Court ruling takes away colonial weight off our shoulders - Nana Kwaku Agyeman

Nana Kwaku Agyeman, President of the Hemp Association of Ghana (HAG) on Thursday stated that the court ruling on the two Rastafarian students has taken an enormous colonial weight off their shoulders.

He noted that dreadlocks became a challenge because Ghanaians wanted to maintain the dictates of the white colonial institution.

According to Nana Agyeman in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at Tema explained that people should not refer to locks as dreadlocks because the oppressors sensed fear when they saw people who had locks come to resist them, they, therefore, called it dreadlocks.

"In fact we shouldn't even call it dreadlocks, it’s just locked, what is dread about it? It doesn't put fear in you," he said.

He said it was a significant step leaving them free to think and breathe again with regards to whether or not dreadlocks should be allowed in schools.

Nana Agyeman said locks were not something Ghanaians were not familiar with since it had been ever-present."All of us have someone in our lives either a friend or neighbour with locks so it's not alien to us as Ghanaians at all and I support the Rastafarians, I don't see any problem with the two Rastafarians keeping locks in school".

According to him, the two boys would be able to cope with the locks in school since they have had locks for the majority part of their lives.

An Accra High Court on Monday ruled that Achimota Senior High School should enroll the two Rastafarian students who were earlier denied admission to the school unless they cut their dreadlocks.

The Human Rights Division of the High Court presided over by Justice Gifty Agyei Addo, ruled that the fundamental human rights of two students cannot be limited by the rules in question.