Transformations in Traditional Rule in Ghana: 1951-1996 (review)

Traditional rule in Ghana has seen political, cultural, historical, and other transformations, as documented by retired University of Ghana Professor Kwame Arhin in Transformations in Traditional Rule in Ghana: 1951-1996. Dr. Arhin currently serves as Nifahene of Barekese in the Atwima Nwabiagya area of the Ashanti Region of Ghana. In this book, he offers his readers, including scholars, teachers, and students of African traditional rule, ten solid chapters of useful political history of Ghana's traditional rule in transformational contexts.

Utilizing chapter one as a stepping-stone for the nine remaining excellent chapters, Dr. Arhin provides useful notes and references from the late University of Oxford Professor K. A. Busia's 1951 study, which dealt with the position of the traditional ruler (or chief) in the former Gold Coast, which was renamed Ghana on 6 March 1957. In his preface, Dr. Arhin briefly references his earlier book, Traditional Rule in Ghana: Past and Present (1985).

According to Dr. Arhin, governance in the Gold Coast could be divided into a couple of segments, and, in the division, one could apply a definition of government as "systems of social control, or systems of the management of public affairs" (p. ix). Toward that end, he adds that there were, subsequently, two different societies, those with centralized society systems, and those without. He explains, "Transformations in Traditional Rule contains the story of significant alternations in aspects of traditional rule since 1951, the beginning of the end of colonial rule" (p. x).

Looking at 1951 as a significant threshold in the annals of Gold Coast politics, he sees the starting point, where scholarship of the era is concerned, to be Professor Busia's 1951 work on Ashanti (Asante) and the changes effected by the colonial administration in its system of traditional rule as a case study, adding the following scenarios: "It shows that whereas traditional rule waned in the first phase of independence under the government of the Convention People's Party headed by Kwame Nkrumah (leader of government business, 1951-1954 . . .), it waxed in the periods of military regimes (1966-69; 1972-79; 1982-92) and that its growing strength is reflected in the Constitutions of the Republic of Ghana (1969, 1979 and 1992)[,] the making of which was supervised by the military regimes" (p. x).

While the foregoing details are fully covered in pages 1-4 of Transformations in Traditional Rule in Ghana, Dr. Arhin explains that chapters five through seven and nine "provide evidence of the growing interest in traditional rule among Ghanaians" (p. x). On its own, chapter five underscores the increasing tendency of the modern elite, the highly educated, notably professional, and apparently wealthy business persons, to seek election to stools, and chapter 6 offers information on the proliferation of festivals centered on traditional rule as symbolic statements of ethnic or subethnic identities and autonomy in the area of traditional rule.

In chapter nine, Dr. Arhin provides information on the perceived "struggles of Ghana's female leaders to secure positions in the system of traditional rule beyond the customary prescription" (p. x). Additionally, he writes that chapter nine "reviews the non-statutory and statutory duties of traditional rulers; the first relate to the role of the ruler as social leader with legitimacy derived from custom, and as the symbol of the separate identity of his political community; the second make him the link between his political community and the external world. He acts as public relations officer in order to draw the attention of the agents of 'modernization' or 'globalization' to his corner of the earth so as to advance his people's material welfare" (pp. xi-xii).

Dr. Arhin utilizes chapter ten as the place for a summary and conclusions. So as not to leave his readers in doubt, he points out that his sources include documentary items, indeed, "particular publications of the governments of Ghana and secondary sources, books, articles and media reports. I have also made personal observations...