Cameron Duodu:LETTER FROM THE NORTH
When I ended my column last week with the words, “that’s another story for another day”, little did I realise that “another day” was to come so soon. For now my own king, the Okyenhene, Osagyefuo Kuntunkununku II of Akyem Abuakwa, has also “gone to Banso” – the resting place of his ancestors – never to return.
To the Akan ethnic group of Ghana (of which Asante and Akyem are the largest constituents) the fact that both the king of Asante and the king of Akyem Abuakwa have departed, within three weeks of each other, will be an astoundingly bad omen. For not only did the two kings share close historical affinities, but, as president of the Ghana National House of Chiefs, Kuntunkununku was to have led all the other traditional rulers of Ghana, to pay homage to the Asantehene.
In the past, such an unusual conjunction of events would have brought a harvest of enormous yield to the sangomas of West Africa. From the top babalawo in Yorubaland to the all-seeing nyame of Kankan in Guinea; from the marabouts of Senegambia to the mallams of Timbuktu and Ouagadougou, messengers would be hot-footing it to each of them to hear (for a price) why it is that the Akans have been so uncommonly smitten by the calamitous hand of fate.
It would have been remarkable for the “soothseekers” of the two courts to encounter one another in the cavernous hideouts of the powers that be. You see, the two kingdoms are best described as Siamese twins with two heads but one stomach who fight over their food at meal times, forgetting that whatever passes through either head will end up in the same stomach.
I wrote last week about how the “illiterate” Akan people use imagery, assonance, alliteration and rhyme to enrich their language. I should have added that they also use craft: there is a gold weight forged specifically to give expression to the abstract idea of two heads and one stomach that strive for the same food.
The gold weight shows two crocodiles with two heads, joined at the stomach. The proverb that explains its meaning – I wish you could hear it intoned – goes:
Funtumfurafu Denkyemafurafu
Yafuru Ye baako
Nso yedidi a na yeeko.
(Stomachs mixed together/Crocodiles joined together/They’ve got but one stomach yet scuffle over who gets the snack.)
The story is that Akyem was formerly part of Asante, and inhabited the area in Asante known as Adanse. But a quarrel arose and Akyem moved southwards to wedge itself between Asante and the sea. The sea was important because it was the provider of salt. It became more important when white men brought guns.
So when the great founder of the Asante kingdom, Osei Tutu, began to expand his empire, he set out to incorporate Akyem into it. But on his way down south, Akyem snipers, hiding on the banks of the Prah River, shot Osei Tutu and he fell into the water. The fast-moving Prah carried his body away and it was never found.
This calamity was so traumatic for the Asante army that when it returned home, no one dared speak about what had happened. Anyone who was asked, “Psst! What happened to the king?” sulkily replied, “Hey, man, I went to the war, right? I didn’t hear all that happened in it, okay?”
It was from this event that the Great Oath of Asante was born. If anyone wants to put you (and himself) into big trouble in Asante, he says, “Me ka Memenda, ka Koromante (I swear by that Saturday when people went but didn’t hear anything).” Both you and he would have to appear before the king of Asante personally. And each had better have a good case to justify the oath!
Naturally, the Akyem and the Asante were forever at each other’s throats after this. Indeed, had the Akyem not enlisted the assistance of the British against the Asante, and taught the British about Asante warfare, the British would never have subdued Asante.
Fortunately, the two kingdoms have made their peace. It was partly the support given by the very influential Akyem king, Nana Sir Ofori Atta I, to the Asante campaign for the return home of the Asantehene, Nana Prempeh I (whom the British had exiled to the Seychelles) that swayed the British to bring Prempeh back.
Nana Sir Ofori Atta, our most famous Akyem king, sat continuously in the Gold Coast Legislative Council from 1916 until his death in 1943. In 1942 he was appointed as one of only two Africans to become members of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) Executive Council or the British governor’s Cabinet. During World War II, he decreed that his people should collect palm kernels to make margarine for the British troops. He also contributed more than 30 000 – an enormous amount in those days – towards the purchase of a warplane for the Brits.
For all that, the Brits never provided his capital, Kyebi, with electricity or water. The only secondary school in the kingdom was financed by ourselves. I suppose it served him right: if you have enough money to give to the Brits, why should they provide you with amenities?
Our dead king, Kuntunkununku, was the 33rd to sit on the Akyem stool. His name was made for the talking drums – can you hear? It was also the name of the very first Akyem king, known in private life as Dr Alex Fredua Agyemang. He was only 57 when he died. His father came from my town, Asiakwa, and I knew him well, since his cousin was my first girlfriend.
Agyemang was trained in Sofia and Prague as a doctor and was one of a new breed of professionals who were eagerly accepted to become the occupants of important stools (thrones) when they were elected by their king-makers.
It was a miracle that he completed his course as a doctor, for while he was in Bulgaria, he and a group of African students were set upon by racist Bulgarian students who did not look favourably on the way Bulgarian girls were flocking around the Africans in a night club called Chuchuluga. Alex was repatriated to Ghana, sporting a bandage on his head. But he wasn’t put off by Eastern Europe and went on to Prague to qualify. He practised for six years before being elected to succeed his maternal uncle, Nana Ofori Atta III, on August 2 1976.
Kuntunkununku was delightfully literate. In 1991 he wrote a forward to the brochure of a major Akyem Festival, Odwira, in which he said: “One of the surest ways to undermine a people’s self-esteem and enslave their minds is to alienate them from their own culture. European imperialism understood this too well. We must therefore hold on doggedly to our cultural heritage, to avoid becoming caricatures of other nations.”
In both Kumase and Kyebi this month, as both the Asantehene and the Okyenhene are mourned by their people, there will be such an exhibition of traditional Africa at its best as will testify that if there are Ghanaians who have become “caricatures of other nations”, they are definitely in the minority.