure to truly comprehend the Northern Territories’ political environment. He insisted that a low level of intelligence and morality among northern chiefs curtailed greater involvement in governing the region than the chiefs exercised at the time.15 In support of the opposition, Yendi district commissioner Gilbert argued that northern officials already engaged in many of the programs that Slater outlined. “Indirect rule,” he insisted, “has been my policy ever since I have been stationed here, all civil cases and all orders concerning the Dagomba country have been sent to the Na,

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so that the proposed innovation under the heading Indirect Rule will be a change in detail only.”16 Indeed, Gilbert had allowed the Ya Na to use the court to increase his influence in local affairs. During Gilbert’s tenure the Ya Na adjudicated “all civil cases between natives.” As district commissioner, Gilbert only decided cases on appeal.17 It was not, as Walker-Leigh explained, that northern officials objected to indirect rule as a policy. They were simply convinced that it was a policy they had already implemented to the fullest possible extent. “The Chiefs and people are illiterate,” he said, “and it will take time to educate the Northern boys in order that they may form the Staff in their various capacities to the various Native Administrations which may in the future be formed. It would serve no good purpose to staff new Native Administrations with strangers.”18 Most of all, it seemed that Gilbert and Walker-Leigh had grown accustomed to conducting government affairs with little interference from Accra and deeply resented oversight from the south, so much so that they were willing to risk their careers over it. On January 3, 1929, Walker-Leigh held a meeting with Provincial Commissioner Cutfield and P.F. Whittal, provincial commissioner for the Northern Province of the Northern Territories, to discuss “the advisability of the introduction of Indirect Rule.” They made a list of 15 reasons that the formal introduction of indirect rule was not feasible in the Northern Territories, including the lack of educated “native” staff, no significant source of revenue in the region, large numbers of laborers migrating south for work, and “inherent graft of the Native would be enormously increased by Native Administration.”19 Yet by the end of 1928, despite their protests, Walker-Leigh and his colleagues lost their fight against indirect rule. Walker-Leigh was forced to retire and the colonial government in Accra transferred away from the region all but one of the officials who supported him.20 Their departure marked a radical shift in leadership in the north and the end of a long period of consistent administration. Many of these departing officials had arrived in the Northern Territories prior to 1914, before the British assumed control of British Togoland with its large Dagomba, Konkomba, and Bimoba populations. Walker-Leigh had worked in the north since 1898; P.F. Whittal since 1907; and Gilbert and P.W. Rutherford, the district commissioners for Yendi and Western Dagomba, had each held their positions for close to a decade.21 The government replaced them with men who were generally better educated, came from civil as opposed to military backgrounds, and, most significantly perhaps, were enthusiastic about the doctrines of indirect rule as laid out under the leadership of the

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new chief commissioner of the Northern Territories, William Andrew Jones (1933–1942).22 Jones was a natural choice to oversee the implementation of indirect rule in the north. He had been a strong influence behind Governor Slater’s decision to press the colonial secretary’s office in London for permission to develop a policy of indirect rule for the Northern Territories.23 As a model, Jones studied the indirect rule policy that Donald Cameron, Tanganyika’s former governor, had developed. He made Cameron’s Principles of Native Administration and Their Application a guide for northern officials. Jones saw similarities between Tanganyika and the Northern Territories. Both regions had ethnically and politically diverse populations that lacked the strong, centralized polities of southern Ghana and Northern Nigeria. Cameron’s indirect rule policy was based largely on Lugard’s early outline. Cameron wrote that indirect rule “is the principle of adapting for the purposes of local government the institutions which the native peoples have evolved for themselves, so that they may develop in a constitutional manner from their past, guided and restrained by the traditions and sanctions which they have inherited (moulded or modified as they may be on the advice of the British Officers) and by the general advice and control of those officers.”24 Differing political environments led Cameron to employ a much broader approach than Lugard, who in Northern Nigeria did not have to address the large presence of noncentralized societies, such as existed in Tanganiyika and the Northern Territories. Interestingly, chieftaincy was not essential for Cameron’s indirect rule policy. What was essential was that the colonial government presided over local society through what it accepted as the Africans’ own “tribal institutions,” which Cameron referred to as “the authority which according to tribal tradition and usage has regulated the affairs of each unit of native society.”25 These institutions, as Cameron described, included anything from a federation of chiefs or council of headmen to a single chief. Yet Jones and the British administration in the Northern Territories regarded chieftaincy as the only truly legitimate tribal institution.26 Jones was not the only official who would leave his mark on local politics in the Northern Territories after the change of 1928. In 1929 and 1930 the colonial government appointed H.A. Blair and A.C. Duncan-Johnstone, respectively, to new positions. Both would significantly shape British political tactics and relations between British officials and local societies. The administration appointed Blair as district commissioner for Western Dagomba. He arrived with a reputation as the quintessential “man on the spot” and did indeed possess

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a variety of talents, from the British point of view, that made him an effective district commissioner. One of those talents was his command of Dagbani, which he had learned during his ten years as an administrator in Tamale and Yendi. His knowledge of a local language made him particularly unique among his colleagues. At the time, it was highly unusual for British administrators—particularly in the north where short tours were common—to be proficient in a local language. Blair also emphasized the relationship between knowledge of a people’s history and culture and an official’s capacity to develop and effectively impose local policies.27 Blair’s colleagues and successors used his research on the history and culture of northern societies, including Dagomba and Konkomba, to formulate policy around social and political status and to define political relations between ethnic groups. A central aspect of these policies for which officials employed ethnographic research was the identification and concretization of cultural and political traditions that readily adapted to the structures of indirect rule and lent themselves to the homogenization of ethnic identity. In 1930, the colonial administration appointed Duncan-Johnstone as commissioner for the Southern Province of the Northern Territories—which included Dagbon and Kekpakpaan. He would later become acting chief commissioner for the Northern Territories. Ducan-Johnstone’s expertise came from his long service in the north. He was one of the few officials who did not depart with Walter-Leigh, who he served under as the district commissioner for Lawra. In Lawra, in 1918, Duncan-Johnstone helped develop the district’s native tribunals, an experience that fostered his interest in ethnography and local history.28 He had initially been among the group of officials who argued that indirect rule as it had been applied in Ashanti and the Gold Coast Colony was far too complicated for the Northern Territories. However, under the new regime, Duncan-Johnstone became a key strategist for applying indirect rule.29 Duncan-Johnstone worked to align his own strategies for effective indirect rule to the colonial government’s official policies in the Northern Territories. This is evident from his writing in Notes on Policy and Standing Orders. “Native Administration,” he explained, “is itself based on the principle of recognizing and developing native institutions, subject to Government control so as to prevent abuses.”30 In the tradition of his predecessors, Duncan-Johnstone argued that it was essential that the government create a unified political state at little or no cost to the British colonial administration, within which, he explains, the preexisting centralized polities would serve

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as foundations for building political structures within the Northern Territories. Duncan-Johnstone described a very clear political goal for building Native Administrations that included the centralized polities achieving high-level political maturity and ultimately political unity. For example, Ashanti and the Colony would ultimately comprise one Gold Coast nation.31 Despite a relatively lucid perspective on the relevance of local cultural and political relationships for defining local policies and clear objectives for Native Administration, Blair and Duncan-Johnstone had limited capacity to influence the overall shape of British policy.32 They brought greater understanding of African society to British rule in the Northern Territories, but failed to pull the government away from policies that were grounded in the initial prejudices that British officials carried when they arrived in the region. Moreover, their research informed British tactics for engaging local societies but had little bearing on the overall shape of British policy. This exemplifies what Carola Lentz calls “the contradiction between the British tribal model and the complex local reality.”33 Even though ethnographic research provided administrators with greater knowledge of the social and political peculiarities of the groups in their districts, it was in the rarest of circumstances that British officials incorporated this information into their policies. By the start of the 1930s, British officials were aware that they had developed policies based on false assumptions and misperceptions of local society. Yet they continued to willfully ignore their newfound knowledge to pursue simplistic policies, much to the detriment of the societies that they governed and British political power.34 British official’s reliance on Dagomba nas in Kekpakpaan hamstrung their efforts to generate revenue among Konkomba that would help sustain the Dagomba Native Authority.35 Despite these significant failings, in early 1930 Chief Commissioner Jones and his colleagues continued to argue that it would be futile to seek a local political system as an alternative to Dagomba authority such as chieftaincies or councils for noncentralized societies because “the Konkomba will not be rushed into the acceptance of anything which has not the sanctions of his forefathers.”36 With his argument Jones ascribed immutability to Konkomba culture and exhibited a lack of consideration for the adjustments that the Konkomba had already made to the imposition of colonial rule. Neither Konkomba nor their forefathers, evidently, sanctioned being subordinated to Dagomba political authority. In fact, fitting the political realities of the region into the structures of indirect rule, as Jones conceived of it, took a great deal of effort. It called for

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considerable research on local politics beyond what Blair and DuncanJohnstone had provided. Jones instructed the district commissioners to investigate the political constitutions and culture of the groups that lived in their jurisdictions, but the most thorough work was done by R.S. Rattray, the government’s special commissioner for anthropology. Anthropologists were new actors on the African colonial stage and were primarily concerned with the disruptive effects of social change.37 In January 1929 Rattray arrived in Tamale for 15 months of field research in the Northern Territories; in the absence of the distractions of administrative duties, his research on local histories was more detailed and analytical than the ethnographies that colonial officials compiled. From his research Rattray produced a series of monographs on particular groups and districts in the Northern Territories, which in 1932 culminated in his monumental The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland. As innovative as much of Rattray’s research methods were at the time, his analysis reflected the colonial bias toward chieftaincy. Most of his investigations into Konkomba history and customs came by way of interviews with the Dagomba nas within Kekpakpaan, particularly the Sunson Na.38 The colonial government intended to use Rattray’s research to reform Native Authorities and demonstrate that British officials pursued political policies that were based on precolonial political institutions.39 Yet, like earlier colonial officials, such as Cardinall who 15 years earlier had sought to objectively examine local societies, Rattray concluded that distinct boundaries between the tribes of the Northern Territories, as the British administration conceptualized, did not exist and argued that in reality tribes were composed of clans that varied in geographical origin and linguistic identity.40 Rattray insisted that British conceptions of “tribe” did not capture the reality of physical mobility, the overlapping networks, and multiple group memberships that predominated in the Northern Territories. He argued that far from there being a single communal identity, most precolonial Africans moved in and out of multiple identities, defining themselves at one moment as subject to this chief, or as a member of that cult, and at another moment as part of this clan, or as an initiate in that professional guild.41 Rattray also warned against exaggerating the real extent of precolonial conquests and their political consequences for the “conquered” peoples. “We are over prone,” he argued, “to visualize absolute monarchs and autocratic forms of Government, in what, in a rather grandiose manner, we describe as these ‘great empires in pagan Africa.’ In fact, such amalgamations affected the real inner life of the common people hardly at all.”42 The disproportionate interest in the centralized societies of the north, as Lentz suggests “helped

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maintain a widely held conceptual dichotomy between state and nonstate societies.”43 Such conceptions had already been firmly enshrined in colonial political philosophy. Consequently, the British willfully ignored Rattray’s findings in order to maintain tribes as a basis for defining local political structures. Throughout the British colonies in Africa many colonial officials had disdain for anthropologists because their findings often contradicted accepted colonial wisdom. For British officials it had become common practice to ignore research that clearly contradicted what had become the accepted practices and ideologies of indirect rule.44 Instead of policy based on research, the colonial government relied on a theory that large tribes had previously existed but had disintegrated because of the Zabarima and Samori incursions of the late nineteenth century, which produced large numbers of noncentralized societies. By reestablishing “tribes” in what they defined as “native states,” the British purported to be restoring them to their “traditional” status and boundaries. Despite the transparent falsity of this position, it took hold and continued to provide a basis for defining social and political categories in local society. Ultimately this approach entrenched a ranked ethnic system in the Northern Territories. The historical relationship between Dagbon and the surrounding noncentralized societies that Dagomba nas presented to district and regional officials substantiated the colonial administration’s position on “tribal” society and traditional power dynamics in the region. The Dagomba influence on British perceptions of local society vividly illustrates the extent to which European understanding of African communities was shaped by an African discourse and characterization of other African societies.45 Although colonial officials gained tremendous insight from the ethnographic work of colonial officials and trained anthropologists, Africans were the primary source of European information on African societies. As Sara Berry describes, most colonial officials depended on the people they sought to govern to instruct them on how to do it. Yet the information that Africans supplied was often contradictory and exaggerated, and “colonial rulers and subjects debated their validity or their relevance to the dilemmas of the present.”46 This information crisis undermined the premise that chiefs and elders knew the timeless customs and traditions that would serve as the basis of indirect rule. Yet traditions were invented, reinterpreted, or discarded to advance the interests of the inventors.47

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In 1932 British officials responded to the ambiguities of tradition and custom with the Native Authority Ordinance, with the purpose to formally define the centralized polities as Native Administrations and, with the governor’s approval, empower the chief commissioner to “appoint any chief or other native or any group of natives to be a native authority for any area,” and increased the chiefs’ authority over the people.48 Previously, Konkomba clans demonstrated their lack of respect for Dagomba authority by ignoring the nas’ orders or migrating beyond their political reach. With indirect rule and the 1932 ordinance the nas’ control grew more difficult to ignore, and their demands for labor and tribute grew difficult to refuse for fear that the British commissioner would punish Konkomba. Local rulers welcomed these policies that clearly defined the relationship between centralized polities and their noncentralized neighbors. The British had imposed a social order that removed the old sources of income that sustained local rulers, particularly warfare, cattle raiding, slave raiding, and the ivory trade. Therefore, they needed new sources of income. British policy provided them with access to court fees and the power to engage in extra-economic and extralegal exactions.49 Through indirect rule, chiefs acquired a position to exploit their neighbors with the support of the British colonial administration. They simply had to claim that their actions were a customary right or that they acted in behalf of the district commissioner. “The effect of indirect rule,” Berry argues, “was neither to freeze African societies into precolonial moulds, nor to restructure them in accordance with British inventions of African tradition, but to generate unresolved debates over the interpretation of tradition and its meaning for colonial governance and economic activity. In seeking to maintain social and administrative stability by building on tradition, officials wove instability—in the form of changing relations of authority and conflicting interpretations of rules—into the fabric of colonial administration.”50 During the 1940s greater Dagomba control and increased exploitation of the Konkomba influenced the development of a nascent Konkomba political identity as many of the historically disunited Konkomba clans of the Oti plain began to identify the Dagomba as their common subjugator and Dagomba exploitation as their common plight. Perceptions of their own powerlessness combined with a widespread desire to assert their autonomy led the Konkomba of the Oti plain to mount more aggressive challenges to Dagomba

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authority. These responses to Dagomba political power were in themselves indirect challenges to the nature of British rule. The 1940 Konkomba attack on the predominantly Dagomba village of Jagbel offers one of the earliest and most salient examples of the ways that Konkomba used their limited but significant autonomous domain to mount an organized response to their subjugation and exploitation by the nas.

The Attack on Jagbel By 1940 Konkomba in the vicinity of Jagbel had grown accustomed to the Zegbeli Na acting as deputy for the district commissioner. Konkomba tended to follow his instructions, lest they be fined by the district commissioner. Most of the Zegbeli Na’s instructions, however, did not come from the British. Rather, his claim that he represented the district commissioner was a means to economically and politically exploit Konkomba in the villages and hamlets that surrounded Jagbel. For example, the Zegbeli Na took advantage of the British practice of using communal labor to routinely force Konkomba to perform communal labor on his farms. On other occasions, he confiscated Konkomba cattle under the pretense of collecting fines on behalf of the district commissioner. Although the Zegbeli Na’s behavior toward Konkomba was not unusual among nas in Kekpakpaan, by 1940 Konkomba had grown particularly frustrated by the nas actively seeking to exploit their positions of power. In September 1940 officers from Veterinary Services administered the annual bovine pleura-pneumonia vaccinations in all of the villages and hamlets in the region. Pleura-pneumonia and rinderpest were among several diseases that posed major threats to cattle in the Northern Territories. In 1930 it was estimated that in the preceding years more than half of all Konkomba cattle had died from rinderpest.51 In 1932 the colonial administration began to work through the colonial office of Veterinary Services to combat these diseases and succeeded to radically reduce the number of cattle that fell ill. From the program’s inception, Konkomba cooperated in the process of administering the vaccinations. Still, Chief Commissioner Jones initially placed Veterinary Services and its annual vaccinations at the center of the events that culminated in the murder of the Zegbeli Na, which reflected the common practice of citing Konkomba as the source of social and political problems in the area rather than the actions of Dagomba nas or the leaders of other centralized societies.

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The events that led to the attack began on Wednesday, September 4, 1940, when F.K. Binka, a veterinary assistant, visited the Konkomba hamlets around Jagbel with a Native Administration veterinary inspector and a cattle guard to inoculate Konkomba cattle. After Binka completed his rounds, the Zegbeli Na sent two representatives to Nyenbunpile—a Konkomba hamlet near Jagbel—to order those who had not had their cattle immunized against rinderpest to pay a fine. Vaccinations against rinderpest, however, were administered during a different time of year and called for a different vaccine than the one Binka had just completed. In addition, it was not official policy for sub-chiefs to deal with immunization delinquency on their own. Usually when a veterinary assistant found cattle that had not been immunized, he reported the problem to the veterinary officer or the district commissioner.52 Clearly, the Zegbeli Na sought to exploit what was likely a general lack of knowledge of the vaccination schedule among Konkomba. On September 5, Haruna and Musa arrived at Nyenbunpile and approached three Konkomba men—Larune, Nibala, and Kodile—and demanded that they forfeit one cow as a fine for failing to have their cattle immunized against rinderpest. The men did not challenge the fine; Kodile simply delivered the cow to the Zegbeli Na without protest. Soon after, Haruna and Musa returned to Nyenbunpile to inform the men that one cow was not sufficient. They insisted that the Zegbeli Na now demanded that the cow be replaced with a bull, and if the Konkomba men failed to comply, the na would report them to the district commissioner. A bull was obviously of significantly greater value than a cow, so to have lost a bull would have been a considerable financial setback for the owner. It is, therefore, not surprising that Kodile and his kinsmen stood their ground and refused to comply with what was purported to be the Zegbeli Na’s fine. A brief fight erupted between the three men and the na’s messengers but it was quickly broken up and the Dagomba men quickly made their way out of the village. But as they rushed along the path to Jagbel, some Konkomba arrows shot from the bush narrowly missed them. The Konkomba in Nyenbunpile had stood their ground, but experience had apparently taught them to assume that the district commissioner and the Zegbeli Na would punish them as a result of it. In response to this dilemma they acted in common Konkomba fashion and demonstrated to the Dagomba men that they were willing to defend themselves. On Friday, September 6, the Zegbeli Na sent a message to the district commissioner in Yendi that Konkomba had attacked two of the

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na’s messengers. In keeping with their political practice of bolstering Dagomba authority by any means, the district commissioner requested that the Zegbeli Na investigate the incident and make any necessary arrests. On September 9, four days after the incident, Constable Bukari Kanjara arrived at Kodile’s compound with the Wulana, the na’s principal assistant, and 11 other Dagomba men. They clearly meant to make a show of Dagomba strength. Yet in their preparations the Dagomba had not considered the possibility that the Konkomba would also prepare to present a show of strength. Before the Dagomba entourage reached Nyenbunpile a large party of Konkomba confronted them, forcing the Dagomba to make a hasty retreat to Jagbel without carrying out their mission. In the days that followed, the Konkomba sent word to fellow clansmen to join them for an attack on Jagbel, and on Tuesday, September 10, the Konkomba who had responded to the call for assistance gathered at Nyenbunpile.53 The Konkomba force gathered under the leadership of Jangbugja, one of Kodile’s relatives and a man of great influence among Konkomba in the area. This was an unprecedented gathering in the colonial history of the Northern Territories. There is no evidence of a noncentralized group organizing in such a way to attack members of a centralized polity. As the group advanced toward Jagbel, a large section broke away to surround the village and prevent any of its residents from escaping, while the main body advanced toward the Zegbeli Na’s compound. As they did so, the na must have spotted them. Before the Konkomba made a move against him, he tried to run out of his compound and away from the village. But his attempt to escape was futile and only created a more dramatic scene. Before he managed to run more than several yards from his compound, a Konkomba arrow struck him down. Jangbugja and his fellow Konkomba focused solely on the Zegbeli Na; some members of his family; and Bukari Kanjara, his constable. They allowed all other residents to escape. Yet as the remaining Dagomba fled Jagbel, the Konkomba burned down most its compounds. By 1940 most Konkomba were well aware that all violent incidents caught the attention of the Yendi district commissioner. Jangbugja and his comrades would have also been familiar with the usual British responses: burning compounds and crops, arrests, fines, et cetera. Furthermore, as was their wont British officials accepted the Dagomba narrative of the attack. However, their version omitted that the Zegbeli Na attempted to unjustifiably confiscate Kodile’s cow and bull. In fact, the Zegbeli Na’s role in the affair had been completely sanitized, which led the British to believe wrongly that the Konkomba

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attacked Jagbel because they were angry that the veterinary officers had interfered in Konkomba affairs. This version spread throughout Dagbon and Kekpakpaan and angered many Dagomba and caused nas to fear that they may suffer the same fate as the Zegbeli Na.54 Konkomba were more concerned about the British response to the attack. Jangbugja fled south toward Bimbilla and was never captured. In the end, approximately 20 people were either dead or injured; there was no record of any Konkomba casualties.55 However, many Konkomba would be arrested in the British administration’s aggressive response. Indeed, the government expressed an extreme sense of dismay and was at an apparent loss as to what had inspired the Konkomba to carry out the attack on Jagbel. In his report, Chief Commissioner Jones described the events as he envisioned them: “My description of the scene at [Jagbel] does not; I fear, convey a true idea of the hideousness of the crime; its frightfulness and barbarity could not be exceeded.” According to his rendering of the scene, “Defenseless people, innocent of any wrong to the Konkomba, were pursued and shot while trying to escape . . . The Konkomba truly reverted to a state of savagery. For twenty-five years they have been a festering sore on an otherwise healthy administrative body.”56 On October 8, 1940, Jones and Governor Arnold Hodgson (1934–1941) announced a series of tactics to strengthen British control over Konkomba areas and prevent future disturbances. These initiatives, and those that followed over the next seven years, evolved into a formal “Konkomba Policy”, a new program to end Konkomba feuds and future attacks against Dagomba. As part of one of the first measures, Jones enacted the Peace and Preservation Ordinance, which outlawed bows and arrows in specific Konkomba areas. More significant than the new ban on bows and arrows was that Jones placed the Dagomba Native Authority in charge of enforcing it, which empowered Dagomba nas to essentially adjudicate Konkomba at will by merely declaring them in violation of the ordinance. Possible punishments for carrying bows and arrows included imprisonment “for a term not exceeding three months or a fine not exceeding two hundred shillings.”57 By the first week of November 1940, constables had seized and destroyed a total of 4,600 bows and quivers. An additional result of increased policing in Kekpakpaan was the arrest of 47 Konkomba accused of participating in the attack on Jagbel. The administration’s “progress” against Konkomba brought out British officials’ perennial misunderstanding of the relationship

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between Konkomba and Dagomba. Echoing the standard misreading of the local political terrain that was typical of his predecessors, Chief Commissioner Jones boasted, “The action agreed upon and already partially taken will, I am convinced, result in the pacification of the Konkomba country. They are now learning the futility and the unpleasant consequences of flouting authority and taking the law into their own hands.”58 Despite decades of experience among Konkomba, the British remained confident that changing Konkomba and ultimately peacefully incorporating them under Dagomba political authority was a matter of moral suasion combined with punishment meted out against Konkomba resistance. Ultimately, however, Konkomba would determine the nature of their incorporation, and it would not happen for fear of British punishment but rather out of recognition among Konkomba leaders that working with the imposed political structure offered the most viable means for them to protect their social and political interests. In the meantime, the government’s response to the Konkomba attack on Jagbel further marginalized the Konkomba and rendered those who lived near Dagomba outposts vulnerable to exploitation by the nas. At the same time, it fostered a sense of common cause among many formerly fractious Konkomba clans. Meanwhile, a greater police presence in Konkomba areas brought the British more deeply into the day-to-day lives of the Konkomba. Previously, Konkomba would have tried to avoid such close contact with British officials. Konkomba leaders had begun to recognize, however, that there were clear advantageous to direct interaction with British officials as opposed to the Dagomba nas serving as official representatives for Konkomba. The British came to a similar conclusion and decided to establish a police substation in a Konkomba village to allow them to have more direct control of events in Kekpakpaan. The administration faced the challenge of deciding the best location to station the police. For the previous quarter century, British officials regarded Konkomba as a distinct group, but addressed them from a strategic standpoint as individual clans, subclans, and villages through corresponding Dagomba nas. The British intention to bring a more tangible colonial presence to Kekpakpaan, with the police substation, marks the first example of them beginning to conceive of Kekpakpaan as a political space. After much deliberation, British officials decided that Saboba was the best location for a police substation. Saboba, with a population of approximately 629 in 1931, was not the largest Konkomba village.59 Sambuli’s population during the same period was approximately 936 and growing.60 But British officials were attracted to Saboba’s location

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in the geographical heart of Kekpakpaan. It was also a village that they could reach easily from Yendi. While the district and regional commissioners made tweaks to the local administration to better enforce law and order in Kekpakpaan, the director of Veterinary Services continued to investigate the cause of the Konkomba attack on Jagbel. He was the first British official to present conclusive evidence that Dagomba political malpractice, not Konkomba grievances against Veterinary Services, sparked the Konkomba attack. His findings undermined Chief Commissioner Jones’s strong statements that the attack was simply more evidence of Konkombas’ natural inclination for thoughtless violence against Dagomba. The director had been suspicious of Dagomba versions of events and was particularly disturbed that they placed his office and the conduct of his employees at the center of the events leading to the attack. He pointed to the fact that Veterinary Services had developed an amicable relationship with Konkomba clans over the previous decade and that the record of this relationship contradicted the theory that Konkomba had somehow been angered by government agents interfering with their cattle. The director further explained that since 1932 when Veterinary Service began to immunize Konkomba cattle it had worked vigorously to educate Konkomba cattle owners on the purpose of immunization and as a consequence had gained their trust and cooperation. Therefore, he argued that it was unlikely that Veterinary Services’ visits to Konkomba near Jagbel would have angered them.61 Early on in their investigation, the district and regional commissioners believed that the Konkomba had not allowed Veterinary Services to carry out its vaccination work.62 But the director’s investigation proved that Veterinary Services had been able to do so “with all possible help from the owners, which is not surprising as the annual visit of the pleura-pneumonia vaccination unit is routine.”63 He surmised that what the Konkomba resented was not the Zegbeli Na’s assistance to the government during cattle inoculations, but the Zegbeli Na’s own unwarranted punitive measures and his general abuse of his position. As the director explained, “My experience and that of my staff is that the only people who are not well received are the Dagomba overlords and their servants. The Dagomba regard the Konkomba as serfs, as beasts of burden to catch all the Dagomba cattle at immunization camps and if possible, to be exploited.” He corrected earlier conclusions drawn by British officials with regard to the alleged subhuman disposition of the Konkomba with his own observations. “I do not think that the Zegbeli riot is an isolated incident

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caused by the innate savagery of the Konkomba,” he argued, “but that it, the 1939 Kugnau trouble, and other cases, are part of a coherent whole, of a smoldering resentment against the Dagomba, which blazes into sudden flame after long provocation. The numerous Konkomba emigrants from this very area, who settle in Nanumba, Gonja and Krachi, appear to lose suddenly their vicious savagery and it seems to be exhibited only in Dagomba.”64 The director advocated that the administration improve its relationship with Konkomba clans by changing its policy to more peacefully bring Konkomba clans under government control through a Native Administration school for Konkomba, which might “yield more benign results than a dozen police patrols.”65 Indeed, although Dagomba lives were lost and many Konkomba were turned into exiles, while others languished in British jails at Tamale and Yendi, there was a positive outcome, from a Konkomba perspective, to the attack on Jagbel. It forced the British to take a serious look at Konkomba, their political situation, and their relationships with Dagomba. A palpable expression of this new outlook was a restructured policy toward the Konkomba. Another, more lasting product of this affair was an emerging Konkomba political consciousness, first demonstrated in the efforts of Kpalbor Djar to create a multi-clan Konkomba council and the Konkomba support that he received. After the attack on Jagbel and British plans to pursue the initial “Konkomba Policy,” British officials had no choice but to develop a new approach to incorporating Konkomba clans into the colonial social and political structure based on a direct assessment of the Dagomba-Konkomba relationship and existing Konkomba political practices. The British focus on chieftaincy had prevented officials from seriously considering councils as an alternative to chiefs. During the three decades of British rule over Konkomba clans until 1945, colonial officials excluded Konkomba from local politics because British perceived Konkomba as lacking tradition, custom, and chieftaincy. While the British successfully marginalized Konkomba politically, they failed to effectively bring them under colonial rule as subjects of Dagomba political power. Beginning in 1945, in the aftermath of Jagbel, the British altered their tactics. Konkomba made more aggressive efforts to represent their interests to the colonial administration, and for several years the British exhibited a willingness to grant Konkomba increased political power as long as Konkomba leaders adopted significant aspects of centralized polities’ political traditions. British officials had not reevaluated Konkomba political status and concluded that they possessed viable political traditions. Rather,

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political exclusion and Konkomba resistance proved to be too great a hindrance to political stability. So, for a brief period, the British encouraged Konkomba efforts to gain political legitimacy and appropriateDagomba political symbols and practices. Ultimately, however, British officials would return to their practice of excluding Konkomba, because Konkomba political legitimacy necessarily meant reducing the stature and authority of local Dagomba nas. This period of great British political experimentation among Konkomba and Dagomba remains significant because it highlights the emerging Konkomba leadership’s growing understanding of political tactics that would enable them to gain greater access to political resources and promote Konkomba unity.

Early Konkomba Politics Previously, the Demon Na officially exercised authority over the relatively large Konkomba villages of Kpalba, Kuntuli, Chagbaan, Sambuli, Kugnau, Kuncha, and Butun, as well as several smaller Konkomba villages, as part of the Demon Sub-Native Authority. In 1948, Kpalba’s population was approximately 428. Kuntuli, the smallest of these villages, had a population of 117, while Sambuli, the largest, had a population of 964.66 In all, Demon Na Mahama had formal authority over a predominantly Konkomba population of more than 2,000 people.67 Yet consistent Konkomba resistance to Mahama’s authority prevented him from fully exercising the authority that the British bestowed upon him, including collecting taxes within Konkomba villages and hamlets. Djar stepped in to fill this void, which precipitated an intense rivalry between the two men. Djar was the Kpalbor, or Konkomba headman of Kpalba, and the principal Konkomba proponent of reforms for local politics in the aftermath of the Jagbel affair. His prominence among Konkomba in the 1940s and 1950s grew largely from him successfully undermining Demon Na Mahama’s authority. Mahama was apparently as unpopular with the district commissioner as he was among Konkomba. By challenging Mamaha, Djar increased his stature among Konkomba beyond Kpalba, even among the Konkomba villages that in the past had feuded with Kpalba. Ultimately Djar’s brief success as the first Konkomba to lead a multi-clan alliance and represent its interests to the district commissioner came from his support among Konkomba, but he benefited also from the support from the Ya Na. Djar also benefitted from the fact that the Konkomba attack on Jagbel and its aftermath left British officials more sensitive to Dagomba

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nas’ abuses of power and unusually open to alternative political arrangements that excluded Dagomba. Increased political flexibility among British officials and the Demon Na’s unpopularity presented Konkomba with a unique opportunity to work within the political channels that the British imposed to advance their political interests. Indeed, the aggressive police response that the British launched in the aftermath of Jagbel had inspired many Konkomba to begin to think in terms of “Konkomba” political interests, as opposed to the more common lineage- and subclan-centered political orientation. It was within this evolving political atmosphere that in March 1945 a group of uninkpel from Kpalba and neighboring Bimokpem villages formed a council of headmen led by Djar that lobbied the Ya Na to formally recognize Djar as na of Kpalba, independent of the Demon Na’s authority.68 The Ya Na honored their request and formally “enskinned,” or instituted, Djar as the first Konkomba na. Djar, at least for the time, had brought a group of Konkomba villages into the Dagomba tribe, but not as subordinates to local Dagomba nas as the British intended. The attack on Jagbel and the consistent lack of authority that Dagomba nas revealed in relation to Konkomba had provided Djar with the leverage to advance the newly formed Konkomba political cause. It was not altruism that opened the Ya Na to such an unprecedented political arrangement. By supporting the council’s request, he gained the loyalty of a potentially volatile Konkomba constituency at a particularly tense moment in relations between Konkomba, Dagomba, and the colonial administration. Moreover, Djar and the Konkomba council depended upon the Ya Na. It is likely that the council would have sought to represent their own interests without the Ya Na’s blessing, but doing so would have brought them into conflict with him and his divisional nas. The question remains, why did the council need the Ya Na to enskin Djar? For what reasons did they not designate Djar as their chief independent of the Ya Na’s authority? It seems that the uninkpel performed a shrewd and clear-eyed assessment of their political options and determined that it was best to work within the established political structure as opposed to against it, and without the Ya Na’s blessing the uninkpel could not get the necessary support of the district commissioner. Indeed, with the Ya Na’s support, Djar lobbied the British administration to sanction the Konkomba council as the political and legal authority within Konkomba areas formerly under the Demon Na’s jurisdiction. Djar and his council traveled to Yendi on March 24, 1945, to meet the district commissioner. Djar expressed to the district commissioner that he recognized the Ya Na’s suzerainty, made his case

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against the Demon Na, and described how aggressively the Demon Na behaved toward Konkomba. He explained that the Demon Na had consistently oppressed the Konkomba and that he alone had been able to collect Konkomba taxes from the Bimopkem and Kpalbtiib for the previous two years. Considering the lack of benefits that Demon Na Mahama brought to Konkomba and the colonial administration, Djar asked that the district commissioner support the council of utindaan and uninkpel of the various disaffected Konkomba villages to serve as the local political authority in place of the Demon Na.69 Historically, among Konkomba there was no political structure beyond the clan. Djar actively worked to bring one factious clan, Bimopkem, under the leadership of the ubor of a neighboring, formerly rival clan, the Kpalbtiib. From the British standpoint, this was an attractive proposal for its potential to stand as a model for the Bichabob, Binafieb, and other Konkomba clans of the Oti plain to form similar councils and finally make indirect rule among them possible. With some hesitation the district commissioner agreed to allow the council to operate on a six-month trial basis,70 which he formally announced, despite the Demon Na’s objections on March 27. These political developments marked the beginning of a period of rapid transformation among Konkomba. The Bimopkem and the Kpalbtiib were the first clans to work together toward the common goal of political autonomy. The British had established Dagomba chieftaincy as the political model for political legitimacy, so it is not surprising that in their quest for political gains Konkomba looked to the Dagomba as the local standard for political tradition. There was no precedent for chieftaincy among Konkomba as it existed among Dagomba. There was no protocol for the ways in which Djar was to intervene in local affairs and have his authority upheld, recognized, and broadened. Djar and other prominent ubor went beyond the shift from looking within Konkomba society and their internal conflicts and alliances to define Konkomba political interests and political consciousness. Konkomba leaders gradually embraced a political agenda that referenced neighboring non-Konkomba societies. To gain a position from which to fully assert authority as the first officially recognized Konkomba chief, Djar embraced the regalia and comportment of a Dagomba na. So much so that when David Tait visited Kpalba in the 1950s he noted that Djar lived to some extent like a Dagomba na, with a horse—which was very rare among the Konkomba—and medicines prepared and sold by Dagomba mallams on his clothing.71 Djar’s embrace of a Dagomba chieftaincy model as a means to exercise political authority demonstrates the continuously

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evolving nature of ethnic characteristics, boundaries, and the factors that influence an individual or group to appropriate outside groups’ political and cultural symbols. Djar did not mean to be taken for a Dagomba na. He simply wanted to be recognized with the same respect and to be seen as possessing equal authority as a Dagomba na. Djar represents a significant step in the development of a Konkomba political consciousness and in changing the British perspective toward the Konkomba. It was rare for an individual Konkomba to challenge a Dagomba na and get away with it, and it was unheard of for him to do it continually. What is apparent about Konkomba political activism, unity, and consciousness as it developed and evolved during this period is that it was almost wholly in response to Konkomba perceptions of Dagomba exploitation and oppression. It was not an organic Konkomba political awakening. Rather, “Konkomba” political and ethnic consciousness developed as a means to protect their interests under specific political circumstances. Therefore, as the Demon Na’s authority waned so did Djar’s basis for acting as a spokesman and leader among the Bimokpem. His legitimacy among Konkomba extended from his ability to check the Demon Na’s political power. Djar did not possess the same symbolic and internal social significance that Dagomba nas carried among Dagomba. Djar’s influence among Kpalbtiib continued well into the 1970s, and he sustained an active rivalry with Mahama, but he failed to evolve into an overall force for change over a broad Konkomba coalition. The true force for change would emerge in the 1950s when the first generation of Konkomba to enroll in schools began to join the class of Gold Coast civil servants. In the meantime, the British administration took on the project of creating a Konkomba council, which ultimately proved to be short lived. Djar was present on July 3, 1946, when A.W. Davis, the Yendi district commissioner, held a meeting with the Ya Na, Sunson Na, and Demon Na regarding the administration’s plans for future Konkomba political development and autonomy. Davis had been sincerely influenced by the administration’s misreading of the Konkomba attack on Jagbel and was inspired by the political precedent that Djar set and its potential to promote more active Konkomba involvement in native administration. Toward that end, the regional and district commissioners prepared to devote considerable energy to resolve, once and for all, the conflict-ridden political relationship between Dagomba and Konkomba. Two months later, Acting Chief Commissioner Guthrie Hall—who temporarily served in place of Chief Commissioner W.H. Ingrams (1946–1948)—formally announced a change in the colonial

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administration’s policy toward Konkomba. In a letter to the colonial secretary, Hall acknowledged that the British strategy for pacifying the Konkomba through force had failed and had subjected Konkomba to Dagomba exploitation. To confront the existing political challenge, Hall announced the appointment of James Anderson as the first assistant district commissioner for Yendi, to be stationed in Saboba.72 In light of the previous 30 years of relations between the Konkomba and the British colonial administration, creating a Konkomba subdistrict was a significant event. It made it possible for more direct communication between the British administration and Konkomba. Hall declared that the government’s new program of direct engagement would bring peace and stability to Konkomba country by fostering a sense of responsibility and gradually building a local government. An unforeseen consequence to the government’s plan, one that ultimately benefited Konkomba, was that the subdistrict further defined Saboba as a common Konkomba political space. It fostered a sense of shared social, political, and economic interests among Konkomba as they began to see this “Konkomba” space in relation to other “ethnic spaces” in the region. This was, therefore, a critical turning point in Konkomba political history. On February 18, 1947, several months after Hall announced the Konkomba subdistrict, Davis convened a meeting in Saboba to inaugurate its opening and formally make peace with the Konkomba of the Oti plain.73 In his diary, Davis described the reception that greeted the chief commissioner upon his arrival in Saboba and the speech he delivered to chart a new course in Konkomba-British relations. At about 9:30 A.M., the chief commissioner arrived in a car, “moving at less than walking pace and surrounded by the leaping, capering, shouting forms of Konkomba warriors, beating drums and brandishing horns, flutes and all kinds of stringed instruments. This tumultuous crowd escorted His Honor to the market place where, with surprising discipline under the circumstances, it fell silent while the police Guard of Honor was inspected and the assembled chiefs were greeted.”74 In his speech, Hall addressed many of the issues that had come to light following the attack on Jagbel seven years earlier. He declared that the time had come for the Konkomba to rule themselves and realize that the government was, as he put it, “a friend and helper as well as a stern supporter of law and order.” Hall defended the government’s past treatment of Konkomba with the rather dubious excuse that Konkomba spoke a language that was difficult to understand and entirely different from Dagbani. Yet he insisted that Assistant

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Commissioner Anderson would begin to reconcile the troubled state of Konkomba affairs with the aid of an interpreter. Hall expressed hope that Anderson would encourage more children to attend school so that in a few years the children would be speaking English and help bring the Konkomba people into closer contact with the world outside.75 At the root of poor relations between Konkomba and the colonial government, then, was not British failure to reconcile the political inequality within the structures they imposed on local society but a great misunderstanding due to Konkomba inability to communicate effectively in both Dagbani and English. The solution for Hall, therefore, was for Konkomba to learn English. Other administrators had similarly simplistic and outrageous solutions to the Dagomba-Konkomba conundrum. Chief Commissioner Ingram, for example, thought it best to avoid developing a new policy for Konkomba and focus instead on relocating Konkomba south of Kekpakpaan. Indeed, during the final decade of British rule, 1947– 1957, Saboba grew as the center of Konkomba political development even as Konkomba migrated southward in increasing numbers to farm and work. In a letter to the colonial secretary from June 1947, Ingram argued that relocating Konkomba would relieve the colonial government of a significant political challenge. “I am firmly of the opinion,” he wrote, “that quite the best policy with the Konkomba is to drop the present antiquarian research and attempts to build yet another Alice in Wonderland constitution, and encourage the natural movement of the Konkombas to other areas. It may well be also that in other areas they will adopt the language of their neighbors and thus reduce one of the babel tongues in the Northern Territories.”76 Indeed by the mid-1940s Konkomba migration southward had rapidly increased. Fairly large Konkomba populations had emerged in Krachi, Salaga, Bimbilla, and other areas south of the Volta basin. Nonetheless, the majority of Konkomba remained in Kekpakpaan. Fortunately, Anderson arrived in Saboba with a more ambitious and Konkomba-friendly program for Konkomba political development. In the months following Hall’s speech Anderson proved himself to be an assiduous commissioner. As he learned more about the Konkomba and their relationship with the administration, he realized the importance of creating a political base for them in the Saboba Subdistrict that would mediate their relationship with the colonial government regardless of whether they resided in the subdistrict. He became a particularly strong advocate for creating a Konkomba council that would gradually take on administrative responsibilities along the lines of the Native Administration system.

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The Saboba Subdistrict included the boundaries of the three Dagomba subdivisions on the Oti plain, Sunson, Demon, and Kunkon, which had the largest solidly Konkomba populations in the Yendi District. Other predominately Konkomba areas included Nambir, but it was originally excluded for the convenience of administration, because under the Dagomba system, it owed direct allegiance to the Ya Na rather than the Sunson Na or the Demon Na. The challenge before Anderson was how to bring the various subclans of the subdistrict together as councils. Anderson considered three possibilities. One would preserve the political power of the nas in Kekpakpaan, while it used a council of Konkomba elders to act purely in an advisory role. The second would replace the nas with an all-Konkomba council that possessed full judicial, administrative, and executive authority over the subdistrict from Saboba.77 The third consideration was to combine these first two forms because, as Anderson explained, it seemed most practical to make use of the nas’ administrative experience. Anderson offers yet another example of British officials’ apparently willful blindness to the lessons of their own experience for the sake of political convenience. He was thoroughly briefed on the relationship between Konkomba and Dagomba and therefore was surely aware that the nas had been anything but effective administrators. Apparently Anderson suffered from the same prejudice that plagued most British administrators and led them to favor chiefs. He wrote a memo regarding the new Konkomba policy in which he asked, “Would it not be better to preserve the Dagomba chiefs for the present because of their immediate usefulness in this line? In due course, this argument runs, as a more favorable situation developed, the functions in question, as with the other administrative functions, could be relegated to Konkomba brought into the chief’s council, while the chief himself would become more and more merely a nominal figurehead.”78 Ironically, while he presented this proposal he revealed a schitzaphrenia toward Dagomba authority. He extolled their usefulness while lamenting their incompetence and corruption. Anderson in fact stated that one of the most attractive features of a Konkomba council would be that it would free the Konkomba of the Dagombas’ corrupt practices: “In no aspect of government have the Dagombas shown up worse than in their courts, where, in a suit between a Dagomba and a Konkomba, the former can almost always be certain of getting the judgment, whatever the true facts of the case.”79 Despite this belief, Anderson and other British officials continued to favor Dagomba authority over Konkomba clans. Their consistent support

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of the centralized polities continually forced the Konkomba back to the political margins whenever they seemed to begin to gain a political voice. Soon after ideas for a Konkomba council had begun to take shape on paper, the administration abandoned it and other projects slated for Konkomba areas, because doing so would have called for increased political and economic investment in Konkomba areas, which the government was not willing to provide. There was also disagreement among some administrators on the effectiveness of a Konkomba council. Meanwhile, Anderson feared that the administration’s rather quick change of course would destroy the trust that the Konkomba had begun to show in him. “I was very distressed to hear that all of the Konkomba capital works had been cancelled,” he said. “I don’t know how I will explain to the Konkomba that all my talk about their taxes being at last about to produce results was just ballyhoo. Surely, in view of the above, the Konkomba works should be included with those others which are being allowed to go forward. They do not amount to more than two hundred pounds and some are of considerable importance. But their main importance is that they represent Konkomba tax being spent in KONKOMBA, a principle which I would say should override all considerations.”80 In the months that followed, the government pursued alternatives to Konkomba political development, including plans to station an elder from Sunson in Saboba to represent Konkomba interests to the administration. When the district commissioner resumed the practice of occasionally touring Konkomba areas accompanied by the Sunson Na, it raised concerns among Konkomba, which, not surprisingly, left the Uchabobor, or ubor of Saboba, particularly concerned. His authority had increased dramatically during the 1940s as Saboba became the site for the police substation and then the administrative center for the subdistrict. In the early years of British rule over Kekpakpaan, officials placed Saboba in the Sunson Na’s jurisdiction. Since Saboba was a considerable distance from Sunson, the Bichabob rarely felt the Sunson Na’s political influence directly nor the need to acknowledge his authority. Placing a Dagomba elder in Saboba the colonial government not only resumed its failed policy with regard to the Konkomba of the Oti plain, but brought an unprecedented Dagomba political presence to the Bichabob. On January 27, 1947, the Uchabobor went with uninkpel of lineages and hamlets in and around Saboba to protest to Assistant Commissioner Anderson the administration’s plan to settle representatives of the Sunson Na in Saboba. Anderson explained to the

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Uchabobor that the subdistrict needed a central authority. To which the Uchabobor stood up and declared that all other headmen in Saboba recognized him as the central authority, which left Anderson incredulous. The following day he met again with the headmen of the surrounding villages and hamlets to allow the Uchabobor the opportunity to repeat his claim in the presence of those over whom he claimed authority, which he did and the others confirmed that it was true.81 The biborb clearly understood what was at stake. They recognized that closing ranks and recognizing the Uchabobor’s local authority would make it difficult for Anderson to justify stationing a representative of the Sunson Na in Saboba. Once again, the threat of British-imposed Dagomba political authority fostered Konkomba unity. There is evidence that the Uchabobor had been a significant political authority among the Bichabob. Yet events among Konkomba since 1928 when the British imposed formal indirect rule policies allowed Konkomba leaders to recognize the advantages that centralized authorities provided for their societies. The support for a central political authority among communities with no political history with the Uchabobor, as was the case for the relationship between Bimokpem and Djar, reflects changes in Konkomba political consciousness. Konkomba were beginning to show signs of buying into the notion of the political indispensability of chieftaincy. While they continued to undermine Dagomba nas’ authority, their own political system evolved toward accepting their own chieftaincy system. Anderson seems to have recognized what was taking place among the Bichabob and had sufficient appreciation for the history of Konkomba-Dagomba relations under British rule to want to avoid generating a conflict between Konkomba and a Dagomba na. British policy was built on the premise that Dagomba had conquered and ruled neighboring noncentralized societies, but British officials admitted that this narrative exaggerates actual precolonial political relationships. In a 1948 report on the influence of the European presence on the people of the Northern Territories, G.N.E. Charles described precolonial centralized polities as having little success controlling neighboring communities even though they claimed success to Europeans at the start of colonial rule. “In these claims the Administration supported them” wrote Charles. “We supported a decadent people, against less organized but nonetheless virile ones. That we had no alternative would be agreed by most, but it is as well to keep the fact in mind in judging subsequent developments.” Charles did not advocate a change in policy but rather a change in practice to

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better assess claims of custom and their implications. “The claims of native custom,” he said, “are constantly urged as reasons for maintaining the status quo, but I fancy that many people tend to lose sight of the fact that native custom in a primitive community is constantly changing.”82 Meanwhile, the colonial administration continued to recognize Dagomba nas’ political authority in Kekpakpaan. The Ya Na’s authority was a particularly potent way to exploit Konkomba. In the 1950s, for example, Tait described an incident in which the Yendi district commissioner’s court fined the Ya Na, who, in turn, sent his representatives to Saboba in two lorries to collect sorghum from Konkomba farmers by declaring, “The European says it has got to be paid.” In another example, Dagomba stopped a group of Konkomba on their way to Yendi and confiscated their load of yams on the grounds that “they had not paid tribute to the Ya Na.”83 These and other cases demonstrate that Dagomba authority over Konkomba had grown under indirect rule, even as an ethnic-based political consciousness was evolving among Konkomba.

Conclusion The attack on Jagbel was a consequence, in part, of British policies that aimed to maintain local political control, which effectively concretized colonial constructs of Konkomba as a traditionless and consequently disfranchised community. While the British influenced social and political change among Africans, their goal was to sustain a political framework that defined each group’s legal status and its relationships with others as static. The attack on Jagbel represents the more blatant form of Konkomba rejection of the status quo, but the politics that emerged in the aftermath foreshadowed Konkomba acceptance of the existing power paradigms in which political legitimacy was predicated on the possession of a particular type of “tradition.” Instead of reforming the local political structures away from an emphasis on tradition, custom, and chieftaincy as markers of political status, the British administration upheld the chieftaincy-centered political structures that had fomented Konkomba frustration. Similarly, Konkomba leaders adopted the most readily available and widely recognized symbols of power to advance their interests and promote social and political change. Konkomba politics developed as the British colonial administration created district councils and the Northern Territorial Council as a means to promote greater selfgovernment for the north and political equality between the districts.

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The British also hoped that these political initiatives would help develop the north and Ashanti to bring their economic and political practices in-line with the Gold Coast Colony. The fear was the more politically conscious political leaders of the Cold Coast would dominate Ashanti and the Northern Territories. In Lord Hailey’s 1941 report on the Gold Coast, he said that there was “a feeling in favor of some measure, which will allow Ashanti and the Northern Territories to maintain their identity.”84 The British established the Northern Territorial Council in 1946 to “meet from time to time for the purpose of deliberating upon matters affecting the welfare and interest of persons in the Northern Territories.”85 In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said notes that there was always some form of resistance to the Western intrusion into the nonWestern world. “Never was it the case,” he argues, “that the imperial encounter pitted an active Western intruder against a supine or inert non-Western native.”86 Indeed, resistance was a defining feature of the colonial experience; yet it consisted of more than challenges to European political and military intrusions. European colonial rule imposed a pervasive power that forced Africans to respond in variety of ways. Surely, there were those who mounted direct challenges to overt European power. Others might cooperate with the European power in some fashion to protect their interests. Colonial resistance was not limited to subjugated Africans challenging European power. The most dynamic resistance occurred within local societies, as Africans challenged the political authority and legitimacy of their African neighbors and developed ways to more effectively compete with them economically and politically. Konkomba are evidence of this historical reality. Until the 1950s when a Western-educated leadership began organizing efforts among Konkomba, their resistance belonged to “the realm of spontaneity,” making it consistent with peasant politics of the colonial period elsewhere in the world.87 Yet the primary focus of their resistance was their Dagomba neighbors. In the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast between 1921 and 1951 Konkomba challenges to Dagomba political power and the social and political change among Konkomba that accompanied Konkomba subversion illustrate the significance of inter-African relations for understanding the nature of power and authority under European colonial rule. It was a common feature of peasant resistance that it was misread by those in power. Peasant insurgency was difficult to read because it inverted, at least temporarily, the dominant power relations. In the act of such resistance it was also common for insurgents to destroy signs of power.88 In the raid on Jagbel, the

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Konkomba destroyed the Zegbeli Na’s compound and took his life. This raid and Djar’s efforts to replace the Demon Na in the wake of the British response illustrates two of Ranajit Guha’s six “elementary aspects” of the insurgent peasant consciousness.89 While indirect rule among Dagomba during the 1930s and 1940s strengthened their chiefs’ capacity to dominate Konkomba politically and economically, the events of the period allowed Konkomba leaders to recognize the benefits of ethnic unity and strong political authority. These events marked a turning point in the relationship between Konkomba, Dagomba nas, and the British. Konkomba leaders began to fashion a Konkomba political identity that centered on Konkomba unity and challenging Dagomba exploitation and political power. The British gradually confronted the realities of the relationship between the Dagomba and Konkomba to carve greater political autonomy for the latter, which set the stage for increased Konkomba political developments in the early postindependence period. The significance of Jagbel is, therefore, not so much in the details of the actual attack but in the behavior of the groups involved— Dagomba, British, and the Konkomba—in its aftermath. This was a moment in which Konkomba and Dagomba might have achieved political solidarity. Konkomba leaders moved toward achieving political unity and ultimately autonomy by working through the political structures that the British had imposed on local society. This tactic included seeking the Ya Na’s approval for social and political change. The continuation of cooperation might have allowed a Konkomba leadership to develop alongside Dagomba and leaders from other historically centralized polities to emerge as a truly inclusive regional movement in the years leading to Ghana’s 1957 independence. Instead, during the 1950s the British enforced Dagomba authority over Konkomba villages, which paved the way for a highly politicized ethnicity marking the political boundaries between Konkomba leaders and their neighbors. Konkomba ethnic identity evolved out of political necessity. The emphasis on political representation and unity as part of the content of Konkomba ethnicity shows it to have been influenced by the prevailing discourse on power and authority but rejecting of the notion that tradition is static and the sole preserve of a particular community.

Chapter

4

“ D ow n w i t h B l a c k I m p e r i a l i s m i n t h e N o r t h ! ” — E d u c at i o n , L o c a l Po l i t i c s, a n d S e l f - H e l p I n i t i at i v e s , 1 9 4 5 – 1 9 7 2

There are intellectual traditions throughout Sub-Saharan Africa that

resemble racism but are not built on ideas of biological distinctions. One does not naturally think of racism to describe relations among African societies in colonial and postcolonial Africa. Indeed, the inequality that was characteristic of the ethnic-based political hierarchy of local society during the colonial period falls short of a race-based system of social exclusion. Yet these hierarchies in their various manifestations throughout Sub-Saharan Africa were built on socially constructed cultural differences that the state and politically dominant communities deemed insurmountable. Popular perceptions of politically subordinate communities as lacking tradition and socially relevant political practices had far-reaching consequences for the ways in which the state, colonial and postcolonial, assigned access to and control over political and natural resources.1 Political exclusion has been institutionalized in Ghana through the Regional and National Houses of Chiefs, which rendered all but a few historically noncentralized communities subordinates to chief-centered societies. The government sanctioned the deliberate institutionalization of ethnic superiority that defined this new form of exclusion. Such discrimination was not unique to the postindependence experience in Ghana.2 The space that the colonial state allowed for culture and tradition provided greater political rights and state

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resources to communities that the state, as the British had during the previous period, deemed as being of a higher political status. These are seemingly insurmountable political challenges for disfranchised communities. What is noteworthy are the innovations and adaptations that local political actors employed to compete with neighboring groups economically and politically despite these obstacles and thereby contributed to the perpetuation of the political salience of ethnicity in defining political power, notions of belonging, and access to resources. This highly politicized form of ethnicity belongs to the same phenomenon that produced genocide and other forms of exterminatory violence elsewhere on the continent and was shaped by perceptions of ethnic categories that are, as Jonathan Glassman describes, “imagined as hierarchical strata, linked to one another in relationships that structure the entire society.”3 Ethnicity is not only the divisive legacy of European colonial rule. It is continually reinterpreted and constructed by local communities as a means to maintain positions of social dominance and to challenge them. Ethnicity remains as much a product of modern Ghanaian politics as it is a legacy of colonial rule. This chapter reconstructs the initiatives of the growing Westerneducated Konkomba leadership to use local and regional politics to assert Konkomba as politically legitimate during the closing years of British rule and the first two decades of Ghana’s independence. As perceived by their neighbors and the state, ethnicity marked Konkomba as chiefless, and devoid of tradition and custom. At the same time, ethnicity was the means through which Konkomba came together to challenge their subordinate status and force a reconsideration of Ghana’s social and political structure. Between 1945 and 1972 the Konkomba Western-educated leadership advocated ethnic consciousness and political and economic autonomy. This new leadership’s political agenda was shaped in the context of Dagomba political authority, Christian missionary activity among Konkomba, party politics, and independent Ghana’s oscillation between dictatorship and democracy. The Konkomba leadership embraced each of these as Konkomba evolved from a collection of disunited, politically fractious, and feuding clans to an ethnically conscious political and economic force, and a threat to the Northern Region’s social and political status quo. Konkomba leaders fought against this form of “racism without race” exercised by the state and the Northern Region’s historically dominant centralized polities, in a movement that challenged their political subordination but did not seek to undermine the social practices that disfranchised the chiefless and customless communities on society’s political margins. They did not advocate a paradigm shift but

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rather a broadening of the existing categories of legitimacy so that they might be included within it. Konkomba gradually transformed themselves to more closely resemble the social and political structures of their historically centralized and, from the state’s standpoint, politically legitimate neighbors. The state officially characterized noncentralized societies’ cultural and political practices as illegitimate within the extremely influential traditional sphere of Ghanaian politics. Among these groups, Konkomba mounted the most organized and aggressive response to their political exclusion, with a grass-roots campaign for political equality and economic autonomy. This campaign grew more aggressive as Konkomba became more organized. Confronting a political system that accepts cultural difference as a basis for political exclusion, Konkomba leaders appropriated cultural symbols that might allow them to transcend their traditional political status. At the same time, Konkomba leaders actively participated in local, district, and regional politics to protect Konkomba interests within the state political structure. Without a formal chieftaincy system, however, there were a host of rights and resources that tradition excluded from Konkomba. The Konkomba campaign advocated equality with their centralized neighbors despite the Konkomba social and political practices that the colonial state defined as markers of political illegitimacy. Within the Konkomba campaign leaders focused first on change among Konkomba. They sought to bring about social transformations intended to disassociate Konkomba from the practices that had come to define subordinate, mostly noncentralized, societies: chieflessness, economic dependence, internal conflict, and a lack of historical land claims. Yet there were limits to Konkomba leaders’ capacity to invent new political traditions. More than Konkomba culture, popular historical memory, the structure of local politics with its emphasis on chieftaincy, and the state’s support of chief-centered traditional politics made social inequality insurmountable, at least until the 1980s.

Education, Christianity, and Konkomba Leadership in the 1950s and 1960s In January 1945 Chief Commissioner Jones instructed J.A. Kaleem, the head teacher of Yendi Native Authority Primary School, to be more aggressive in his efforts to recruit Konkomba students. Jones was concerned that there were too few students overall in schools in the Northern Territories. The British colonial administration had an

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interest in increasing enrollment among northern communities as a means to better incorporate them into the colonial political structure and train the future staff for Native Authorities. Jones went so far as to set quotas for the number of new pupils that each district was to enroll and toured the districts with the district commissioners to assist in recruitment efforts. There was strong resistance to Westerneducation throughout the region, but Konkomba opposition was the most acute. Until the 1940s, few northerners enrolled their sons in colonial or mission schools. Exceptions were constables and servicemen whose jobs provided them with a sense of the social and economics benefits of Western education. A gradual increase in demand for education began in the 1920s but well into the 1940s district commissioners continued to have a very difficult time filling government schools’ classrooms with students. Meanwhile, the role of education in colonial affairs continued to be debated within the government. Gerald Power, who arrived in the Gold Coast in 1933 to serve as director of education, advocated that education be restricted to the ruling classes. Power was doubtful that more than a few Africans were truly capable of sufficiently benefiting from Western education. He also wanted to avoid the consequences of expanding access to education, so as not to confront the political activism that came with a broader and more aggressive education policy in the Gold Coast Colony and Ashanti.4 He argued that “the children of chiefs, of their official advisers, of village heads and of important local people should be chosen in sufficient numbers to allow for wastage and to provide a choice of children capable of education beyond the elementary stage.”5 What Power did not anticipate was that the spread of education in the Northern Territories would contribute to grass-roots activism among historically noncentralized societies aimed at northern chiefs. Particularly among Konkomba, this activism was forged in the colonial schools of the Northern Territories. The government’s education program had made little progress since 1908 when Chief Commissioner Alan Edward Watherston (1904–1910) first embarked on a tour of Dagomba villages to recruit pupils. At the time, nas feared that school would train their sons to become cooks, servants, and soldiers. In place of their children, the nas sent the sons of their slaves and servants. Watherston had to persuade the nas that there were benefits that their entire society would gain from educating their sons and that they would not be turned into servants.6 In late February 1945, after weeks in which he had little success filling the seats of Yendi Primary School with Konkomba students,

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Kaleem persuaded a group of Konkomba uninkpel to visit Yendi Primary School. Kaleem’s goal was to impress the uninkpel with the school’s educational and living facilities and convince them of the benefits that school would bring to their communities, but he faced a formidable challenge. While touring the school the uninkpel did indeed praise its accommodations and expressed appreciation for its goals as Kaleem explained them. However, according to Kaleem, one of the elders spoke for the group and dismissed any possibility that Konkomba would enroll boys in the school for the simple fact that Western education and way of life conflicted with Konkomba values. Kaleem quoted him as saying, We admit that the school is a good place, a home of wisdom where people can be taught how to think and act like “white people.” . . . That is all good and nice . . . . But we are afraid of one thing. We are inclined to think that such a soft life will weaken the strong blood of our children, and they will become soft like women. God has instilled a very warm blood in us, while in the majority of tribes “cold blood.” Therefore we believe in hard work, with streaming brows of sweat, nothing passive. Perhaps if our children are brought up in a way which is not befitting to our tribe and heritage, they will in the end, shirk to labour and moreover will be dissatisfied and uncontented with their home-lives, and will wander about seeking easy-lives abroad, in foreign countries and towns. And how can we account for this before our grandfathers, when we die to meet them in the underworld.7

Similar complaints were heard among Dagomba. In 1930, nas complained to District Commissioner Rutherford that when they sent their sons to school they did not return, which reduced their families’ farming capacity.8 While Konkomba initially resisted government efforts to force them to enroll in government schools, their leaders quickly began to perceive of Western education as a political asset. From the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, Konkomba went from active resistance to an enthusiastic embrace of Western education. By the mid-1950s a small but growing group of Western-educated Konkomba leaders had begun to redefine Konkomba as a community whose “warm blooded-ness” was tied to Konkomba’s hardworking nature and economic self-sufficiency. This redefined Konkomba image was part of Konkomba leaders’ rejection of the characteristics that the government and their neighbors tied to Konkomba and used to substantiate Konkomba political marginalization. The first generation of Konkomba leaders struggled to transform the label of political illegitimacy, which had deprived them of specific rights and resources. Social transformation and political power were the chief items on their

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political agenda. Part of the story of social change that they spearheaded was the speed with which the Konkomba responded to their leaders to effect social change. In 1949 most of the remote areas of the Northern Territories, beyond their larger villages, remained resistant to Western education, but Konkomba, for whom education had grown in importance, had rapidly become an exception.9 Dagomba political dominance and British colonial rule established Konkomba political subordination, but Western education, in concrete ways, fostered the Konkomba leadership’s capacity to effectively challenge this social framework. During the colonial period, the many instances of Konkomba resistance to Dagomba political authority were isolated and ad hoc. With the exception of Djar, there is no evidence of large meetings of Konkomba uninkpel of different subclans at any point during the colonial period to address the problems of British policies and Dagomba political dominance. Schools were the first consistent forums for young Konkomba to meet on neutral ground away from lineage and clan politics; away from, most importantly, the overwhelming control of uninkpel. The feuding that continued to shape internal politics in Kekpakpaan was of little significance among Konkomba students. Although clan and subclan identities were not entirely erased, among most students these localized notions of belonging were outweighed by their consciousness of being a Konkomba and a minority within the school.10 The historical primacy of clan and subclan affiliation among Konkomba did not weaken the bond that many students formed at Yendi Primary and Middle Schools, which the government had opened in 1937. A building ground for Konkomba leaders were the “tribal” meetings held at Yendi Primary School and in schools throughout the Northern Territories. These meetings were the genesis of many of the ethnic-based civic organizations that proliferated during the 1950s and 1960s.11 At Yendi Primary School, for example, students of the various communities met together each Friday at 2:00 P.M. and conducted activities or study sessions in their local language, and these gradually developed into formal gatherings.12 Konkomba students such as Isaac Bawa, Nakoja Namuel, Samson Mankron, and Budale Bikaem, joined later by others such as Daniel Neina Jobor, advised the younger students on academic performance, proper school etiquette, and Konkomba culture.13 The sons of ex-servicemen and policemen were disproportionately represented in the schools, a significant number of whom were raised outside of Kekpakpaan and were not necessarily fluent in Likpakpaln or familiar with Konkomba cultural practices. The school meetings provided a space and an opportunity

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for student leaders to teach Konkomba dances, songs, and other practices of general importance to Konkomba life.14 These cultural lessons, together with the songs and dances that often dominated the meetings, helped to standardize Konkomba culture within the Konkomba student body. Western education was generally limited to boys, a fact that became a central issue among Konkomba in the 1950s. With few exceptions, girls in the Northern Territories were not part of the early generation of Western-educated Konkomba. Their access to education improved slowly compared with the Gold Coast Colony and Ashanti. The White Fathers Mission was the first to actively recruit northern girls to enroll in their schools beginning in 1928. Government schools enrolled girls as early as 1921 but the few who enrolled were the daughters of civil servants from the Gold Coast Colony. Among Konkomba, there were many obstacles to Western education for girls within society, not the least of which were Konkomba marital practices and the lack of accommodations for girls at boarding schools. All but a few girls who had the opportunity to attend school only did so until the time arrived for them to join their husband’s compound, which was rarely more than a couple of years.15 Despite the social obstacles to girls’ education, there were strong advocates among the first generation of Western-educated Konkomba. They found an easy alliance and support among American missionaries of the U.S.-based Assemblies of God, who arrived in Saboba in 1948. The missionaries and the Konkomba Westerneducated leadership worked to provide Konkomba girls with greater freedom in marriage and in education. The alliance between these two groups was strengthened by the early conversion of a number of Konkomba leaders, who became active members of the Assemblies of God mission. Missionaries in Africa generally had a different perspective of African societies than colonial officials. They demonstrated greater willingness to learn the language and cultural complexities of a society. Missionaries were also more likely to gain an appreciation for the multiple ways in which Africans defined themselves and their capacity to change, in contrast with the dominant view among colonial officials in which Africans appeared as monolithic and unchanging tribes. Generally speaking, missionaries viewed Africans in universal terms. They perceived them as possessing particular characteristics, but characteristics that distinguished them in fundamental ways from Europeans.16 By contrast, the dictates of colonial officials’ job did not allow them to live among a particular group and observe their daily activities in great detail. British colonial officials did not arrive in the continent

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to live among Africans as missionaries did; quite the opposite. They established clear and firm social and political boundaries between themselves and Africans and focused on the chain of power and how it operated rather than the culture and its susceptibility to religious conversion. Ultimately, however, although colonial officials acquired a less intimate understanding of community than did European missionaries, the colonial administration had a far greater impact on African society.17 Christian missionary work in Kekpakpaan was preceded by the increase in missionary activity in Northern Territories generally. The White Fathers, or the Society of Missionaries of Africa, introduced Christianity to Northern Ghana in 1906 through their mission and its school in Navrongo. The success of their school inspired Chief Commissioner Watherston to open a government’s school for boys in Tamale in 1908. Yet the White Fathers maintained their mission as an exception to the colonial government position against Christian missionaries in the Northern Territories, until the governor shifted in favor of increased openness during the 1930s.18 Noncentralized societies of the Northern Territories were particularly attractive to Christian missionaries because most were non-Muslim, although missionaries also worked among the centralized, mostly Muslim societies as well. The Assemblies of God Mission began their work in the area in 1931 in Yendi. After failing to gain the support of the government to take over a government school at Gambaga, the Assemblies of God Mission did not get formally involved in education in the Northern Territories. Medicine was their conversion instrument. They used medical clinics to develop friendly relationships with residents in surrounding villages and gain converts. In October 1948 after brief stays in Liberia and Kumasi, Mel and Marita McNutt settled in Saboba with their four children for nine months as the first permanent missionaries in Saboba.19 The McNutts’ chief aims were to organize the mission and establish a medical clinic. The couple’s arrival in Saboba was preceded by a long period of negotiation between the Assemblies of God and the colonial government. Still, the missionary influence was strong, and the British were aware of its transformative potential. Assistant District Commissioner Anderson had declared that as long as he was in charge of Saboba, Christianity would never be firmly planted among Konkomba. However, the McNutts arrived the year that the government stationed Anderson out of Saboba and, ironically, the McNutts moved into his former bungalow. North of the bungalow, Mel McNutt installed

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a prefabricated army building purchased from Accra for the medical clinic. Although she was not a formally trained medical professional, Marita ran the clinic once it opened, until the McNutts were joined by two trained nurses, Ruby Johnson and Ozella Read.20 The Saboba that the McNutts entered in 1948 was little more than a modest-sized village, which contrasted with its designation by the colonial government as the seat of the Saboba subdistrict. The central village had fewer than ten compounds, with a small number scattered along its fringes,21 and in the middle of the village there was a market area surrounding a large baobab tree. The Assemblies of God clinic and the McNutts’ bungalow were north of the market and west of Kpatakpaab, the Uchabobor’s village. Previously, with the exception of market days, few nonresidents traveled regularly to Saboba, but the clinic, mission, and police substation increased Saboba’s significance and, in time, helped to increase its population. The clinic also made Saboba a focal point in feuds among nearby villages, because the police began to bring the dead and wounded to Saboba both for the police substation and for the missionary clinic. The wounded combatants under the large baobab in the market became a common sight.22 The Assemblies of God Mission and its clinic influenced change within Konkomba society that quickly contributed to Konkomba politicization toward internal social change and political equality with neighboring ethnic groups. Social change was in fact a significant part of the mission’s evangelism. The missionaries worked to spread literacy, raise awareness about public health and hygiene, and distribute used clothes. Their strongest influence came through the medical clinic, which served as a means to carry out the various strategies that the missionaries employed to form personal relationships among the Konkomba.23 On November 3, 1949, Paul Konkomba was the first of thousands of babies born in the Assemblies of God clinic in Saboba. Despite tension between Konkomba and Christian notions of morality, in its first eight years the number of Konkomba who converted to Christianity through the mission steadily increased. Among the early converts was Samson Mankron, a graduate of Yendi Middle School who had become a core member of the Western-educated leadership. Mankron was more than a convert; his participation in missionary activities was essential to the Assemblies of God’s early success among Konkomba. There were many instances, throughout 1955, in which he served as a link between the mission and Konkomba. His role as a culture and language translator for the American missionaries and an organizer for events to attract Konkomba to the mission were

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critical to building its early foundation. He and Pastor Peter Salah of Wapuli organized the first Konkomba Sunday School, which its held first class on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955, with 26 children.24 The Sunday School class was a good introduction to Western education for the Konkomba who became involved with the mission. In addition to teaching reading and writing the teachers encouraged students to comport themselves “properly” and dress in a more Western manner. On the first day of class, E. Charlese Spencer, who arrived in Saboba in November 1954 to replace Ruby Johnson as a missionary and nurse, was shocked to find most of the students with little or no cloth covering their bodies. She tackled the “problem” of the children’s nakedness with shirts for the young men that she made from feed sacks. In her memoir, Spencer reflects upon the mission’s success during its first two years of running the Sunday School class, preparing future Christian and Konkomba leaders. “Within the month of January 1957,” she wrote, “twelve members of my Sunday school class were leaving to attend boarding middle schools outside the Saboba area. From these would come our future pastors, nurses, midwives, teachers, doctors, and elected civil officials.”25 The Assemblies of God missionaries lived in general peace in Saboba. Yet they found certain practices among their hosts repugnant. It was their practice to exercise patience and earn the friendship and trust among African communities, not to proselytize. They believed that their acts of kindness and patient instruction would make the benefits of Christianity, as they saw it, apparent. Still, circumstances occasionally arose in which the missionaries found themselves in conflict with Konkomba. Charlese Spencer became actively involved in a number of conflicts among Konkomba around “morality” issues and Konkomba social practices that Spencer deemed unjust. These issues were not all directly related to Christianity, but were tied to the ways in which missionaries conceived of what is moral, and right and wrong. For example, Spencer’s experience with the Sunday School class raised her awareness of the extent to which infant betrothal impeded girls’ education. Glyima’s daughters, Yani, Piger and Yaro, were the only girls who attended the Sunday School classes and were the only girls, to Spencer’s knowledge, enrolled in school. Glyima was the principal translator for the Assemblies of God mission and the son of the first Konkomba member of the Assemblies of God. According to Spencer, Glyma, had been raised a Christian and that is why he did not betroth his daughters at birth. But Glyma was not typical of the Konkomba men who joined the mission. Most had already pledged their daughters at birth to be married. Infant betrothal greatly disturbed Spencer.

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She saw it as immoral on many grounds, but most of all she perceived it as robbing young women of a choice in how they would live their lives. She recognized that as infant betrothal was an entrenched practice, she could not simply convince fathers to change. She argued that young girls “may need to fight for their freedom to go to school or to marry whom they choose.”26 On several occasions Spencer tried to “free” girls from marriage, at great risk to her safety and that of the girls for whom she advocated. She focused on the daughters of men who had joined the mission and decided to release their daughters from their arranged marriages.27 She worked to “rescue” girls and end infant betrothal because, she believed, the practice was wrong, violated Ghana law, and undermined a girl’s freedom of choice. Spencer dealt with the men who had been promised the girls but did so with little regard for their cultural perspective. The men who brought these girls to their compound were, in Spencer’s mind, simply kidnappers. She was not concerned with the cultural context of these arrangements and the dominant Konkomba perspective on them. She disregarded, moreover, the differences in notions of “right” and “wrong” between Americans and Konkomba. For example, in one of her “rescues” Spencer helped Bileti, a member of the Assemblies of God mission from the village of Toma, reunite with his daughter Yajoningan. Bileti had betrothed Yajoningan to a man before he had joined the mission. Apparently he had not informed his daughter’s in-laws that as a result of his Christian conversion he no longer wanted his daughter to join their compound. When the in-laws arrived to take her to join her husband, Bileti attempted to negotiate with them to dissolve the marriage, but they declined. As Spencer bluntly explained, “The people refused to talk; they wanted the tall teenage beauty.”28 The investment on the part of the man’s family was not only material but also time and energy. It was not the type of arrangement in which there is space for one to change one’s mind. Before the dispute became violent, with the assistance of police from Yendi Spencer arranged for Yajoningan to remain with her father. While there is little doubt that Spencer made it possible for Yajonignan to escape what considering the circumstances would have likely been an unhappy marriage, the marriage was an arrangement between two lineages in which at least one lineage believed that it had suffered an injustice. As an outsider, Spencer’s efforts to bring in additional outsiders—the Yendi police, most of whom would have been Dagomba—to decide the outcome of a dispute rooted in common Konkomba cultural practice risked, and indeed nearly

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succeeded, inciting a violent conflict between the two lineages and with the Assemblies of God. Such an outcome would have likely damaged the stable existence and trust among their Konkomba hosts that the Assemblies of God Mission had built over the previous 23 years. Spencer’s methods stand in stark contrast with those of Westerneducated Konkomba activists who endeavored to bring about changes in Konkomba marriage practices that would allow girls the freedom to complete their education and have a greater say in the marriage process. Western-educated Konkomba active in the efforts toward effecting social change among the Konkomba understood the potential dangers of interference in Konkomba marriage arrangements. They attempted to convince men not to enter such arrangements and to enroll their daughters in school. Their larger goal was to end Konkomba feuds; intervening in existing marriage arrangements carried considerable risk. For the missionaries, the spread of literacy and elevating the status of women was part of their goal to make the mission fully operated by individuals from the community that it served. In 1947, when the McNutts opened the mission they did not intend for it to remain a permanent American undertaking. To contribute to the building of an African missionary staff, Charlese Spencer and Ann Fisher, another missionary and nurse who worked in Saboba, created a program at the clinic to train children who demonstrated potential to become doctors and nurses. The mission established a relationship with a nursing, midwifery, and technical training institute in northern Ghana to facilitate Saboba students who had a desire to take the entrance exams. While the students prepared to take their exams, Fisher and Spencer retained them as nurses at the clinic. By 1969, however, Americans continued to run the mission house and clinic, in part because there were no trained Konkomba nurses or doctors.29 Nonetheless, the link between Western education and social progress had taken root among Konkomba leaders. The missionaries were highly influential in this regard, but it would be Konkomba self-help initiatives that would have the greatest success transforming Konkomba perspectives on education, economic development, and ethnic-based political unity. Yao Wumbei was a pioneer among Konkomba with regard to the spread of Western education and the increase in the number of Konkomba girls enrolled in school. Although he was neither a member of the Assemblies of God mission nor a Konkomba from Saboba, Wumbei, a Bikoam Konkomba from Gushiego, was the earliest of the first generation of Western-educated Konkomba to teach school in a Konkomba community. In 1951, the Education Administration of

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the colonial administration sent him to Saboba to open Saboba Primary School, the first government school in Kekpakpaan. For three years he remained the school’s only teacher and administrator, and endured the difficulties that at the time went with efforts to recruit students. Undaunted, Wumbei successfully recruited three girls for Saboba Primary School during his first tour through the Konkomba hamlets and villages around Saboba.30 In 1954, two Yendi School alums, both Konkomba, joined him at Saboba Primary School. The first was Nakoja Namuel, soon followed by Daniel Neina Jobor. The three teachers, eager to increase Konkomba school enrollment and help effect positive social change, toured the villages and hamlets throughout the Oti plain and used a variety of tactics to enroll students in Saboba Primary School. When asked the reason Konkomba were so vehemently against sending their children, one elder explained that the common view among Konkombas was that “if it does not provide food to eat or pito to drink, it is not worth pursuing.”31 With the government failing to provide an apparent incentive for parents beyond avoiding harassment and possible arrest by divisional nas or the district commissioner, most Konkomba firmly believed that education was not worth pursuing. They shared the perspective that the changes that education would bring to their day-to-day lives were irrelevant in terms of their immediate needs. Changing this perception became the central initiative of the small but energetic Konkomba educated leadership that emerged in the early 1950s and contributed to increasing the number of Konkomba that enrolled in schools. With a police substation, a clinic, a mission, and now a school, the small but growing group of Yendi School graduates in Yendi and Saboba, with their acute awareness of the disparity in Dagomba and Konkomba political power, began to discuss ways to achieve greater Konkomba political unity. Several, including Nakoja Namuel, E.A. Yani, Daniel Jobor, Samson Mankron, and Johnson Bilidou, an ex-serviceman, organized a series of meetings, which in 1955 formally became the Konkomba Improvement Association. They intended for this organization to spearhead self-help initiatives among Konkomba and generate a greater sense of unity and common cause. Its members understood that the greatest obstacles to Konkomba unity were inter-Konkomba feuds. The association’s primary focus became ending feuds and by extension changing Konkomba marital practices and promoting Western education. The Konkomba experience with missionaries and Western education illustrates the contradictions in the relationships between many

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African communities and Western institutions during colonial rule. Bruce Berman has described the ways in which Western-educated leaders reflect the blending of the traditional and modern in African politics. For missionaries, providing medical care was as much God’s work as it was political. Their goal was to gain trust from the communities in which they worked, but they also sought to gain a level of influence to effect social change and ultimately gain converts. Europeans brought Western medicine to Africa with Enlightenment assumptions that sanitary measures were humanitarian acts that legitimated European paternalistic rule over the unclean, backward, heathen “others.” Missionary and colonial education and medicine strengthened European hegemony, but were also a means for Africans to define themselves as communities with clear political interests, agendas, and the tools to assert these newly defined interests in relation to neighboring communities. Western-educated leaders were the primary African product and response to the influences of missionaries and colonial officials. All three blurred the lines between tradition and modernity, reactionary and progressive, and combined elements of African practices with European modernity.32 The Konkomba Improvement Association was a product of these three forces during the late colonial period. It ushered in a new era of Konkomba politics, one in which a Konkomba community of belonging and its clearly defined political and economic interests were the focal point. Intra-Konkomba politics and conflicts were subordinated by Konkomba leaderships’ advocacy for a collective Konkomba focus on protecting their interests against exploitation from their historically centralized neighbors. As Ghana advanced toward political independence, disfranchisement and political illegitimacy remained Konkomba clans’ dominant political challenge. Yet postindependence Konkomba leaders mounted a united social, political, and economic front that created dissonance in the region’s ethnic hierarchy.

The Konkomba Improvement Association During proindependence struggles youth associations and regional associations were recruiting grounds for nationalist political parties.33 Konkomba leaders were influenced by the political wave that had begun to overtake West African politics in the 1930s. Among the earliest was the Lagos Youth Movement in 1934. By the end of the 1930s, there were youth organizations in Ghana and Sierra Leone.34 The first ethnic-based civic organization in the Gold Coast/Ghana was the Asante Youth Association, founded in 1947. “Youth” did not

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refer to the age of its members but to their political status within Akan society. Youth were part of the political structure of “chiefs,” “elders,” and “people” and formed the non-title-holding segment, which allowed them to define themselves as the representatives of the commoners. The youths, as a social and political category, owed their origins to nkwankwaa, a Twi term that has been translated as “young men,”35 or commoners.36 By the mid-nineteenth century, nkwankwaa emerged as a petite bourgeoisie that aggressively guarded against the Asantehene’s interference in their economic activities.37 A common characteristic of youth associations was the aim to further unify their respective ethnic groups and contribute to their social, economic, and cultural development. “On the one hand,” Carola Lentz explains, “the associations want to mobilize the rural population, especially for ‘self-help’; on the other hand, they sought to obtain a hearing for local interests in regional and national political arenas.”38 Non-Akan Ghanaians, including northerners, adopted this social category to fill a political void within their social structures, as they were integrated more deeply into Ghana’s social and political framework. The expansion of local ethnic-based organizations during the interwar period and the years that followed facilitated the growth of political parties. Local associations served as training grounds for the new nationalist elite. For example, the Convention People’s Party, the political party that dominated the Gold Coast’s transition to independence and politics in Ghana’s first republic, depended to a large extent upon the support of the young men or commoners. Its origins, moreover, lay in the Committee on Youth Organizations, a national umbrella organization for youth associations.39 One of the groups that modeled itself after the Asante Youth Association was the Northern Youth Association (NYA), which was founded in the mid-1950s by a number of lawyers, civil servants, businessmen, and politicians to voice northern interests and concerns during the years leading to independence. One of the challenges the NYA encountered was that these interests and concerns varied widely. It was difficult for northern leaders from different backgrounds to identify and form a consensus around a common agenda or problem. The historically centralized societies had political interests that were distinct from noncentralized societies. Even among the latter, cultural and geographic differences proved to be difficult obstacles to overcome and build common ground. Rather than unite northerners in a common front to represent and protect northern interests, from the 1970s to the 1990s particular groups of noncentralized communities got together, on various occasions, to confront Dagomba, Nanumba,

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and Gonja dominance. However, these alliances were usually short lived. During the 1950s and 1960s, the majority of northern societies formed their own, ethnically exclusive organizations, which broadened political perspectives beyond kingship and village and allowed the educated leadership to mobilize and manipulate important segments of the population.40 Of all the northern groups, efforts among the Konkomba to organize an ethnic-based organization had the most profound influence on local politics. The Konkomba Improvement Association did not seek to redefine Konkomba identity through literature, as other groups in Africa, such as the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Kikuyu of Kenya, had done.41 It was similar to other self-help organizations formed in West Africa to promote education and development and was the progenitor of the Konkomba Youth Association, which during the 1980s and 1990s dominated Konkomba political activism. In fact, its initiatives were rather modest at first. The leadership galvanized Konkomba ethnic and political consciousness by spreading awareness of the Konkomba political status relative to their centralized neighbors; increase Konkomba enrollment in schools; lay the foundation for future development; and end inter-Konkomba feuds, which, from their perspective, allowed neighboring groups, particularly Dagomba, to continue to exploit them. The desire for increased access to education was common in many communities after World War II. Individuals and groups had begun to regard education as an asset to the group as well the individual. The link between education and social mobility grew increasingly clear as leaders began to understand the extent to which education increased the community’s capacity to defend its interests.42 To build greater Konkomba influence in district and regional politics and to bolster Konkomba political legitimacy generally, members of the Improvement Association cooperated with uninkpel and biborb as much as possible. They consulted these traditional elders on Improvement Association initiatives and updated them on recent regional and national events. It was particularly important that this new generation of Konkomba leaders involve uninkpel and biborb in efforts to effect social change, particularly the initiative to increase Konkomba girls’ enrollment in school. Konkomba leaders recognized that changing Konkomba marital practices, a common source of discord between Konkomba lineages and subclans, would be a formidable task that would take considerable time before it produced tangible results. The cooperation and guidance of respected members of the community helped to ensure that the younger,

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Western-educated leadership was not perceived within Konkomba communities as usurpers. The Improvement Association also took on issues that shaped the day-to-day quality of life among Konkomba of the Oti plain. For example, they lobbied the Yendi district commissioner to improve the markets and roads in the Konkomba areas. The government responded with new stalls and butchers shops for the markets at Saboba, Wapuli, and Nabuli.43 The Improvement Association’s success in dealing directly with the district administration increased its support among Konkomba clans. However, the Improvement Association only remained active for a little over a year, because there was not a large enough educated population to sustain its membership base, which consisted largely of civil servants who had little control over where the government assigned them to work. Approximately a year after the Improvement Association initiated its activities, the government began to transfer many of its members away from Saboba. To compensate for the north’s relatively small educated and professional class, the government shifted civil servants throughout the north. Nonetheless, as it gained influence among uninkpel throughout the Oti plain in its short existence, the Konkomba Improvement Association made great gains toward ending Konkomba feuds, increasing girls’ enrollment in school, and representing Konkomba social and political interests outside of Saboba. During the decade that followed, many of the association’s former members remained active in various aspects of local Konkomba and district politics. The Improvement Association set a precedent for organized political activism among Konkomba. The issue that Konkomba leaders continually addressed during the years between the Improvement Association and the Konkomba Youth Association (1977) was Konkomba tribute to Dagomba and Nanumba nas. Konkomba leaders argued that this practice undermined all their efforts to gain political and economic self-sufficiency. In 1959 Isaac Bawa, Namuel, Jobor, Mankron, and Bilidou launched an initiative to end Konkomba tribute to the Dagomba nas whom the British had given authority over Konkomba villages and hamlets. Konkomba leaders insisted that as long as Konkomba continued to pay tribute to the nas, they would continue to treat them as second-class citizens, and exploit and disfranchise them. They believed that as Ghanaian citizens, Konkomba should not be subject to the demands of traditional chiefs; therefore, they petitioned the district administration to force an end to the practice. However, the Ya Na had considerable influence in the regional government and in Yendi, and the Dagomba administrators did not

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want to do anything that might contribute to diminishing the Ya Na’s status or that of any of his divisional nas in Kekpakpaan. Konkomba leaders did not receive a response to their petition. Nonetheless, Bawa, Mankron, Jobor, and Bilidou gained support among Konkomba through their continued efforts to organize Konkomba around local issues. Although their petition failed, the men used their growing influence to persuade the Bichabob clan to no longer perform annual labor for the Sunson Na, the Dagomba chief of Sunson.44 This break from the Sunson Na was a small victory but noteworthy, as a reflection of the Konkomba capacity to organize around a common political issue. An additional victory came in December 1955 when the government recommended that the Ya Na appoint Konkomba to serve as judges within the Dagomba Native Authority courts, because of the significant differences in marriage practices between the two communities.45 Konkomba leaders cemented their place within Konkomba society through the skill with which they balanced their own long-term political agenda and promoted the narrative of injustice that united Konkomba around a focused political movement. Konkomba had begun to follow the educated leaders’ efforts and regard themselves as part of a larger group with common interests and concerns. The Konkomba Improvement Association and the leadership it spawned were the first multi-clan Konkomba effort toward greater political equality. It was common among first generation Western-educated leaders in African societies to legitimate their position as communal leaders by clarifying their relationship to and serving as advocates for an indigenous culture.46 Berman describes the means through which Westerneducated elites and traditional rulers legitimated their social positions as largely the same and almost entirely self-serving. He argues that they all promoted interpretations of tradition that justify their social and political gains and their control over patronage networks that provided others with access to resources.47 Konkomba leaders illustrated these characteristics but were not so typical in their tactic and goals. Until the 1990s, their leaders actively worked to broaden access to resources for individual and groups of Konkomba. Their goal was not to strengthen their own position but that of Konkomba collectively. With Ghana’s independence Konkomba clans became formally part of the local political structure, and Konkomba leaders were absorbed into regional and national politics. Kwame Nkrumah laid the foundation for Konkomba political assimilation as part of his program to detribalize local politics. Ironically, as Konkomba leaders became more involved in local and regional politics, they acquired

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clearer perceptions of a Konkomba ethnicity and Konkomba political interests. Konkomba ethnicity, therefore, was a product of Ghana’s political modernization and development. Yet tradition remained the primary means through which local societies were pushed to the margins of local politics, and it served as the means through which they challenged their marginalization.

Ghana’s Independence and the Birth of Konkomba Politics The postcolonial state continued, and in many cases expanded, the institutional arrangements and administration of colonial rule. Postcolonial regimes did little to transform the courts, police, army, and technical services of government that they inherited from European powers. Nationalists accentuated differences between the colonizer and the colonized to define the political illegitimacy of the latter, at least within the domain of sovereignty. In this way they exercised the politics of culture as a liberating tool and layed claim to the uniqueness and exclusivity of culture, much in the same way as European colonial powers when they substantiated distinct political spheres for colonizer and colonized. But in the domain of the state, nationalists embraced the universality of the modern regime of power. They ended colonial rule, but pushed forward with its political structures, and at times enhanced them. Just as the colonial state marked the difference between the colonizer and colonized in clear and certain terms, within the postcolonial state, there came to be an emphasis on markers of differences between African societies. “Many of these,” Partha Chatterjee explains, “are part of contemporary postcolonial politics and have to do with the fact that the consolidation of power of the national state has meant the marking of a new set of differences within postcolonial society. But the origin of the project of modernity in the workings of the colonial state has meant that every such historical claim has had to negotiate its relationship with the history of colonialism.”48 As Konkomba history demonstrates, the legacy of British rule and popular historical memory were contested tools for the local power struggle in Northern Ghana. Konkomba political activism began as the Northern Region gained a greater voice in Gold Coast politics. During the 1960s Konkomba leadership began to diversify with respect to the political positions of its members and, subsequently, it began to push Konkomba politics in unprecedented directions. There continued to be general agreement among Konkomba leaders on issues of Konkomba unity, the need for political autonomy

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from Dagomba nas, and to expand Western education. Yet differences emerged with regard to the relevance of chieftaincy and tradition to the Konkomba struggle for political equality. Specifically, during the Nkrumah years, from 1957 to 1966, Konkomba leaders assimilated into regional and national politics in a way that grew out of their focus on specific Konkomba issues. Meanwhile, other northern leaders focused on what they believed to be a political threat that came from southern societies. One of Nkrumah’s priorities was to Africanize the civil service, but the dearth of Western-educated northerners made it difficult for his administration. Inevitably, large numbers of southerners relocated to northern districts to work as clerks and administrators, which gave rise to the sense among many northerners that they would be overwhelmed by southerners unless they challenged southern hegemony and prevented what J.A. Braimah described as a southern invasion. Southern dominance in the north, Braimah argued, threatened northern leaders’ political prospects and the regions potential for development. “Away with local expatriate officers,” he insisted in 1955. “Down with Black Imperialism in the North.”49 For Braimah, a minor chief among Dagomba and a member of the Legislative Assembly, northern unity and “northern interests” transcended ethnic boundaries and superseded any concern for national unity and independence. Dagomba, Mamprusi, and Nanumba leaders sought to define “northern interests” to counter a government dominated by southerners. There was little relationship, however, between Konkomba political developments and mainstream “northern” politics. Konkomba Western-educated leadership launched their own fight against “black imperialism,” which they regarded as coming from Dagomba within the region, not from the south. Nkrumah placed many northerners in positions of power to broaden his sway in the region. Between 1958 and 1962, Nkrumah increased the number of Ghana’s districts to reduce the influence of tribalism. By dividing groups between two or more districts, he sought to separate political from ethnic interests. He also provided smaller, politically subordinate groups with greater political autonomy. Yet when Nkrumah created the Saboba district in 1963 and appointed Isaac Bawa as commissioner he inadvertently facilitated a dramatic expansion of Konkomba ethnic political activism. The Saboba district was the first autonomous Konkomba political entity since the European conquest of the middle Volta basin in the late nineteenth century. It comprised all of the predominantly Konkomba villages of the Oti plain, except those that had been under the Sunson Na’s

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political authority during British colonial rule. Bawa’s appointment, the first of a Konkomba to a government office, ushered in a new period of political engagement between the Konkomba and neighboring groups in which Konkomba leaders challenged Dagomba authority and their own purported political marginalization and exploitation from within the government and as political activists as well. Yet district politics did not hold sway over traditional politics. Regardless of the level of political access or economic success that Konkomba achieved, they remained politically illegitimate, so long as the state and neighboring ethnic groups recognized Dagomba as their traditional overlords and Konkomba were not directly represented in the Regional and National Houses of Chiefs. Although Bawa and Nkrumah were both members of the CPP, they held different perspectives on the relevance of chieftaincy and ethnicity. Nkrumah regarded ethnicity, tribalism, and chieftaincy, as sources of disunity in society. Bawa’s enthusiastic embrace of chieftaincy was out of step with Nkrumah and the CPP platform and inconsistent with the Konkomba political structure. His views of chieftaincy in general were complicated. While he staked out a political position that would allow him to challenge the chiefs of the historically centralized communities, he advocated that Konkomba develop their own system of chieftaincy and an accompanying political tradition because he rightly perceived them as essential for the Konkomba to gain a position to compete with the region’s major ethnic groups. With chieftaincy and traditions of their own, Bawa believed, Konkomba would undermine the premise of Konkomba cultural and political inferiority upon which Dagomba based Konkomba disfranchisement and political subordination. The major obstacle Bawa faced was that most Konkomba did not share his view of the necessity of Konkomba chieftaincy. A common perception of chiefs among Konkomba was that they were sources of exploitation and divisiveness and that chieftaincy did more social harm than good. As one Konkomba elder explained, there was the common view among Konkomba that “a wise man is better than a chief.”50 Although there was broad support for raising the legitimacy of biborb, few Konkomba perceived Konkomba chieftaincy as a viable issue.51 Bawa, on the other hand, held chieftaincy as the most salient symbol of Ghanaian politics and a means for Konkomba to gain national respect and political legitimacy. Yet, in addition to the lack of enthusiasm among Konkomba for a Konkomba centralized chieftaincy, Bawa faced the quandary of who would become the Konkomba paramount chief. Despite the Improvement Association’s effort to broaden

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biborb’s political role among the Konkomba, few biborb held significant sway beyond their particular villages. The biborb of the larger villages such as Kpalba, Saboba, and Sanguli, who did in fact carry some political influence, had little respect for each other and often competed for influence in Kekpakpaan. Saboba’s status as the Konkomba political center increased competition among biborb. As the district’s headquarters, the Uchabobor was widely believed to have the government’s support to become the Konkomba paramount chief. The Sangulbor argued that the Sangultiib had biborb long before any other Konkomba subclans and, therefore, he deserved to be paramount. Others discounted the Sangulbor because he is “enskinned” by the Sunson Na, not the Ya Na.52 The rivalry between biborb did not erupt into a conflict among competing parties and remained a minor political side show among Konkomba, which is a testament to the lack of interest most Konkomba had in chieftaincy. Yet their debate suggested an increased Konkomba awareness of the political currency of chieftaincy and tradition. Bawa failed to elevate chieftaincy during his tenure; in 1966 he lost his position in the coup that drove Nkrumah from office. The National Liberation Council that took over the government brought Saboba back into the Yendi District.53 Still, the debate over Konkomba chieftaincy continued from the 1970s to the 1990s. In espousing both nationalism and ethnocentrism as core components of his politics, Bawa was not unique among Ghanaian politicians. Although Konkomba leaders remained highly critical of ethnic chauvinism, their efforts to effect social and political development inevitably made them participants in ethnic politics. The apparent double standard of attacking the use of ethnicity as a basis for promoting a political agenda while using ethnicity to counter this practice results from postcolonial local political structures that remained centered on ethnic categories, much as they had during the colonial period. It was most practical to organize along ethnic lines to gain access to and control over political and natural resources. Konkomba leaders placed their political energy in specific Konkomba issues as opposed to engaging the broader concerns of the region and nation, which left them on the sidelines of the major nationalist activities of the 1950s.

The Zabzugu-Saboba Dispute During its three year rule from 1966 to 1969, the National Liberation Council (NLC) contrasted with Nkrumah and his anti-chieftaincy

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politics. In 1967 the Northern Regional Administration, under the direction of the NLC, worked to reduce the number of local councils in the region by amalgamating the Saboba Local Council with the Zabzugu Local Council. Local councils were the governing bodies that facilitated government development projects and distributed government resources in each district. Zabzugu was a predominantly Konkomba area in Kekpakpaan, but Dagomba dominated its local politics. Meanwhile, Konkomba dominated Saboba. The government merged the two councils as the Zabzugu/Saboba Management Committee to take on the responsibilities of both councils. The Dagomba-controlled Regional Administration designed the structure and makeup of the Management Committee in a way that placed Konkomba at a severe disadvantage. Soon after the two councils came together, Konkomba and Dagomba members of the Management Committee came into conflict over its structure, agenda, and even its name. Konkomba representatives complained that the Regional Administration placed the Management Committee’s administrative office in Zabzugu, the smaller of the two towns, and Dagomba were disproportionately represented on the committee. Indeed, despite Konkomba numeric strength in the two area, Dagomba occupied 9 of the 11 seats on the committee, a disparity that Konkomba viewed as part of Dagomba attempts to retain the political control over Kekpakpaan that they gained under colonial rule but had begun to lose during the Gold Coast’s transition to independence. The Konkomba members’ frustration only increased after the committee began its work and, as they saw it, ignored the needs of the Konkomba majority. The committee’s Dagomba chairman did not schedule any development projects in Saboba or the Konkomba villages around Zabzugu. Konkomba leaders accused the Dagomba of carrying out a much broader pattern of political abuse, arguing that Dagomba ability to exercise such disproportionate control over the committee was an extension of Dagomba dominance in regional politics. Without a strong advocate or representative in the district or regional government, there was little that Konkomba leaders could do beyond voice their concerns. Ultimately, the Regional Administration decided the committee’s makeup and the ways that it allocated resources. Throughout its first year, the acrimony between its nine Dagomba and two Konkomba members essentially hamstrung the committee’s work. The Konkomba members filed several complaints with the Regional Administration only to have them ignored by its Dagomba personnel.54 In April 1968 members of the Development

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Committee listed several grievances in a petition to the Regional Administration Office in Tamale against the Dagomba members of the Zabzugu/Saboba Management Committee. They insisted that the Management Committee failed to provide basic amenities for Saboba District despite the fact that Saboba contributed a larger percentage of the Management Committee’s budget through taxes. From the Konkomba leaders’ standpoint, the committee demonstrated the government’s ethnic chauvinism in favor of Dagomba in the manner in which the committee was housed and its ethnic composition.55 The location of the committee’s administrative office reflected the widespread Dagomba bias that undermined its mission. Konkomba leaders argued that Saboba was a more practical location for the office because it was a larger, more populous town with greater amenities than Zabzugu. They also pointed out that the Saboba District’s population was 30,000 and Zabzugu’s 15,000; Saboba had 17 primary schools; a Catholic secondary school; a modern police station, which housed a Border Guard in addition to regular units; and government veterinary and agricultural offices. For the Konkomba leaders, the disparities in Dagomba and Konkomba power on the committee were symptomatic of the government’s overall disregard of the Konkomba. They argued that the injustices that Konkomba continued to suffer at the hands of the Dagomba contributed to the growing Konkomba migration to areas south of Kekpakpaan such as Kpandai, Salaga, Nanumba, Damanku, and Kete-Krachi. They recommended that the government restore Saboba’s autonomy as a local council.56 Their feeling of political oppression may have influenced a number of Konkomba to migrate away from Kekpakpaan; but the vast majority of Konkomba migrants were influenced by greater farming opportunities in the south. For their part, the Dagomba members of the Management Committee argued that they had not supported any development projects in Konkomba areas because the Konkomba had been uncooperative with collecting taxes, which had caused the Zabzugu/Saboba Management Committee to be one of the poorest councils in the region.57 Konkomba members felt that the government had not adequately addressed their grievances, and the battles with their Dagomba colleagues left them frustrated. They finally resigned and hoped that with no Konkomba members on the committee the government would have no choice but to directly address Konkomba concerns. They joined with Konkomba leaders in Saboba to form the Town Development Committee as an alternative administrative body. This

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exclusively Konkomba organization argued that the Management Committee was incapable of serving Konkomba interests and contended that its very structure was an injustice to Konkomba and therefore they needed an independent organization.58 The dispute continued until the 1969 election that brought Kofi Busia and his Progressive Party to national power, which began Ghana’s Second Republic. Saboba subsequently regained its independence as a local council, and the Konkomba elder statesman Johnson Bilidou became its clerk. The conflict over the Zabzugu/Saboba Management Committee highlights three issues that shaped Konkomba political activism during the 1970s and 1980s. The first was a Konkomba belief that the Dagomba ethnic chauvinism led Dagomba leaders to deliberately block any government programs that would potentially benefit Konkomba. Dagomba leaders were motivated by a sense of political competition and a desire to protect tradition and custom. In doing so, they helped maintain colonial policies in postcolonial Ghana. Second, the lack of a recognized and respected Konkomba centralized traditional authority hindered their political standing as an ethnic group in local and national politics. Finally, although Konkomba conceded that soil erosion was a significant factor, they argued that Dagomba exploitation of Konkomba remained a significant factor that pushed the Konkomba to migrate to districts farther south. These three themes would continue to form the center of Konkomba politics as they became increasingly mobilized and assertive.

Kofi Busia, Hilla Limann and the Expanding Power of Chiefs In 1969 after the nation’s second democratic election, the government of Prime Minister Kofi Busia assumed power from the NLC and in its three years, from 1969 to 1972, did the most to lay the groundwork for Konkomba conflict with their historically centralized neighbors of any regime since British rule. In his determination to reverse Nkrumah’s policies, Busia went even further than the NLC’s pro-chieftaincy positions even though the role that ethnicity played in Ghanaian politics had increased since the NLC took power.59 Busia’s most lasting legacy with regard to chieftaincy and local politics was Act 370, the Chieftaincy Act of 1971. It created the National House of Chiefs, which was composed of all of the nation’s existing paramount chiefs, and chieftaincies, and adjudicated particular land and chieftaincy disputes. Act 370 also empowered the recognized paramount

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chiefs to vet and recommend all applications from paramount chiefs to the Regional and/or National Houses of Chiefs and discretion to elevate lesser chiefs to the status of divisional chiefs within their Traditional Councils. By creating the House of Chiefs, Busia did not increase the political voice and influence of every local society. Enhancing the role of chieftaincy in local affairs further institutionalized tradition, authority, and ethnic difference, which excluded most noncentralized societies and further entrenched common notions and practices that presented tradition and history as the exclusive domain of centralized societies. The government might have rectified this problem by appointing representatives from noncentralized societies to the House of Chiefs, but it did not. If Konkomba were to follow the protocol for elevating one of their biborb to paramount status, they would have to seek the Ya Na’s approval. While Act 370 served as a significant obstacle to Konkomba efforts to assert political equality with their historically centralized neighbors, when Busia made Saboba a separate constituency from Yendi, he enabled Konkomba to gain greater control over political and natural resources. Konkomba acquired a rather confused political status. Within Ghana’s liberal democratic state, Konkomba were officially politically autonomous from Dagomba and possessed a recognized right to pursue their own political agenda. Yet Busia developed what amounted to a compromise between the indirect rule policies of British rule and the liberal democracy of the Second Republic. Within the traditional sphere of Ghanaian politics Konkomba remained disfranchised and were represented in the House of Chiefs by the Ya Na, Bimbilla Na, and the Nayiri. When Busia created the Saboba constituency he demonstrated his belief in the inevitability of ethnic loyalty. “A sounder approach to the problem of tribalism in Africa,” he declared, “is to accept the fact of pluralism, rather than fly in the face of the facts and attempt to achieve monolithic structures through coercion. It is no sign of backwardness to recognize the fact of the existence of different tribes and ethnic groups, nor is it necessary to seem in accommodation with tribal loyalties.”60 Saboba as a separate constituency meant that its residents could elect a district commissioner. They elected E.S. Yani, a Yendi School alumnus and a former member of the Konkomba Improvement Association. Yani, however, did not serve a full term because in 1972 Busia was ousted in a military coup led by Colonel Ignatius Acheampong, who would rule Ghana until he himself was ousted in a coup in 1978.

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Kpasa and the Question of Land Tenure In 1979 Hilla Limann (1979–1981) was democratically elected as Ghana’s third president. Like Acheampong before him, Limann sought the support of northern chiefs. In his most significant gesture, Limann promulgated land reforms, which institutionalized control of the land under the authority of the “original owners”, which with few exceptions was a position claimed by the chiefs of the historically centralized societies on behalf of their constituents. Authority over land was power that their counterparts in the southern regions had enjoyed since the colonial period. Differences in land tenure in Northern Ghana, Southern Ghana, and the Ashanti Region had their roots in the colonial period. The colonial administration rendered all land in the Northern Territories “public land” to be held in trust by the governor of the Gold Coast Colony. This policy remained unchanged through the postcolonial period. An unintended consequence of government control over land was that it stifled interethnic land claims. No one group had legal grounds to claim control over land, but with limited government oversight, each group operated its own tenure and ownership claim. Customary law was the basis for resolving land disputes, which placed considerable authority in the hands of chiefs. Yet with lineages as opposed to ethnic groups serving as trustees over land and with all land ultimately held under state control, interethnic conflicts were kept under check. In theory, the government treated everyone as if they had the same land rights.61 By comparison, in southern Ghana, since the colonial period authority over the land had been vested in the chiefs. President Limann was the first to effectively respond to the northern chiefs’ requests to gain these same rights. While northern chiefs benefited from land reforms, it was a political setback for the historically noncentralized societies of the region who had benefited during the postcolonial years from the diminished authority of the chiefs. Through the act, land historically occupied by groups that lacked an officially recognized chief legally became part of the domain of the neighboring chief. In addition, the Ya Na assumed legal control over all land in the Oti plain. Among the Konkomba who had migrated to areas around Bimbilla, the Bimbilla Na formally became their paramount chief despite the Konkomba numeric strength in the district. With few exceptions, Konkomba farmers were welcomed into areas where they migrated. But disputes erupted between Konkomba and the societies that historically dominated these areas—Gonja and Nanumba—when the Konkomba

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population surpassed that of their “hosts”, thereby threatening their political dominance. By 1980 Konkomba in the Bimbilla District represented as much as two-thirds of its population of 125,000.62 Therefore, multiparty democracy, which returned to Ghana in 1979, provided the Konkomba with the capacity to take control of elected offices in the district. In 1953 R.J.H. Pogucki described Konkomba migrations to Salaga and northern Krachi as a mass movement.63 According to the 1960 census, the last to report groups based on ethnicity, there were 13,700 Nanumba in the district compared with 21,160 Konkomba. Taking into account the likelihood that the Konkomba had been undercounted due to their propensity for settling in isolated, hard to reach areas, they still constituted a clear majority. Overall, by 1962, the Konkomba population in Ghana was approximately 110,100, compared with 217,600 Dagomba and 58,700 Nanumba.64 Nonetheless, Konkomba remained politically marginal, unassertive, and welcome in Bimbilla by the Bimbilla Na.65 In the late 1960s, Konkomba also began to settle in large numbers in previously uninhabited and fertile land in Kpasa, south of Bimbilla. In the colonial period, the British had designated Kpasa, and neighboring Nkwanta, as part of the Krachi District within the boundaries of the Northern Territories. The Krachi District’s population was predominantly Akan speaking and felt greater affinity with the people of the Gold Coast Colony and Ashanti than with those of the Northern Territories. Therefore, in 1946, the Krachi Native Authority petitioned the British administration to incorporate Krachi into the administrative jurisdiction of the southern section of the Togoland Protectorate. On December 1, 1950, the British administration complied. Shortly after independence, Nkrumah made the Krachi District, and therefore Kpasa as well, part of the newly created Volta Region. Nonetheless, Kpasa, remained part of the Nanumba Traditional Area. Even after the mid-1960s, as the Konkomba population rapidly grew, the Bimbilla Na had little incentive to exercise his authority over the area. The Nkrumah administration made this land accessible in 1965 while developing the Volta River Project. The area bordered Lake Volta, the massive man-made lake that the Volta River Project created, which also served as a natural border between parts of the Volta, Eastern, and Brong-Ahafo Regions. Historically, the Bimbilla Na claimed this area as part of Nanun but did not formally rule over it because Kpasa had always been very sparely settled. After Nkrumah created Lake Volta, his government constructed a road through the Volta

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Region that cut directly through Kpasa from the south and came to an end at Damanku on the bank of the Oti River. One could continue via ferry across the Oti and along the Yendi-Bimbilla road to Bimbilla and then on to Yendi. It was along this road that many Konkomba settled. The growing Konkomba population in Kpasa and the political importance that land had acquired for chieftaincy following the Land Act of 1979, motivated the Bimbilla Na to seek to clear up any ambiguities with regard to his authority over Kpasa. In 1980 the Bimbilla Na successfully petitioned the Stool Land Boundary Settlement Commission to formally recognize his “traditional” authority over Kpasa. With a large Konkomba population, Kpasa now enhanced the Bimbilla Na’s political stature and represented a potential increase in the Nanumba Traditional Area’s revenue. Although the government continued to control taxes, policing, and development projects from Nkwanta in the Volta Region, the Bimbilla Na gained increasing control over “traditional” matters in Kpasa from Bimbilla, including the power to adjudicate cases and collect fines. To assert his authority, the Bimbilla Na’s first step was to install Nanumba nas in Kpasa and its surrounding area. Nanumba and Dagomba farmers in Kpasa welcomed the nas, perhaps because they helped offset the Konkomba numerical advantage. The Konkomba farmers of Kpasa, for the most part, refused to acknowledge the nas’ authority. In an additional step to solidify his claims to authority over Kpasa, the Bimbilla District executive, on behalf of the Bimbilla Na, issued several requests to the Regional Administration in Tamale to recognize the authority of the divisional nas of Nanun in Kpasa.66 However, according to the constitution of the Third Republic, 80 percent of an area’s population had to support the change in jurisdiction. Konkomba comprised more than 80 percent of Kpasa’s population, and few of them had any particular interest in joining the Bimbilla Na. The Bimbilla Na took the general lack of interest that Konkomba showed in the issue as a challenge to his authority. The Konkomba Youth Association had recently initiated political activities in Tamale, Saboba, and Bimbilla, and it was clear, so it seemed to the Bimbilla Na, that they were fomenting resistance. If Konkomba were engaged in any overt resistance to increased Nanumba control over Kpasa, it would have likely stemmed from what had quickly become the Konkomba farmers’ deepening resentment of the nas’ presence and attempts to assert authority over Konkomba villages.67 In the years leading to the 1981 conflict, the dispute over Kpasa’s political status merged with the building tension between the

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Konkomba and the Nanumba in Bimbilla. The growing Konkomba dominance over the yam trade in Ghana was an additional source of tension between these two groups. Until the late 1970s, the bulk of the profits from yams went to Nanumba and Asante middlemen who transported and sold the yams in Brong-Ahafo and the markets of Ghana’s major cities and towns. The success of Konkomba yam farmers and traders stood in contrast to the financial struggles of the majority of northern farmers during the 1970s. The Acheampong regime’s state subsidies for civil servants, military officers, and local businessmen enabled them to invest in mechanized rice farming. Ordinary local farmers, however, received little financial support from the state, yet were forced to depend upon the tractor services that wealthy farmers established.68 By the early 1980s a shortage of spare tractor parts, fuel, and fertilizer made mechanized agriculture close to impossible. Yet Konkomba yam farmers managed to survive this period relatively unaffected. Economic and political development among Konkomba fostered the sense that there was no basis for their political subordination and marginalization. Konkomba challenges to chieftaincy during this period were an extension of their grievances during British colonial rule. The difference was that in the colonial period, British officials substantiated Konkomba political subordination with the argument that neighboring Dagomba and Nanumba were far more economically and politically developed than Konkomba clans and therefore more readily integrated into the colonial political structures. In the 1970s that argument was no longer viable, so it was set aside and an emphasis placed on tradition as the basis for Nanumba and Dagomba authority over Konkomba. With all of the social, political and economic change among Konkomba the chiefs of the historically centralized polities continued to define tradition. The relevance of chieftaincy in local and regional politics in Ghana is a modern phenomenon that developed in response to colonial and postindependence political issues. In 1979 traditional claims to authority did not mean the same as they would have during the colonial period, but they had very real and symbolic significance for the political status of historically noncentralized communities and their members. Land tenure issues and conflicting claims over traditional authority were issues at the heart of the 1981 conflict that erupted between Konkomba and Nanumba in the Bimbilla District. The Konkomba fragmented social and political structure provided no real role for chieftaincy. But, as colonial policies brought Konkomba within a broader political structure that included chieftaincies and

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conflicting claims to control over land and there was increased scarcity of resources, Konkomba were pressured to either join the lower rungs of existing local political hierarchies or develop their own system for local authority by creating a chieftaincy or a comparative system.69

Conclusion Patrick Chabal explains accumulation as proportional to inequality. Accumulation by some is only possible at the expense of others.70 The dominant narrative of the late colonial period is of a large class of exploited and alienated Africans who layed the foundation for the nationalist movement. Yet this account neglects the substantial class of Africans who benefitted from the colonial economy and therefore the political inequalities created by “the colonial revolution.”71 Konkomba businessmen did not fit into that category because they focused on a crop that was not a major commodity within the colonial economy. It was produced for domestic consumption. The Konkomba businessmen that yam farming produced were not fostered by the colonial economy and politics but rather evolved as a result of opposition to it. Yet like the new African elites of the colonial period, Konkomba businessmen constructed, financed, and led the Konkomba political movement.72 The boundaries between traditional politics and local society in late colonial and postindependence Ghana remained uncontrollably porous and contributed to forms of discrimination and exclusion that were justified on the basis of culture and tradition. Konkomba’s traditional identification with political illegitimacy and subordinance hampered the real economic and political gains that continued to transform them into an ethnically conscious and political assertive community. Traditional constructs of Konkomba political dependence that grew out of the colonial period served as the basis for their continued marginalization but also the fuel for their political unity and activism. The early Konkomba leadership aimed its activism internally at Konkomba practices that it deemed stifling to Konkomba social and political advancement. They were spurred in these efforts by the activities of missionaries of the Assemblies of God who supported their challenges to infant betrothal and feuding, particularly the Konkomba Improvement Association of the 1950s. Yet as Konkomba activism met regional and national governments that maintained the colonial system of empowering the historically centralized communities Konkomba leaders shifted their focus to confronting discrimination with local government committees, the National House of

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Chiefs, and disfranchisement through the 1970s land tenure laws that reaffirmed Dagomba traditional authority among Konkomba. The characteristics of Konkomba ethnicity were shaped within political parameters that were determined by the colonial and postcolonial state, but as this chapter illustrates, Konkomba individuals and groups responded to the changing political circumstances that they encountered to reinterpret in ways that allowed them to assert their own constructions of Konkomba as a community of belonging. Konkomba did so to gain greater political power and respect within the region and the nation as a whole. While challenges to Dagomba political authority remained a strong factor shaping the relationship between Konkomba and the state, the spread of Westerneducation, American missionary activities in Saboba, party politics, and Ghana’s oscillation between dictatorship and multiparty democracy all contributed to a fashioning and a refashioning of Konkomba ethnicity. During the 1970s the historically centralized communities of Northern Ghana began to perceive Konkomba political activism as a threat to their own positions of power and a violation of their notions of tradition. The political disputes around Konkomba activism and political aspirations challenged popular notions of tradition, citizenship and power in Northern Ghana in ways that forced the state to reconsider local power structures. However, similar to the British colonial government, the postcolonial state was married to a system of local and traditional power from which it proved reluctant to divorce itself. These events demonstrate that at particular moments, individuals and groups played a central role in shaping and asserting a particular ethnicity in ways that would grant them greater access to political and economic resources. Konkomba in the 1960s and 1970s present a nationalism built in confrontation with the “modular” forms of national society that postcolonial Ghana built from the social and political structures of British rule. As they had throughout the colonial period, Konkomba rewrote the script of creating and asserting power that the British had established. Chatterjee argues that “the most power as well as the most creative results of the nationalist imagination in Asia and Africa are posited not on an identity but rather on a difference with the ‘modular’ forms of the national society propagated by the modern West. How can we ignore this without reducing the experience of anticolonial nationalism to a caricature of itself?”73 The characteristics of a particular ethnicity must not be seen as static or consistent, even within a

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relatively short period. The Konkomba, as do most societies, possessed multiple identities that changed in significance depending upon the circumstances. During the 1980s, Konkomba began to assert themselves as Ghanaians and the second largest society in Northern Ghana. Therefore, their leaders argued, Konkomba deserved a position within the local political framework that reflected that reality. In the chapter that follows, the dissonance in the ranked ethnic hierarchy that the Konkomba sought to dismantle came up sharply against the political will of the centralized societies to maintain an exclusive hold on the social and political privileges that came with a history of chieftaincy. In the 1990s, both groups remained steadfast, while the state maintained a contradictory policy of supporting the privileges and authority of chieftaincy while promoting representative democracy and notions of equality.

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Chapter

5

“ T h at a l l K o n k o m b a S h o u l d H e n c e f o r t h U n i t e” — E t h n i c Politics and the Use of Violence in Northern Ghana, 1977–1994

During the period of colonial rule in the Northern Territories of

the Gold Coast, land and ethnicity were politicized in very similar ways. Both had far-reaching implications for popular interpretations and reinterpretations of belonging. The British structured local politics in a way that forced tradition to be intertwined with constructions of ethnicity, rendering it static and clearly demarcated. Yet the people included under the rubric of particular ethnicities continuously changed and reinterpreted notions of community, which created dissonance in the ethnic-based social hierarchy of local society. Similarly, tradition and land were intertwined, which contributed to particular ethnic groups dominating or controlling particular well-defined areas through claims to custom with putative roots in the period before European rule. A frequent source of tension revolved around determining who had the right to recognize and dismiss land claims. In a liberal democracy what is the relationship between tradition, political status, and land tenure? In addition, how do the relationships and, ultimately, the conflicts between Konkomba and their historically centralized neighbors help us understand these broader forces?

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A central debate that surrounds the 1981 and 1994 conflicts in Northern Ghana deals with competing claims to autochthony— or claims to being the most recent legitimate occupiers of a given geographic space—both among Konkomba and neighboring ethnic groups. In 1981 and 1994, Dagomba and Nanumba leaders claimed that Konkomba were actually immigrants from Togo who attempted to usurp political power from the indigenous Dagomba and Nanumba. Under British colonial rule, however, Dagomba nas portrayed themselves as invaders from farther north who conquered and ruled Konkomba. This contradiction clearly illustrates continuous shifts in the political value of autochthony throughout the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods. For the British, the question of belonging was more than who originally occupied the land. Who conquered these original occupants was more important. Yet, autochthony remained relevant among African communities for defining relationships and political status. Therefore, specific cultural and political factors carried different value and relevance depending upon whether one was operating in an African or a British political context at that particular moment. There were many Africans who were acutely away of this. In their early dealings with British colonial officials, Dagomba nas asserted claims to a particular origin and relationship with the land and people, which they understood would resonate with the British. Their claims supported British notions of local traditional political structures and the nature of political power in Africa.1 Similarly in the postcolonial period, with increased Konkomba populations in the Bimbilla District and land reforms, which gave control over land to “traditional” owners, autochthony took on meanings that were important for gaining and/or preserving political power and control over resources. In this case, the Land Tenure Act motivated Konkomba leaders to claim autochthony in land that Konkomba predominantly occupied. The dissonance in Konkomba social development and their continued political subordination illustrates the ways in which postcolonial regimes employed the colonial era standards for political legitimacy to the detriment of social equality and stability. It was not only an emphasis on tradition, chieftaincy, and ethnicity in local politics that postcolonial regimes inherited from their British predecessors. The colonial state was fragile and possessed limited capacity to shape the nature of local politics. Postcolonial regimes were similarly fragile and lacked the capacity to effectively shape local politics in ways that would establish social and political stability. States cannot effectively

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and consistently impose stability from above, because local issues and events affect relationships between communities and between communities and the state. The state does have the capacity, however, to foster instability. Konkomba continued to be formally defined by their neighbors and the state as a subordinate community; yet their economic and political development provided them with the means to effectively challenge the political authority of their historically centralized neighbors. The ongoing tension between Konkomba and their historically centralized neighbors was a consequence of the dual system of belonging that the government maintained. One system recognized the political equality of all Ghanaian citizens regardless of religion, ethnicity, or region of origin as presented in the constitutions of each of Ghana’s four republics. The second system only recognized the political legitimacy of the historically centralized societies that were supported by the British colonial government. This ethnic-based political inequality, although a product of British rule, was institutionalized by postcolonial regimes in ways that undermined notions of equality guaranteed by the constitution and exacerbated notions of ethnic exclusivity and tensions between communities. The Konkomba Youth Association (KOYA) was at the forefront of confronting the dialectic of inclusion and exclusion inherent in this dual system, but they were by no means the sole force for change. Farming and education were also significant factors in building Konkomba unity and challenging the status quo. Konkomba Western-educated leaders and business elites aspired toward greater mobility and recognition, which was at odds with the strictly ascriptive hierarchy of northern society. They confronted an entrenched political culture that valued chieftaincy and custom. While politics in Ghana operated with a heightened sensitivity to ethnic identity, the nation’s growing market economy was increasingly ethnically blind. Equality within the market opened opportunities for those at the bottom of Ghana’s political hierarchy. The largely unregulated and underdeveloped yam trade allowed Konkomba farmers, transporters, and marketers to carve a niche in the Ghanaian economy. As Konkomba migrated throughout the country to farm and sell yams, subsidiary industries opened additional economic opportunities and attracted greater number of Konkomba to larger towns and urban areas. The growing Konkomba dominance of commercial yam farming and their numeric dominance in several historically Nanumba and Gonja districts outside of Kekpakpaan allowed them to exploit Ghana’s nascent market economy and representative democracy to circumvent the

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ranked ethnic hierarchy that had stifled their stride toward political equality. In addition, the expansion of education increased the number of Konkomba among the ranks of salaried employees. The dual system of belonging reflects the weakness of the postcolonial state and its inability to effectively accommodate the cultural and political diversity of its various ethnic communities. The 1981 and 1994 conflicts were not the defining events in the relationship between Konkomba and Dagomba but were products of a social structure shaped by political tradition and the dialectics of inclusion and exclusion. The Konkomba experience demonstrates that ethnicity is both constructed and changes over time, but also illustrates the limits of ethnic change. African societies worked within social and political parameters imposed by their politically dominant neighbors and sanctioned by the state. Rather than reinvent new paradigms of traditional representation for inclusion in local political structures, Konkomba leaders sought to gain acceptance of a Konkomba political framework that conformed to the dominant, chief-centered model that had dominated society since the advent of British colonial rule. The very absence of a well-organized, politically active chieftaincy provided Konkomba leaders with political freedom to assert a radical political agenda and identity. Yet their agenda was stifled by their initiative to reconstruct Konkomba as a centralized polity, which demonstrates the continued primacy of chieftaincy for defining political legitimacy within Ghanaian popular culture.

Autochthony and Land Control in Postcolonial Northern Ghana In 1978 in an effort to bring about political equality between Ghana’s regions and expand local land control, the regime of General I.K. Acheampong established the Committee on Ownership of Land and Positions of Tenants in Northern and Upper Regions, popularly known as the Alhassan Committee. Acheampong’s land tenure initiative represented a significant break from British colonial policy, during which the government exercised authority over all land in the Northern Territories. Postcolonial regimes, until Acheampong, had done little to reform the practice of state control. Land tenure in Southern Ghana and the Ashanti Region were regulated by a policy in which the “original owners,” whether chiefs, lineage heads, families, or individuals, exercised authority of land. Needless to say, local control provided the southern regions with economic opportunities that were absent in the north. The Alhassan Committee was shouldered

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with the responsibility to create a uniform system of land tenure for the entire nation, by determining the best process to transfer land control from the government to the region’s “original land owners” in the north. In 1978 KOYA, the largest and most significant civic organization among the Konkomba, was in the first year of a movement to establish Konkomba autonomy in local affairs through economic self-sufficiency and political independence from their historically centralized neighbors. The challenge to the Konkomba political agenda was that they sought the government’s cooperation to undermine what had come to be popularly accepted as the traditional social structure. The very groups they sought autonomy from were well represented on the committee. There is little evidence that Konkomba leaders turned to the committee out of a sense of optimism and faith in its objectivity. Rather, Konkomba leaders had no viable alternative than to appeal to the moral sensibilities of the committee’s members if they hoped to succeed in claiming authority over land in Kekpakpaan. The committee was a unique opportunity for local empowerment and a rare case of a military regime loosening its controls over central government. Yet while seeking to shed the legacy of British colonial practice, the Acheampong regime embraced the British stance on custom, political authority, and ethnicity. The committee was itself a reflection of the government’s regard for the groups that since the period of British rule had been deemed politically legitimate. The 12-member Alhassan Committee had two members from the Upper Regions, four from Southern Ghana, and six from among the historically centralized societies of Northern Ghana. There were no representatives from the numerous historically noncentralized societies that constituted a majority in the region. Like the British before it, the Acheampong regime expected the leaders of the “politically legitimate” communities to represent their neighbors’ interests. At the time, Konkomba were the second largest ethnic group in Northern Ghana but KOYA did not protest the absence of a Konkomba representative on the committee. They hoped to create allies on the committee, not alienate its members.2 The committee’s power to determine legitimate land ownership carried far greater consequences than accepting and rejecting land claims. Its emphasis on historical evidence as the central criteria in evaluating land claims empowered it to dismiss communal histories as false and by extension label them as politically illegitimate. For leaders of KOYA, the Alhassan Committee was an opportunity to gain legitimacy within the traditional political sphere to match recent

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Konkomba economic and political gains. Their petition requested the committee’s official recognition of the Konkomba clans of the Oti River plain as the original and rightful owners of land in Kekpakpaan where they continued to be a majority of the population. For KOYA, it was crucial that the committee accept their petition, not only to formalize Konkomba control over the land in the Oti plain but also to confirm their status as one of Ghana’s “legitimate” tribes. In addition, a favorable decision by the committee would potentially call into question Dagomba claims to authority over Konkomba and the basis for Konkomba political subordination. Therefore, the Konkomba petition was a political tactic within a broader strategy for Konkomba leaders to assert Konkomba as political equals to their historically centralized neighbors. Despite hope among KOYA leaders, the committee responded negatively to their petition. “The land the Konkomba now claim should be vested in them is under the Ya Na by conquest but is currently inhabited by the Konkombas,” it declared. “We therefore accept the claim of the Dagombas that the area claimed by the Konkombas is Dagomba land.”3 With this brief statement, the committee, although established to empower northerners with greater land control, further disempowered Konkomba clans and other communities that the government recognized as formally under the “traditional” authority of the region’s historically centralized polities. The words that the committee employed to express its decision demonstrates that historical memory had political currency in ways that were similar to its influence during the colonial period, and it continued to define social and political status and relationships between groups in colonial and postcolonial Ghana. The committee had an opportunity to transcend the legacy of ethnic privilege and truly determine the groups that lived in particular areas prior to British and German rule. Instead, it moved in support of existing social inequality by reaffirming the primacy of chieftaincy and ethnic privilege. The committee demonstrated the strength of British colonial legacy and Dagomba historical tradition. It chose to “accept the claim of the Dagombas” that the Konkomba had been conquered prior to the imposition of European rule and, therefore, have no legitimate claims to the land on which they have resided, evidently, longer than Dagomba. The British had interpreted conquest as part of the process of physically controlling a territory. As Chapter 2 discussed, evidence suggests that in the precolonial period Dagbon lacked both the capacity and incentive to rule “the land the Konkomba now claim.” Generally speaking, in precolonial Africa,

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with the exception of densely populated areas such as Rwanda and parts of southwestern Africa, only limited power was gained from controlling land. Peoples as opposed to lands were conquered. As the committee claimed to substantiate its decisions on the history of political relations between Konkomba and Dagomba, it only did so to the extent that British accepted the history of Dagomba political control over Kekpakpaan as grounded in fact. The committee’s decision further disenfranchised Konkomba, when it denied them title to and ownership of any piece of land in the Northern Region. It did so, moreover, through references to a past that was shaped by present political circumstances and interests. Acheampong’s initiative to reform land policy in Northern Ghana was aimed at establishing equality between northern chiefs and their southern counterparts. The government’s mission was not to unhinge the ethnic-based social hierarchy of the region. Doing so would have reduced the recognized authority of the northern chiefs, even if they had little real power to match their recognized status. A coup d’état pushed Acheampong from power and prevented the Alhassan Committee from shaping its conclusions into a viable land policy. Yet upholding the ethnic-based status quo remained a practice of the regimes that followed Acheampong, as well. This is clearly illustrated by the 1979 Constitution, Article 188, Paragraphs 3 and 4, which stated, For the avoidance of doubt it is hereby declared that all lands in the Northern and Upper Regions of Ghana which immediately before the coming into force of this Constitution were vested in the Government of Ghana are not public lands . . . all lands . . . shall vest in any such person who was the owner of any such land.

The statement “who was the owner of any such land” in the constitution implicitly privileged autochthony, tying it to land ownership in ways that would have been foreign to precolonial land occupants. It raised the primacy of the past but not past practices as they existed prior to European rule. Rather, the constitution appropriated Western notions of ownership and applied them to the precolonial past in a way that suggested continuity when there was in fact radical change. The specificity with which the constitution spoke of land ownership elevated the importance of control over land for individuals and groups. One of the major consequences for local society and the competition over the exercise of power was that land as a symbol of political control was added to chieftaincy as a symbol of political legitimacy. As land in

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postcolonial Ghana came under the purview of the traditional political sphere, chiefs gained considerable sway over the ways in which it could be utilized and allocated even when they were not deemed the original owners. These transformations in land tenure added an additional challenge to the Konkomba quest for enfranchisement within the traditional political sphere where they had been constructed as chiefless and politically subordinate to their neighbors. Their image as landless solidified this political identity but unlike their chieflessness the notion of Konkomba landlessness was challenged by their association with a relatively well-defined space, Kekpakpaan, and their success as highly productive farmers. The relationship between Konkomba and land added to the dissonance in their status as state citizens and members of a traditional tribe already produced by their economic and political success during the previous two decades. Konkomba success as commercial yam farmers and marketers, relative to other northern groups, and their status as a subordinate group in the ranked ethnic system of Northern Ghana became contradictory. Ranked ethnic systems are characterized by stratified group relations among ethnic categories within a single society. As Jay Oelbaum explains, “The relative rank and worth of these groups is determined ascriptively and is established by institutional arrangements, prescriptions, and taboos, even as there is some permeability to the boundaries between these groups.”4 Donald Horowitz contends that relations between groups in a ranked system involve conceptions of superordinate and subordinate status that all groups clearly understand. As examples of archetypical ranked ethnic systems, he points to race relations in the Western Hemisphere founded on African slavery.5 Most ranked systems are continually evolving, as a result of economic and educational change, which produces leaders eager to counter the basis for society’s ethnic-based inequality. “Subordinate groups can attempt to displace superordinate groups,” Horowitz explains. “They can aim at the abolition of ethnic divisions altogether; they can attempt to raise their position in the ethnic hierarchy without denying the legitimacy of that hierarchy; or they can move the system from ranked to unranked.”6 Strides toward greater equality were commonly accompanied by the superordinate group’s strenuous efforts to avert changes in the status quo, although they were powerless to stifle true social change. The Konkomba petition and its rejection illustrate the challenges of a rapidly evolving community that no longer fits its ascribed categories of centralized and noncentralized, coming up against and challenging

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broadly accepted notions of customary status and power. Therefore, in examining the evolving relationship between Konkomba and their neighbors in the postindependence period it is necessary to move beyond analyses of conflicting traditional structures. Konkomba were no longer noncentralized; they could not be described as chiefless. Yet they did not have a paramount chief and continued to be represented in the National and Regional Houses of Chiefs by the Ya Na, as a group subordinate to Dagomba.

KOYA and the Making of Tradition KOYA was part of a larger trend in political activism and self-help among highly politicized ethnic groups in postcolonial Africa. The state fostered a political environment—at times deliberately and others inadvertently—in which a common organizing tool for political leaders was to rally around tribe and chief. Throughout Ghana, from the 1950s to the 1970s, the lack of outlets for communities to express their social and political concerns contributed to a proliferation of civic associations.7 Civic associations gained particular social relevance in 1975 after Acheampong and the Supreme Military Council (SMC) (1975–1979) banned political parties and ethnic-based associations. The SMC leaders argued that ethnicity and party loyalty had grown too closely aligned and threatened the nation’s security. Communal associations proved difficult to completely undo, despite Acheampong’s efforts. The ban did not reduce ethnic-based political activism in Ghana. In fact, it had the opposite effect, as people turned to ethnic associations as the most viable and seemingly obvious means to advance their interests. In Northern Ghana, the desire for such an outlet, particularly among Konkomba Western-educated and semieducated professionals and civil servants who lived in Tamale, formed the basis of KOYA political activities. KOYA was founded in Tamale through a series of casual conversations beginning in mid-1975 that centered on strategies to build greater Konkomba political unity and development. These conversations were led by men such as Alfred Cotin, George Uka, Anthony Adams Bukari, Joseph Likanli, Samuel Kwaku, and Daniel Ngula.8 They reached out to former members of the Improvement Association who lived in and around Saboba and Yendi, such as Dan Neina Jobor, Isaac Bawa Bukari, Johnson Bilidou, and Nakoja Namuel to participate in these discussions. Meetings were initially held at Dan Ngula’s home in Tamale but soon became so popular that Ngula moved them to the Attah Asibi Hotel in Tamale. Likanli and Ngula aggressively

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recruited Konkomba civil servants and teachers who worked in Saboba and Yendi to attend the meetings and become an active part of the nascent Konkomba organization.9 With broad support from a crosssection of Konkomba society throughout Ghana, KOYA’s leadership structure and political agenda quickly took shape. KOYA also benefitted from having many former leaders of the Improvement Association as active members and a much larger group of educated Konkomba than the Improvement Association. Therefore, it managed to sustain its membership over a longer period and open chapters throughout the country. KOYA’s strength was built on its dedication to farming and economic issues. Its leadership was not focused solely on issues that affected the professional classes that comprised its leadership. KOYA presented itself as the leadership for all Konkomba and its constitution, to a certain extent, was to be the constitution for Konkomba. It was the first document written by Konkomba that speaks to the unity of all Konkomba in cultural, political, and historical terms. Specifically, the constitution proclaimed that KOYA’s aims were to promote understanding and brotherhood among all Konkomba, to help alleviate many of the factors that confined the Konkomba to social and political minority status in Ghana, and to “work ceaselessly for the eradication of illiteracy, suppression, exploitation, corruption and other social evils in Konkomba society.”10 As it says in its preamble, We the Konkomba Youth: Having Realised the need for coming together as a body; conscious of our responsibility to harness the human and natural resources of our people. Inspired by a common determination to promote understanding among ourselves. Believing that we are capable of being a vital force in our society as a group. Determined to safeguard and consolidate unity among ourselves; dedicated to the general progress and welfare of Konkomba land in particular and Ghana in general. Desirous that all Konkomba should henceforth unite so that our welfare and well being can be assured; resolved to reinforce our unity by coming together.11

In addition to proclaiming Konkomba unity, the constitution explicitly declared that Saboba was the “traditional” Konkomba headquarters. Although the constitution cited good relations with “other tribes having common boundaries with Konkomba” as one of its goals, it declared that its members had the responsibility to safeguard “the fatherland of Konkomba and improve it from exploitation and from falling into the hands of foreigners and undesirables.”12 Its reference

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to land was not meant simply to rouse Konkomba emotions and ethnic nationalism, KOYA targeted land as a central issue and employed language that explicitly claimed land in Kekpakpaan as belonging to Konkomba. In addition to situating Konkomba within a specific geographic space, the KOYA constitution emphasized Konkomba cultural unity. In this way it asserted to neighboring societies and the state a Konkomba definition of what it meant to be Konkomba, while presenting an argument to the broader Konkomba community for unity around land, culture, and social development. Aims: The aims of the Konkomba Youth Association shall be: A. To promote understanding and brotherhood among Konkomba people at home and abroad. B. To promote the advancement of education among our people. C. To explain and play a major role in the National Programmes. D. To explore the avenues for carrying out scientific research into the traditional healing methods practiced by the old folks. E. To uphold and promote the culture and traditions of the Konkomba.

KOYA leaders took copies of the constitution to each of the prominent biborb of Kekpakpaan, which was essential to KOYA’s agenda. KOYA leaders hoped to promote the biborb as an alternative to Dagomba and Bimbilla nas’ authority over Konkomba villages and their capacity to represent Konkomba local interests in the Regional and National Houses of Chiefs. Biborb support for the KOYA constitution simultaneously proclaimed the reality of Konkomba political unity and presented the appearance of KOYA leadership as consistent with Konkomba political tradition. Moreover, cooperation between KOYA and the biborb reinforced the political authority of the biborb. To make the words of unity captured in the KOYA constitution a reality, KOYA organized a convention to bring Konkomba from throughout the country in support of political unity and the KOYA agenda. In early March 1977 KOYA leaders produced radio advertisements and spread by word-of-mouth news that KOYA was to hold its first national convention in Saboba.13 The annual Easter Convention, as it came to be called, was central to building an ethnic-based political consciousness among the Konkomba and affirming Saboba as the Konkomba political center. Prior to the first Easter Convention, there had been no large-scale gatherings among Konkomba. Funerals had been the largest gatherings, along with church services for the relative few who converted to Christianity, but the convention

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provided Konkomba with a rare opportunity to share information and reconnect with family and friends.14 In addition, it expanded KOYA’s membership throughout Kekpakpaan and areas of Ghana where Konkomba had migrated. KOYA leaders hoped that those who attended Easter Convention would return to their villages or schools and spread word of KOYA and its projects. At the first convention, Daniel Ngula was elected to a fouryear term as KOYA president. Ngula was a unique figure among Konkomba for his varied experiences and family background. He was the first Konkomba to obtain a degree from a university. In the 1960s he earned a degree from California Polytechnic University and credits this experience in the United States during the height of the civil rights movement for his politicization. Racial politics in the United States inspired his interest in becoming an advocate for disfranchised and marginalized Konkomba back in Ghana. In addition, Ngula’s background illustrates how porous ethnic boundaries can be. He was raised primarily in Accra by his father, a Konkomba, who served as a police officer for the colonial administration, and his mother, who was Dagomba. Like most Ghanaians from Accra, Ngula grew up speaking Twi and the local Ga language, and he also spoke Dagbani. He did not, however, learn Likpakpaaln and only became active among Konkomba as an adult. As KOYA president, Ngula outlined the organization’s initiatives around the same issues that the Improvement Association took on 20 years earlier, which initially focused KOYA on ending the practice of infant betrothal and promoting Western education. After the government; land reforms, Ngula added land control to the KOYA agenda. Ngula proposed that girls younger than 14 not be forced to marry the men to whom they had been betrothed.15 He and other KOYA leaders argued that Konkomba boys and girls should be allowed to develop natural relationships and that girls should marry men who are closer to their own age.16 Unlike the leaders of the Improvement Association, KOYA leaders did not have to contend with the Konkomba feuds that continued to plague Kekpakpaan until the early 1950s. By the late 1970s disputes among Konkomba rarely became violent; yet Konkomba leaders remained concerned about the politically and socially disruptive effects of Konkomba marriage practices. As late as the early 1980s, many disputes that grew out of Konkomba marriage arrangements were taken to Dagomba and Nanumba courts for arbitration, which, KOYA leaders argued, granted Dagomba and Bimbilla nas social and political sway over the Konkomba community.

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The Third Easter Convention took up the government’s land reforms as its major focus. Ngula and other Konkomba leaders considered the act a significant political setback in the Konkomba struggle for political equality and their efforts to become economically selfsufficient. The act vested the “original” owners of all land in Northern Ghana with control over land. Just as Acheampong’s Alhassan Committee had done a year earlier, the Limann administration recognized Dagomba as the “original” authorities in Kekpakpaan, which allowed the Ya Na to claim legal rights over land. The Land Tenure Act also affected Konkomba who had established farms in Bimbilla and Kpasa, where, as a result of migration, they constituted a majority of the population. The government recognized the Bimbilla Na as the owner of the previously unoccupied land on which Konkomba had established their farms. Just as the policies of the British colonial administration made the Konkomba politically subordinate to the Dagomba and Mamprusi, similarly the Land Tenure Act sustained Konkomba traditional exclusion and upheld Dagomba and Nanumba dominance of the traditional political sphere by virtue of their recognized status as politically legitimate tribes. Ngula expressed his regret that biborb in Kekpakpaan failed to protest the Land Tenure Act. The Konkomba, he insisted, simply allowed the centralized polities to take control of what belonged to Konkomba by right.17 He proposed that KOYA petition the Limann administration to form a committee to develop a protocol for a just allocation of land rights in the region.18 Debates with the Konkomba community and among Konkomba leaders over the most effective tactics for confronting their disfranchisement produced a small but committed faction of Konkomba activists who insisted that Konkomba would remain disfranchised as long as they lacked a paramount chief.19 While arguments for a Konkomba paramount gained traction, KOYA continued to work aggressively to circumvent the obstacles to greater political and economic development, such as working with Konkomba businessmen and farmers to improve their stake in yam farming and marketing. Since the 1950s when Western-educated leaders began to organize Konkomba, their movement sought to work beyond the boundaries of traditional authority through economic accumulation and district and electoral politics. In the 1970s yam farming and marketing became a major factor in Konkomba social and political change, and a basis for increased unity. The numerous Konkomba yam markets organized between 1981 and 1994, particularly the market at Agbogbloshie in Accra, served as political and economic gathering points

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for Konkomba outside of Tamale and Saboba. While Ghana’s overall agricultural sector experienced a considerable downturn, during the 1980s, Konkomba economic productivity increased because of yams. Yams provided Konkomba with a number of advantages over their neighbors who focused on crops such as cassava, or sorghum, or did not engage in commercial farming on a large a scale. With yams, Konkomba did not have to rely on marketing boards or government support for fertilizer. Konkomba also benefitted from the absence of one particular group dominating yam production. In fact their growing dominance went largely unnoticed by their neighbors. Its leaders encouraged Konkomba yam farmers to expand their operations to include the transport and marketing of yams. In this way KOYA worked outside of the traditional political parameters that Ghana inherited from the British colonial state. Konkomba migration into Nanun and Gonja took place mainly in the first half of the twentieth century. These migrants were initially made up of men who were attracted to opportunities to work on farms in the more fertile farmland in Bimbilla, Gonja, and the Brong-Ahafo Region. As migration gained momentum whole compounds and even lineages left Kekpakpaan for the more fertile lands to the south. Nanumba originally gave the Konkomba permission to settle in their territory on the condition that they would pay allegiance, including a tribute, to the Bimbilla Na. As Sara Berry explains, “For both colonial regimes and their African subjects, control over land was a means of controlling labor as well as asserting authority. Like European officials and settlers, African chiefs, elders, and family heads extended cultivation rights to immigrants or subordinate members of their own households and communities in exchange for tribute, allegiance, and/or labor.”20 The Bimbilla Na, Mamadu, exercised authority over Konkomba farmers through the collection of tribute, control over their access to farmland, and the adjudication of Konkomba cases in the Bimbilla Na’s court. Konkomba complained that Mamadu exploited them with excessive fines in his court and restricted their access to new farmland. There was also growing frustration among many Konkomba that nas exploited them when their cases came before their courts.21 Konkomba tribute to the Bimbilla Na consisted of free labor on his farms, a hind leg of any large wild or domestic animal that was slaughtered, and intermittent shares of foodstuffs and livestock. The government accepted these practices as part of the traditional political domain, which fell under the jurisdiction of the Regional and National House of Chiefs. Nanumba leaders viewed the Bimbilla Na’s

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demands for tribute as a fair sharecropping arrangement and lenient when compared with tribute in other parts of Ghana such as the abunu or abusaa system of the Akan. Some Konkomba regarded the arrangement as a system of tribute comparable and related to their subjection and exploitation under Dagomba nas and held disdain for the Bimbilla Na’s seemingly arbitrary collection of tribute, which Konkomba deemed denigrating and added to the popular perception of Konkomba as a subject population within the Dagomba and Nanumba social structures. To establish greater control over their affairs and escape the onerous tribute, Konkomba sought to break away from the Bimbilla Na’s authority and shield themselves from what they believed to have been systemic exploitation and corruption, which allowed the Bimbilla Na to gain financially from Konkomba disputes.22 As the Konkomba population in Bimbilla grew and eventually surpassed the Nanumba, collecting tribute and adjudicating Konkomba disputes acquired great meaning for the Bimbilla Na and helped raise his political status in the region. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Bimbilla Na challenged these Konkomba attempts at political autonomy. When Nanumba leaders learned of the Konkomba plan to cease providing tribute, they insisted that such a tactic would cheat the Bimbilla Na of his rights as landlord and that the Konkomba, whom he had welcomed and provided with yams seedlings to plant, were ungrateful. In 1977 the Konkomba community in the Bimbilla District elected Joseph Ali Kamshegu as headman and declared that they would no longer take their disputes to the Bimbilla Na and would be more selective in submitting tribute to the Bimbilla Na. Even before he became the Konkomba headman in Bimbilla, Kamshegu had been one of the early advocates for Konkomba political autonomy. He insisted that Konkomba develop a means to settle their disputes in a manner that reflected Konkomba practices and understandings of right and wrong. As long as Konkomba continued to present the Bimbilla Na with their disputes, Kamshegu argued, the chief would continue to benefit.23 With Kamshegu usurping the Bimbilla Na’s authority over Konkomba the Bimbilla Na filed a complaint with the district administration. Mamadu accused Kamshegu of challenging his authority and creating an illegal tribunal within the Nanumba Traditional Area. At the Bimbilla Na’s urging the district administrator summoned Kamshegu to respond to the Bimbilla Na’s allegations before the Bimbilla Na, Nanumba elders, the magistrate, and the superintendent of police. Kamshegu insisted that he was neither operating a court nor trying

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cases. He was only arbitrating Konkomba disputes, free of charge. Kamshegu explained the distinction, “If a woman has a problem with her husband I will advise her, ‘what have you done, my daughter? Be nice to your husband.’ If it is on the part of the man, I will tell the man, ‘Please, go back and take care of your woman. You are wrong.’ When the woman has stated her case and the man has stated his case, I only ask them to go buy some small pito. I then tell them to drink it together from the same calabash, which is a sign of reunion, reconciliation. When they finish drinking, I tell them to shake hands. Then I will crack a joke and they will laugh over it. Then the rest of the drink will be shared with all the people gathered, and the matter is settled. If it is a dispute between men, the same way. All this time, only Konkombas.”24 While Kamshegu’s explanation understates his actual role among Konkomba, it satisfied the district administrator. He encouraged Kamshegu to continue the work he had begun among Konkomba and declared the matter closed.25 This was quite a coup for Kamshegu, considering that the political apparatus of the district, including the office of district administrator, was in Nanumba hands. However, for the Bimbilla Na this was a significant setback in his efforts to maintain the reins of power in the face of increased Konkomba migration and political organization in Bimbilla. In Bimbilla, therefore, KOYA entered an ongoing dispute. Part of the KOYA agenda was to remove the influence of non-Konkomba chiefs over Konkomba. Their strategy was to assert their own claims to tradition to undermine the legitimacy of “traditional” Nanumba and Dagomba authority over Konkomba populations. Simply put, KOYA leaders argued that the two traditions were incompatible and that Konkomba should not be ruled by nas who did not understand Konkomba practices. To confront what they argued was exploitation by the Bimbilla Na, KOYA recommended that Konkomba farmers in the area stop paying tribute and, instead, appoint their own Konkomba elders to adjudicate internal disputes. In assisting communities to select headmen, KOYA leaders argued that they only sought to promote Konkomba self-reliance and to settle their disputes in a manner that reflected their local culture. KOYA did not initiate major economic change among Konkomba. Konkomba farmers had gradually moved toward cash crop farming as early as the 1920s. Konkomba yam farmers had been working with a small group of Konkomba lorry owners prior to KOYA’s founding. Still, KOYA played a significant role as an advocate for Konkomba economic autonomy, which they tied to the broader issue of political

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equality. KOYA wanted Konkomba to do more than join the ranks of the middlemen who transported yams to markets throughout the country. Its goal was for Konkomba to replace Nanumba and Dagomba middlemen who, Konkomba leaders argued, exploited Konkomba farmers by paying them less than market value for their yams, which the traders then sold to wholesale markets at a considerable profit.26 By 1981, Konkomba were the most productive group of yam farmers in the nation. Initially, while the number of Konkomba middle men remained small, Konkomba farmers avoided Nanumba and Dagomba middlemen in favor of Asante women traders. E.N. Balidin, Kwame Ngula, and Ousmanu Tamalbe were among the few Konkomba who sold yams in Accra.27 They were among a number of traders at the Timber Market in Central Accra. For most of the market’s history, members of various northern communities sold yams together without incident. Yet during the 1981 conflict, tension developed between Nanumba and the Konkomba merchants. During the first days of fighting in the Bimbilla District, Nanumba merchants pressured the Konkomba to find an alternative market for their produce, which caused a momentary crisis among the men. Fortunately, Dalafu Omtapii, parliamentarian representing the Saboba constituency, intervened and arranged for the men to sell yams in the market at Ayaloloo in Central Accra. However, Ayaloloo market was narrow, with little room for trucks to maneuver in and out as they loaded and unloaded yams.28 Dalafu then made arrangements with the Ga-Gbeshie Korle, head of the Ga traditional council for Korle near Accra, to allow the men to set up a small market near the Odaw River in the upper reaches of the Korle lagoon at Agbogbloshie. Agbogbloshie was an undeveloped area east of the center of Accra that had open space and a close proximity to a road that easily linked to major traffic arteries. The men agreed that it was a highly suitable site for a market. Once established, the new Konkomba yam market quickly attracted a growing number of Konkomba yam sellers. Konkomba businessmen organized similar markets in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city. These markets subsequently became centers of Konkomba social and economic life for the increasing Konkomba population outside of Kekpakpaan. The success that the Konkomba attained in commercial yam farming and marketing contributed to financial independence for many Konkomba, to go with their increasing political autonomy and power. Commercial farming allowed Konkomba to circumvent the local political authority that their historically noncentralized neighbors exercised

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and helped to render the ethnic hierarchy irrelevant with regard to all but a few issues. Konkomba social and political change created dissonance in the ethnic-based social hierarchy in Northern Ghana that was evident in the district and regional governments. Government officials were also aware of the slowly escalating tension between Konkomba and Nanumba in the Bimbilla District, but they failed to intervene with a peaceful solution. Their reluctance to act was tantamount to a green light for violence. In March 1981 while Kamshegu traveled to Bimbilla from a KOYA meeting in Saboba, a group of Nanumba men confronted him, forced him into a lorry, and drove him to a small village six miles from Yendi, where they threatened to seriously harm him if he did not stay away from Bimbilla. Although Kamshegu had no choice but to take his abductors’ violent threats seriously, he was determined to return to his home in Bimbilla and continue his leadership role within the Konkomba community. He traveled by lorry to Tamale where he reported his abduction to the regional commissioner.29 The commissioner also took the Nanumba men’s threats seriously and sent orders for the Bimbilla Na to guarantee Kamshegu’s safety in Bimbilla. From the Bimbilla Na’s perspective, this was the second time that the government sided with Konkomba in their evolving conflict. Yet the commissioner’s intervention only temporarily secured Kamshegu’s safety. The government remained ambivalent about the obvious tension building between Konkomba and Nanumba. On March 23 members from the Nanumba Youth Association and KOYA met to discuss the growing tension in the district. Both groups left the meeting hopeful that they would settle their differences amicably. During the four weeks that followed, Nanumba and Konkomba leaders managed to keep the more aggressive factions in their respective communities resigned to a peaceful resolution. While the district remained relatively calm, though only temporarily, Kamshegu and Bimbilla Na Mamadu continued their dispute over who had the right to exercise authority over the Konkomba in Bimbilla. Their dispute trickled over into the wider Nanumba and Konkomba communities; after their sons had a fight in a pito bar, on April 23, 1981, Kamshegu’s son stabbed Mamadu’s son. Later, while a group of Nanumba men searched for Kamshegu’s son they attacked and ultimately killed three Konkomba men and a young Nanumba woman who they mistook for a Konkomba.30 On April 28, as a search party combed Konkomba villages in the vicinity of Bimbilla looking for Kamshegu’s son, Hamilton Salifu, a Nanumba, entered a compound and peered through one of its windows and was met by a bullet in

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the head that killed him instantly.31 The death toll in the conflict rose slowly at first, while the fighting remained limited to attacks on individuals, before Nanumba and Konkomba men organized to attack entire villages. Ethnic conflict is the form of social unrest that most clearly demonstrates the weakness of the state. Postcolonial Ghana continued to rely on tradition as a form of local rule and control. Such a system is easily undermined by challenges to authority and larger economic and political change, from which Konkomba benefitted immensely. It is not by chance that the two major conflicts erupted within two years of successful democratic elections in Ghana. The democratically elected regimes introduced new constitutions, which brought discussions of citizenship and equality into sharper focus. It is necessary to see the 1981 and 1994 within this broader context of change; they were a product of transformation not a tactic to achieve it. The section that follows presents some of the details of the 1981 conflict to demonstrate that there was within it a discourse and performance of tradition that was blurred, at times, with an emerging discourse on citizenship and belonging.

The 1981 Conflict: Challenging Tradition and Social Change Through reports on the 1981 conflict the national media motivated more and more Nanumba and Konkomba men to join the fighting as reports of attacked villages appeared in the national papers and on the radio. For example, on April 30, 1981, the Ghanaian Times reported the complaints of the Nanumba na in Kpasa that on April 24 Konkomba had attacked and killed a number of Nanumba and Dagomba in the Kpasa market and set fire to their compounds.32 As the story spread, hundreds of Nanumba in the vicinity of Kpasa fled across the nearby border to Togo, while Nanumba men from Bimbilla organized an attack against Konkomba compounds throughout the district. Initially Konkomba casualties outnumbered those of the Nanumba, but the tide quickly shifted in favor of the Konkomba until they exhibited a palpable advantage. There have been a number of explanations for Konkomba success during the conflict. Nanumba leaders argued that the government and the police showed a bias toward Konkomba. As evidence Nanumba cited examples of police who turned a blind eye to Konkomba weapon transport schemes, but arrested Nanumba caught transporting weapons.33 Konkomba leaders argued that their

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only advantage stemmed from their tradition of joining together to fight for prolonged periods with only a short notice.34 This was an essential skill because historically Konkomba social structure did not allow for standing armies. Living as they commonly did in small, scattered communities in the shadows of Nanun, Dagbon, Mamprugu, and Chakosi—well-organized militaristic polities—every Konkomba man had to maintain a capacity and readiness to fight at the shortest notice. All male Konkomba were trained as warriors, primarily with bows and arrows. The Konkomba fighting tradition, which also evolved due to frequent feuds between Konkomba groups, allowed the Konkomba to assume defensive and offensive positions within minutes of hearing the whistle that warned them to take up arms.35 Although there were few incidents of protracted violence that involved Dagomba since the imposition of British and German rule, largescale feuds were part of recent Konkomba history. It is very likely that there were men who participated in the 1981 conflict who had engaged in large-scale, protracted feuds with other Konkomba only two decades earlier. The Konkomba capacity to quickly rally and turn a defensive position into an offensive one was demonstrated in June 1981 when a group of Nanumba men organized a surprise attack against the Konkomba village of Chichagi. Chichagi was an important Konkomba target because it was between Bimbilla and Kpasa, two large and overwhelmingly Konkomba towns. To mount an effective attack on Kpasa, which was so central to the debate over traditional authority between Konkomba and Nanumba, Nanumba had to attack and disperse Konkomba residents of Chichagi. As the Nanumba crossed the Oti River at Salnayili and made their way toward Chichagi, Konkomba spotted them and sounded an alarm that was quickly carried through the village and its surrounding area, informing all the men that it was time to fight. Konkomba immediately overwhelmed the Nanumba who had prepared for an attack but were in no position for an actual fight with the Chichagi villagers. Consequently, the Konkomba easily routed the Nanumba.36 On the heels of this success, Konkomba men from Chichagi organized to attack Wulensi, a predominantly Nanumba village of 3,000 residents and the second largest town in the Nanumba Traditional Area. The short time in which the Konkomba arrived in Wulensi and destroyed it shocked its residents and the police, who arrived long after the town had been abandoned. According to witnesses, there was less than 40 minutes between the Konkomba entering the town

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and withdrawing. Yet in that period, 147 residents were killed and the survivors were forced to flee.37 Iddrisu Seini, in the Daily Graphic, described Wulensi as a town that had been, “bustling with commercial activities now turned into a ghost town. A visitor to this town is greeted with a stinking odor of decomposed human bodies. Human skeletons can be seen scattered in some of the rooms. Some shallow mass graves, one right in front of the Wulensi Police Station, are a common sight.”38 On their way to Bimbilla, the Konkomba combatants attacked smaller villages before the Ghana Police finally stopped them just short of the Bimbilla town line. With the exception of large-scale assaults on the towns of Wulensi and Damanko, the Konkomba aimed their attacks at the houses of Nanumba nas in the overwhelmingly Konkomba villages.39 Nonetheless, casualties were high. The rapid response of the Konkomba outside of Bimbilla and Kpasa further demonstrates the sense of Konkomba political consciousness that pervaded Konkomba communities. Konkomba throughout the Northern, Volta, and Brong-Ahafo Regions and in Accra were encouraged to go to the Bimbilla District to join the conflict.40 There were reports from the national press that Konkomba from the Volta and Brong-Ahafo Regions had fought alongside Konkomba in the Bimbilla District and Kpasa and that major Konkomba reinforcements were building up on the Togo border, preparing to cross the Oti River if required.41 The police prevented a physical attack against Bimbilla but most of its Nanumba residents had already fled, including the Bimbilla Na, Mamadu, making a Konkomba attack unnecessary. Konkomba took control of the town and elected one of their biborb to replace the Bimbilla Na and other biborb to be chiefs of other towns that they conquered. Konkomba leaders hoped to use their own chiefs as a buffer between themselves and the historically centralized groups.42 They recognized that chiefs were a potent symbol of political authority in Ghana. The extent to which they actually exercised political authority within Konkomba society was not as important as what they represented to outsiders. Although Nanumba attacked first, the speed with which Konkomba expelled them from Wulensi and other areas of the district and began to install their own chiefs made many Nanumba believe that Konkomba interest in taking full control of Nanumba land was at the root of the entire affair. Although the government used the military to prevent violence from spreading to Tamale, it was socially disrupting to the city. Still, the conflict was felt in a variety of non-physical ways. For example, in

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early July, a group of Dagomba men placed notices throughout the city that ordered the Konkomba to leave: All Konkomba resident in Tamale and its surrounding area are hereby given 96 hours from today (July 6) within which to pack and leave the municipality. They are to do this without fail. For failure after the expiry of the deadline will mean nothing but death. All landlords are warned to refrain from giving shelter to these sadists. Any landlord who disobeys will be treated like a Konkomba and be subjected to revolutionary justice . . . We are on the move and nothing can stop us.43

Not all Dagomba leaders expressed such strong anti-Konkomba sentiments. The Dagbon Youth Congress cautioned all Dagomba to stay neutral and nonaligned in the conflict. It issued a statement that “the policy of the Congress in disputes of this nature has always been to stay neutral to enable it to play a reconciliatory role.”44 Fortunately, although there was a sizable Konkomba population spread throughout Tamale that was vulnerable to attack, no fighting occurred in the city; yet the situation there remained extremely tense. By the first week of July, the military had established itself throughout the Northern Region, with an especially strong presence in and around Bimbilla. As a semblance of order returned the government began to investigate the origins of the conflict, its damage in the towns and rural areas, and the proper course of actions it should take in terms of the administration of justice. On Tuesday, July 7, parliament declared the Bimbilla District a “disaster zone” and dispatched a fourman fact-finding team to assess the damage and determine the causes of the conflict and the extent, if any, of non-Ghanaian involvement. Harry Gandaa, MP for Lawra-Nandom, headed the team, which was made up of members of parliament from the Northern and Upper Regions. The 1981 conflict left an enduring sense of humiliation among Nanumba. Their paramount chief was forced to flee Bimbilla during the conflict, they lost control of several villages, and Bimbilla temporarily came under Konkomba control. Konkomba and Nanumba blamed each other for the cause of the violence. The Nanumba accused the Konkomba of violating Nanun’s customs and traditions. Konkomba leaders, on the other hand, insisted that the conflict resulted from the exploitation Konkomba suffered under the Bimbilla Na.45 Meanwhile, the government’s fact-finding team reported that the conflict had upset living conditions, disrupted farms, and seriously damaged the region’s capacity to efficiently transport goods.

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The government quickly moved to address these issues through a National Relief Committee, under Dr. J.S. Nabila, minister of presidential affairs. The Relief Committee arranged for the Ghana Air Force to airlift food donated by Catholic Relief Services from Takoradi to the affected areas.46 The Bimbilla Na insisted that before a government commission of inquiry could launch an investigation in the Bimbilla District, the government must force Konkomba to return cattle stolen from Nanumba, prevent Konkomba from continuing to destroy Nanumba crops, and prevent the Konkomba from evicting Nanumba farmers from their land.47 Implicit in the Bimbilla Na’s demands is the extent to which Konkomba had successfully taken control of the Bimbilla District and forced the Nanumba into a politically subordinate position. The Bimbilla Na suggested that Konkomba instigated the conflicts as a cover for illicit activities and exploits to weaken the Nanumba social position. Blame was pointed in all directions, including at Limann, the president. Members of parliament publicly criticized Limann for his failure to respond to initial signs of trouble in the Bimbilla District or make any public statements to condemn the violence once it began. Indeed, the Limann administration appeared stunned by the conflict’s magnitude and scale, yet remained silent throughout the two months of violence. The president made his first public statement after the fighting had stopped, but his words did little to pave the road to reconciliation between the Konkomba and Nanumba. In a meeting with representatives from KOYA and the Nanumba Youth Association on July 11 in Tamale, Limann advised the chiefs to eliminate practices that are incompatible with modern society. If the institution of chieftaincy was to save itself, he suggested, it must do away with provocative practices that led to violence and death.48 Limann warned the Bimbilla Na that there were once kings throughout Europe, but those who could not change were forced out.49 He repeated these ill-advised statements the following day in a speech before the Northern Region House of Chiefs, where they were poorly received. But Konkomba leaders were encouraged by Limann’s statements. Dan Ngula and Ken Wujangi, the KOYA president, felt vindicated and satisfied that the government had finally recognized what Konkomba leaders had long held to be the issue at the heart of the conflict, the exploitative behavior of Nanumba.50 Despite Limann’s speeches in the north, the commission of inquiry did not begin its work until September 2, 1981, two months after

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Limann returned to Accra. Its members included Justice George Lamptey, a high court judge; Yelboura Antumni, a social welfare officer; J.K. Gyaisie, a youth leader; and Edmund D. Nutotuo, secretary to the commission. By December the commission had compiled a long list of Konkomba who had participated in the attacks against Nanumba nas and against Wulensi and Damanko. However, the commission suffered the same fate as the Alhassan Committee three years earlier. On New Year’s Eve 1981, before the commission made significant progress in its investigation, Flight Lieutenant John Rawlings carried out his second successful coup. He removed Limann from office and suspended the commission of inquiry, which never reconvened its work and, therefore, the government’s findings on the causes of the conflict were not brought before the public. For Konkomba, and Konkomba leaders in particular, the 1981 conflict pushed their struggle for social and political equality from a local to a national issue. Konkomba became more well known for the conflict than for their dominance in the yam trade. Nanumba leaders continued to insist that Konkomba had violated Nanumba nas’ rights to assert their authority over non-Nanumba groups within the Nanumba Traditional Area. Without this right, Nanumba would be reduced to a numeric and political minority. Nanumba traditional leaders petitioned the government to remove a long list of “disloyal” Konkomba, but the Rawlings administration was content to enforce the stalemate. For their part, Konkomba successfully gained consideration for their grievances, but remained politically subordinate to the centralized polities due to the nature of their political structure. Consequently, the 1981 conflict was merely the first of several violent disputes between the Konkomba and their centralized neighbors, including the 1994 conflict.

Konkomba Economic Development Konkomba identity transformation created dissonance in their ascribed political status. Their success as commercial yam farmers, middlemen, and merchants during the 1980s and 1990s, relative to other northern groups, and their status as a subordinate group in the ethnic hierarchy of Northern Ghana was contradictory. As Konkomba Western-educated and business elites aspired toward greater mobility and recognition, which was incompatible with the strictly ascriptive hierarchy of northern society, they confronted an entrenched political culture that valued chieftaincy and historical precedent.51 Politics in Ghana operated with a heightened sensitivity to ethnic identity, but

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the nation’s growing market economy was ethnically blind. Equality within the market opened opportunities for those at the bottom of Ghana’s political hierarchy. Although the north has historically been poor relative to Southern Ghana, during the 1980s and early 1990s there was substantial agricultural growth in some areas of the region, which, prior to 1994, lowered the incidence of poverty among particular groups.52 KOYA pushed for Konkomba yam farmers to get involved in other facets of yam commerce, because, prior to 1981, with the exception of a small number of traders in markets in predominantly Konkomba areas, few Konkomba transported or marketed yams. The KOYA leadership recognized the benefits other groups reaped from yams grown by Konkomba and perceived it within a larger context of Konkomba subordination and dependence. For them, the lack of Konkomba control over the transport and selling of yam further demonstrated the lack of Konkomba autonomy. There were additional factors that contributed to the rapid increase in profitability of yams among Konkomba, such as improved roads in the north and the lack of price controls allowed the Konkomba to profit quickly with little investment.53 Unlike other crops in Ghana, such as cocoa and cassava, Konkomba and other yam producers controlled the price and distribution with very limited government interference.The improved roads in Northern Ghana included those that connected Yendi, Bimbilla, and Salaga; Tamale to Bolga; Tamale to Accra, through Kumasi. When the colonial government opened road transport in the 1920s it facilitated the growth in yam production among the Konkomba and their migration to southern areas to farm. Commercial yam farming increased wealth among Konkomba and fostered the emergence of Konkomba “Big Men.” By 1994 yams were Ghana’s largest nontraditional export, outside of frozen fish and pineapples.54 Due to the importance of yams in Gonja cuisine and its rapidly growing national market Konkomba and other historically noncentralized communities migrated into eastern Gonja in large numbers to grow yams for the local and national market. In areas of the north and the Brong-Ahafo Region that are closer to the forest zones, Such as Gonja, yams are more plentiful and are therefore a more significant part of the local diet. Konkomba and Nawuri settled in Gonja in such large numbers that they upset the electoral dominance that Gonja people held in the area since Ghana’s first national election in 1951.55 The opportunities to participate in yam farming in Gonja were so great and ultimately profitable for non-Gonja because few local Gonja,

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as well as Nanumba and Dagomba, took advantage of the growing national demand for yams from the southern edges of the Northern Region and the Brong-Ahafo Region. Traditional elites generally held a negative view of farming and their perspective influenced commoners’ attitudes and practices with regard to cash-crop farming. This is not to say that these groups did not farm. In recent decades, however, they have not engaged in cash crop farming on the level of many of their noncentralized neighbors, particularly Konkomba. The failure of these politically dominant groups to take advantage of the growing market for foodstuffs in Ghana has resulted in increased wealth for the Konkomba and the shattering of the ranked system. Chieftaincy was at the center of the debate that sparked the 1994 conflict, but the conflict was much larger than chieftaincy. The Konkomba threat to Dagomba, Nanumba, and Gonja political power had developed throughout the postcolonial period. Since the closing years of British colonial rule, the Konkomba not only accepted social and political change, a defining feature of their ethnicity was that they encouraged it. The major themes in the 40-year history of Konkomba political activism prior to the 1994 conflict—migration, commercial farming, Western–education, local politics, communal associations—were each part of the Konkomba transformation toward greater equality, political access, and economic autonomy within local society. Yet the changes that they advanced continually conflicted with the entrenched political position of their historically centralized neighbors. Despite Konkomba economic and political gains, by 1994 their leaders continued to argue that Konkomba lacked true political equality with their centralized neighbors, due to the primacy of tradition and chieftaincy in shaping local affairs and political status. KOYA members pushed for Konkomba chiefs to be recognized as equal with the Ya Na, Bimbilla Na, Nayiri, and the Yagbumwura of Gonja. KOYA never expressed a specific position on chieftaincy, but a faction of its leaders lobbied for the creation of a Konkomba paramount chief. They argued that Konkomba would remain politically irrelevant as long as they lacked politically relevant chiefs. There were others, however, who argued that chieftaincy led to factionalism and violence, as Dagbon exhibited throughout the course of its contemporary history.56 Two points become clear from looking at Konkomba social and political change between 1977 and 1994. One, no one single factor drove Konkomba social and political change. Konkomba reinterpreted

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their ethnic identity and political status in response to the political subordination that they inherited from British rule, but also in response to changing economic circumstances, particularly as they related to commercial yam farming. Second, the 1981 and 1994 conflicts were products of this change. The 1981 conflict was not over land or chieftaincy. The central issue in both was the extent to which social, economic, and political equality was possible in a society dominated by a dual system of belonging. True equality called for social and political change; the type of change that had continuously taken place in postcolonial Ghana. However, political equality specifically called for those groups that maintained positions of privilege to forfeit some of their rights. Such change was difficult, considering the inequality that had been institutionalized in Ghana through the National and Regional Houses of Chiefs and the Chieftaincy Act, and the Land Tenure Act of 1979. The government’s failure or inability to address these contradictions in society allowed the forces of change and stagnation to continue to rub against each other in the years that followed the 1981 conflict until it sparked a series of conflicts that culminated in the 1994 conflict, the largest and most destructive to date in Ghana’s colonial and postcolonial history.

Chieftaincy and Conflict in Northern Ghana The growing autonomy of chiefs in Northern Ghana was accompanied by their growing association with local development issues and security.57 Prior to the 1994 conflict there were a series of conflicts that were directly related to issues of chiefly power and “minority” rights. The Nawuri-Gonja conflict of 1991–1992 took place in the East Gonja District and played a central role in laying the foundation for the disputes that would precipitate the 1994 conflict. Tension between Gonja and Nawuri and been aggravated by political competition between the Gonja Youth Association and the Nawuri Youth Association. Both were deeply involved in the dispute over the Gonja Youth Association’s decision to hold its 1991 annual meeting in Kpandai, a town that Nawuri claimed as their traditional capital but Gonja regarded as within the Gonja Traditional Area and, therefore, part of the Yagbumwura’s jurisdiction. The Nawuri chief viewed the decision for the meeting as a direct assault on his authority and appealed to the government to prevent the meeting. Meanwhile, Gonja claimed that Nawuri refused to respect the rights of Gonja chiefs. The efforts by Gonja and Nawuri to uphold the status of

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their chiefs placed them in a conflicting position. Tension between these groups escalated and turned violent.58 As the fighting intensified, Gonja mistook Konkomba, who live in large numbers in the rural area around Kpandai, for Nawuri. The casualties that Konkomba suffered in the Gonja attack motivated them to join the conflict on the side of the Nawuri, which gave Nawuri a significant advantage over Gonja. With Nawuri and Konkomba as allies they successfully captured Kpandai in 1992 and burned Gonja houses forcing them to seek government protection. The Nawuri-Gonja conflict demonstrates the extent to which chieftaincy and ethnicity pervaded social, economic, and political issues in postcolonial Northern Ghana. The government played a role in sustaining this high level of ethnic politicization but it was the relationships between communities that defined it and the nature of political power. In addition, the government proved incapable of preventing such conflicts and, as illustrated by the 1981 conflict, reluctant or incapable of fully investigating the issues at the heart of these disputes. In addition to illustrating the role that groups play in shaping local politics and notions of belonging, authority, custom, the Nawuri-Gonja conflict contributed to growing antagonism between Konkomba and Gonja leaders. While the 1981 conflict had been between Konkomba and Nanumba, in the 1994 conflict Konkomba were joined by a small number of Nawuri in fighting against Nanumba, Dagomba, and Gonja.

The 1994 Conflict While the Nawuri-Gonja conflict raged, KOYA leaders petitioned the government and the National House of Chiefs to recognize the Uchabobor, chief of Saboba, as the Konkomba paramount chief. Dagomba and Nanumba leaders were outraged by what they perceived to be an affront to their traditional rulers and their political status in the country. Ghana’s 1992 constitution put all chieftaincy matters in the hands of the National and Regional Houses of Chiefs. Any changes to chieftaincies, including the creation and promotion of chiefs, had to be approved by the existing paramount chiefs in the House. Consequently, for Konkomba to gain a paramount of their own they would first have to apply through the Regional House of Chiefs, which was presided over by the Ya Na. The nature of chieftaincy politics in Ghana put Konkomba leaders in a very difficult position. The initiative to establish a paramount chief was part of the larger goal to gain autonomy from the Nanumba and Dagomba, fully participate in

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the traditional sphere of politics through the Regional and National Houses of Chiefs and claim and maintain control over land in Kekpakpaan. Yet to achieve this goal they had to seek the approval of the Ya Na and his council, the very institution whose political authority they sought to challenge. KOYA leaders argued that the size of the Konkomba population in Ghana compared with the level of political representation that they enjoyed warranted the creation of a Konkomba paramount chief. Furthermore, Konkomba leaders described Dagomba, Nanumba, and Gonja authority over the Konkomba as a product of the British policies of indirect rule during the colonial period in which British officials placed the Konkomba under the chiefs of Dagbon, Mamprugu, and Nanun for the sake of British political expedience. Ghanaian democracy, they argued, would be served best if there were more than five ethnic groups dominating the Regional House of Chiefs. To elevate the Uchabobor to paramount status, therefore, would serve a national good because it would allow the Konkomba to live in a clearly defined traditional area and practice their culture and traditions.59 The president of the National House of Chiefs received the Konkomba petition on June 29, 1993, but the Ya Na did not learn of it until August 22 when it was made public. Dagomba leaders opposed the Konkomba leaders’ initiative on several grounds. The Ya Na declared the petition void and argued that Konkomba leaders had violated protocol, by not issuing their petition directly through the Ya Na. Representatives for the Uchabobor responded that they had made six attempts to work through the Ya Na but did not receive a response, so they turned to the National House of Chiefs and the national government. The Ya Na argued that although the British did in fact provide the basis for a Konkomba chief in Saboba and established the political environment that granted unprecedented political relevance to chieftaincy, the Konkomba chief of Saboba was incorporated into the Dagomba Traditional Council in the 1950s by the Sunson Na, Hamidu. He described the history of the relationship between the Konkomba chief of Saboba and Dagbon, and depicted the Dagomba and the Ya Na as accommodating hosts to the Konkomba, whose real home was in Togo. “The British came from a foreign country and settled on our land,” Hamidu said. “They granted us independence and left for their country. The Konkomba came from Togo and settled on our land. If they no longer want to be part of our establishment, they have to go back home. They cannot be given land in Dagbon to establish a second home in addition to their home in Togo.”60 In this way, the Ya Na painted Konkomba as troublesome

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foreigners with no legitimate claim to rights under the Ghanaian constitution. His argument suggests that government support for Konkomba demands threatened the integrity of the Ghanaian state. The Ya Na and other northern leaders’ assertions that the Konkomba were not the original inhabitants of Kekpakpaan were among the most stinging and lasting claims that Dagomba made. In a speech to the Dagbon Youth Association in December 1993, the Ya Na reiterated this claim and is quoted as declaring that the Dagomba will not give “an inch of their land away.”61 Local leaders recognized that the dispute between Konkomba and Dagomba was heading toward violence and urged the government to create a commission to deal with the impending crisis. Dagomba leaders had grown convinced of the national government’s bias in favor of Konkomba interests. The commission members expressed an eagerness to disabuse the Dagomba of their perceptions. During their inaugural conference, the Dagbon Youth Association took a firm position on the Konkomba-Dagomba problem. They insisted that the government was unwilling to address the growing conflict due to its bias in favor of Konkomba. In interviews conducted by Oxfam, Dagomba respondents also expressed concern for what they perceived to have been tacit government support for the Konkomba position in the dispute.62 The Dagbon Youth Association position was put forward in a three-point resolution: First, the land of Dagbon bequeathed to us through the blood, sweat and enterprise of our revered forbearers shall be preserved as our patrimony and ancestral birth-right and any attempt to expropriate any portion of it shall be resisted by all legal means possible. Second, Konkomba own no land in any part of Dagbon and wherever they are found in Dagbon territory they are alien settlers who inhabit the land by the permission, let or license of the Ya Na as allodia owner of all Dagbon lands. Third, the Konkomba, Dagomba, Chakosi, Nafieba, and Komba have for many years co-existed on Dagbon land and that the Konkomba have no clam to ownership of the land and the any spurious claims by them is provocative and subversive of the peace and security of the area and should be condemned.63

The Ya Na expressed to the commission Dagomba leaders’ frustration with the Konkomba. He said, “For the past five months the Konkomba have tried to disturb the peace of Dagbon and for that matter the Northern Region.” He assured the delegation that the Dagomba “do not intend to fight anybody” but on the other hand they “will defend themselves when attacked.”64 In response, the

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Uchabobor declared that Konkomba leaders were not interested in fighting with their neighbors; but only wanted their paramount chief recognized and will achieve that end solely through peaceful means.65 Government officials met with chiefs and other local leaders to devise a strategy to for Konkomba and Dagomba leaders to work out a peaceful solution to the impasse. On December 25, 1993, the government dismantled its 12member commission for peace in the region and replaced it with a three-member committee chaired by Nana Obiri Yeboah. The next day, this new committee met with the Uchabobor in Saboba. At the same time, tension between Konkomba and Dagomba came to a head in Bimbilla. The police had set up a checkpoint on the Bimbilla-Kpandai road in response to reports that both Konkomba and Nanumba had transported weapons through the area from Southern Ghana. The Konkomba were the first group that possessed weapons that the police intercepted. According to Ibrahim Mahama, after discussions with the police, the travelers were released with their weapons. Shortly after, the police stopped a group of Nanumba who possessed weapons. In this case, however, the police reportedly confiscated the travelers’ goods and stored them in the Bimbilla police station. As rumors of the government’s favoritism spread, a crowd formed in front of the police station and demanded the release of the confiscated weapons and ammunition. After the crowd refused police demands to disperse, an officer fired warning shots and struck a couple of protestors in the process. In response to the police shooting, the crowd attacked the police station and forced the police to flee. With no police to stand in their way, the crowd set the police station on fire, although without retrieving the alleged arms and ammunition. December 31, 1993, was market day in Nakpayili, a village a few miles south of Bimbilla. Two Konkomba men in the market were bargaining over the price of a guinea fowl, when a Nanumba man stepped in to offer a higher price. The argument between the two buyers, the Konkomba and the Nanumba, soon became a physical fight in which the Nanumba emerged the victor. According to the “Konkomba Position Paper” on the conflict, the following day, the Nanumba man went to his farm, where he was met by the son of the Konkomba man he had bested the previous day, who intended to avenge the humiliation that his father suffered and shot and killed the Nanumba man on his farm. News of the murder spread, and both communities gathered to prepare for a fight. Members of the Nanumba community searched in vain for the murderer, but encountered and killed four Konkomba men.66 In three days, violence spread to seven districts.

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The first Konkomba attack was against Dagomba in the village of Nakpachei; from there, they moved north and burned villages around Yendi.67 Two days after the start of the fighting, the Konkomba minority in Tamale, at the time numbering about 5,000 people, were attacked by Dagomba. Many were killed and many more forced to flee, mainly to Saboba, Accra, and villages in Kekpakpaan. The government created a Military Task Force under the command of Brigadier General G.H. Smith responsible for restoring the peace, but poor communication between the districts and the government in Accra delayed its arrival in Yendi. Once it did arrive, the task force was beset with problems. For the most part, Dagomba and Nanumba lived in larger towns and villages. By contrast, Konkomba customarily settled in small compounds away from larger settlements. The task force’s limited personnel prevented it from patrolling areas beyond the district capitals, Salaga, Gushiegu, Yendi, Saboba, Zabzugu, and Bimbilla. It lacked sufficient means to assert a real presence among Konkomba. Consequently, the arrests that the police made and the ammunition they were able to confiscate only served to increase suspicion of government support of Konkomba. Many argued that the task force left the Dagomba and Nanumba vulnerable to Konkomba attacks.68 General Smith was sympathetic to these concerns. “Most Gonja, Dagomba, and Nanumba have handed in their arms in compliance with the order to all warring factions to surrender them,” he said. “In the case of the Konkomba, however, since they are operating in small pockets under bush cover it has not been easy for the disarming teams to reach all of them. Regrettably this created a sense of insecurity among the factions who have cooperated and who no longer felt able to defend themselves in the attacks which at various places have claimed lives.”69 The most intense fighting took place nearest to the Oti River, where many Dagomba and Nanumba lived in close proximity to Konkomba. By contrast, Yendi and Bimbilla witnessed little violence because they were well protected by the army. During February and March, Konkomba destroyed most Dagomba and Nanumba villages along the Bimbilla-Yendi road. To limit fighting in the West Gonja District, the military erected road blocks along the Tamale— Buipe road. With no military presence, Gonja burned all Konkomba compounds in West Gonja and forced the small and unorganized Konkomba community out of the district. As the fighting continued to escalate, the Ya Na proposed a way to end the conflict. He reached out to Otumfuo Opoku Ware II,

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Asantehene, to mediate peace between the combating parties. The Asantehene arranged an April meeting in Kumasi between Dagomba and Konkomba leaders, but it did little to move the conflict toward a peaceful resolution. The two parties continued to blame each other for the start of the conflict, and Dagomba leaders insisted that no peace resolution would be reached until Konkomba compensate their “victims” for losses to life and property. It was not until December 20, 1994, that a formal peace was established. Konkomba leaders agreed to apologize to the Ya Na. They resubmitted to the Ya Na their petition for a paramount skin and the Ya Na assured them that it would receive a fair and unbiased review. While Dagomba leaders presented the ceremony as a Konkomba apology, Konkomba leaders insisted that they participated not to apologize but as a gesture of reconciliation. In its aftermath, as the ceremony came to be popularly interpreted as a Konkomba apology, Konkomba leaders began to denounce it. In March and April 1995 there was renewed violence in the Bimbilla District and farther north in the Gushiegu-Karaga District. The government quickly intervened and took measures to control Konkomba villages. Yet for most of the region the conflict had come to an end. Few Konkomba remained in Tamale and the relationship between predominantly Dagomba Yendi and the Konkomba surrounding area had begun to normalize through the strong interests among Yendi traders to resume business with rural the Konkomba.70 Nongovernment organizations, religious organizations, and peace building teams were at the forefront of sustaining peace in Northern Ghana. There were six peace meetings before the “Kumasi Accord” and the formation of the Northern Ghana Youth and Development Association (NORYDA). For Konkomba leaders, both conflicts illustrated the extent to which they had successfully united Konkomba’s historically fractious clans and asserted Konkomba’s numeric strength in Northern Ghana. The unity that they exhibited was due in no small part to their role in the national yam trade, the activities of the Konkomba Improvement Association in 1955 and 1956 and, to an even greater extent, KOYA. These government clerks, school teachers, businessmen, and other professionals persuaded Konkomba clan members to shift their focus from issues such as land rights and marriage practices, which continually sparked internal feuds, to gaining political and economic independence from Dagomba and Nanumba nas, or chiefs, and commercial middlemen. Essentially, what the leaders sought was a Konkomba independence movement. In this regard, Konkomba represent what is likely the most common yet understudied type of

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separatist movement in postcolonial Africa: one in which marginalized groups do not pursue a separate state, but rather seek autonomy from a political structure dominated by a neighboring ethnic group since the first years of colonial rule had redefined regional and local politics. Throughout much of Ghana, the conflicts fostered misperceptions of Konkomba as foreign, warlike, and uncivilized. Ethnic conflicts in Ghana have been rare. The general perception of Ghana as a peaceful country deepened the shock that most Ghanaians experienced at the protracted violence in the north. Rumors spread that foreign (Togolese) Konkomba promoted violence as part of a conspiracy to destabilize the Northern Region and unite part of it with Togo.71 These rumors and stereotypes reflect the general unfamiliarity that most Ghanaians had with the Konkomba.72 People were familiar with the Konkomba in the eastern half of the Northern Region where the Konkomba maintained a numeric stronghold and parts of KeteKrachi and the Brong-Ahafo Region where in the 1920s Konkomba had begun to migrate as farmers. Yet most Ghanaians heard of the Konkomba for the first time through media reports on the conflicts.

Post-conflict Politics Conflict disrupts economic progress and development. During the ten years that followed the 1994 conflict, Kpandai remained cut off from support from Bimbilla after alienating Nanumba leaders. The strength of chieftaincy in Northern Ghana, the lack of viable economic development, and political isolation contributed to the entrenched political inequality in the Northern Region. Compared with the south, chieftaincy remained popular in the north and, prior to the 1980s, there was no opportunity for a strong business or professional class to emerge that might have posed a counterweight to chieftaincy for shaping ethnic politics.73 Party politics in the postcolonial period also helped to sustain political inequality in the region. The dominant political parties devoted their energy on candidates and potential candidates from the historically centralized societies even when they were minorities in their constituency, which made room for Konkomba candidates of minor parties to win elections in majority Konkomba constituencies. In 1996, in Bimbilla, a Konkomba won the parliamentary seat because he ran for a minor party, while the majority parties divided the Nanumba vote.74 Political tradition maintained an ethnic hierarchy in Northern Ghana and, to a lesser extent, throughout the country. Konkomba history in the postcolonial period presents an example of a group that

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took advantage of political and commercial opportunities that were not influenced by region and ethnicity. The success they gained within these sectors allowed them to circumvent the ranked ethnic system of society. At the same time, Konkomba leaders used the influence they acquired to gain acceptance at the higher echelons of the ranked system. Dagomba, Nanumba, Gonja, and Mamprusi, defined as politically dominant since the first days of British colonial rule, worked aggressively to sustain the status quo, which served to fuel antagonism with Konkomba. Leading to the second democratic election of the Fourth Republic Jerry Rawlings’s National Democratic Congress suffered severe bruises from corruption and sex scandals that threatened to undermine Rawlings’s image as the champion of democracy and Ghana’s economic recovery. Most of all perhaps, the administration’s failure to effectively address the conflicts in Northern Ghana between Konkomba and their historically centralized neighbors threatened to terminally derail their prospects to gain a second term. Konkomba and Dagomba leaders blamed the Rawlings administration for its inadequate response. In addition, Konkomba leaders had long mistrusted Mohammed Ibn Chambas, MP for Bimbilla and first deputy speaker of parliament. They accused him of providing arms to Nanumba combatants. Before the fighting broke out there was palpable tension between the two groups, which pointed to the potential for a repeat of the violence of 1981.75 Abdulai Ibrahim, the regional minister, denied that there was any immediate danger. Jon Kirby attributes different perceptions of the 1981 and 1994 conflicts to cultural differences among Konkomba and Dagomba. As he explains, debt avoidance among Konkomba was a top priority. Konkomba lived in compounds that were isolated, deep in the bush, and beyond the reach of arrow from a neighboring compound. They avoided conflicts because of their history of protracted feuds. There is a common practice among Konkomba of avoiding involvement in other people’s issues and, instead, focusing on farming. Therefore, running from conflicts has been pragmatic for Konkomba. But in the decades prior to the conflicts Konkomba were no longer fragmented and disorganized. “For the Konkomba,” Kirby suggests, “any kind of ‘agitation’ has a ‘shameful tinge’ because it constrains others’ freedoms. For the Dagomba, being weak in itself is shameful, but for Konkomba hitting first is shameful; acting the bully is shameful.”76 In the years that followed the 1994 conflict, Konkomba leaders continued to pursue recognition for a Konkomba paramount chief but it was more than the Ya Na’s resistance that stood in their way.

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Even if the Ya Na accepted the Konkomba request, there was little agreement among Konkomba with regard to which ubor should be the Konkomba paramount chief. There was no single ubor or individual leader whose authority was recognized throughout Kekpakpaan. KOYA enjoyed broad respect in the political realm, but with regard to traditional authority—issues of land, social relations, and death—no organization or individual wielded such influence. The absence of a strong central leader who exercised broad and consistent authority was, in many respects, an advantage for Konkomba. With no leadership hierarchy, historical precedent and protocol were irrelevant in Konkomba politics. Western-educated professionals and business leaders were able to push forward a political agenda for Konkomba without advice or oversight from an entrenched, hereditary political class. Consequently, social and political transformation occurred more rapidly among Konkomba than among their centralized neighbors. The obstacles to Konkomba change were the state—with its support of chiefs and chieftaincy— and groups with an established system of chieftaincy who jealously guarded the privileges that came with such a system. The opposition that Konkomba encountered for their social and political reforms precipitated their dominance in fields outside of the more common paths to political power. Party politics and commercial farming in Ghana were not regulated by ethnicity in the way that traditional politics was. Today, Konkomba generally recognize that their economic gains were a result of their embrace of Western education and hard work.77 Few Konkomba cite increased political power, commercial success, and population growth in historically Nanumba and Gonja areas as sources for the 1981 and 1994 conflicts. Rather, most cite chieftaincy affairs, which suggests that Konkomba regard the issues at the heart of the conflicts as tangential to their immediate concerns. In addition, there continued to be few Konkomba who list chieftaincy as a significant issue within their communities.78 It was not the case, however, that thousands of Konkomba rallied around an issue that the majority regarded as inconsequential. In fact, although many Konkomba explain that chieftaincy was the cause of the 1994 conflict, for those who participated in the fighting the conflict was about their right to freely define their political character and status. However, the consequences of the conflict extended far beyond the issue of chieftaincy. Most Konkomba residents of Yendi, Tamale, and Damanko were forced by their Dagomba and Gonja neighbors to flee. Many Konkomba continue to be reluctant to spend long

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periods in Yendi and Tamale. The main road to Saboba from the south passes through Tamale and then through Yendi, but after the conflicts, a longer route from Accra, that passes through the Volta Region and connects to Yendi via Bimbilla, became a popular alternative to traveling through Tamale, for Konkomba travelers.79 The conflicts also affected northern politics. While most northerners present a picture of improved ethnic relations and, in some areas ethnic harmony, for many politicians violence or the threat of violence has become a card to be played for political leverage. This tactic carried the potential to inspire actual violence because having experienced the conflicts, violence then becomes a viable option for resolving disputes when there is an existing perception that the threat of violence is real. In recent years, there have been several political disputes that carried the potential for larger, violent conflicts. In 2000, men in Konkomba Yam Market, in Agbogbloshie, Accra, explained to Jay Oelbaum that there is peace between the Konkomba and their neighbors in the north but they feared that violence could flare up again.80 Their fears were confirmed four years later during the 2004 election. In Bimbilla, Nanumba and Konkomba fought before and after the elections and in 2006 the police seized a large cache of weapons at Konkomba Yam Market.81 The following month, the Nanumba North District chief executive, Salifu Saeed, described the political insecurity of the area to reporters as severe. Nanumba who lived in predominantly Konkomba villages fled to Bimbilla out of fear that Konkomba were preparing to attack them. Kirby describes a dispute between Konkomba and Dagomba in the village of Ngani, on the periphery of Dagbon over where to erect a new market. Ngani possesses one of the four so-called witch villages in Northern Ghana. These villages originated during British colonial rule as alternatives to lynching those accused of witchcraft. Witch villages function as sanctuaries for the accused where they are under the control of the local earth shrine. Ngani is also one of several towns in Kekpakpaan that has a mixed Konkomba and Dagomba population. Dagomba sought to reserve a central role in the decisionmaking process for the na, but the Konkomba insisted that the earth priest held the rightful position to determine where the market should be as well as who should be the “witch chief.” As Kirby describes, “When the Dagomba candidate for the ‘chief of the witches’ went to assume the new role, her sacrificial fowl died face down rather than face up, indicating the shrine’s rejection.” For Konkomba this proved that Dagomba chiefs had no place appointing earth shrine custodians, which was a direct challenge to the primacy of Dagomba

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chiefs. Tension brewed as the Ngani sought support from Yendi. After Dagomba heard Konkomba war cries and Konkomba men visibly began to gear up for a fight, the government sent Malik Yakubu, minister of the interior, to work out a peaceful solution to the impasse.82 In another incident, farmers from Chamba, a predominantly Konkomba community of yam farmers, were angered when they learned that Nanumba refer to the local Chamba market as “Jara-daa,” meaning “fools market” in the Nanumba language.83 The implication is that the Konkomba farmers sold their yams to Nanumba middlemen at arbitrarily low prices set by the Nanumba. After Konkomba farmers began to set their own prices, the Nanumba refused to purchase yams at Chamba and also, allegedly, attempted to prevent others from purchasing there and at neighboring Konkomba villages as well. As a result of the conflict, the Nanumba leaders in Bimbilla declared that Konkomba must begin to pay rent for their farmland. Adding to the tension between Konkomba and Nanumba communities in the district were new Nanumba chiefs “enskinned” in Konkomba communities. Konkomba leaders asked the Nanumba Traditional Council for permission to elect their own chiefs, but Nanumba leaders contended that the Konkomba were settlers among the Nanumba and therefore lacked rights to chieftaincy titles.84 These developments are further evidence of the continued primacy of chieftaincy and ethnicity in local politics in Northern Ghana. Ethnicity remains a tool with which political stakeholders compete for political and economic gains. These recent disputes also point to the failure of Ghana’s government, since the end of British colonial rule, to properly ensure social and political equality. With the responsibility left to individuals and groups to secure their own access to the privileges of Ghanaian citizenship it carries the potential for conflict because power gained by some is inevitably seen as power lost by others.

Conclusion The 1994 conflict would have garnered a greater share of the world’s attention if not for the Rwanda genocide that same year. Although on a much smaller scale, Ghana’s postcolonial conflicts are part of the broader problem of state frailty and the dilemmas of reconciling social and political change with traditional politics in postcolonial Africa. In 2000 the issues of land and autochthony contributed to violence in the Ivory Coast. Land scarcity and the political threat of “northerner” migrants threatened the economic and political dominance of Baoulé and Bété. Notions of who was Ivorian had remained vague because it

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allowed for an unmitigated influx of labor and agricultural production for the state and these ethnic groups.85 Bété came into conflict with Mossi and Dyula communities over access to unexploited forest land.86 The definition of citizenship became important. Northerners were all categorized as foreign and targeted as such in the ethnic killings that followed the 2000 election. The Konkomba role in the events and debates that surrounded the 1981 and 1994 conflicts illustrate the ways in which ethnicity— however ambiguous and continuously changing—has been employed to compete with their neighbors economically and politically. KOYA’s initiatives to push Konkomba dominance of the yam trade and to create a Konkomba paramount chief are examples of the ways that the Konkomba brought practices into their social structure to purposefully change their political status. Konkomba activism demonstrates that although the state established the parameters in which ethnicity was asserted and much of language that defined the discourse on power, belonging, and citizenship, individuals and groups actively worked to define their own ethnicity and political status. Yet the conflicts also demonstrate that there were limits to viable social and political change in Africa. African individuals and groups are central to defining their own identity and political status, but the state and neighboring ethnic groups also contributed significantly to how a group defined itself and was defined by outsiders in terms of its ethnicity and political status. While ethnicity was constructed and changed over time, myriad factors influenced the nature of change. For Konkomba, the state—both colonial and postcolonial—and neighboring ethnic groups precipitated Konkomba interpretations and reinterpretations of their own ethnicity. At the same time, they placed a limit on the extent to which the Konkomba could be officially defined as transformed. The result was dissonance in their political status and the ethnic identity that was reflected in the ways that the Konkomba operated as Ghanaian citizens, farmers, and politicians. Within the traditional sphere, they remained subordinate to their historically centralized neighbors, with no direct representation in the National and Regional Houses of Chiefs. However, the strengthening of Ghana’s multiparty democracy, the increasing sophistication and political diversity of Konkomba politicians, and the ongoing Konkomba enthusiasm for farming and Western-education, rendered their traditional status largely irrelevant in regional politics. Yet within local communities traditional status remains a potent means to assert authority over communities and deny them access to political and economic resources.

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Konkomba leaders attempted to join the status quo as opposed to confronting the laws that sustained social and political privilege to broaden the definition of democracy and equality or utilizing Ghana’s parliamentary system to alter existing laws that disfranchised noncentralized societies. These events demonstrate the extent to which Konkomba ethnicity continued to evolve during the 1980s and 1990s in response to social transactions between the Konkomba and their neighbors and through the relationship between the Konkomba leadership and the state. The ongoing sway of chieftaincy, moreover, illustrates the extent to which the parameters for such change for communities within Ghana remained fixed. Konkomba social and political change, therefore, was radical in the extent to which the Konkomba had evolved since the 1950s and the level of economic and political power they achieved. However, it remained conservative with respect to the political model to which they aspired. KOYA, despite the level of political change that it achieved, was the driving force behind both Konkomba change and political conformity, and, ultimately, the Konkomba role in the 1981 and 1994 conflicts.

Conclusion

“ We E v e n Da n c e To g e t h e r ” — S o c i a l R e l at i o n s i n P o s t- C o n f l i c t N o r t h e r n G h a n a

Between 1955 and 1994 Konkomba leaders in Tamale, Saboba, and

Accra promoted the idea of a Konkomba community of belonging that would allow them to assert Konkomba as one of Ghana’s politically legitimate tribes. Political legitimacy meant economic and political autonomy and direct representation by a recognized paramount chief at the Regional and National Houses of Chiefs—the quasigovernment bodies with authority over the nation’s “customary” affairs. Issues of chieftaincy and tribe are broadly conceived as products of Africa’s precolonial past. However, Africa’s twentieth-century history shows that both are very much part of the fabric of modern African politics. Few Konkomba identified themselves with a broad Konkomba community of belonging prior to Ghana’s independence in 1957. Yet by 1994 Konkomba were embroiled in a multi-clan conflict that grew out of their leaders’ efforts to assert Konkomba as social and political equals to their historically dominant neighbors. As the first half of this book has shown, Konkomba ethnicity was not a novel idea. British colonial policy between 1916 and 1957 treated Konkomba clans as belonging to a single tribe that possessed a common history and set of political interests, even though protracted inter-clan feuds remained an obstacle to multi-clan alliances until the 1960s. Yet the sense of Konkomba-ness that evolved after 1955 and ultimately became a source of political tension between Konkomba and neighboring ethnic groups between the 1970s and

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1990s was not a British construction. The British and historically centralized societies in the region pushed their own constructions of Konkomba political identity. Konkomba leaders, particularly within the Konkomba Youth Association, did not seek to socially and politically reposition Konkomba clans within Ghana by writing Konkomba versions of local histories. Rather, they sought to organize Konkomba from the ground up around education, economic self-sufficiency, and political autonomy. Among the many ironies of Konkomba political relationships during the colonial and postcolonial periods is that the factors and institutions that excluded them on one level incorporated them on another. The British perceived each tribe as possessing its own customary law defined by chiefs. With their power to define customary law, chiefs asserted control over land and, by extension, markets. The chiefs acquired power that could not be questioned from below because they had the backing of the colonial state, which recognized chiefs’ authority over clearly demarcated political spaces. But the political spaces that the British defined as tribal were multiethnic and multicultural. What the British imposed was a two-tiered structure with ethnically defined Native Authorities governing local societies and white colonial officials governing Native Authorities.1 A consequence of this structure was that customary law, as defined by chiefs and accepted by British officials, regulated the process of production and exchange, which enabled chiefs to limit the possibilities of social and economic mobility. Yet economic forces and the rather ambiguous content of custom opened possibilities for the politically marginalized to protect themselves from coercion through market relations that existed beyond the parameters of customary authority. A central debate that surrounds the conflicts in northern Ghana deals with competing claims to autochthony—or claims to being the earliest legitimate occupiers of a given geographic area—both among Konkomba and neighboring ethnic groups. In both 1981 and 1994, Dagomba and Nanumba leaders claimed that Konkomba were actually immigrants from Togo who attempted to usurp political power from the indigenous Dagomba and Nanumba. Under British colonial rule, however, Dagomba nas portrayed themselves as invaders from farther north who conquered and ruled Konkomba. This contradiction clearly illustrates continuous shifts in the political value of autochthony throughout the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods. For the British, however, the question of belonging was more than who originally occupied the land; of greater importance was who conquered these original occupants. Yet autochthony remained

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relevant among African communities for defining their relationships and political status. Therefore, specific cultural and political factors carried different value and relevance depending upon whether one was operating in an African or British political context in any given moment. There were many Africans who were acutely aware of this AfricanBritish dichotomy. In their early dealings with British colonial officials, Dagomba nas asserted claims to a particular origin and relationship with the land and people that they knew would resonate with the British. Their claims supported misguided British notions of local traditional political structures and the nature of political power in Africa.2 Similarly, in the postcolonial period, land reforms led to conflicting claims to autochthony between Konkomba and their neighbors on land in which Konkomba predominated. The political currency of autochthony is not unique to Northern Ghana or Africa. Throughout the world, claims of “belonging” have shifted in meaning with varying political significance.3 Italy and the Netherlands offer examples of the power of autochthony and its ability to influence the popular imagination and the national discourse on citizenship and political legitimacy. More recently, in the I’vory Coast under the presidency of Laurent Gbagbo, the president and other political leaders from the southern part of the country have distinguished “true” and “fake” Ivorians. This phenomenon of political elites aggressively seeking to utilize claims of autochthony for political leverage is common. Yet perceptions of the politicization of autochthony as a product of manipulation by political elites do not lend themselves to a complete explanation of this process. Political leaders can only successfully push their ideas as legitimate if the notions they assert have some resonance with the general population.4 Konkomba leaders built a movement and political identity around a collective sense of exclusion. Interpretations of custom excluded Konkomba from positions of power and influence within the political hierarchy that the British imposed within local society. Based on these same interpretations of custom, the British incorporated Konkomba clans into the local political structure as politically subordinate to their historically centralized neighbors. This was but one level of marginalization and incorporation within the colonial experience. More broadly speaking, colonial rule excluded the colonized from the racial hierarchy of the colonial state and incorporated the colonized through Native Authorities. Despite external efforts to define Konkomba and their social and political status, this book has presented Konkomba history

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to argue that relationships between African communities at the local level have had profound implications for the nature of state power and the popular discourse on power, citizenship, and notions of belonging. Ethnic-based social and political inequality in West Africa has precipitated eruptions of collective action. What is clear is that the very notion of citizenship, particularly in states such as Liberia, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria, which have teetered on the precipice of implosion, remains one of the most contested issues in modern Africa. Ghana is a nation that prides itself for its ethnic harmony and multiparty democracy. Yet it has not been immune to ethnic-based political disharmony, although clearly not on the scale of its neighbors. Questions of inequality within citizenship are taken for granted in Ghana and have largely been ignored in the literature on local politics in Ghana. This book has examined the ways in which constructions of communal and national belonging, although heavily imposed by the state, are molded and reinterpreted from below as individuals and groups contend with challenges and changes in the local economic and political environment. The exceptions in postcolonial Africa were leaders who worked aggressively to create a viable rural citizenry. Yet most leaders of postcolonial states focused on replacing European with African power. They embarked on top-down social and political change. While civil society served as a popular voice in urban areas, the rural majority continued to be ruled by the customary laws of postcolonial versions of Native Authorities.5 The failure to enact fundamental reforms of local political structures in the immediate postindependence period prevented the rural majority from acting as equal citizens within the state. In the absence of democratization, development became a top-down agenda that the state forced on the peasantry.6 The significance of “the oft-forgotten and marginalized masses” was in the dissonance they created in the social and political hierarchy. Their bottom-up responses to local political inequality forced changes in state policy and broader understandings of citizenship, inequality, and political power in Africa. It becomes clear, therefore, that to achieve social stability, democratization must include the dismantling of the mode of rule organized on the basis of fused power, administrative justice, and extra-economic coercion, all legitimized as customary.7 On Friday, March 3, 2007, as part of the festivities in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Ghana’s independence, I was in Efua

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Sutherland Park in the heart of Accra attending a durbar of Accra chiefs of Ghana’s northern communities. Among the festivities, Vice President Aliu Mahama, who hails from the north, was scheduled to deliver a speech. In the meantime, I observed Frafra, Hausa, Fulani, Dagomba, and Nanumba under two u-shaped canopies in the center of the park with their chiefs bedecked in the traditional garb that designates their authority. Each chief sat in a particular area under the canopies, and in front of them dancers sustained a continuous tribute to their community and chiefs. Two and three groups danced simultaneously with no hint of conflict or competition. The different rhythms of drums and bells from each community and the dust that rose from the dancers’ feet combined with the intensity of the sun to create a spectacular scene. This was truly a northern event, and there was a palpable sense of pride as they celebrated their northern culture and Ghana’s independence. I observed the scene for approximately two hours and prepared to leave when, at precisely noon, I heard drumming and bells coming from the park’s entrance and saw a tall, slim but muscular man with a horned headdress. Immediately I thought, “Konkomba!” The melody of a high-pitched flute confirmed my instincts, and soon 25 men and women danced in a line toward the center of the park. At the front were two women carrying large drums on their heads followed by two men who walked behind them, each beating the drums with two large sticks. Two lines of five men followed, wearing bright, white tata-feather headdresses and tiny metal rings hanging from their ankles that rang with each step that the men took. Two lines of five women followed the men, each marking time with a shakere as they danced.8 Unlike the other groups, the Konkomba were not announcing the arrival of their Accra chief. No such chief exists. Their powerful entrance was a testament to the strength of their community and its culture and symbolic of their position in northern society. The Konkomba danced to the edge of the enclosure and found their place under one of the canopies. Soon the drummers changed their rhythm and the dancers adjusted their movement to highlight an individual dancer. Two women kept time by beating on a large bowl that was made from half a calabash, commonly used for serving pito. “This is the dance that we perform for funerals,” a man shouted into my ear from behind me. I soon learned that this was the voice of Wajus Nawa, one of the group’s leaders. He had noticed my interest in the performance and stepped in as my narrator. He disappeared and reappeared

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over the course of an hour providing bits of information, answers to questions that I would have never thought to ask. At one point in the group’s performance, individual male dancers rhythmically stomped their feat in a rapid, forward-moving pattern. Wajus suddenly appeared behind me again and shouted over my shoulder, “And this dance is the dance that young men perform to attract girls. If we were in the village, and a girl admired him, she would take a long piece of cloth and place it over his head. That would mean that this is his lucky day.” Wajus looked at me smiling. I asked Wajus about the two white feathers that most of the men wore in their headdresses. I had seen a number of photos of Konkomba wearing headdresses with horns, and long rows of cowries, but I had never seen these white feathers. I thought perhaps they were meant as a substitute for the horns. “We do use the horns as well,” Wajus explained. “But we have always used the feathers. These are tata bird feathers. The tata bird is very large bird that moves freely with other types of birds. It is very sociable. But when it is provoked, you better watch out!” I was immediately struck by the tata as a metaphor for Konkomba and their relationships with neighboring groups in northern Ghana and of the changes they had undergone throughout the twentieth century. Konkomba have moved easily throughout Ghana to farm on land that is more fertile than most of the land in Kekpakpaan and have set up markets to sell yams. Throughout their history Konkomba have settled within or near neighboring communities, particularly Dagomba, Nanumba, Kabre, Bassari, Mossi, and Bimoba. These communities have lived among Konkomba as well. Intermarriage remains common in northern Ghana, and there have been relatively few instances of intercommunal violence. This is not to suggest that prior to 1981 and since 1994 violence has not been a part of the relationship between and among northern communities. Low-level conflicts have always occurred, but commonly extended from disputes over where cattle could graze, where an individual could farm, or disagreements over marriage arrangements. The centrality of ethnic claims in the violence of 1981 and 1994 is what made these conflicts so alarming and disruptive to Ghanaians. The fighting created a wedge between families, businesses, villages, and churches and exposed the unfinished business of decolonization in northern Ghana, while contradicting the very notion of Ghanaian ethnic harmony. Throughout the colonial and postcolonial periods, ethnicity remained at the center of what defined political status and determined the distribution of resources.

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So while they did not respond to their marginalized status violently there remained an underlining tension beneath the veil of ethnic harmony. As Konkomba, and Nawuri, to a lesser extent, circumvented the traditional power structure to gain political and economic influence in sectors that were free of regional and ethnic barriers, they undermined northern Ghana’s ethnic hierarchy and forced society to reconceptualize the intersection of power, authority, and identity. Although political competition between Konkomba and neighboring ethnic groups remained largely confined to political leaders, these leaders articulated their fight against the status quo as a mass-based Konkomba struggle, affecting their access to land, markets for yams, and the power to exercise authority within their local communities. A great deal of their success can be attributed to the weakness of the postcolonial state, which lacked the capacity to exercise broad and consistent control in rural areas where assertions of custom and tradition collided with claims to citizenship and national equality. Although the 1981 and 1994 conflicts are significant for a broader understanding of the relationship between ethnicity, historical memory, and popular notions of belonging in Africa, I have explored ethnic politics where there is no violence, toward a deeper understanding of the factors that shaped ethnicity and contributed to its politicization and influenced constructions of citizenship and power during the colonial and early postcolonial periods. These factors were coercive. A central question has been, how might political equality be achieved within a society structured around ethnic-based political inequality? In Moral Man and Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr argues that it is practically an impossibility to achieve this goal by moral and rational suasion and accommodation because relations between groups are political rather than ethical.9 The coercive is always present in politics. “Only a romanticist of the purest water,” Reinhold insists, “ever arrives at a ‘common mind’ or becomes conscious of a ‘general will’ without the use of either force or the threat of force. This is particularly true of nations, but it is also true, though in a slighter degree, of other social groups. The limitations of the human mind and imagination, the inability of human beings to transcend their own interests sufficiently to envisage the interests of their fellow-men as clearly as they do their own makes force an inevitable part of the process of social cohesion.”10 The coercive force of colonial power structured around ethnicity, chieftaincy, tradition, and historical memory pushed Konkomba under the political control of neighboring Dagomba, Mamprusi, and Nanumba chiefs. Postindependence Konkomba leaders employed the

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coercive power of autochthony, ethnicity, chieftaincy, and trade to force themselves onto center stage of regional politics in Northern Ghana. Ethnicity, chieftaincy, and tradition enforced Konkomba social and political inequality and served as the tools with which they struggled for equality. The ways in which individuals and local communities shaped the discourse on authority and legitimacy and defined popular notions of belonging reflect the general weakness of the colonial and postcolonial state, which Crawford Young presents as the legacy of European colonial rule, and rings equally true for relationships between African communities and between African communities and the state.11 But more than simply the frailties of the state, such a retrospective that focuses on the events and challenges of local societies in the midst of the rapid social and political change of the colonial and postcolonial periods clarifies the capacity of Africans to contend with layers of control and the political uncertainty that extends from the state and to creatively innovate means to protect their interests and compete with neighboring communities economically and politically. This book demonstrated that local politics in African societies have influenced a presentist character within political identities. Ethnic identities are products of particular historical moments but the political potency of ethnicity has remained constant since the colonial period. As Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent suggest, “It is precisely because of its analytical fuzziness, and its potential association with a wide range of different collectivities, that the language of ‘ethnicity’ has become such a powerful idiom for the creation of communities and hence such an important political resource.”12 While ethnicity has remained a powerful idiom for the creation of communities, it is also subject to continuous change. Yet Konkomba history demonstrates the limits of social and political change in states where local political structures and social status are tightly bound with ethnicity and tradition. Konkomba challenged their political status through readily recognizable political tools and symbols, which contributed to tension between them and their neighbors as the structures of power and authority and how and by whom they were constructed and asserted continued to be contested. Konkomba political circumstances brought on by the ethnic-based political hierarchy of British colonial rule motivated Konkomba to join in an ethnic-based political movement. Yet the very meaning of Konkomba and the Konkomba political movement were fragile and continually evolving. The mutual obligations and alliances that characterized relations between lineages and subclans prior to the

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emergence of Konkomba insurgency were incorporated into relations within the Konkomba community. Solidarity and alliances among Konkomba clans that provided the basis of the Konkomba community are not uncommon among insurgent peasants. Within this framework, alliances are not seen as the result of contracts based on common interests; rather, they are believed to be the necessary duty of groups bound together by mutual bonds of kinship; “You are our brothers. Do join with all expedition.”13 Still, the boundaries that define “we” and “they” are continuously shifting as circumstances and local politics change. After the 1994 conflict, Konkomba leaders continued to ascend to political office through party politics, and the expansion of evangelical and Catholic Christianity provided a means of identification beyond ethnicity and clan. Moreover, churches brought Konkomba into a community of belonging that also served as a community of support. Christianity and party politics represent the new force for change since the end of the conflict. They have increased interethnic fellowship and cooperation between Konkomba and neighboring communities throughout Ghana. The liberalization of Ghana’s economy and the democratization of local politics provided Konkomba with means to challenge the established local political structure. Konkomba success at doing so—electing Konkomba members of parliament and exercising control over a substantial portion of the yam trade—lessened the politicization of Konkomba ethnicity. Konkomba present a powerful example of the “processes and mechanisms” through which putative identities—such as nation, ethnicity, and race—transform from the stage of “political fiction” to “crystallize, at certain moments, as powerful, compelling reality” that Frederick Cooper has urged social scientists to explain.14 Democracy confronting entrenched political privilege born from custom and tradition defined the political disputes between Konkomba and their historically centralized neighbors up to the 1994 conflict. Konkomba experiences during the colonial and early postcolonial experiences illustrate the role of local political actors in shaping and at times defining the discourse on power, authority, and belonging. Despite British and Dagomba efforts to define Konkomba political subordination and marginalization as custom, Konkomba leaders adopted the characteristics of political legitimacy that the British outlined to reconstitute Konkomba in ways that allowed them to compete with their neighbors economically and politically. In recovering the experiences of rural Africans under European colonial rule, this book presents the substance of ethnicity and the ways in which it evolved

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according to changes in time and politics, and the central role of Africans in precipitating these processes. But there has been a conscious effort not to reify ethnicity and identify its influence in areas where it does not exist. The narrative of this book does not culminate in the solidifying of a Konkomba ethnicity. Ethnicity defined the society in which Konkomba operated and gained access to resources and power. Konkomba leaders adopted ethnicity and other accepted power motifs, including chieftaincy and political unity, to gain political legitimacy. Throughout the colonial period, Konkomba actively undermined British assumptions regarding chieftaincy and political relationships between local communities. Yet Konkomba postcolonial political activism tacitly embraced chieftaincy and organized around ethnicity as tactics to achieve greater social equality and compete with their neighbors economically and politically. Konkomba leaders also embraced party politics and the democratic process. Their movement demonstrates that no clear line exists between traditional and modern politics, just as the lines that mark the boundaries between ethnic communities have always been blurry and continually shifting. Examining the history of a community and its relationships with neighboring communities and the state makes it possible to explore the often subtle ways that Africans carved out autonomy from the layers of authority placed over them. In addition, African ethnicities have taken on varying characteristics depending upon the circumstances in which they are asserted. Although Konkomba ethnicity steadily transformed in a particular direction from the 1950s to the 1990s, other ethnic groups may assert transformed identities before reverting back to earlier forms. My emphasis on Konkomba efforts to reinterpret their ethnic identity and political status in the face of both opportunities and challenges seeks to reshape discussions about the relationship between ethnicity and the state. Ethnicity was simultaneously the means of excluding societies from positions of power within the colonial political structure while forcefully incorporating them as political subordinates. Ethnicity was also the means through which Konkomba leaders challenged their disfranchisement and political marginalization. In challenging the colonial order, the goal was not an internally constructed ethnicity. Rather, constructing ethnicity in such a way as to galvanize political unity was a means for Konkomba leaders to participate within local politics and economic affairs to compete with their neighbors economically and politically. Konkomba

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social and political transformation was, therefore, part of a political moment driven by the economic and political change that came with colonial rule. British colonial rule set the stage for the collective identification with particular ethnic group. The British created maps that outlined the territories of people with some putatively common characteristics.15 The Konkomba political movement was an extension of what Mahmood Mamdani describes as the basic features of the African colonial experience: racism, its colonial and external aspect, and tribalism its particular, internal aspect. The end of European colonial rule eliminated the primacy of race in African politics but did little to alleviate the challenges of tribalism and ethnic conflict.16 The influence of the colonial state was that it defined the customary as synonymous with the tribal. Each tribe had its own culture and customary law. Power was defined ethnically as Native Authorities enforced custom, backed by the colonial state.17 Therefore, this was in part a study of the processes through which collective solidarities and self-understanding develop. The goal was not the creation of a Konkomba identity but rather through a narrative of common oppression for the state and their neighbors to recognize Konkomba as socially and politically equal to Ghana’s political dominant tribes. Konkomba clans and subclans had connections and commonalities with other non-Konkomba groups as a consequence of geography, migration, and history. Yet the narrative of oppression wove the connections and commonalities that Konkomba clans shared with each other into politically unified ethnicity. At the durbar in Accra in March 2007, the Nanumba and Konkomba danced very close to each other, which led me to wonder how soon after the 1994 conflicts did social relations between them normalize. “Is everyone here a northerner?” I asked a woman who was with the Nanumba group. “Oh yes,” she replied. “We are all northerners” and went through the list of the different groups, or tribes as she described them, in the park. “In the past, the Konkomba and Nanumba had some conflicts. Are there peaceful relations between the two communities today?” I asked. “Oh yes!” she replied. “We are all mixed. That trouble was in the past. There are no more problems. In fact, at times, we even dance together.” I went back over to Wajus and asked him these same questions. “You’ve been to the Konkomba areas in the north,” he responded. “Do you see people lying around during the middle of the day?” “No” I said, taking his cue.

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“We are always working. When we finish one activity we begin another. A Konkomba man does not rest. We do not have time to engage in these petty fights. Look at my father who gets up at 5:00 A . M . to travel to his farm and comes back after dark. How can he find time to fight? It is very difficult to pull a Konkomba from his farm. Farming is what we do. Even the Konkomba who you see here in Accra, whatever they are engaged in most will travel north at least once a year to farm.” Wajus’s assertion of Konkomba as first and foremost farmers is one that I heard many times during my research in the north. I was told many times by different people, even non-Konkomba, that Konkomba are the best, hardest working farmers in Ghana. That is why they arrange their compounds in such a spread out fashion, they say. It is easier to make these claims now that the debate over Konkomba citizenship has ended and Konkomba are well represented in Ghana’s parliament. Konkomba have not achieved equality in the sphere of traditional politics, but they have largely circumvented that route with their dominance of the yam trade, control over particular markets in Ghana’s urban centers, their numerical and, therefore, political strength in areas south of Kekpakpaan, Bimbilla, and Kpasa. The Konkomba movement that began in 1955 failed to succeed in many of its tactics, but it achieved its overall goal of political equality.

N ot e s Introduction 1. Bill Bravman, Making Ethnic Ways: Communities and Their Transformations in Taita, Kenya, 1800–1950 (Oxford: James Curry, 1998), 6. 2. Kenneth Wujangi served two nonconsecutive terms as KOYA president. In 1981 Wujangi succeeded Dan Ngula, KOYA’s first president. Wujangi was reelected in 1994. 3. Ada van der Linde and Rachel Naylor put the number of deaths at 15,000, while official reports say 2,000 deaths, though the number is likely much higher. SeeBuilding Sustainable Peace: Conflict, Conciliation, and Civil Society in Northern Ghana (Oxford: Oxfam Working Papers, 1999), 28, and Jönsson, Julia, “The Overwhelming Minority: Traditional Leadership and Ethnic Conflicts in Ghana’s Northern Region,” Oxford University, Crise Working Paper no. 30 (February 2007), 18. By 1994, Konkomba were thought to be the second largest group in the Northern Region. Estimates suggest that at the time of the 1994 conflict there were 268,000 Dagomba; 247,000 Konkomba; 134,000 Gonja; and 27,000 Nanumba. 4. See, in particular, James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) and Patrick Chabal, Political Domination in Africa: Reflection on the Limits of Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 5. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 161. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 162. 8. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 9. See for example, Leroy Vail and Landeg White, “Tribalism in the Political History of Malawi,” The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, Leroy Vail (ed.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 10. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizens and Subjects: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 7, 24, 183. 11. Ibid., 183. 12. Bruce Berman, “Ethnicity, Patronage and the African State: The Politics of Uncivil Nationalism,” African Affairs, 97 (1998), 323.

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13. Bravman, 1998, 21. 14. Berman, 1998, 317. 15. Sean Hawkins, “Disguising Chiefs and God as History: Questions on the Acephalousness of Lodagaa Politics and Religion,” Africa, 66, 2 (1996), 202. 16. Berman, 1998, 312; Crawford Young, Ethnicity and Politics in Africa, Critical Themes in Africa Studies Series (Boston University African Studies Center, 2002), 9. 17. Philip Burnham, The Politics of Cultural Difference in Northern Cameroon (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1996), 16–17. 18. Mamdani, 1996, 122. 19. Bruce Berman, “ ‘A Palimpsest of Contradictions’: Ethnicity, Class, and Politics in Africa,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 37, 1 (2004), 24. 20. Berman, 1998, 317; Sara Berry, No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 8. 21. Berry, 1993, 29. 22. Kojo Sebastian Amanor, “Customary Land, Mobile Labor and Alienation in the Eastern Region of Ghana,” Land and the Politics of Belonging in West Africa, Carola Lentz and Richard Kuba (eds.) (Boston: Brill, 2006), 138–139. 23. Ibid. 24. Carola Lentz and Richard Kuba, “Land Rights and the Politics of Belonging in Africa: An Introduction,” Land and the Politics of Belonging in West Africa, Carola Lentz and Richard Kuba (eds.) (Boston: Brill, 2006), 2. 25. Burnham, 1996, 5–6. 26. Under Kwame Nkrumah and the ruling Convention People’s Party, the Northern Territories were divided into three separate regions: Upper East, Upper West, and the Northern Region. 27. Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent (eds.), Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), 9. 28. Terence Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” The Invention of Tradition, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 220. 29. Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 36. 30. Igor Kopytoff, The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 5. 31. Carola Lentz, “Dagara Rebellion against Dagomba Rule? Contested Stories of Origin in North-West Ghana,” Journal of African History, 35 (1994), 469.

N ot e s

197

32. Eric Worby, “Maps, Names and Ethnic Games: The Epistemology and Iconography of Colonial Power in Northwestern Zimbabwe,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 20, 3, Special Issue: Ethnicity and Identity in Southern Africa (September 1994), 371. 33. Ibid., 372. 34. Sean Hawkins, Writing and Colonialism in Northern Ghana (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 24. 35. Jay Oelbaum, “Liberalization or Liberation?: Economic Reform and the Paradox of Conflict in Ghana’s Northern Region.” Paper presented at the 48th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association. Chicago, Il. February 28–March 3, 2007. 36. Peter Skalnik, “Questioning the Concept of the State in Indigenous Africa,” Social Dynamics, 9, 2 (1983), 21. See also, Artur Bogner, “The 1994 Civil War in Northern Ghana: the Genesis and Escalation of a ‘Tribal’ Conflict,” Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention, Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent (eds.) (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2001); H.B. Martinson, The Hidden History of Konkomba Wars in Northern Ghana (Accra: Matta Press, 1994); Ibrahim Mahama, Ethnic Conflicts in Northern Ghana (Tamale, Ghana: Cyber Systems, 2003). 37. See Philip Andrew Evans, “The Lobirifor/Gonja Dispute in Northern Ghana: A Study of Inter-Ethnic Conflict in a Postcolonial State,” Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1983. 38. Susan Drucker-Brown, “Local Wars in Northern Ghana,” Cambridge Anthropology, 13, 2 (1988–1989), 101. 39. Berman, 1998, 312–313. 40. Mamdani, 1996, 51. 41. Jeff Grischow, Shaping Tradition: Civil Society, Community and Development in Colonial Northern Ghana, 1899–1957 (Boston: Brill, 2006), 10. 42. Cooper, 2005, 27. 43. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997), 7. 44. Grischow, 2006, 2–3. 45. Mamdani, 1996, 15–16. 46. Nina Emma Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900–1965 (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1982). 47. Anthony Appiah, “A Slow Emancipation,” The New York Times Magazine, May 18, 2007 (New York). 48. Mamdani, 1996, 24. 49. Laura Fair, Pastimes & Politics: Culture, Community, and identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 34.

198

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50. Yakubu Saaka (ed.), “Introduction,” Regionalism and Public Policy in Northern Ghana (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 3–4. 51. Ibid., 4–5. 52. Henryk, 448; Tait, 1961, 35–36. 53. Eric Allina-Pisano, “Resistance and the Social History of Africa,” Journal of Social History, 37, 1 (Fall, 2003), 194.

Chapter 1 1. A.W. Cardinall, The Natives of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (London: Francis Edwards, 1921), 232. 2. Mamdani, 2001, 166. 3. Ibid., 87. 4. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 9. 5. Ibid., 117. 6. Mamdani, 1996, 16–17. 7. J.D. Fage, “Early History of the Mossi-Dagomba Group of States,” The Historian in Tropical Africa, J. Vansina, R. Mauny, L.V. Thomas (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 177. 8. A.A. Iliasu, “The Origins of the Mossi-Dagomba States,” Research Review, 7, 1 (1970), 107. 9. J.D. Fage, “Reflections on the Early History of the Mossi-Dagomba Groups of States,” The Historian in Tropical Africa, J. Vansina, R. Mauny, and L. Thomas (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 179; Iliasu, 1970, 107. On the history of Dagbon, see A.W. Cardinall, “Customs at the Death of the King of Dagomba,” Man, 11, 52 (1921); A.C. Duncan-Johnstone and H.A. Blair, Enquiry into the Constitution and Organization of the Dagbon Kingdom (Accra: Government Printer), 1932; E.F. Tamakloe, A Brief History of the Dagbamba People (Accra: Government Printing Office), 1931; Paul A. Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana (London: Longman, 1979). 10. M.D. Iddi states that most writers have erroneously stated that the capital was called “Ya Ni Dabari,” “When the Dagbamba moved to the new site, or to be more precise, were driven under Gonja pressure, they referred to the old site in retrospect as Ya Ni Dabari ‘Ya Ni which is in ruins’ [the deserted Ya Ni].” See M.D. Iddi, “The Musketeers of the Dagbong Army: Dagban-Kombonse,” Masters Thesis, University of Ghana, Legon, 1973, 12. 11. Martin Staniland, The Lions of Dagbon: Political Change in Northern Ghana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 4. 12. Nehemiah Levtzion, West Africa Chiefs Under Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 6. 13. Ibid.

N ot e s 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

199

Ibid., 103. Cardinall, 1921, 260. Levtzion, 1968, 87. Iliasu, 1970; Tamakloe, 1931; Skalnik, 1983, 13. Interview with Joseph Ali Kamshegu, Saboba, November 15, 2000. Levtzion, 1968, 87. Jon Kirby, “Peace Building in Northern Ghana: Cultural Themes in Ethnic Conflict,” Ghana’s North: Research on Culture, Religion, and Politics of Societies in Transition. Franz Kröger and Kröger, Barbara Meier (eds.) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), 175. Herbst, 2000, 38. Interview with Moses Mabengba, Tema, January 20, 2001; Hippolyt A.S. Pul, “Exclusion, Association and Violence: Trends and Triggers in Northern Ghana’s Konkomba-Dagomba Wars,” The African Anthropologist, 10, 1 (March 2003), 16. Pul, 2003, 16. R.S. Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, Volumes I and II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 546. Interview with Moses Mabengba, Tema, January 20, 2001. Indeed, although there are Konkomba narratives that describe Konkomba clans migrating from the area, there was a sizable Konkomba population in and around Yendi until the 1994 conflict between the Konkomba and Dagomba. Interview with Kaplija Madou, Toma, March 3, 2001. Interview with Joseph Ali Kamshegu, Saboba, January 6, 2001. Interview with Dalafu Omtapii, Tema, March 21, 2001. Presently, the utindaan from Sanguli continues to attend the shrine in Sambul. Interview with Gnafori Dulnya, Sambuli, March 29, 2001. Interview with Joseph Ali Kamshegu, Saboba, January 6, 2001. Ibid. Interview with Kaplija Madou, Toma, March 3, 2001. See Lentz, “Dagara Rebellion Against Dagomba Rule? Contested Stories of Origin in North-West Ghana,” Journal of African History, 35 (1994), 457–492. Martin Klein, “The Slave Trade and Decentralized Societies,” Journal of African History, 42 (2001), 53–55. Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). Charles Piot, Remotely Global (The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 31. Staniland, 1975, 6. See Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chapters three and four. See for example, Benedict Der, The Slave Trade in Northern Ghana (Accra: Woeli Publishers, 1998), 11.

200

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41. Ibid., 27. 42. R.O.G. Marville, The Formation of the Protectorates of Northern Ghana, Masters Thesis, University of Ghana, Legon, Institute of African Studies, 14. 43. Tamakloe, 1931, 36. 44. M.D. Iddi, “Chieftaincy in Dagbong,” Unpublished Field Notes, Institute of African Studies, Legon, 1974, 124. 45. Ibid. 46. Tait, 1961, 4. 47. Iddi, 1973, 14. 48. Jagbel is officially noted as Zegbeli, which reflects a Dagbani pronunciation. Konkomba refer to the village as Jagbel. Therefore when making a historical reference I use Jagbel unless speaking of the title of the na or the present-day town. 49. Interview with Joseph Ali Kamshegu, Saboba, March 8, 2001. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Pito is a beer made from fermented guinea corn and is popular among many people in the northern parts of Ghana. The corn is threshed, and the grain is soaked in a large pot. After four days it begins to germinate and it set out to dry. Next, the grain is ground into a flour and brewed twice over two consecutive days. The liquid is poured into a pot that has yeast sediment. A thick cloth is also placed in the pot to expedite fermentation. The resulting fermented beer is pito. See Zimon Henryk, “Guinea Corn Harvest Rituals among the Konkomba of Northern Ghana”, Anthropos, 84 (1989), 449. 53. Interview with Joseph Ali Kamshegu, Saboba, March 8, 2001. 54. Herbst, 2000, 56. 55. Kopytoff, 1987, 29. 56. Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (New York: Longman, 1993), 23. 57. R.S. Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, Volumes I and II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 549. 58. Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1997), 7. 59. Frantz Kröger, “Introduction,” Ghana’s North: Research on Culture, Religion, and Politics of Societies in Transition, Franz Kröger and Barbara Meier (eds.) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), 4. 60. J.C. Myers, Indirect Rule in South Africa: Tradition, Modernity, and the Costuming of Political Power (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 2. 61. Mamprugu, Nanun, and Dagbon are historically, linguistically, and culturally related. Chakosi are a neighboring Akan group that was also politically centralized but did not play a central role in political events related to the Konkombas of the Oti plain.

N ot e s

201

62. Kwame Arhin, The Papers of George Ekem Ferguson (Cambridge: African Studies Centre, 1974), 116. 63. Throughout Anglophone Africa most Africans use “tribe” when speaking English to refer to sociopolitical groups as opposed to the more academic “ethnic group”. 64. Lentz, 2006, 79. 65. Lentz and Nugent, 2001, 9. 66. Interview with Dalafu Omptapii, Tema, March 21, 2001. 67. Interview with Joseph Ali Kamshegu, January 6, 2001. 68. Heinrich Klose, “Journey to the North,” Translation of Unpublished Manuscript, African Studies Centre, University of Ghana, Legon, n.d., 150. 69. Ibid., 151. 70. Ibid., 151. 71. Peter Sebald, “Togo 1884–1900,” German Imperialism in Africa: From the Beginnings until the Second World War, Helmut Stoecker (ed.) (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1986), 92. 72. Berry, 1993, 34. 73. Henrika Kuklick, The Imperial Bureaucrat: The Colonial Administrative Service in the Gold Coast, 1920–1939 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979), 45. 74. Ladouceur, 1979, 41. 75. Lentz, 2006, 79. 76. FO 64/1650 Colonial Correspondence. 77. Jack Goody, “Political Systems of the Tallensi and their Neighbors, 1888–1915,” Cambridge Anthropology, 14, 2 (1990), 6. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Chabal, 1994, 42. 81. Kuklick, 1979, 51. 82. Chabal, 1994, 42. 83. Ladouceur, 1979, 58. 84. Martin Klein, “African Participation in Colonial Rule,” Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa, Lawrence, Benjamin, Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts (eds.) (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 275. 85. Franz, Kroger. “Introduction,” Ghana’s North: Research on Culture, Religion, and Politics of Societies in Transition, Franz Kröger and Kröger, Barbara Meier (eds.) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), 5. 86. Herbst, 2000, 82. 87. Chabal, 1994, 41. 88. Ibid., 42. 89. Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” American Historical Review, 99 (1994), 152.

202

N ot e s

Chapter 2 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24. 25.

ADM 56/1/368, Informal Diaries, Southern Province, 1926. Ibid. ADM 56/1/368, Yendi District Commissioner Diary, 1926. Cooper, 1994, 1517. Annual Report on Togoland under British Mandate for the Year, 1929. Adolf Ruger, “The Colonial Aims of the Weimar Republic,” German Imperialism in Africa: From the Beginnings until the Second World War, Helmut Stoecker (ed.) (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1986), 301. R. Bagulo Bening, “Administrative Boundaries of Northern Ghana, 1898–1951,” Regionalism and Public Policy in Northern Ghana, Yakubu Saaku (ed.) (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 23. ADM 56/1/211, Annual Report, Yendi District, February 1916. ADM 56/1/204, Handing Over Report, Yendi Station, December 1920. ADM 56/1/211, Letter from Captain Short, DPO Yendi, to CCNT, January 7, 1916. ADM 56/1/211, Letter from CCNT to A.W. Cardinall, Acting Yendi District Commissioner, October 23, 1916. ADM 56/1/211, Annual Report, Yendi District, February 1916. Ibid. ADM 56/1/204, Handing Over Report, Yendi District, October 25, 1916. ADM 56/1/211, Proceeding of the Palaver Held at Yendi, June 30, 1916. ADM 56/1/211, Letter from CCNT to District Commissioner Short, July 2, 1916. ADM 56/1/211, Letter from the CCNT to A.W. Cardinall, Acting District Political Officer Yendi October 23, 1916. ADM 56/1/211, Letter from CCNT to Yendi District Commissioner, May 9, 1917. ADM 56/1/229, Yendi District Official Diary, May 1919. Ibid. Tait, 1961, 128. Tor Aase, “Introduction: Honor and Revenge in the Contemporary World,” Tournaments of Power: Honor and Revenge in the Contemporary World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002), 1. Christopher Boehm, Blood Revenge: The Anthropology of Feuding in Montenegro and Other Tribal Societies (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1984), 65. Tait, 1961, 89. A.W. Cardinall, In Ashanti and Beyond (London: Seeley Service and Company, Ltd., 1927), 119.

N ot e s 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

203

Interview with Ujorn Dimaba Akonsi, Wapuli, March 6, 2001. Interview with Daniel Jobor, Wapuli, April 19, 2006. Interview with Mary Bukari, Saboba, January 4, 2001. Ibid. Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 11. ADM 56/1/380, Letter from DC W.E. Gilbert to Acting Chief Commissioner of the Southern Province. March 22, 1926. ADM 56/1/368, Informal Diaries, Southern Province, 1926. Ibid. Ibid. ADM 56/1/204, Handing Over Report, Yendi Station, G.E. Poole to Harold Branch December 1920. A.I. Asijawu, “Law in African Borderlands: The Lived Experience of the Yoruba Astride the Nigeria-Dahomey Border,” Law in Colonial Africa, Kristin Mann and Richard Roberts (eds.) (Portsmith, NH: Heinemann, 1991), 224. Ibid., 228–229. A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 66. ADM 56/1/229, Official Diary, January 24, 1918. Ibid. ADM 56/1/229, Official Diary, January 24, 1918. Terrence Ranger, “Connections between ‘Primary Resistance’ Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism in East and Central Africa,” Journal of African History, 9 (1968), 437–453. Cooper, 1994, 1520. Kristen Mann and Richard Roberts (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmith, NH: Heinemann, 1991), 4. Berry, 1993, 338. Mamdani, 1996, 110. Mamdani, 1996, 110. Berman, 1998, 314–316. NRG 3/4/3, Native Administration—Development Programme. W.E. Gilbert, District Commissioner. February 3, 1930. Thomas Spear, “Neo-Traditionalism and the Limits of invention in British Colonial Africa,” Journal of African History, 44 (2003), 4. Mann and Roberts, 1991, 4. ADM 56/1/300, Yendi District Native Affairs. Ibid. Native Tribunals Ordinance, 1932. Amanor, 2006, 144. Quoted in Myers, Indirect Rule in South Africa, 11. Ibid.

204

N ot e s

58. NRG 3/4/3, Native Administration—Development Programme. February 8, 1930. 59. Hawkins, 2002, 29. 60. ADM 67/4/8, Criminal Court Record Book, Yendi. 61. Ibid. 62. ADM 67/4/6, Criminal Court Record Book, Yendi. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid. 65. ADM 67/4/5, Commissioner of Gold Coast Police Versus Njonam Konkomba, Bardouc Konkomba and Onukpili Konkomba, April 24, 1942. 66. ADM 67/4/7, Criminal Court Record Book, Yendi, 1953. 67. ADM 56/1/380, Memo from W.E. Gilbert to Commissioner of the Southern Province, January 21, 1929. 68. Ibid. 69. ADM 56/1/380, “Inquiry into the Death of T.S. Quarshie2nd Division Surveyor and Wounding of His Wife and Two Labourers”. 70. Ibid. 71. ADM 56/1/380, Memo from W.E. Gilbert to Commissioner of the Southern Province, NT, January 21, 1929. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. Boahen, 1987, 76.

Chapter 3 1. The village is officially recognized as Zegbeli, which corresponds with the Dagbani pronunciation. In Likpakpaaln it is Jagbel. I use Jagbel in reference to the village and Zegbeli Na to refer to its Dagomba chief. 2. Chatterjee, 1993, 163. 3. Ibid. 4. Michael Fisher, Indirect Rule in India: Residents and the Residency System, 1764–1858 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1. 5. Ibid., 2. 6. Myers, 2008, 1. 7. Vail and White, 1989, 13; see also Mamdani, 1996, 8. 8. Myers, 2008, 3. 9. Fisher, 1991, 11. 10. NRG 4/3/2, Memo from District Commissioner Eastern Dagomba to the Commissioner of Southern Province, Northern Territories, July 21, 1928. 11. NRG 8/2/20, Letter from Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories to Chief Commissioner Northern Province, October 20, 1928.

N ot e s

205

12. NRG 8/2/4, Preliminary of Native Administration Ordinance. 13. NRG 3/4/3, Chief Commissioner Walker-Leigh, Letter to the Commissioner of the Southern Province, December 27, 1928. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. As quoted in James Lance, “Seeking the Political Kingdom: British Colonial Impositions and African Manipulations in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast Colony,” Doctoral Dissertation, Stanford University, 1995, 161. 17. NRG 8/2/28, Progress Report Upon the Re-Establishment of the Positions of Chiefs in the Dagomba Constitution, May–September 1930. 18. NRG 3/4/3, Memo to the Commissioner of the Southern Province from the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories. 19. ADM 11/1/1379, Political Conference Held at Tamale, January 3, 1929. 20. James Merriman Lance, “Seeking the Political Kingdom: British Colonial Impositions and African Manipulations in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast Colony,” Doctoral Dissertation, Stanford University, 1995, 168. 21. Ibid. 22. Staniland, 1975, 78. 23. Stanley Shaloff, “Indirect rule in the Gold Coast: The Internal Debate, 1935–1939,” Unpublished Paper, African Studies Centre, University of Ghana, Legon, 1978. 24. Donald Cameron, Native Administration Memoranda Tanganyika Territory: Principles of Native Administration and Their Application (Dar es Salaam: The Government Printer, 1930), 7. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Staniland, 1975, 83. 28. Carola Lentz “Colonial Ethnography and Political Reform: The Works of A.C. Duncan-Johnstone, R.S. Rattray, J. Eyre-Smith and J. Guiness on Northern Ghana,” Ghana Studies, 2 (1999), 121. 29. NRG 8/2/38, Proposed Ordinance for the Introduction of Indirect rule, May 14, 1930. 30. NRG 11/1/1379, A.C. Duncan Johnstone, Notes on Policy and Standing Orders to Political Officers, Southern Province, Northern Territories, 1930. 31. Ibid. 32. See Lentz, 1999. 33. Ibid., 137. 34. Ibid., 122. 35. NRG 3/4/3, Native Administration—Development Programme February 3, 1930.

206

N ot e s

36. NRG 8/2/28, Progress Report Upon the Re-Establishment of the Positions of Chiefs in the Dagomba Constitution, May–September 1930. 37. Barbara Bush, Imperialism, Race, and Resistance: Africa and Britain, 1919–1945 (New York: Routledge, 1999), 36. 38. NRG 8/2/33, H.A. Blair, Assistant District Commissioner Activities Report for July 1931. 39. Lentz, 1999, 138. 40. Ibid., 145. 41. R.S. Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, Volumes I and II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932). 42. Ibid., 549. 43. Carola Lentz, “Histories and Political Conflict: A Case Study of Chieftaincy in Nandom, NorthWestern Ghana,” Paideuma, 39 (1993), 477. 44. Sean Hawkins, “Disguising Chiefs and God as History: Questions on the Acephalousness of LoDagaa Politics and Religion,” Africa, 66, 2 (1996), 208. 45. Lentz and Nugent, 2000, 9. 46. Berry, 2002, 644–645. 47. Ibid. 48. ADM 47/32, The Native Authority (Northern Territories) Ordinance No. 2, January 30, 1932. 49. Mamdani, 1996, 122. 50. Berry, 1993, 32. 51. NRG 3/4/3, Native Administration—Development Programme, February 3, 1930. 52. NRG 8/2/88, Report on Konkomba Disturbances by the Director of Veterinary Services, March 18, 1941. 53. NRG 8/2/88, Letter from Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories to Colonial Secretary September 17, 1940. 54. Tait, 1961, 7. 55. NRG 8/2/88, Letter from Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories to Colonial Secretary September 17, 1940. 56. Ibid. 57. NRG 8/2/88, Letter from W.J.A. Jones, Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, to DC Dagomba and SOP Tamale, November 2, 1940. 58. Ibid. 59. Gold Coast Census Report 1948, 309. 60. Ibid. 61. NRG 8/2/88, Memo from Director of Veterinary Services to the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, February 28, 1941. 62. NRG 8/2/88, Letter from the Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories to Colonial Secretary September 17, 1940.

N ot e s

207

63. NRG 8/2/88, Report on Konkomba Disturbances by the Director of Veterinary Services, March 18, 1941. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. The Gold Coast 1948 Census of Population, Report and Tables, 294. 67. Ibid. 68. Staniland,1975, 212. 69. NRG 8/4/94, Informal Diary of the DC Eastern Dagomba, 1947. 70. Ibid. 71. Tait, 1961, 11. 72. NRG 8/2/206, Letter from Guthrie Hall, Acting Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, to Colonial Secretary, Accra, September 6, 1946. 73. NRG 8/2/97, A. W. Davis, DC Yendi, Opening of Saboba Station, February 18, 1947. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. NRG 8/2/97 Letter from Chief Commissioner Ingram to Colonial Secretary, June 19, 1947. 77. NRG 8/2/97, James Anderson Asst. DC Saboba, Memorandum on Konkomba Policy, July 2, 1949. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. NRG 8/4/103, Informal Diary James Anderson, District Commissioner, Saboba, 1947. 81. Ibid. 82. G.N.E. Charles, “The Effect of Civilization on the Primitive Tribes of the Northern Territories,” February 1948, Unpublished Report, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. 83. Tait, 9. 84. As quoted in Bening, “Administrative Boundaries in Northern Ghana,” 28. 85. Ibid. 86. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993), xii. 87. Chatterjee, 1993, 159. 88. Ibid., 161. 89. Ibid., 162.

Chapter 4 1. Zanzibar is a useful example. See Laura Fair, Pastimes & Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001). Rwanda presents a more extreme example of new racism and discrimination.

208

N ot e s

2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

See, for example, Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). Etienne Balibar, “Is there a ‘New-Racism’?”, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (eds.) (New York: Verso, 1991), 21. Jonathan Glassman, “Slower Than a Massacre: The Multiple Sources of Racial Thought in Colonial Africa,” American Historical Review, 109, 3 (June 2004), 730. Der, 2001, 118. Quoted in Benedict Der, Regionalism and Public Policy in Northern Ghana, Yakubu Saaka (ed.) (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 117–118. Christine Oppong, Growing Up in Dagbon (Accra: Ghana Publishing Corporation, 1973), 68. NRG 8/4/14, Letter from J.A. Kaleem, February 24, 1945. Oppong, 72. NRG 8/3/167, Annual Report on the Dagomba and Nanumba District for the Year 1949–1950. Interview with Daniel Jobor, Saboba, November 15, 2000. Carola Lentz, “Unity for Development’: Youth Associations in NorthWestern Ghana,” Africa, 65, 3 (1995), 397. Interview with Anthony Adams Bukari, Saboba, November 16, 2000. The students enrolled in Yendi Primary School were adolescents, few would have been younger than twelve and many were significantly older. Interview with Daniel Neina Jobor, Wapul, January 5, 2001. Interview with Anthony Adams Bukari, Saboba, November 16, 2000. Interview with Yao Wumbei, Saboba, March 7, 2001. Chabal, 1994, 40. Ibid. R. Bagulo Bening, A History of Education in Northern Ghana, 1907– 1976 (Accra: Ghana University Press, 1990), 29–32. Interview with Mary Bukari, Saboba, April 19, 2006. NRG 8/3/167, Annual Report on the Dagomba and Nanumba District for the Year 1949–1950. For a detailed account of the experience of Assemblies of God missionary activities among Konkomba during the period, see the first two in a series of three E. Charlese Spencer’s memoirs, Welcome Madam (Tucson, AR: Iceni Books, 2006) and Around the Baobab Tree: A Christian Missionary Nurse Recounts Her Experiences in Africa (Tucson, AR: Iceni Books, 2006). Interview with Mary Bukari, Saboba, April 19, 2006. Ibid. Interview with Marita Gladson, Fullerton, California, May 29, 2007. Ibid., 69. Spencer, Welcome Madame!, 143. Ibid., 69. Spencer, Around the Baobab Tree, 96.

N ot e s

209

28. Ibid. 29. As of May 2006, the mission house and clinic continue to be operated by Americans, although there were Ghanaian nurses and assistants on staff. 30. Interview with Yao Wumbei, Saboba, March 6, 2001. 31. Interview with Dalafu Omptapii, Tema, March 21, 2001. 32. Berman, 2004, 28. 33. Claude Meillassoux, Urbanization of an African Community: Voluntary Associations in Bamako (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), 69. 34. Philip Zachernuk, Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 108. 35. Jean Allman, The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 31. 36. Richard Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–60 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), 23. 37. Allman, 1993, 32. 38. Lentz, 1995, 395. 39. Thomas Hodgkin, African Political Parties: An Introductory Guide (New York: Penguin Books, 1971), 47. 40. Ibid., 48. 41. See, for example, E.A. Ayandele, The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria, 1814–1942 (London: Longman, 1966) and Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya (London: Vintage Books, 1962). 42. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 28. 43. “The Historical Background of the Konkomba Youth Association,” Unpublished pamphlet of the Konkomba Youth Association (n.d., circa 1994). 44. Interview with Anthony Bukari, Saboba, Janaury 3, 2001. 45. NRG 8/5/102, Minutes of the Dagomba District Council, 1952– 1955. 46. Berman, 1998, 326–327. 47. Ibid. 48. Chatterjee, 1993, 26. 49. Ladouceur, 1979, 192. 50. Interview with Kpalija Madou, Toma, March 3, 2001. 51. Interview with Dan Ngula, Accra, April 5, 2001. 52. Interview with Anthony Adams Bukari, Saboba, March 28, 2001. 53. Interview with Dan Ngula, Accra, April 5, 2001. 54. NRG 8/5/276, Memo to Region Chief Executive, Region Office Tamale from the District Administrative Officer-in-Charge, April 14, 1968. 55. Ibid.

210

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56. NRG 8/5/276, Memo to Region Chief Executive, Region Office Tamale from the District Administrative Officer-in-Charge, April 14, 1968. 57. NRG 8/5/276, Memo from Principle Local Inspector, April 24, 1969. 58. NRG 8/5/276, Minutes of August 23, 1968 Meeting of the Town Development Committee. 59. Joshua Teye Tetteh, “Ethnic Conflict and Development Resource Allocation,” Doctoral Dissertation, American University, 1998, 82. 60. As cited in A.C. Smock and R. Smock, The Politics of Pluralism, The Politics of Pluralism: A Comparative Study of Lebanon and Ghana (New York: Elsevier, 1975), 248. 61. Hippolyt A.S. Pul, “Exclusion, Association and Violence: Trends and Triggers in Northern Ghana’s Konkomba-Dagomba Wars,” African Anthropologist, 10, 1 (March 2003), 17. 62. Skalnik, 1983, 19. 63. ADM 5/4/121, Gold Coast Land Tenure Volume I, 1953. 64. 1962 Statistical Yearbook (Accra: Central Bureau of Statistics, 1964). 65. Skalnik, 1983, 19. 66. Ibid., 15. 67. Ibid. 68. Paul Nugent, Big Men Small Boys and Politics in Ghana (Accra: Asempa Publishers, 1995), 75. 69. Kirby, 2003, 185. 70. Chabal, 158. 71. Ibid., 160. 72. Ibid. 73. Chatterjee, 1993, 5.

Chapter 5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

See Mamdani, 1996. See also, chapter above. Interview with Daniel Ngula, Accra, December 19, 2000. Oelbaum, 2007, 60. Ibid., 7. Horowitz, 1985, 22. Ibid., 34. Lentz, 1995, 398. Their presence in Saboba is testament to the role that the Yendi School played in building a Konkomba ethnic consciousness. Although Saboba is historically the center of the Bichabob clan, Anthony Bukari Adams, for example, was Nakpantiib. 9. Interview with Daniel Ngula, Accra, December 19, 2000. 10. “The Historical Background of the Konkomba Youth Association,” Unpublished pamphlet of the Konkomba Youth Association.

N ot e s

211

11. KOYA Constitution, Saboba, 1977. 12. “The Historical Background of the Konkomba Youth Association,” Unpublished pamphlet of the Konkomba Youth Association. 13. Interview with Daniel Ngula, Accra, December 19, 2000. 14. Interview with Ousmanu Tamalbe, Accra, October 26, 2000. 15. Interview with Daniel Ngula, Accra, December 19, 2000. 16. Peter Barker, Peoples, Languages, and Religion in Northern Ghana: A Preliminary Report (Accra: Asempa Publishers, 1986), 177. 17. Interview with Daniel Ngula, Accra, December 19, 2000. 18. “The Historical Background of the Konkomba Youth Association,” Unpublished pamphlet of the Konkomba Youth Association. 19. Interview with Anthony Adams Bukari, Saboba, March 28, 2001. 20. Berry, 2002, 641. 21. Interview with Joseph Kamshegu, Saboba, November 16, 2000. 22. For example, Konkomba informants claim that in one case in which two families claimed a girl as a wife the Bimbilla Na judged in such a way as to claim the girl for himself. 23. Interview with Joseph Kamshegu, Saboba, November 16, 2000. 24. Ibid. 25. Evidently, Joseph Kamshegu was misrepresenting his role to the district administrator through a technicality. Historically, there were no institutions similar to courts among Konkomba. Yet there were practices related to resolving disputes, which Konkombas in Bimbilla sought to incorporate. So, while he was not technically presiding over cases, within the Konkomba context he was performing the equivalent role. 26. Interview with Ousmanu Tamalbe, Accra, October 26, 2000. 27. Interview with Dan Ngula, Accra, April 5, 2001. 28. Interview with Omtapii Dalafu, Tema, March 21, 2001. 29. Interview with Joseph Ali Kamshegu, Saboba, March 30, 2001. 30. Ibid. 31. “Seven Killed in Fighting,” Daily Graphic (Accra), Tuesday April 28, 1981. 32. “Nanumba Youths Call for Peace,” Ghanaian Times, April 30, 1981. 33. Mahama, 2003. 34. Interview with Daniel Jobor, Wapuli, April 19, 2006; Anthony Adams Bukari, Saboba, March 28, 2001. 35. Interview with Daniel Jobor, Wapuli, April 19, 2006. 36. Interview with Daniel Jobor, Wapuli, April 19, 2006; Anthony Adams Bukari, Saboba, March 28, 2001. 37. “Konkombas, Nanumbas to Smoke Peace Pipe,” Daily Graphic (Accra), Tuesday, July 14, 1981. 38. “Lesson for all Who Love Peace,” Daily Graphic (Accra), Thursday, July 23, 1981. 39. “Kpandai—The Next Hot Spot,” Daily Graphic (Accra), June 22, 1981.

212

N ot e s

40. Interview with Dan Jobor, Wapuli, April 19, 2006. 41. “Kpandai—The Next Hot Spot,” Daily Graphic (Accra), June 22, 1981. 42. Evans, 1983, 316. 43. “Run for Your Life,” Daily Graphic (Accra), Tuesday, July 7, 1981. 44. “Dagombas Asked to Stay Out of the Conflict,” Ghanaian Times, Thursday, July 9, 1981. 45. “House Calls for a Commission of Enquiry,” Daily Graphic (Accra), Wednesday, July 8, 1981. 46. “Nanumba Area Now Disaster Zone,” Daily Graphic (Accra), Wednesday, July 8, 1981. 47. “Nanumba Regent’s 3 Conditions for Peace,” Ghanaian Times, July 24, 1981. 48. “Handle Nanumba-Konkomba Conflict with Maturity—President,” Ghanaian Times, Monday, July 13, 1981. 49. “Be Alive to Your Responsibilities,” Daily Graphic (Accra), Monday, July 13, 1981. 50. Interview with Ken Wujangi Saboba, November 14, 2000; Daniel Ngula, Accra, April 5, 2001. 51. Horowitz, 1985, 26. 52. Oelbaum, 2007, 30. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid, 40. 55. Jack Goody, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 49. 56. For an analysis of modern chieftaincy disputes in Dagbon, see Evans, 1983; Staniland, 1975. 57. Julia Jönsson, “The Overwhelming Minority: Traditional Leadership and Ethnic Conflicts in Ghana’s Northern Region,” Oxford University, Crise Working Paper No. 30 (February 2007), 2. 58. Bogner, 2001, 190. 59. P.Y. Dibabe and G.Y. Mabe, Konkomba Position Paper to the Permanent Negotiation Team into Conflicts in the Northern Region, July 1994, 10–11. 60. Mahama, 2003, 23. 61. As quoted in Mahama, 2003, 15. 62. Naylor and van der Linde, 1999, 21. 63. Mahama, 2003, 9. 64. Ibid, 7. 65. Ibid. 66. Unpublished Konkomba Position Paper, July 1994 to the Permanent Negotiation Team. 67. Naylor and van der Linde, 1999, 27. 68. Mahama, 2003, 93. 69. Ibid.

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70. Bogner, 2001, 186. 71. There was indeed a small group of Konkomba that sought to incorporate Kekpakpaan into the Republic of Togo but they remained on the fringe of Konkomba political activities during the 1980s and 1990s. Interview with Anthony Adams Bukari, Saboba, January 3, 2001. See also, Mahama, 2003. 72. Many of the reports and analyses of the conflicts depict Konkomba as migrants from Togo. Academic scholarship also presented Konkomba as foreigners. See for example, Mahama, 2003; H.B. Martinson, The Hidden History of Konkomba Wars in Northern Ghana (Accra: Matta Press, 1994). 73. Oelbaum, 2007, 19. 74. Ibid., 34. 75. Paul Nugent, Bid Men, Small Boys and Politics in Ghana (Accra: Asempa Publishers, 1995), 278. 76. Kirby, 2003, 173. 77. Saboba Surveys, 2007. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Oelbaum, 2007, 11. 81. Ibid. 82. Kirby, 2003, 174. 83. “Provide Bimbilla Security Personnel With Logistics—Government Urged”, Ghana News Agency, January 15, 2007. 84. Ibid. 85. Dwayne Woods, “The Tragedy of the Cocoa Pod: Rent-Seeking, Land and Ethnic Conflict in Ivory Coast,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 41, 4 (2003), 648–649. 86. Ibid., 651.

Conclusion 1. Mamdani, 1996, 286. 2. Mamdani, 1996. See also, Chapter 2 of this book. 3. Peter Geschiere and Stephen Jackson have defined autochthony as literally implying “of the soil and meaning a direct claim to territory although in the meaning and currency of autochthony change according to context. See Geschiere and Jackson, “Autochthony and the Crisis of Citizenship: Democratization, Decentralization, and the Politics of Belonging,” African Studies Review, 49, 2 (September, 2006), 2. 4. Geschiere and Jackson, 2006, 3. 5. Mamdani, 1996, 293. 6. Ibid., 288. 7. Ibid., 296.

214

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8. A shakere is a dried and hollowed calabash (gourd) covered by beads strung on a mesh. It serves as a rattle and in some instances a drum. 9. Niebuhr, 2001, xxxi. 10. Ibid., 6. 11. Young, 1994, 9. 12. Ibid., 4. 13. Chatterjee, 1993, 165. 14. Cooper, 2005, 62. 15. Ibid., 80. 16. Mamdani, 1996, 285. 17. Ibid., 286.

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Index

1981 Konkomba-Nanumba conflict, 1–2, 4, 17, 137–8, 144–6, 160–70, 177–8, 181–2, 184, 188–9 1994 conflict (Guinea Fowl War), 1–2, 4, 17, 144, 146, 166, 168–84, 188–9, 191, 193 Abdulai I, Ya Na, 33, 35 Accra, 117, 154, 163, 166, 183 British government in, 8, 36, 44, 81–3 Ghana archives in, 17 Ghana independence celebration in, 191, 193 road through, 167, 179 yam market in, 155–6, 159, 179 Acheampong, Ignatius, 134–5, 146–7, 149, 151, 155 Adam Nanumba, 70–1 Administrative Ordinance of 1902, 43 Agbogbloshie, 159 Alhassan Committee, 146–9, 155, 166 Alhassan, Ya Na, 53 Allman, Jean Marie, 10 Amanor, Kojo, 66 Anderson, James, 101–5, 116 Anglo-Asante War (1874), 34–6 Appiah, Anthony, 13 Armitage, C. H., 50–5, 59–61 Asante British and, 15, 20–1, 30–6 expansion, 30–6

social structure, 13, 15 yam trade and, 155, 159 Asantehene, 32, 34, 40, 123, 174–5 Asante Youth Association, 122–3 Asijawu, A. I., 60 Assemblies of God Mission, 115–20, 139n20 autochthony, 24–8, 45, 69, 144, 146–51, 180, 184–5, 190n3 Baabey Konkomba, 72 Babatu, 31 Balamo Konkomba, 70 Balidin, E. N., 159 Bawa, Isaac, 114, 125–6, 128–30, 151 Bekou Konkomba, 72 belonging community of, 1, 5, 50, 76, 122, 140, 183, 200 dual system of, 145–6, 169 national, 200 notions of, 3–4, 8, 21, 30, 58, 110, 114, 143, 170, 187, 189–203 question of, 144, 184–5 Berman, Bruce, 5–6, 122, 126 Berry, Sara, 7, 40, 105, 156 betrothal, infant, 57–8, 69, 118–19, 154, 156 biborb (headmen), 33, 105, 122, 124, 134, 153, 155, 163. See also Ubor Bichabob clan, 26, 28–9, 33, 99, 104–5, 126n8

236

Index

Bikaem, Budale, 114 Bilidou, Johnson, 121, 125–6, 133, 151 Bimbilla Na, 69, 134–7, 155–60, 163–8, 179n22 Bimopkem (clan), 55, 61, 78, 99 Bingini, 68–70 Binka, F. K., 91 Blair, H. A., 84–7 Boahen, A. Adu, 61 Branch, Harold, 59 Bravman, Bill, 5 Brong-Ahafo, 136–8, 156, 163, 167–8, 176 Bukari, Anthony Adams, 151 Bukari, Isaac Bawa, 151 Busia, Kofi, 133–4 Butun, 47, 65–6, 97

Christianity and Christian Missions, 76, 110, 116–19, 153, 191 citizenship, 8, 13, 140, 161, 180–1, 189, 194, 202 Clifford, Hugh Charles, 44 cocoa farming, 167 colonialism. See Great Britain Committee on Youth Organizations, 123 Convention People’s Party, 123, 196n26 Cooper, Frederick, 4, 11, 49, 63, 191 Cotin, Alfred, 151 Culture and Imperialism (Said), 107 customary law, 9, 50, 63–7, 135, 184, 193, 203 custom, interpretations of, 1, 7, 19, 21, 40, 189, 202

Cameron, Donald, 84 Cameroon, 51 Cardinall, A.W., 19, 36, 53–6, 87 cassava farming, 156, 167 Chabal, Patrick, 3, 45, 156 Chagbaantiib subclan, 29 Chakosi, 9, 16, 36, 41–2, 50, 162, 172n61 Chambas, Mohammed Ibn, 177 Charles, G. N. E., 105–6 Chatterjee, Partha, 3–4, 78–9, 127, 140 Chief of Police v. Baabey Konkomba, 72 chieftaincy British emphasis on, 8–11, 14, 16, 40, 44, 87, 96, 99, 106 Dagomba, 20–1, 26, 49, 99, 146, 149 indirect rule and, 80, 84 Konkomba and, 105, 128–34, 137–9, 141, 144, 145–9, 165–71, 176–83, 189–92 Chieftaincy Act of 1971 (Act 370), 133–4

Dagbon Youth Association, 164, 172 Dagbon Youth Congress, 164 Dagomba British relationship with, 9, 29–31, 35–46 centralized political system of, 16 chieftaincy of, 20–1, 26, 49, 99, 146, 149 Demon Na, 34, 48, 53, 97–100, 103, 108 Gonja conflicts with, 40 history of, 20–36, 40–1, 45–6, 51, 54, 67 Kekpakpaan and, 30–5, 44, 53–4, 75, 86–7, 106, 131, 149 political sway of, 81 precolonial, 148 Dalafu, Omtapii, 159 Damanku, 132, 137, 163, 166, 178–9 Davis, A. W., 66, 100–1 Demon Na (Dagomba chief of Demon), 34, 48, 53, 97–100, 103, 108

Index direct rule, 79 Djar, Kpalbor, 78, 96–100, 105, 108, 114 Duncan-Johnstone, A. C., 84–7 education, 17–18, 63, 83, 110–24, 128, 140, 145–6, 150–5, 178 ethnicity, 3–7, 10–11, 14, 108, 110, 127–30, 133–40, 143–7, 151, 168, 170, 177–83, 188–93 Fage, J. D., 40 farming, 2, 5, 26–8, 34, 102, 113, 130, 132–9, 150–9, 164–9, 173, 176–81. See also Yam farming and trade Ferguson, George Ekem, 36–7 feuds and feuding, inter-clan, 1, 25, 48–75, 92, 97, 110, 120–5, 141, 154, 162, 177, 183 First Republic of Ghana, 123 Fisher, Ann, 120 Fisher, Michael, 79 Fourth Republic of Ghana, 177 France, 18, 49–51, 59–61 Gbagbo, Laurent, 202 Gbewa, 39 German East Africa, 51 Ghana’s independence, 17, 19, 26, 108, 122–3, 127–30 Ghana’s independence, fiftieth anniversary of, 204, 193–4 Gilbert, W. E., 48, 58, 61–2, 64, 73–5, 82–3 Glassman, Jonathan, 110 Gold Coast Colony, 81, 86, 107 civil servants in, 100, 115 education policy in, 112, 115 governors of, 15, 39, 44, 135 indirect rule in, 9, 40, 63, 67, 85 migration to, 61 Northern Territories of, 37, 43–4, 48, 50–4, 63, 66–7, 79, 135 transition to independence, 123, 131

237

Gonja British tribal model and, 9 burning of Konkomba compounds, 174 Dagbon conflicts with, 40 dominance of, 2, 124, 135, 167, 171, 177 Guggisberg and, 51, 81 Konkomba migration into, 96, 156, 167–8 Nawuri conflict with, 169–70 political structure of, 16, 36, 41 political sway of, 81 Slater’s plan and, 82 as slave raiders, 34–5 yam farming and, 145, 156, 167–8 Gonja Youth Association, 169 Goody, Jack, 41 Great Britain Asante and, 15, 20–1, 30–6 chieftaincy emphasized by, 8–11, 14, 16, 40, 44, 87, 96, 99, 106 colonial policies of mid, 1940s, 4, 185 early colonial rule of, 4, 50–5, 58–62, 75–6 indirect rule of, 11–12, 17, 21, 27, 59, 62–4, 67, 77, 96–114, 134, 171 prescriptions for political legitimacy, 14 question of belonging for, 144, 184 records of interactions with Konkomba, 17–18 relationship with Dagomba, 40, 29–31, 35–46 tribal model of, 9, 86, 184 Grischow, Jeff, 10–11 Gruner, Dr, 38–9 Guggisberg, Gordon, 51, 81

238 Guha, Ranajit, 108 Guinea Fowl War, 1–2, 4, 17, 144, 146, 166, 168–84, 188–9, 191, 193 Hailey, Lord, 107 Hall, Guthrie, 100–2 Hamidu (Sunson Na), 171 Hanno, Alfa, 35 Hawkins, Sean, 6, 10, 67 Herbst, Jeffrey, 3, 45 historical memory, 7, 13, 17–19, 26–30, 36–46, 111, 127, 148, 189 Hodgson, Arnold, 93 Hodgson, Frederick Mitchell, 39 Horowitz, Donald, 150 houses of chiefs, 2, 133–4, 151, 156, 165, 170–1. See also National House of Chiefs Ibrahim, Abdulai, 177 Iddi, M. D., 40, 33n10 India, 4, 79–80 indirect rule, 11–12, 17, 21, 27, 59, 62–4, 67, 77, 80–89, 99, 105–8, 134, 171 infant betrothal, 57–8, 69, 118–19, 154, 156 Ingram, W. H., 100, 102 Italy, 202 Ivory Coast, 61, 180, 203 Jagbel, attack on village of, 77–9, 94, 100–1, 106–8 Jobor, Daniel Neina, 114, 121, 125–6, 151 Johnson, Ruby, 117–18 Jones, William Andrew, 84–7, 93–5, 101, 111–12 Kaasiitiib subclan, 28–9 Kabre, 188 Kaleem, J. A., 111–13 Kambekye, 68–70

Index Kamshegu, Joseph Ali, 157–60, 211n25 Kekpakpaan British and, 17, 50, 53–4, 59–60, 93–5, 102–6 Dagomba authority in, 30–5, 44, 53–4, 75, 86–7, 106, 131, 149 geography of, 60–1 Konkomba and, 26, 102, 131, 147–50, 153–9, 171–2, 174 Saboba Primary School in, 121 Kete-Krachi, 38, 132, 176 Kidikuri Konkomba, attack on, 71–2 Kirby, Jon, 25, 177, 179 Klein, Martin, 44 Klose, Heinrich, 38–9 Kokaah, 68–9 Konkomba Armitage and, 50–5 Asante expansion and, 30–6 autochthony and, 24–8, 45, 69, 144, 146–51, 180, 184–5, 190n3 chieftaincy and, 169–70 Christianity and, 76, 110, 116–19, 153, 191 claims of their immigration from Togo, 144, 171, 176, 184 community of belonging, 183–91 cultural and geographic context, 15–16 early politics, 97–106 economic development, 166–9 education, 17–18, 63, 83, 110–24, 128, 140, 145–6, 150–5, 178 feuds, 1, 25, 48–75, 92, 97, 110, 120–5, 141, 154, 162, 177, 183 historical memory, 36–45 history of autonomy, 39–47 indirect rule, 62–72, 101 Jagbel attack, 107–114

Index Kekpakpaan and, 26, 102, 131, 147–50, 153–9, 171–2, 174 KOYA’s call for a paramount ruler for, 2, 155, 168, 170–3, 175, 177–8, 181 political legitimacy for, 14, 30–1, 50, 97, 100, 106–13, 124, 141, 144–9, 183–6, 190–2 as primarily farmers, 194 social change in context, 16–18 social relations, 183–94 tradition and, 96, 106, 109–11, 142 Konkomba Improvement Association, 121–7, 134, 138, 139–144, 151–2, 154, 175 Konkomba Youth Association (KOYA) constitution of, 152–3 early goals of, 124, 137, 145, 147, 151–2 founding of, 151 Land Tenure Act and, 155 meetings with Nanumba Youth Association, 160, 165 membership of, 151–2 Ngula and, 151–2, 154–5, 165n2 petition for a Konkomba paramount ruler, 2, 155, 168, 170–3, 175, 177–8, 181 tradition and, 151–61 yam farming and, 155–9, 167, 175, 181 Kopytoff, Igor, 9, 35 Kpalbtiib clan, 27–9, 33–4, 78, 99–100 Kpandai, 132, 169–70, 173, 176 Kpasa, 135–9, 155, 161–3, 194 Kugnau, 47–8, 96–7 Kuklick, Henrika, 42 Kumasi, 13, 32–5, 39, 40, 58, 116, 159, 175 Kuntcha, 47–8, 65 Kwaku, Samuel, 151

239

Lagos Youth Movement, 122 land rights, 8, 13, 65, 135, 155, 175 land tenure, 135–41, 143–4, 146, 154–5, 169, 186 Land Tenure Act of, 1979, 135, 144, 154–5, 169, 186 League of Nations, 51 Lentz, Carola, 3, 9–10, 29, 37, 86–8, 123, 190 Levtzion, Nehemiah, 40 Liberia, 116, 203 Likanli, Joseph, 151–2 Limann, Hilla, 135, 155, 165–6 Lugard, Frederick, 80, 84 Luro, Ya Na, 24–6 Mahama, Aliu, 204 Mahama (Demon Na), 97, 99–100 Mahama, Ibrahim, 173 Mamadu (Bimbilla Na), 156–7, 160, 163 Mamdani, Mahmood, 3, 5, 7, 11–12, 20–1, 63–4, 193 Mamprusi, 15, 26, 41, 43, 51, 82, 128, 155, 177, 189 Mandated Territory of British Togoland, 48, 50–1, 60–1, 83, 136 Mankron, Samson, 114, 117, 121, 125–6 Mann, Kristin, 65 Marville, R.O.G., 32–3 McNutt, Marita, 116–17, 120 McNutt, Mel, 116–17, 120 memory, historical, 7, 13, 17–19, 26–30, 36–46, 111, 127, 148, 189 Milner-Simon Agreement, 51 Moral Man and Immoral Society (Niebuhr), 189 Moreton, P. C., 52 Morris, Arthur Henry, 43 Namibia, 57 Namuel, Nakoja, 114, 121, 125, 151

240

Index

Nanumba 1981 conflict with Konkomba, 1, 160–6, 170, 184 1994 conflict and, 170–80, 184 in Bimbilla District, 152, 156–7, 159–60 British domination of, 50 as centralized, 16 chieftaincy of, 9 dominance of, 123–4, 135–6, 153, 155, 157 Konkomba immigration to, 96 population of, 136 tensions between Konkomba and, 1–2 Traditional Area, 136–7, 157–8 yam farming and, 155, 158–9, 166, 179–80 Nanumba Youth Association, 160 National House of Chiefs, 2, 109, 139–40, 150, 153, 156, 170–1, 173–4, 183. See also Houses of chiefs National Liberation Council (NLC), 133, 147–148 National Redemption Council, 147 Nation and Its Fragments, The (Chatterjee), 3 Native Authorities, 44, 62–6, 70, 81–2, 86–9, 93, 112, 184, 193, 201 Native Authority Ordinance, 66, 106 Native Tribunal Ordinance of, 66, 1932 Nawa, Wajus, 193–4, 204 Nawuri-Gonja conflict, 169–70 Nawuri Youth Association, 169 Nayiri, 39, 41–2, 82, 134, 168 Netherlands, 202 Ngula, Daniel, 151–2, 154–5, 165n2 Ngula, Kwame, 159 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 20, 189

Nigeria, 12, 32, 40, 60, 67, 80, 84, 124, 203 Nkrumah, Kwame, 126–30, 196n26 nkwankwaa (young men or commoners), 123 Northcott, H.P., 39–43 Northern Ghana Youth and Development Association (NORYDA), 175 Northern Regional Administration, 131 Northern Youth Association (NYA), 123–4 Nteh Nanumba, 70–1 Nugent, Paul, 9, 190 Nyagse, 40 Oelbaum, Jay, 10–11, 150, 179 Oti River, 19, 33, 47, 61–2, 65–6, 73, 78, 137, 162–3, 174 Parker, John, 10 Peace and Preservation Ordinance, 93 pito, 34, 57, 70–1, 121, 158, 160, 187n52 Pogucki, R. J. H., 136 political legitimacy British prescriptions for, 14 Dagomba chieftaincy as model for, 20, 99, 146, 149 ethnic identities and, 5, 145 historical narrative and, 45–6 Konkomba and, 14, 30–1, 50, 97, 100, 106–13, 124, 141, 144–9, 183–6, 190–2 tradition and, 7, 106 Poole, G. A., 59 Power, Gerald, 112 primary resistance movement, 63 proxies, African, 7–8, 12 Quarshie, T. S. murder of, 72–5 Ranger, Terrence, 9, 63 Rattray, R. S., 26, 35, 87–8

Index Rawlings, Jerry John, 2, 166, 177 Read, Moutray, 41 Read, Ozella, 117 Roberts, Richard, 65 Rwanda, 20, 149, 180n1 Saboba, 28, 38, 94, 101–6, 115–21, 125, 128–34, 137, 140, 151–6, 159–60, 170–4, 179, 183 Saeed, Salifu, 179 Said, Edward, 107 Sambuli, 27–8, 47, 65, 94, 97 Sambultiib (subclan), 27, 38, 65–6 Sanguli, 28, 130n30 Sansanne-Mangu district, 37–41 Scott, James, 3 Second Republic of Ghana, 133, 134 Short, Yendi District Commissioner, 52–3 Sitobu, 40 skin debt, 33 Slater, Alexander, 81–2, 84 slave raiding, 19, 31, 35, 106 slavery and slave trade, 13–15, 19, 26, 30–6, 46, 112, 150 Smith, G. H., 174 Society of Missionaries of Africa, 116 Spear, Thomas, 64 Spencer, E. Charlese, 118–20 Sunson Na, 52–3, 87, 100–5, 126, 128–30, 171 Supreme Military Council (SMC), 151 Swahili, 15 Taita, Kenyan community of, 5 Tait, David, 33, 55, 57, 99, 106 Tamakloe, E.F., 33 Tamalbe, Ousmanu, 159 Tamale attack on, 174–5, 178 British government in, 85, 87 British jails in, 96 Ghana archives in, 17

241

Konkomba migration to, 2 Konkomba ordered to leave, 163–4 KOYA in, 137, 151, 165 Regional Administration in, 132, 137, 160 roads through, 167, 179 school for boys in, 116 Tanzania, 51 tendana, 16 Third Republic of Ghana, 137 Thomas, Shenton, 81 Tiribii, 68–9 Togoland British, 48, 50–1, 60–1, 83, 136 French, 59–1 German, 50–1, 61 Togo (Togolese Republic), 18, 32, 37, 39, 144, 161, 163, 171, 176, 184n71–2 Toure, Samori, 31, 37 tradition British colonialism’s focus on, 8, 21, 30, 40, 43, 45, 49–50, 64, 106, 144 challenges to, 140, 161–6 discrimination/exclusion and, 156 ethnic hierarchy and, 139, 168, 176, 206 interpretation of, 106, 126 invented, 4, 6, 9, 105, 151–61 invention of ethnicity and, 3 Konkomba perceived as lacking, 96, 106, 109–11 Konkomba’s developing, 142 land and, 143 marginalization and, 127 modernity and, 122 political legitimacy and, 7, 106 tribal model, 9, 86 Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, The (Rattray), 87 tribes, British concepts of, 87 Twumalam, 68

242

Index

ubor (headman), 33, 99, 104, 178. See also Biborb Uchabobor (chief of Saboba), 104–5, 117, 147, 170–3 Uka, George, 151 uninkpel (oldest village inhabitant or clan member), 16, 37–8, 56, 65–6, 68, 98–9, 104, 113–14, 124–5 Vail, Leroy, 80 Volta River Project, 136–7 von Massow, Valentin, 39 Walker-Leigh, A.H., 48, 82–3 Watherston, Alan Edward, 112, 116 White Fathers Mission, 115–16 Whittal, P. F., 83 witch villages, 179–80 Worby, Eric, 10 World War I, 16, 51 World War II, 124 Wujangi, Kenneth, 2, 165 Wulensi, 69–71, 162–3, 166 Wumbei, Yao, 120–1 Yakubu, Malik, 180 yam farming and trade, 13, 74, 106, 145, 150, 155–9, 166–9, 175, 179–81, 188–91, 194 Ya Na 1994 conflict and, 174–5 Abdulai I, 33–5 on adultery, 67 Alhassan, 53–4 Asante capture of, 32

authority of, 68–9, 77, 108, 135, 148–9, 151, 155, 170–1 biborb and, 134, 147 Dariziegu, 40 division of Dagbon and, 41 Djar and, 97–8, 100 Gilbert and, 83 indirect rule and, 106 influence of, 125–6 KOYA petition and, 168, 171–2, 177–8 Luro, 24–7 Nambir’s allegiance to, 103 Nyagse as first, 40 Oti plain controlled by, 135 restored power of, 45 Yani, E. A., 121, 134–5 Yendi District, 44, 48–59, 65–6, 77, 82, 92, 100, 103, 106, 125, 142 precolonial history of, 19, 42 roads through, 38, 137, 167, 174, 179 Saboba made separate from, 134 See also Cardinall, A. W. Gilbert, W. E Yendi Primary School, 111–14, 121n13 Young, Crawford, 190 youth organizations, 122–4, 169, 172, 175. See also Konkomba Youth Association (KOYA) Zabzugu-Saboba Dispute, 147–150 Zanzibar, 15 Zegbeli Na, 53, 77, 107, 108, 204n. See also Jagbel