Queen Mothers in Ghana Fight for Their Say in Land Deals
It is about half past two in the afternoon. Women and children are busily mining salt from the pond near Elmina, a small coastal town in the Central Region of Ghana. A 46-year-old single mother, Adjoa Mensah, tells me this is her livelihood. ?I sell this salt to take care of my family and aged father.?
Referring to the matrilineal inheritance tradition, Nana Tseasewaa III believes everything around the stool belongs to women: ?Men do not have property when it comes to the stool. All stool properties -?such as lands and regalia, to mention but a few -?belong to women. But in reality, men run the show.?
The coast of Elmina is blessed with an abundance of salt and beach sand. While some natives of the area engage in salt mining, others are busy mining beach sand, although this is illegal. The local salt pond is the property of the people of Gwira Akyinim, a suburb of Elmina known for its Portuguese slave castle. In recent years the castle was developed into a tourist attraction, but most people continue to live from salt mining or fishing, as has been the case for centuries. A bag of salt sells for about GHS15.00 (USD7.00). It is good business, but you cannot just go to the pond to mine salt. You must buy a portion of the land the pond is located on, inherit it from your family, or lease it from the family that owns it. Mensah is lucky: the pond belongs to her father, who is aged and cannot mine anymore. As a woman, she would never get a space to mine on her own.
Elmina is at the heart of the territory of the Fanti people, who are famous for a matrilineal inheritance system that traditionally gives women authority in questions of land ownership and management. In today?s practice, it is mostly the men who control
Women?s access to communal land and participation in land governance issues in the area has been seriously curtailed, says Nana ?Tseasewaa III, the 49-year-old queen of Gwira ?Akyinim of Elmina. Together with some women in the community, she has started to complain about the chief?s sale of communal land without due consultation. As Ghana?s economy prospers, selling or leasing ?stool? (communal) land to private developers has become big business.
In the past, women of authority made important contributions to development, but without control over land, they
have only limited means to contribute to community wellbeing.
This practice of not consulting women has rendered most queens and queen mothers incapable of implementing basic developmental projects in their communities, which is part of theirtraditional responsibility in Fanti society. In the past, women of authority made important contributions to development, but without control over land, they have only limited means to contribute to community wellbeing.
?My chief has indiscriminately sold a lot of our stool lands. He has realised that I am calling him to account for this reckless behaviour, so he has tendered his resignation – something that is rare in a traditional setting such as this. Unless he dies, I will pursue this case to its logical conclusion. We shall reply to his [resignation] letter, after which I will face him about the sale of the lands without consultation,? Nana Tseasewaa III fumes.
Her view is that ?most women in my area are afraid of questioning his actions because they fear he will kill them through supernatural means, or through what is popularly referred to as voodoo.? Chiefs in Ghana are undisputed authorities not only due to their position in the traditional hierarchy but also to the belief that they vest themselves with spiritual powers before inauguration to consolidate their lifelong power over people and land. Nana Tseasewaa III, however, is not scared.
She believes that this situation has occurred as a result of illiteracy and timidity on the part of some queen mothers, who ?are so afraid of being killed spiritually, by voodoo that they? are not challenging the decisions of these chiefs or even request[ing] explanations for some decisions the chiefs make.?
However, some queen mothers have come together to fight back. The formation of the National Queen Mothers Association in 2008 has given some level of authority and confidence to a lot of women in Ghana, including queens and queen mothers. The association has appealed to government for capacity-building support to keep them abreast of modern technologies in order to play their role in the country?s socio-economic development. Nana Tseasewaa III also believes that the Chieftaincy Act of 1971, which provides guidelines for the various chieftaincy institutions, is silent on queen mothers and needs to be reviewed. The minister for chieftaincy and traditional affairs, Dr Seidu Daanaa, refutes the assertion. ?It is probably misinformation. The highest law in Ghana is the Constitution. When you look at the definition of a chief in the 1992 Constitution, it says the chief is one hailing from the appropriate lineage or family who is selected or elected and installed as a chief or queen mother. Probably what they are complaining about is the fact that, over the years there has been some kind of traditional imbalance. Men in our culture have dominated.? He adds, ?You know old traditions always die hard and the way to deal with it is to get the people to see the harm. We are now in a modern economic world and women form a very large part of our population. The sooner we make them play their rightful role, the better for democracy and economic development.?
Daanaa plans to organise seminars to bring chiefs and queen mothers together, shoulder to shoulder. ?If you only legislate and do not educate and sensitise, you don?t achieve much. To strengthen the female part in traditional structures, the government started paying some allowances to queen mothers in 2009. The idea is that they are now brought on board and they are supposed to be seen on the pitch and to play hard?. Daanaa supports Nana Tseasewaa III?s stance of taking chiefs who mismanage communal land to court, and encourages queen mothers to report mischievous chiefs to the Regional Houses of Chiefs or to the ministry of chieftaincy. But, he admits, ?these machines grind slowly?.? So, for the time being, the office of a queen mother does not influence the life of Adjoa Mensah, the single-mother salt miner near Elmina. But Nana Tseasewaa III knows: the moon moves slowly, but it
gets across town.
Pascal Kelvin Kudiabor
Pascal is an investigative online journalist?and used to write for Ghana Business News. He is now the Online Editor of Spy Ghana, ?the premier news portal in Ghana with a sharp eye on corruption and bad governance. His areas of focus include oil, gas, mining, environment, climate and election-related matters. He was named Online Reporter of the Year 2012 in the Gold Business Awards for his investigative story, ?The complex web of illegal mining in Ghana – Chiefs, politicians, the police, land owners involved?.
This article was first published on The Heinrich B?ll Foundation Southern Africa
