Introduction

Property rights in Bolgatanga and northern Ghana have been the object of much debate and struggle during the past three decades. A legal situation that was established in 1927 essentially remained in effect after independence. The Land and Native Rights Ordinance (Cap. 143) declared all lands in the Northern Territories, whether occupied or unoccupied, to be native lands and placed them under the control of the governor. When the 1979 Constitution divested the state of its trusteeship over most lands in the Northern and Upper regions, the need to address the question to whom these lands were to be given became acute. The new legal situation provided an opportunity for reassessing the past, resettling old accounts, reasserting belonging in terms of prerogatives and jurisdictions, and renegotiating ownership to land. Chiefs and earthpriests intensified their competition over the control of the land.

This chapter deals with the history of landownership in Bolgatanga as a story of competing claims to customary authority and clashes between public and private interests in land. The chapter starts with a brief glimpse into a report of the lands commissioner, from 1948, which illustrates the evolutionary perspective on customary land tenure promoted by both anthropologists and administrators during the colonial period.