Dear Ghanaweb Editor,
The above-referenced article (Diasporian News of Tuesday, 29 August 2006) is yet another demonstration of the Asante's religio-cultural superiority feelings. Of all God's creatures, they alone are unique and they thus have a divine right to rule over all others and so they make all sorts of claims as they seem fit. When God dropped the golden stool to them from heaven because of their uniqueness, God also added the art of kente weaving. Indeed, Odomankoma gave them the art of Kente cloth also!. They are thus the originators of the art of kente weaving---there's no mistake about it!. For this reason, they have since then had no need whatsoever to learn anything new about kente weaving from any other sources on planet earth. This means that they have never been influenced by any other people when it comes to kente cloth. Indeed, as the writer of the article defines it, kente is "an Asante ceremonial cloth hand-woven on a horizontal treadle loom". He then categorically dismisses any other type of kente by asserting that any 'kente' elsewhere can never be kente but only an imitation of the real thing---that of the Asante alone. As he puts it: "Various ethnic groups in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa weave many variations of narrow-strip cloths, similar to Kente."
Oh, how truly arrogant are some of the Asante, like this writer? Why do they like to give themselves this false sense of superiority in everything? Why are they always trying to rewrite history? Owing to their false sense of superiority and their tendency to falsify history, they have, so they have managed to convince themselves, never been overcome by any other people in all their wars of aggression and greed, rooted in their passion to seize what is not theirs---one need only consider the number of times they invaded their immediate neighbours to the coast, prompting the British to come to the aid of the latter on each occasion! To the contrary, they have won every war against their neighbours, including even that of 1869-73 when they foolhardily invaded their neighbours to the extreme southeast of the country! Yet their historians have to date failed to write about it---a very good example of the falsification of history---even though one of their three great oaths still bears testimony to it.
Meanwhile, most of them, it seems, remain deeply dishonest and corrupt. [...] Thus, all that talk about zero-tolerance for corruption in Ghana will remain mere talk so long as the reign of government is entrusted to their care. Remember when our President said not long ago that corruption had been in existence since the time of Adam and then challenged Ghanaians to prove with evidence that there were indeed corrupt elements in his administration?
[...]
It is against this backdrop that the reader of the above-referenced article in which the author claims kente to be the invention of the Asante should consider it.
In addition, the reader who is interested in a more objective and educational view about the kente industry in Ghana should refer to the ff. URLs:
http://www.hamillgallery.com/EWE/EweTextiles/EweLargeTextiles.html
http://home.clara.net/adire/kentegallery2.htm
http://black.clarku.edu/~jborgatt/african_textiles.htm
Sincerely,
Kem Anderson
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
