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‘WHEN THE CHIEF TAKES AN INTEREST’: DEVELOPMENT AND THE REINVENTION OF ‘COMMUNAL’ LABOR IN NORTHERN GHANA, 1935–60*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2017

ALICE WIEMERS
ALICE WIEMERS*
Affiliation:
Davidson College
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Abstract

As colonial and nationalist governments pursued small-scale development in mid-century northern Ghana, so-called ‘voluntary’, ‘communal’, or ‘self-help’ labor became a key determinant of funding. District records and oral histories show how colonial officials, chiefs, and party politicians alternately cast unpaid labor as a way to cut costs, a catalyst for new forms of politics, and an expression of local cohesion. This article extends analysis of ‘self-help’ beyond articulations of and debates about national policy, examining daily negotiations over budgeting and building. It follows two chiefs who used their ability to raise labor to navigate a rapidly changing political landscape. The line between coercion and voluntarism was rarely clear, nor were the meanings of labor fixed for administrators, chiefs, or their constituents. These local actors created the circumstances for successive governments to frame unpaid labor as a legitimate demand on rural citizens.

Keywords

Ghanadevelopmentchieftaincycommunal labor
Type
Colonial Plans and Local Politics
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , July 2017 , pp. 239 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the African Seminar at Johns Hopkins University, the African Studies Association Annual Meeting, the Department of History at the University of Ghana, the Institute of African Studies at Emory University, and the Africana Studies Department at Davidson College. I would like to thank Sara Berry and Pier Larson for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this article. I would also like to thank The Journal of African History’s three anonymous reviewers for their advice. Author's email: [email protected]

References

1 Public Records and Archives Administration (PRAAD) Tamale NRG8.4.98, Informal Diaries Navrongo, Jan. 1944. Emphasis is from the chief commissioner, who noted ‘Good’ in the margin.

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4 Evidence from secondary literature suggests that ‘communal’ and ‘self-help’ labor could serve a variety of political, social, and economic purposes. Demands for unpaid labor for the Mass Education Programme elicited collective refusals in the northern Ghanaian town of Nyohini but, in the southern town of Kwaso, took on popular connotations of ‘good citizenship’. See Skinner, K., ‘From Pentecostalism to politics: mass literacy and community development in late colonial Northern Ghana’, Paedagogica Historica, 46:3 (2010), 307–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skinner, Kate, ‘“It brought some kind of neatness to mankind”: literacy, development and democracy in 1950s Asante’, Africa, 79:4 (2009), 479–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Benjamin Talton shows how Konkomba activists organized self-help labor to demonstrate political unity. See Talton, B., Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality (New York, 2009), ch. 4, 109–42Google Scholar.

5 To illuminate regional trends alongside the careers of two chiefs, the article draws on archival material and oral historical evidence collected by the author and available in secondary literature. For the Wulugunaba Sebiyam, the article draws on the author's oral historical research in Kpasenkpe. Interviews were conducted in English and Mampruli with the help of Solomon Dawuni Sebiyam and Seiya Namyoaya Enoch, to whom I am very grateful. For the Sandemnaab Azantilow, the article benefits from the extensive anthropological and public historical work available in English by Franz Kröger, Ghanatta Ayaric, Barbara Meier, and Rüdiger Schott. The open-access journal Buluk, available at: (http://www.buluk.de), edited by Kröger and Ayaric, has been extremely helpful. Based on these sources, the article is able to illuminate the uses of unpaid labor for district officials, party politicians, and chiefs. Other methods and sources may be able to shed greater light on the important questions of how constituents experienced and interpreted labor demands and contributions. Rather than establish a line between voluntarism and coercion, this article seeks to show the historical processes by which this line became enduringly blurred.

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14 Recent examples include Aerni-Flessner, J., ‘Development, politics, and the centralization of state power in Lesotho, 1960–1975’, The Journal of African History, 55:3 (2014), 401–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moskowitz, K., ‘“Are you planting trees or are you planting people?” Squatter resistance and international development in the making of a Kenyan postcolonial political order (c. 1963–1978)’, The Journal of African History, 56:1 (2015), 99–118 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tague, J., ‘Mozambican refugee settlement and rural development in Southern Tanzania, 1964–1975’, in Berger, Iris et al. . (eds.), African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights (Athens, OH, 2015), 38–57 Google Scholar. These pieces build on agenda-setting collections from late 1990s and early 2000s. See Cooper, F. and Packard, R. (eds.), International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley, CA, 1997)Google Scholar; Peters, P. (ed.), Development Encounters: Sites of Participation and Knowledge (Cambridge, MA, 2000)Google Scholar; Beusekom, M. van and Hodgson, D., ‘Lessons learned? Development experiences in the late colonial period’, The Journal of African History, 41:1 (Special Issue) (2000), 29–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 In part because of ongoing discussions of the relationship between statecraft and ‘tradition’, scholars of chieftaincy have had to think flexibly about the ideologies, discourses, and practices of local politics. In the Ghanaian context, a number of scholars have worked to uncover mechanisms by which chiefs retained or captured political and economic relevance over the course of the twentieth century, focusing particularly on claims to land and belonging. See Allman, J. M., The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana (Madison, WI, 1993)Google Scholar; Arhin, K., Transformations in Traditional Rule in Ghana (1951–1996) (Accra, 2001)Google Scholar; Berry, S., Chiefs Know Their Boundaries: Essays on Property, Power, and the Past in Asante, 1896–1996 (Portsmouth, NH, 2001)Google Scholar; Boone, C., Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grischow, J., Shaping Tradition: Civil Society, Community and Development in Colonial Northern Ghana, 1899–1957 (Leiden, 2006)Google Scholar; Lentz, Land, Mobility, and Belonging; Lund, C., Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa (Cambridge, 2008)Google Scholar; Rathbone, R., Nkrumah & the Chiefs: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–1960 (Accra, 2000)Google Scholar; Sackeyfio-Lenoch, N., The Politics of Chieftaincy: Authority and Property in Colonial Ghana, 1920–1950 (Rochester, NY, 2014)Google Scholar. For anglophone West Africa more broadly, see Geschiere, P., ‘Chiefs and colonial rule in Cameroon: inventing chieftaincy, French and British style’, Africa, 63:2 (1993), 151–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peel, J. D. Y., Ijeshas and Nigerians: The Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom, 1890s–1970s (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; Vaughan, O., Nigerian Chiefs: Traditional Power in Modern Politics, 1890s–1990s (Rochester, NY, 2000)Google Scholar.

16 Green, E., ‘Indirect rule and colonial intervention: chiefs and agrarian change in Nyasaland, ca. 1933 to the early 1950s’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 44:2 (2011), 249–74Google Scholar; Hodgson, D., Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Cultural Politics of Maasai Development (Bloomington, IN, 2001)Google Scholar; Munro, W., The Moral Economy of the State: Conservation, Community Development, and State Making in Zimbabwe (Athens, OH, 1998)Google Scholar; Osborne, M., ‘The Kamba and Mau Mau: ethnicity, development, and chiefship, 1952–1960’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 43:1 (2010), 63–87 Google Scholar; Beusekom, M. van, Negotiating Development: African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office Du Niger, 1920–1960 (Westport, CT, 2002)Google Scholar.

17 Social science research on recent decentralization initiatives has shown how neoliberal policies aimed at reaching the ‘grassroots’ have reinforced existing hierarchies. See Bierschenk, T. and Olivier de Sardan, J. P., ‘Powers in the village: rural Benin between democratisation and decentralisation’, Africa, 73:2 (2003), 145–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bierschenk, T., Chauveau, J.-P., and Olivier de Sardan, J.-P., Courtiers en développement: les villages Africains en quête de projets (Paris, 2000)Google Scholar; Ribot, J. C., Chhatre, A., and Lankina, T., ‘Introduction: institutional choice and recognition in the formation and consolidation of local democracy’, Conservation and Society, 6:1 (2008), 1–11 Google Scholar. Here, I suggest that these dynamics may be embedded in much longer histories of chiefly engagement with developmentalism.

18 Both chiefs cultivated multiple bases of authority at the local and regional levels, including engagement with judicial, religious, and governmental institutions.

19 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.2.150, Mamprusi Traditional Council Constitutions and Proceedings, ‘Address Delivered by Mr. Mumuni Bawumia, Regional Commissioner, at a Meeting of the Mamprusi Traditional Council at Nalerigu on Friday, 26th Apr. 1963’.

20 While there are debates about the extent of British influence on Builsa chieftaincy, it is clear that there was no ‘head’ or ‘paramount’ Builsa chief before 1911. See Franz Kröger, ‘Colonial officers and Bulsa chiefs’, Buluk, 7  (http://www.buluk.de), 2013.

21 Staniland, M., The Lions of Dagbon: Political Change in Northern Ghana (Cambridge, 1975), 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, ‘Forced labour’.

22 F. Kröger, ‘Extracts from Bulsa history: Sandema chiefs before Azantilow’, Buluk, 6 (http://www.buluk.de), 2012.

23 Most complex and controversial were debates surrounding the position of earth priests. See Allman, J. M. and Parker, J., Tongnaab: The History of a West African God (Bloomington, IN, 2005), ch. 2, 72–105 Google Scholar; ch. 5, 182–216; Lentz, C., Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana (Edinburgh, 2006), chs. 2_3, 33–103 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lund, Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa, ch. 3, 47–67.

24 Grischow argues that administrators conceived of development as ‘preserving community’. See Grischow, Shaping Tradition.

25 Grischow quotes a memo from Chief Commissioner W. J. A. Jones calling direct taxation ‘the corollary to the abolition of forced labor’. See Ibid. 99. For more on the history of British and I. L. O. forced labor bans in colonial Africa, see Okia, Communal Labor.

26 Lentz, Ethnicity, 126.

27 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.10.14, letter from George E. London, Acting Governor of the Gold Coast, to Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 10 July 1935.

28 ‘Funeral Service for the Late Nab Dr Ayieta Azantilow, 1900–2006’, 2006, original copy from the personal files of Namiyelana Mr. E. D. Sebiyam. Text also available in Buluk, 6 (http://www.buluk.de).

29 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.10.14, letter from W. A. Jones to Colonial Secretary, 9 Mar. 1936.

30 Grischow, Shaping Tradition, 138–42.

31 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.10.14, letter from Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories to Colonial Secretary, 21 Jan. 1939.

32 District officer notes, 3 Dec. 1939, cited by Kröger in his notes on Sandema records at PRAAD Accra, available at: (http://www.kroeger1937.homepage.t-online.de/Materialien/). Officials also noted that Azantilow used the school to learn English. See Thomas, R., ‘Education in Northern Ghana, 1906–1940: a study in colonial paradox’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 7:3 (1974), 459Google Scholar.

33 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.10.14, letter from W. A. Jones to Colonial Secretary, 11 Dec. 1939.

34 Mixed farming programs envisioned that chiefs would ‘demonstrate’ crops and techniques advocated by the recently established northern agricultural service. District officials used chiefs’ farming to measure the success of agricultural programs and the competency of particular chiefs. PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.4.98, Informal Diaries Navrongo, July 1943 and Jan. 1944.

35 Since both chiefs were deceased at the time of research, oral evidence comes from constituents and family members. Their recollections are invariably colored by both chiefs’ involvement with development throughout their careers, which makes it particularly difficult to isolate this initial period.

36 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.4.98, Informal Diaries Navrongo, Apr. 1940.

37 Ibid . Feb. 1940.

38 Ibid . Mar. 1940.

39 Keese, ‘Slow abolition’.

40 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.4.98, Informal Diaries Navrongo, June–Aug. 1942.

41 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.4.98, Informal Diaries Navrongo, Sept.–Oct. 1942.

42 Ibid . July 1943. For a similar phenomenon in Lawra-Tumu District, see Lentz, Ethnicity, 69.

43 Grischow, Shaping Tradition, ch. 6, 137–68.

44 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.4.98, Informal Diaries Navrongo, Apr. 1942. This comment likely reflects growing official concern about Native Courts in southern Ghana. See Berry, Chiefs, 38–43.

45 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.4.98, Informal Diaries Navrongo, Apr. 1943.

46 Ibid . 1940–7.

47 Ibid . May 1940.

48 Former students recall mixed reactions to the Sandemnaab's efforts to recruit students and teachers in the 1940s and 1950s. See G. Ayaric (ed.), ‘Eric Akanpaanab Ayaric recalls his school days in the 1930s and 1940s (taken from an audio-recorded account by Akanpaanab in 2000)’, Buluk, 7 (http://www.buluk.de), 2013; F. Kröger, ed., ‘Going to a Bulsa school: enrolment, motivation and resistance’, Buluk, 3 (http://www.buluk.de), 2001. For more on colonial schooling in Northern Ghana, see L. Ferrell, ‘“We were mixed with all types”: educational migration in the Northern Territories of colonial Ghana’, in E. Rozy and M. Rodet (eds.), Children on the Move in Africa: Past & Present Experiences of Migration (Suffolk, 2016), 141–58. Notes on the cattle kraal and opening of the middle school are in ‘Funeral Service for the Late Nab Dr Ayieta Azantilow, 1900–2006’.

49 F. Kröger, ‘Mr. Abu Gariba, one of the first to combine traditional and modern Bulsa values’, Buluk, 8 (http://www.buluk.de), 2014.

50 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.4.98, Informal Diaries Navrongo, Feb. 1943.

51 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.5.18, ‘Address by His Excellency the Governor to the Northern Territories Chiefs at the Durbar Held at Tamale on 27th Jan. 1945.’

52 For a comprehensive account, see Cooper, F., Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996), chs. 3, 4, and 5, 57–224 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as the studies of specific development initiatives cited in fns. 10 and 12, above.

53 Grischow shows how the Gonja Development scheme failed to reach its goals of promoting mechanized agriculture and ‘reconcil[ing] economic development and African community’. See Grischow, Shaping Tradition, ch. 8, 205–33.

54 Data preserved in district records is partial. Unlike national or colony-wide aggregates, however, it appears amidst practical discussions of how funds were allocated. It is thus much more likely to reflect the actual disbursements at the district level. Figures are compiled from PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.10.27, Direct Taxation 1945–54; NRG8.10.32, Community and Local Development Committees (Grants in Aid) 1948–51; NRG8.10.36, Grants in Aid 1950–1; NRG8.10.38, Government Grants in Aid to Native Authority (Local Authorities) 1951–7; NRG8.10.58, Regional Development and Funds 1956–1957; and NRG8.3.224, Reports on Development Aid to Local Authorities 1957–9.

55 Grischow, Shaping Tradition, 171–6.

56 NPP leaders acknowledged that federalism would disadvantage the region. Throughout 1954–6, NPP politicians attempted to maintain a distinct call for ‘regional autonomy’ as opposed to federalism, as they negotiated this ‘second best’ alternative. See P. Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana (London, 1979), 133, quoting Mumuni Bawumia. For the best study of the complexity of 1950s electoral politics in Ghana, see Allman, The Quills of the Porcupine.

57 Including a non-negotiable ‘bonus’ of £80,000 to the Ashanti region over the population-apportioned estimates for the rest of the colony. PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.10.38, Government Grants in Aid to Native Authority (Local Authorities) 1951–7, internal notes Apr. 1955.

58 Colonial policies that restricted northern education to the ‘sons of chiefs’ in the interwar era meant that the educated elites who dominated northern party politics in the 1950s overwhelmingly belonged to chiefly families. See Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians, 84–6.

59 Allocations among districts, a potentially explosive political issue, were given a bureaucratic solution by matching grants to taxation or population. There was no formula for allocations within districts.

60 The title of ‘district commissioner’ was changed to ‘district administrative officer’ in the mid-1950s but they remained ‘DCs’ in local parlance.

61 While the CPP launched frequent rhetorical attacks on the institution of chieftaincy, in practice the party tried to use chiefly struggles to its advantage.

62 Interview with Sakparana, Kpasenkpe, 28 June 2010; interviews with Azondow Barijesira, Kpasenkpe, Sept. and Oct. 2010. Davis describes how colonial attempts to regularize and codify chiefly succession in Mamprugu resulted in an ever-changing selection process. See Davis, D. C., ‘“Then the white man came with his whitish ideas…”: the British and the evolution of traditional government in Mampurugu’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 20:4 (1987), 627–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 PRAAD-Tamale NRG3.16.3, letter from Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories to DC Gambaga, 10 Sept. 1947; PRAAD-Tamale, NRG3.16.3, letter from N. O. Dobbs to Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, 22 Oct. 1948.

64 PRAAD-Tamale NRG3.25.32, memo from Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories to all DCs and Assistant DCs, 12 Oct. 1948.

65 Ibid . memo from DC Bawku, 29 Oct. 1948.

66 PRAAD-Tamale NRG 8.10.32, ‘Community Development and Local Development Committees’, memo 19 Sept. 1949. Problems with implementation are evident in subsequent notes from DCs.

67 Ibid .

68 PRAAD-Tamale NRG3.25.32, letter from A. D. C. Gambaga to Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, 22 Dec. 1948.

69 PRAAD-Tamale, NRG8.10.32, Memo from the Ministry of Social Welfare and Community Development to Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, 19 Sept. 1949.

70 Grischow, Shaping Tradition, ch. 6, 137–68.

71 PRAAD-Tamale NRG 3.4.8, Informal Diary (Gambaga) 1951–4; NRG 3.4.7, Diaries and Newsletters (Gambaga) 1954–5. The quotation is from Feb. 1955.

72 PRAAD-Tamale NRG3.4.7, Diaries and Newsletters (Gambaga), 1954–5.

73 Ibid . Diaries and Newsletters (Gambaga), Mar. 1955.

74 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.1.26, Mass Education Policy, 1949–55.

75 Interviews with Zongonaba, Kpasenkpe, 5 Oct. 2010 and Wudana, Kpasenkpe, 3 Oct. 2010. Examples of nearby disputes over market relocation include Chiana 1953–5 (PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.4.111, Navrongo Monthly Diary, Mar. 1955), Kunkwa 1971 (PRAAD-Tamale NRG 3.3.37, Complaints and Petitions, 1968–70), and Walewale 1970 (PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.5.369, Management Committee Walewale-Kpasenkpe Local Council, 1970–1).

76 Interviews with Azondow Barijesira and Zongonaba, Kpasenkpe, 5 Oct. 2010; PRAAD-Tamale NRG3.4.7, Diaries and Newsletters (Gambaga), 1954–5.

77 Interviews in Kpasenkpe with Nkrumah Aguriba, 30 Sept. 2010 and 1 May 2011; Jacob Pitigi, 1 Oct. 2010; and Zanlowrana, 30 Apr. 2011; interview with Namiyelana E. D. Sebiyam, Bolgatanga, 5 May 2011. In the 1950s, nayiri kpariba extended the general institution of farm labor sharing, called kpariba (nayiri means chief).

78 As Lund has argued with regard to land rights, evidence from Kpasenkpe suggests that the chiefly ‘right’ to raise communal labor was a product and a generator of the Wulugunaba's authority vis-à-vis Kpasenkpe constituents as well as regional and national officials. See Lund, C., ‘Negotiating property institutions: on the symbiosis of property and authority in Africa’, in Juul, K. and Lund, C. (eds.), Negotiating Property in Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 2002), 14Google Scholar.

79 Interviews in Kpasenkpe with Jacob Pitigi; Na Guŋa Barijesira, 1 Oct. 2010; and Zongonaba.

80 Interview with Warana, Kpasenkpe, 29 June 2010.

81 At present, the English word ‘development’ is associated with a uniform set of terms – ‘malgu’ (improvement), ‘ninyesim’ (enlightenment), ‘naŋba-yini’ (unity), and various words using ‘soŋ’ (help). It is difficult to isolate the terms that were used in the 1950s from those that have since come into use.

82 Interview with Azondow Barijesira, 2 Oct. 2010.

83 Skinner, ‘From Pentecostalism’.

84 PRAAD-Tamale NRG3.5.3 and NRG3.5.4, General Elections South Mamprusi West, 1954 and 1956.

85 Interviews in Kpasenkpe with Wulugunaba Prof. John S. Nabila, 25 July 2010 and Azondow Barijesira, Sept. and Oct. 2010.

86 Connections between jurisdiction and labor demands were also not new. In 1927, the previous Builsa paramount had sought British support to keep jurisdiction over the towns during protests against colonial forced labor. Kröger points out that the 1951 case did not acknowledge this history, but that oral accounts in the area confirm its importance. See F. Kröger, ‘Kunkwa, Kategra and Jadema: the Sandemnaab's lawsuit’, Buluk, 6  (http://www.buluk.de), 2012.

87 Lentz, Ethnicity.

88 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.16.16, Azantelow Sandemanab versus Nayeri Mamprusi and Three Others, P. W. C. Dennis, Chief Commissioner's Court President, ‘Judgment of the Court’, 27 Feb. 1952.

89 Bawumia, M., A Life in the Political History of Ghana (Accra, 2004), 19Google Scholar.

90 PRAAD-Tamale NRG8.16.16, petition to the Governor from nine Kunkwa area leaders, 10 Aug. 1952.

91 Bawumia, A Life, 19; interview with Azondow Barijesira, 1 Sept. 2010.

92 This occurred during the creation of new districts in 1960, after the coup against Nkrumah in 1966, upon the death of the Kunkwa chief in 1968, and with the creation of the regional boundary between Northern and Upper East regions in 1973.