Guess Who Is Damning Chieftaincy?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

It is always a delight to watch, hear and listen to Ghana’s most notorious Afropean journalist make a great fool of himself. Thus, it came as no surprise, at all, to me that Mr. Kwesi Pratt would jump on all of his four limbs, during the Second African Sister-Cities International Conference on Trade and Exhibition, to impugn the functional organicity of the monarchical institution to the socioeconomic and cultural development of the African continent.

It also did not surprise me the least bit that his largely superficial presentation at the conference would, reportedly, be punctuated with applause. Most likely, Mr. Pratt provided the needed comic relief to soften an otherwise leaden and dead-end debate. For any attempt to discursively damn the civilized institution of the monarchy is tantamount to unconscionably impugning the highly prized capacity of the human mind, and soul, to healthily induce order and the rule of law in society. Indeed, had he bothered to critically examine Dr. J. B. Danquah’s classical treatise titled Akan Laws and Customs (Frank Cass, 1928), the critic would have decidedly been humbled by the experience. Unfortunately, being a fanatical Nkrumacrat, one did not expect Mr. Pratt to wisely and soberly avail himself of the requisite knowledge prior to embarking on his quixotic attempt at de-tusking the august, pachydermous institution of the monarchy (See “Kwesi Pratt Damns Chieftaincy, Nana S. K. B. Asante Says It’s Good For Democracy” MyJoyOnline.com 5/15/10).

First of all, it is quite obvious that the editor-publisher of the so-called Insight newspaper does not fully appreciate the leadership role of chieftaincy as both a military and cultural establishment; else, Mr. Pratt would not have so facilely pooh-poohed the idea of chieftaincy being closely interlinked with the selection of candidates with impressive individual achievements. For, needless to say, in indigenous African societies, just like most other societies and cultures around the globe, leaders are selected on the basis of merit, which invariably implies that some form of “positive discrimination” ought to be taken into account.

Consequently, in an effectively functioning society, a “wayward bastard” like Flt.-Lt. Rawlings, a man almost wholly bereft of the sort of behavioral balance taken for granted by people who grew up in dual-parent homes, would never have been allowed to assume the reins of governance and, in consequence, be made to represent/symbolize Ghana’s most cherished ideals to the rest of the international community. And while we promptly acknowledge the fact that people like Mr. Rawlings, and indeed each and every one of us, have no control over our parentage, nevertheless, we ought to also equally acknowledge, for example, that Mr. Rawlngs’s mother’s evidently indiscreet decision to create a parentally unbalanced family has had some dire and untold consequences on the destiny of Ghanaians during the course of the last three decades.

In essence, it appears that Mr. Pratt equates “modernity” with abject stupidity, and thus his claptrap query: “Can anybody justify a system of governance which excludes the physically disabled and albinos?” For starters, where in the civilized world are military commanders selected/appointed without any regard, whatsoever, to their physical and intellectual ability to both prosecute and defend their nations and peoples against foreign enemies and aggressors?

Then also, whether albinos can be enstooled/enthroned as Kings and Queens is less the point at issue here. The real question regards whether in today’s society, albinism has been made the cause of any legislative or judicial proscription in both Ghana’s local and national arenas of governance. And if we may know: Why did Mr. Pratt, a married man, decide to marry a woman who is physically sound like himself, rather than a physically disabled/deformed woman? And why not an albino? Or is it simply because at the time of his marriage, no fetching albinos and/or physically disabled women existed in Ghanaian society? And by the way, we also know of the other conjugal Afropeans, such as the Van Dykes, who form an integral part of the Pratt family group. Are there no Kwesi Mensahs, Appiahs and Agyepongs in Fanteland?

It also appears that Mr. Manasseh Azure Awuni, the reporter who covered the story under discussion, slightly de-contextualized Prof. S. K. B. Asante’s dead-on poignant assertion that “gone are the days when the institution of chieftaincy was a preserve of the illiterate.” To be certain, there was absolutely no time in our cultural history, until very recently, when the prime criterion for being enstooled a chief was simply announcing one’s functional illiteracy. Actually, in a “preliterate” society, as opposed to an “illiterate” (or uncivilized) society, the question and/or concept of “literacy” never really arose, since not being able to read and write, in the contemporary sense of the term, was the societal given.

And, needless to say, the fact that it took many a member of a royal family relatively longer to embrace Western-type education had more to do with custodial conservatism, or the perceived need to protect our indigenous mores, against foreign invasion and dilution. Mr. Pratt is also rather facile in claiming that “in countries where the [chieftaincy] institution has been abolished, the culture of the people is still upheld [intact?].” I hope the stentorian critic had offered a single example, or case in point, where the abolition of chieftaincy on the African continent engendered a society that is either far more cohesive or progressive than Akan society, for instance, in both the colonial and postcolonial eras. Maybe Mr. Pratt could appreciate matters better if he could figure out why the British, and other Western colonial powers in Africa, proceeded to create what came to be widely called “Warrant Chiefs” in African, as well as Asian, societies where the institution had not existed prior to colonial conquest.

And just why do the British maintain, perhaps, the most expensive ceremonial monarchy in the world? And does Mr. Pratt also know that Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron is actually the great-great-grandson of an English monarch?

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI), the pro-democracy policy think tank, and the author of 21 books, including “Sounds of Sirens: Essays in African Politics and Culture” (iUniverse.com, 2004). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###