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A Murder in the Colonial Gold Coast: Law and Politics in the 1940s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Richard Rathbone
Richard Rathbone
Affiliation:
S.O.A.S., University of London
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Extract

This article looks at a murder case which resulted from allegations of ‘ritual murder’ in the course of Nana Sir Ofori Atta's final funeral rites in Akyem Abuakwa, Ghana, in 1944. At the level of the Akyem state, the accusations came from an affronted section within the polity, the Amantow Mmiensa, who had been defeated by the Stool in the course of the 1932–3 disturbances arising from the Native Administration Revenue Ordinance but whose grievances against the Okyenhene were of greater antiquity. The accused were all descendants of past kings of Akyem. At the level of the Gold Coast state, the case provided an arena for some of the best lawyers in the country to use their mastery of colonial law to challenge the legal and hence colonial establishment both in Accra and in London. At the imperial level, opponents of the Labour Government both from the right and the left were able to use the case to belabour a weak Secretary of State for the Colonies both within and outside the House of Commons. The Governor, Sir Alan Burns, was ultimately confronted with an entirely legal if eccentric challenge to his authority in the Gold Coast, and serious assaults on his competence in London. The article argues that the case poisoned relations between Dr J. B. Danquah, the inspiration behind the defence case, and the colonial establishment in Accra so much that the constructive relationship between some of the intelligentsia and the Governor before 1944 was destroyed. This in turn influenced the nationalists' reception of the reformed 1946 constitution and the attitude of the administration to the United Gold Coast Convention.

Type
Death, Ritual and Power in West Africa
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , November 1989 , pp. 445 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Akyem Abuakwa sadly boasts only a slight literature. It must begin with Danquah's, Dr J. B.Akim Abuakwa Handbook (London, 1928).Google Scholar The list is augmented by two fine theses; that of Simensen, Jarle, ‘Commoners, Chiefs and Colonial Government: British Policy and Local Politics in Akim Abuakwa, Ghana, under Colonial Rule’ (University of Trondheim, 1975)Google Scholar and Addo-Fening, Robert, ‘Akyem Abuakwa, c. 1874–1943: a study of the impact of missionary activities and colonial rule on a traditional state’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Ghana, 1980).Google Scholar Addo-Fening is not only a distinguished member of the history department at Legon but also Okyeame to the Adadientam stool in Akyem Abuakwa state. I have found Attobrah's, KumiThe kings of Akyem Abuakwa and the ninety nine years war against Asante (Tema, Ghana, 1976)Google Scholar very useful. On the case itself I have also used the late Bing's, Geoffrey interesting memoirs, Reap the whirlwind (London, 1968)Google Scholar and the papers of one of the police officers involved in this case, E. Berkeley-Barton, which can be consulted in MSS. Afr. s 579 in the Library of Rhodes House, Oxford, as well as material in the Ghana National Archives, the Public Record Office and the British Library's newspaper collection at Colindale. Nuamah, H. A., An account of the Kibi ritual murder case (Educational Press and Manufacturers Limited, Accra, 1985).Google Scholar is a fascinating source, not least because Mr Nuamah was one of the detectives involved in the case.

2 This is apparent in evidence given to the Arbitrator in the Asamankese dispute (September, 1929) as well as in oral material provided by both Addo-Fening and Simensen.

3 Hill, Polly, Migrant Cocoa Farmers of Southern Ghana (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar

4 These figures depend on the listing of such disputes to 1929 in ADM/11/2/14 in the Ghana National Archives. From 1929 the only record of such events is that of the Government Gazette.

5 This is apparent not least in the funding of the defence case from 1944 onwards. It is also apparent that the ‘sons of the stool’ were members of an import-export company whose managing director was the first of the accused to hang. Dua or Dwa literally means ‘stool’ as in ‘Sika Dwa’ or Golden Stool, in Twi; it was also Ofori Atta's birth-given name. It is clear that membership of the board was confined to princes and royals. Dua and Company was established in 1936 ‘for his children in collaboration with his [Ofori Atta's] friends Austin and Young of Victoria Street,… London SWi ’ according to an unpublished sixty-page letter to The Times of London written by Danquah in July 1947. In the same letter, in my possession, Danquah refers to the allegation, which he disputes, that the late Okyenhene had left £70,000 to the state of Akyem Abuakwa which had found its way into the coffers of the firm. It is clear that Dua and Company's affairs need looking into.

It must be remembered that until the late 1930s Stool Treasuries were, in effect, not audited although this certainly implies no more than that it was easy to accuse royals of crooked transactions. Simensen also draws our attention to the number of the Omanhene's sons who entered higher education, which before the 1950s meant expensive study abroad. Simensen, J., ‘Nationalism from below. The Akyem Abuakwa example’, in Jenkins, Paul (ed.), Akyem Abuakwa and the politics of the inter-war period in Ghana (Basle, 1975), 44.Google Scholar I certainly find it hard to believe that Ofori Atta I left only £200, as Danquah insisted in the same letter, to this concern.

6 Ibid., 52.

7 Ghana National Archives, Kibi Quarterly Reports. 1917–18.

8 These events are admirably covered in Simensen, J., ‘Crisis in Akyem Abuakwa: the Native Administration Revenue Measure of 1932’, in Jenkins, Paul (ed.), Akyem Abuakwa, 91–112.Google Scholar

9 The sources are numerous and contradictory. Amongst other works I have consulted are Rattray, R. S., Ashanti (Oxford, 1923)Google Scholar, Danquah, J. B., The Akan Doctrine of God (London, 1944)Google Scholar, and Sarpong, Peter, The Sacred Stools of the Akan (Accra, 1971).Google Scholar

10 The material for the following paragraph is drawn for the most part from the transcript of the trial which is to be found in the Public Record Office, London, CO 96/783/2.

11 The ritual experts who gave evidence at the trial differed on this point, with defence witnesses denying it and prosecution witnesses asserting it. It is important to note that the ancient practice was ultimately conceded in the petition which I believe Danquah to have drafted at the end of 1945 on behalf of ‘The Enlightened sons and daughters of Akim Abuakwa’. Although this is of course a tricky and unpleasant issue, my oral sources are unanimous about this having been ancient and not-so-ancient practice. To such testimony can be added the interesting little volume What the elders of Ashanti say, by Kullas, H. and Ayer, G. A. (Kumasi, 1967)Google Scholar, which rests, its authors say, entirely upon the ‘verbal informations of people who are regarded by the communities in which they live as people who by virtue of their age and experience have the knowledge and keep alive the traditional forms’ (p. vii). The sources are duly listed and accord with this description.

12 See Danquah, Akim Abuakwa Handbook.

13 See the theses of both Addo-Fening and Simensen, cited in n. 1.

14 There was on this point at least no dissent between the Crown and the defence. There was however disagreement about what actually happened during Wirempe.

15 See the trial transcript in CO 96/783/2.

16 This is particularly striking. Several readings of the trial convince me that the various versions did not simply represent the adversarial nature of the proceedings. Experts were genuinely at odds about what should have happened, not least because it was many years since an Omanhene had died. There is a strong suggestion that all such great events which denoted pecking-orders, amongst other things, always promoted heated struggles over the ‘rules’.

17 Some historians of colonial Africa will be surprised by the presence of jury trial in the Gold Coast. Jury trial was instituted as early as 1853 in the Supreme Court Ordinance (no. 1, s. 6) and was retained in capital and some other cases in the Criminal Procedure Ordinance of 1876 (no. 5). The number of jurors was reduced from twelve to seven in the Criminal Procedure Amendment Ordinance of 1898 (no. 2). Certain changes were made in the system under the Criminal Procedure Amendment Ordinance of 1916 (no. 12), some of which were, in turn, overhauled in the Criminal Procedure Code of 1935 (no. 10). This code was in operation at the time of the trial and stipulated that in the Colony alone capital cases were to be tried by a judge and seven jurors. The Governor-in-Council, however, had the power under this code to order jury trial both for other serious offences and in areas outside the Colony. It seems to be common ground in this sequence of legislation that Africans had to be tried by a jury at least half of whom were to be African. For further information, see Jearey, J. H., ‘Trial by jury and trial with the aid of assessors in the superior courts of British Africa’, J. Afr. Law, IV (1960), 133–46; V (1961), 36–47, 82–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Amongst other things, this, my first foray into ‘legal history’, has made me profoundly sceptical about the reliability of historical analyses which attempt to ‘reconstruct’ crimes and subsequent trials. We lack not only the court-room atmosphere but too much of the material –the solicitors' papers, the police working-papers as well as telephone calls, talks in smoke-filled rooms and the bulk of the unrecorded matter which assuredly surrounds any trial whether it be great or small –to be really confident about post hoc conclusions regarding guilt or innocence.

19 There was no suggestion whatever of foul play. Apietu was at least sixty-five years old at the time of the trial.

20 This brief narrative draws on the copious material in CO 96/783/1 and CO 96/783/2 and those parts of the Gold Coast press which are available in the British Library newspaper collection in the Colindale repository.

The Government Pathologist had attempted to match a photograph of the dead man with the skull. This methodology was not without precedent, having being used in the Ruxton case and the delightfully named Baptist Church Cellar Murder of 1941–2. So far as the Kyebi case is concerned, however, the grisly remains were not admitted by the trial judge as exhibits. I am most grateful for Miss P. D. James' interest in this case and for bringing these earlier cases to my attention, as well as for introducing me to Keith Simpson and Bernard Knight's very useful, if insomnia-inducing volume, Forensic Medicine (ninth edition: London, 1988).Google Scholar

The question of the Governor's prerogative was of considerable importance in this case. Fiddes, G. V., in The Dominions and Colonial Offices (London, 1926), 48Google Scholar, usefully summarises those powers and comments: ‘It is an express delegation from the Sovereign to the Governor alone [in the Royal Instructions] of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy. The Secretary of State does not come into it at all. Attempts have been made, from time to time, on behalf of convicted persons, to bring in the Colonial Office as a Court of Appeal; but they have been firmly resisted, and it is essential to justice that this should be so. The Governor and his Executive Council, assisted by the Judge who tried the case, are best able to take into account all the surrounding circumstances; the Colonial Office is in no position to re-try the case; and even if it were competent to do so, the result, owing to the delay necessarily involved, would be the practical abolition of the death penalty. Lastly, it would give a very odious advantage to the rich over the poor. In one case, some years ago, the friends of a convicted person paid a very heavy fee to a local lawyer to proceed to England to use his efforts at the Colonial Office. In another case, a local lawyer sent through a High Commissioner an appeal to the Secretary of State, evidently counting on the delay to secure a remission of the death penalty. The attempt to interfere with the High Commissioner's discretion failed, as it deserved to fail. The communication to the Secretary of State was, of course, duly forwarded, as prescribed by the regulations; but the murderer was not reprieved, and the law took its course.’ I am very grateful to Professor K. E. Robinson for bringing this reference to my notice. While no inference should be drawn from a guess, I find it hard to believe that the extremely well-read Danquah had not come across this fascinatingly predictive passage in the course of his tireless studies.

21 The preceding two paragraphs are drawn from CO 96/783/1 and CO 96/783/2.

22 Ibid, and CO 96/783/3.

23 Minute, 31 March, 1941, in CO 96/773/13. Unlike most of the Legal Advisers to the Colonial Office, Abrahams, who had been brought into it as a result of war-time recruitment problems and the pressure of work on the Office, had held a series of high judicial offices. In 1936–9 he had been Chief Justice of Ceylon, the most prestigious of such posts within the Colonial Office's ambit. Interestingly he had also served as Attorney-General in the Gold Coast in 1928. Even more unusually, he later became a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. I owe this interesting series of points to Kenneth Robinson. A brother of Abrahams was the Olympic athlete celebrated in the film Chariots of Fire.

24 The Secretary of State's in-tray began to fill with such correspondence in June 1946 following Bryden's circulation of his memorandum. The seriousness of the onslaught can be judged by the fact that the writers were not confined to the ranks of the Conservative Opposition or left-wing back-benchers on the Government side. The Attorney-General, for example, in a letter to Hall dated 8 July 1946, questioned the propriety of hanging men after ‘the long lapse of time’, CO 96/783/4.

25 This petition represented, according to the Officer Administering the Government, Sir Thorlief Mangin, ‘the feelings of a considerable part of the Akim Abuakwa State… [and]… is an example of the public disgust in the Gold Coast…civil disturbance is to be expected in the Akim Abuakwa State if the murderers are not executed’. Telegram to Secretary of State, 12 October 1946: CO 96/783/5. This was certainly partisan exaggeration and was not taken seriously in London.

26 The preceding paragraphs draw on the almost daily signal traffic between Accra and London on this matter, to be found mostly in CO 96/802/5, CO 96/802/6, CO 96/803/1, CO 96/803/2, CO 96/803/3, CO 96/825/5 and Lord Chancellor's Office 2/3231. An example of the manifest impatience of officials with Creech Jones' prevarication is to be found in a minute by K. E. Robinson to Sir George Gater on 4 January, 1947. ‘… I feel bound to urge that full weight should be given to his [Burns'] assessment of local opinion. All the available evidence here supports his views…’. CO 96/783/5.

27 This paragraph draws on data to be found in Ibid. The probability of an intended leak on the resignation matter is somewhat substantiated by the fact that both the British and Ghanaian press carried stories about it on 7 March 1947. Almost without exception the Ghanaian press expressed sympathy with Burns and anger with London's handling of the long-drawn out affair, an analysis Burns clearly relished.

28 The automatic assumption that lawyers, as pre-eminent representatives of the ‘modern elite’, were at the throats of ‘traditional rulers’ is an unreflective weakness of too much of the general literature. It is also an aspect of Edsman's, BjornLawyers in Gold Coast politics: c. 1900–1945 (Uppsala, 1979)Google Scholar which I feel to be mistaken. As with every element of Ghanaian politics, things were far more complex than this simplistic neo-Weberian generalisation. I look forward to seeing this point put with greater elegance and deeper knowledge by Gus Casely Hayford in his forthcoming thesis on coastal family history.

29 See Simensen, ‘Crisis in Akyem Abuakwa’ (cited in n. 8), ioi. Danquah had the admirable ability of all able politicians to mend fences with those he had opposed in the past. Both Rohdie, Sam, ‘The Gold Coast Aborigines Abroad’ in J. Afr. Hist., VI (1965), 3Google Scholar, and Sheng-Pao, Chin, ‘Gold Coast delegations to Britain in 1934’ in National Chengchi University [Taiwan] Studies in African Affairs, no. 2 (1970)Google Scholar remind us of Danquah's break and then reconciliation with Ofori Atta in the early 1930s as well as his opposition to but later accommodation with most of the A.R.P.S. delegation to London in 1934.

30 Nkrumah, Kwame, Ghana: the autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (London, 1959), 57.Google Scholar

31 Lewey had served as Attorney-General in the Gold Coast since 1943 following four years in the same post in Jamaica. There is little evidence of real confidence in his legal judgement by the Colonial Office Legal Advisers and the recollections of officials paint him in rather negative terms.

32 Burns was Governor of the Gold Coast from 1941 until August 1947 when he became Britain's permanent representative on the U.N. Trusteeship Council. In several interviews before his death it was clear that he continued to regard this matter with great anger as the nadir of his distinguished career. He deplored what he felt to be the absence of support of the Secretary of State and felt that this had allowed a malicious campaign to achieve the humiliation of both colonial rule and of course of himself. I somewhat doubted his often-stated loathing of capital punishment as he did after all refuse to use his prerogative in the case of five of the accused. But on looking at the contemporary record it is clear that he did state this on many occasions in the course of these events.

Dennis Austin briefly linked the Akyem Abuakwa murder trial to the poisonous relationship between Danquah and Burns (Politics in Ghana (London, 1964), 9 n. 11Google Scholar), but his fine account of the origins of the U.G.C.C. does not point out that the ten men who founded it, a month after the execution of three of the accused, included Danquah, his half-brother William Ofori-Atta and E. A. Akuffo-Addo, one of the defence lawyers. See also Burns' entertaining and very personal memoirs, Colonial Civil Servant (London, 1949).Google Scholar His account of the case was rather more peppery in the first draft, but he graciously submitted the manuscript to Creech Jones, who insisted that Burns' comments be toned down for publication. See correspondence in CO 96/802/6.

33 For more evidence on this point see Rathbone, Richard, ‘The transfer of power in Ghana’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1968.)Google Scholar