Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-txr5j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-10T03:00:07.419Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Strangers and Local Government in Kumasi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

The political status of strangers in African societies, particularly in urban areas, has been insufficiently analysed.1 This may be partly because studies of African politics and political development have been dominated by a conceptual framework which contrasts two types of society, the ‘traditional’ or ‘tribal’ and the ‘modern’ or ‘developed’. The former usually implies a rural community with a relatively self- sufficient political system.2 In such a society, the traditional leaders are usually associated with a particular ethnic group and territory; and their authority may be derived from sacred sources, such as tradition itself, ties to land, or genealogical links to ancestors. In the ‘modern’ society, leadership is assumed to be ‘rational’ and ‘secular’, oriented towards western rather than traditional values.3 Political development has often been somewhat vaguely conceived as the transformation of a society from the traditional to the modern type.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Page 251 note 1 See, however, Skinner, Elliott P., ‘Strangers in West African Societies’, in Africa (London), XXXIII, 1963, pp. 307–20Google Scholar, and Cohen, Abner, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa (London, 1969).Google Scholar

Page 251 note 2 See, for example, Geertz, C. (ed.), Old Societies and New States (Glencoe, Ill., 1963)Google Scholar. For a review of attempts to avoid this model, see W. J., and Hanna, J. L., ‘The Political Structure of Urban-Centred African Communities’, in Miner, H. (ed.), The City in Modern Africa (London, 1967), pp. 2139.Google Scholar

Page 251 note 3 Apter, D. E., The Gold Coast in Transition (Princeton, 1955), p. 82.Google Scholar

Page 251 note 4 Drake, St. Clair, ‘Traditional Authority and Social Action in Former British West Africa’, in Human Organization (Ithaca, N.Y.), XIX, 1960, pp. 150–8.Google Scholar

Page 252 note 1 For a review of the literature on indirect rule, see Forde, D., ‘Applied Anthropology in Government: British West Africa’, in Kroeber, A. L. (ed.), Anthropology Today (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar. For studies of modern Africa, see St. C. Drake, op. cit.; Busia, K. A., The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti (London, 1951)Google Scholar; and Fallers, L., ‘The Predicament of the Modern African Chief: an instance from Uganda’, in American Anthropologist (Washington D.C.), LVII, pp. 290304.Google Scholar

Page 252 note 2 See, for example, Epstein, A. L., Politics in an Urban African Community (Manchester, 1958)Google Scholar; Mitchell, J. C., The Kelela Dance: aspects of social relationships among urban Africans in Northern Rhodesia, Rhodes-Livingstone Institute Papers No. 27 (Manchester, 1957)Google Scholar; Gluckman, M., ‘An Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand’, in African Studies (Johannesburg), XIV, 1940, pp. 130 and 147–74Google Scholar; and L. Fallers, op. cit.

Page 252 note 3 Ghana Constitution, 1969 (Accra–Tema, 1969), para. 157.Google Scholar

Page 252 note 4 Almond, G. A. and Coleman, J. S. (eds.), The Politics of Developing Areas (Princeton, 1960), p. 272.Google Scholar

Page 253 note 1 Wilks, I., ‘Ashanti Government’, in Forde, D. and Kaberry, P. (eds.), West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1967), p. 229.Google Scholar

Page 254 note 1 Rattray, R. S., Ashanti Law and Constitution (London, 1929), p. 40.Google Scholar

Page 254 note 2 Dupuis, J., Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824)Google Scholar; Bowdich, T. E., Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819).Google Scholar

Page 255 note 1 1960 Census of Ghana: Special Report A, Statistics of Large Towns (Accra, 1964).Google Scholar

Page 255 note 2 This term generally means the strangers' quarter, although in Nigeria it is used to refer to a cattle market; see Cohen, op. cit.

Page 255 note 3 The official definition of ‘chief’ entails recognition by the Governor; see Harvey, W. B., Law and Social Change in Ghana (Princeton, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 2, and K. A. Busia, op. cit. ch. 8.

Page 259 note 1 See Tordoff, William, Ashanti under the Prempehs, 1888–1935 (London, 1965).Google Scholar

Page 260 note 1 Two were nominated by the Asantehene and the Divisional Council, two (generally Europeans) by the Chamber of Commerce, and one African by the Chief Commissioner. In 1943, the Public Health Board became the Kumasi Town Council, with the addition of elected members from each of the six wards. In 1960, Kumasi became a city, with its own City Council.

Page 261 note 1 See Banton, M., West African City (London, 1957)Google Scholar, and ‘Adaptation and Integration in the Social System of Temne Immigrants in Freetown’, in Africa (London), XXVI, 1956, pp. 357–69Google Scholar; and Little, K., West African Urbanization (Cambridge, 1965).Google Scholar

Page 262 note 1 Letter of 19 January 1952 from Amadu Baba and others to Asantehene; Kumasi Traditional Council File, ‘Stranger Communities’.

Page 262 note 2 Letter of 25 June 1951 from Amadu Baba to Asantehene; ibid.

Page 263 note 1 See Austin, Dennis, Politics in Ghana, 1946–1960 (London, 1964), pp. 187 ff.Google Scholar; E. P. Skinner, op. cit.; and Rouch, J., Migrations an Ghana (Paris, 1956), ch. 8.Google Scholar

Page 266 note 1 Speech delivered at the Regional Office, Kumasi, August 1966.

Page 267 note 1 Wallerstein, I., ‘Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa’, in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), III, 1960, pp. 129–39.Google Scholar

Page 268 note 1 W.J. and J. L. Hanna, loc. cit. p. 179.