'They must be Dagaba first and any other thing second… ': The Colonial and Post-Colonial Creation of Ethnic Identities in North-Western Ghana

African Studies

Volumn 53, Issue 2, 1994, Pages 57-91

  Lentz, Carola ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0002621977     PISSN: 00020184     EISSN: 14692872     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00020189408707802     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. This article is part of an ongoing research project on the creation of an ethnic community among the Dagara of north-western Ghana. Grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft financed part of the fieldwork as well as archival research and the present writing up of the results. As research affiliate, I am grateful to Professor Nana Kwame Arhin, Head of the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana at Legon. For many discussions, logistic support, and constant encouragement thanks are due to numerous Dagara friends, colleagues, and interview partners, particularly to Dr Sebastian Bemile and his whole family, Dr Daniel Delle, Aloysius Denkabe, Dr E.N. Gyader, Father Richard Abba-Kugbeh, Alexis Nakaar, John Sotenga, and Jacob Yirerong.
2. J. Lonsdale, 'When did the Gusii (or any other group) become a tribe?', Kenya Historical Review 5(1), 1977, 122-33; J. Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979); T. Ranger, 'The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa', in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), 211–62. For West African examples of the colonial 'creation of tribalism' see, for example, A. Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa. A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969); E. Schildkrout, People of the Zongo. The Transformation of Ethnic Identity in Ghana (Cambridge, 1978); J.P. Dozon, 'Les Bété; Une Creation Coloniale', in J-L. Amselle and E. M'Bokolo (eds), Au coeur de Vethnie: Ethnics, tribalisme et état en Afrique (Paris, 1985), 49-85; J-L. Amselle, 'L'ethnicité comme Volonté et comme Representation: A propos des Peul du Wassolon', Annales ESC 2, 1985, 465-89; J.D.Y. Peel, 'The Cultural Work of Yoruba Ethnogenesis', in E. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman (eds), History and Ethnicity (London, 1989), 198-215; T. Bkrschenk, 'Rituel politique et construction de 1'identity ethnique des Peuls au Bonin', Cahiers des Sciences Humaines (forthcoming). See C. Lentz '“Tribalism” and Ethnicity in Africa. A Review of Four Decades of Anglophone Research', Cahiers des Sciences Humaines (forthcoming) for an overview of anglophone research on tribalism and ethnicity in sub-Saharan Africa since the 1950s.
3. Ranger, 'Invention'; L. Vail (ed), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London, 1989); J. Lonsdale, 'The Moral Economy of Mndonau-Mau', in B. Berman and J. Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Clan, Class and State in Kenya (London, 1992).
4. There is considerable debate on Dagara or Dagaba as ethnic terms, as I will show below. Because much of my data refers to the Nandom Traditional Area, I use the name 'Dagara' most of the time.
5. 5 In an overview of recent studies on ethnicity, Ranger has noted self-critically that the term 'invention' (which he employed originally) overemphasises the mechanical, authorial aspects and the fictionality and rigidity of the creation of tradition (including ethnicity) - 'The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial Africa', in T. Ranger and O. Vaughan (eds), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa (London, 1993), 62–111. See also Peel, 'Cultural work'; 'Making History: The Past in Ijesha Present', Man 19, 1984, 113-32; D.W. Cohen, and E.S.A. Odhiambo, Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape (London, 1989).
6. Public Record Office, London (PRO), CO 96/381, 327 Fr Burnham, Wa Syndicate Lt., in a letter to Major Morris, Resident Commissioner Northern Territories, 1 May 1901.
7. PRO CO 96/493, North Western District Commissioner Moutray Read, November 1908, in a report on the 'Laws and Customs of West African Native Communities', enclosure 3 in Gold Coast No. 41 of 19 Jan. 1910.
8. J.Goody, The Social Organisation of the LoWiili (London, 1956), 17–20.
9. Archbishop Peter Dery, Tamale, in an interview of 17 Nov. 1990.
10. See J. Goody, The LoWiili (London, 1956); 'Fields of Social Control among the LoDagaba', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 87, 1957, 75-104; and Death, Property and the Ancestors (Stanford 1962), for an extensive analysis of the interlocking and crosscutting of multiple social relationships and cultural characteristics.
11. Ferguson, in K. Arhin (ed.), The Papers of George Ekem Ferguson, a Fanti Official of the Government of the Gold Coast, 1890–1897 (Leiden and Cambridge, 1974), 99, 109, 117. After Ferguson had actually set foot in Wa in 1894 and signed a treaty, he referred to 'Dagarti' as the territory and the people over 'which the 'King of Wa' claimed sovereignty (ibid., 101, 130). Prior to this he had mentioned the 'Dagari' and 'Dagabaka' as two of the 'several little States more or less independent' into which 'Gurunshi, unlike Dagomba, is divided' (ibid., 76). This change shows how closely description and political agenda were intertwined.
12. See M. Last, 'The Pre-Colonial Basis of Social Knowledge and its Transfer: Islamic Social Science in West Africa', in V.Y. Mudimbe and B. Jewsiewicki (eds), Transfer of Knowledge to Africa (forthcoming), for an analysis of the impact of Islamic social categories on British perceptions of African societies. See J.J. Holden, 'The Zaberima conquest of north-west Ghana', Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 8, 1965, and Wilks, Wa and the Wala. Islam and Polity in Northern Ghana (Cambridge, 1989), 100–140, for details on Babatu, Samori and other African slave-raiders who made their inroads into the north-west from the 1870s onwards.
13. Monthly Reports, Black Volta District, May 1901, National Archives of Ghana (NAG), ADM 56/1/416.
14. NAG, ADM 56/1/50, Captain Moutray Read in a report on tours of inspection March-May 1905.
15. PRO, CO 879/54, No. 143, enclosure 1, p. 254, Henry P. Northcott, Commissioner and Commander of the Northern Territories, in a memorandum of July 1898.
16. See H. Kuklick, The Imperial Bureaucrat: The Colonial Administrative Service in the Gold Coast, 1920–1939 (Stanford, 1979), 43–52, and H. Kuklick, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology (Cambridge, 1991), Chs 5 and 6, for a discussion of colonial views on African history and their connection with early British anthropology.
17. R. Bening, 'Foundations of the Modern Native States of Northern Ghana', Universitas 5(1), 1975, 116-38.
18. Lentz, 'Histories'.
19. Vail, Creation.
20. I. Sutton, 'Colonial Agricultural Policy: The Non-Development of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast', International Journal of African Historical Studies 22(4), 1989, 637–69.
21. C. Lentz and V. Erlmann, 'A Working Class in Formation? Economic Crisis and Strategies of Survival among Dagara Mine Workers in Ghana', Cahiers d'etudes africaines 24(1), 113, 1989, 69-111.
22. See, for instance, the list of chiefs and tribes of 1925, NAG, ADM 56/1/243. However, the classification was never quite consistent; some documents listed Nandom as 'Lobi' and Jirapa as 'Lobi-Dagarti', while others introduced further sub-categories such as 'Lobi-Burifo' (for Lawra) and 'Lobi-Wili' (for Tugu).
23. P. Naameh, 'The Christianisation of the Dagara within the Horizon of the West European Experience'. Doctoral thesis, University of Munster, 1986; R.F. McCoy, Great Things Happen: A Personal Memoir of the First Christian Missionary among the Dagaabas and Sissalas of Northwest Ghana (Montreal, 1988).
24. C. Lentz, 'Home, death and leadership: Discourses of an educated elite from northwestern Ghana', Social Anthropology 2(2), 1994.
25. See D.L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, 1985), 55–92, and G. Elwert, 'Nationalismus, Ethnizitat und Nativismus:Über die Bildung von Wir-Gruppen', in P. Waldmann and G. Elwert (eds), Ethnizitat im Wandel (Saarbriicken, 1989), 21–60. By insisting that what J. Fernandez, in Persuasions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture (Bloomington, 1986), calls 'metaphoric predication' and the 'argument of images', drawn particularly from the domain of the family, are central to ethnic discourses, I do not mean to suggest that kinship is a 'natural' network; it is, in fact, also socially constructed, as many anthropologists have shown - for example, D.W. Cohen and E.S.A. Odhiambo, Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape (London, 1989), for Luo patricians.
26. D.B. Abemethy, The Political Dilemma of Popular Education: An African Case (Stanford, 1969).
27. See C. Lentz, 'Staatlich Verordneter “Self-help Spirit” Versus Lokale “Self-reliance”: Regionale Kulturfestivals in Ghana als Politische Arenen', in M. Bollig and F. Klees (eds), Uberlebensstrategien in Afrika (Cologne, 1994), 293–316, for a discussion of cultural festivals in the Upper West as political arenas.
28. Many Dagara hold that ntafo is a Twi word for 'twins', which, when applied to northerners, refers to the fact that they undertake their labour migration in pairs or groups; pepeni is translated as 'only a visitor'. Cross-checking of these etymologies with Twi speakers revealed contradictory explanations. One informant claimed that ntafo and pepeni as terms for the 'Dagarti' are virtually unknown, and that ntaafo, without pejorative connotation, refers only to the Gonja, as people who live between two rivers (ntaa - two); according to him, ntafo could be a corruption of NTifo, 'people from the Northern Territories', and pepeni of potoni, 'barbarian'. Another informant maintained that ntafo was derived from taney'light, floating on top'.
29. Quoted from a discussion during the annual meeting of Dagara living in Europe, in Gammelshausen/Koblenz, 30 June to 2 July 1989.
30. See, for example, Goody, The LoWiili, 16–26, and the critique by B.G. Der, 'The Origins of the Dagara-Dagaba', Papers in Dagara Studies 1(1), 1989 (Language Centre, University of Ghana, Legon); N.C. Somda, 'Les Origines des Dagara', Papers in Dgara Studies 1(1), 1989, Language Centre, University of Ghana, Legon; P.K. Bekye, Divine Relation and Traditional Religions with Particular Reference to the Dagaaba of West Africa (Rome, 1991), 95–6.
31. Officially, reference to tribal differences is avoided as much as possible: the 1960 population census was the last one to report on 'tribes in Ghana', and terms such as 'ethnic group' or 'peoples' and 'ethnicity' or 'cultures' have replaced the words 'tribes' and 'tribalism'. But the latter abound in popular usage and in newspapers.
32. 'History' here refers to the Dagara saakumine yele (the grandfathers' speech/affairs), koroza yele (the olden days' speech/affairs), a body of non-fictional narratives which provides charters for all enduring, significant cultural practices and social relations. See J. Goody, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge, 1987), 149–57, for a discussion of 'traditional knowledge among the LoDagaa', and J. Goody, The Myth of the Bagre (Oxford, 1972) on the recitations during the Bagr initiation.
33. See, for instance, the examples in P. Hébert (ed.), Esquisse d'une Monographie Historique du Pays Dagara, (Diocese de Diebougou, 1976); Goody, The LoWiili, 14-16; D. St. John-Parsons, More Legends of Northern Ghana (London, 1960).
34. PRO, CO 96/493, enclosure 3 in Gold Coast No. 41 of 19 Jan. 1910.
35. PRO CO 96/548 No. 42088, enclosure 1, Northern Territories Chief Commissioner Armitage in a report on land tenure and taxes, Aug. 1914.
36. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss in detail the participation of the chiefs in the development of the new tribal histories. A good example is the story, written down for the first time in 1908, of a hunter named Kontol, who is claimed to have founded Lawra (NAG, ADM 61/5/11, 251). Such stories, however were told of specific chiefdoms, not of larger 'tribes'. For further details, see C. Lentz, 'A Dagara rebellion against Dagomba rule? Contested stories of origin in northwestern Ghana', Journal of African History 35, 1994 (forthcoming).
37. F.K. Buah, A History of West Africa from AD 1000 (London, 1986), ix.
38. Somda, 'Les Origines', 6.
39. 39 Hébert, Esquisse, 260.
40. Ibid., 2.
41. Ibid., 30. This etymological explanation is shared by B.G. Der, 'The Origins', and by many other Nandom-based Dagara, while Pére Girault, quoted in Hébert, Esquisse, interpreted 'Dagara' as 'buying a horse saddle' and took this for evidence for a Mossi origin. G. Tuurey, An Introduction to the Mole Speaking Community (Wa, 1982), 13–14, believes that 'Dagaba' is a corruption of 'Dagomba'.
42. Hebert, Esquisse, 33–40.
43. Tuurey, An Introduction, 48.
44. Hébert, Esquisse, 48.
45. Ibid., 22.
46. Der, 'The Origins' 14.
47. Ibid., 21.
48. For dissenting views see Naameh, 'Christianisation' 97-106; and Somda, 'Les origines'.
49. Dependent on context and occasion, such conversations also delight in pursuing the distinct personalities and characteristics typical of different patri- (and matri-)clans. Constituting a different, but interlinking genre are the debates on moral questions arising from proverbs, songs, and stories.
50. For more sophisticated accounts of Dagara characteristics see G.T. Ansotinge, 'Wisdom of the Ancestors: an Analysis of the Oral Narratives of the Dagaaba of Northern Ghana'. Doctoral thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1986; Somda, 'La pénétration coloniale en pays Dagara, 1897–-1914 Master's dissertation, Université Paris VI1, 1975, 13–37, and, on the basis of the interpretation of proverbs and folk tales, C. G. Dabire, 'Nisaal: L'homme comme relation'. Doctoral thesis, Facultéde Philosophic, Université Laval, 1983, 61–111. For a European anthropologist's romanticist transfiguration of Dagara anti-Wala sentiments into anti-capitalist communitarism see F. Sabelli, Le Pouvoir des lignages en Afrique: La reproduction sociale des communautes du nord-Ghana (Paris, 1986), 53–116.
51. See R. Launay, 'Stereotypic Vision. The “Moral Character7' of the Senufo in Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse'. Paper presented at the Institute of Advanced Study and Research in the African Humanities, Northwestern University, Evanston, 1993, for an interesting case study of the appropriation of colonial verdicts on the Senufo 'moral character' by Senufo intellectuals.
52. NAG, ADM 56/1/50.
53. Ibid., 14.
54. L. Tauxier, Le Noir du Soudan: Pays Mossi et Gourounsi (Paris, 1912), 23–26.
55. M. Delafosse, Haut-Senegal-Niger, Vol. I (Paris, 1912), 348; English translation by the author.
56. See E. van Hoven, 'Representing Social Hierarchy. Administrators-Ethnographers in the French Sudan: Delafosse, Monteil and Labouret' Cahiers d'Eudes Africaines 118, 30–2, 1990, 179–98 for a discussion of the theoretical framework of French administrator-ethnographers.
57. NAG, ADM 61/5/11, 254-55, Lawra District Record Book
58. Somda, 'La penetration' 17–-33.
59. Tuurey An Introduction, 7.
60. From a group discussion with the national executive of the Nandome Youth and Development Association in Wa, 15 Nov. 1989.
61. See, for instance, B. Some, 'Organisation Politico-sociale Traditionelle des Dagara', Notes et Documents Voltaiques 2(2), 1969, 16-41; Dabire, Nisaal; D. Gaspard, Inheritance and Marriage among the Dagaaba of Northern Ghana (Accra, 1987); Bekye, Divine Revelation 109-30; G.E. Kpiebaya, Dagaaba Traditional Marriage and Family Life, (Wa, 1991).
62. PRO CO 96/493 'Remarks… that are common to the Pagan Dagartis, Lobis in some cases Walas who have not come under the influence of Mahommedanismf, enclosure 3 in Gold Coast No. 41 of 19 Jan. 1910.
63. Ibid.
64. J. Goody, 'Bridewealth and Dowry in Africa and Eurasia', in J. Goody and S J. Tambiah, Bridewealth and Dowry (Cambridge, 1973), 8–10, suggests an inverse correlation: the incidence of labour migration increases where bridewealth is high.
65. See T. Ranger, 'Tradition Revisited' for a general discussion of the colonial invention of tradition, and M. Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge, 1985), for a case study of Malawi and Zambia.
66. The 'Lobi' bride price was stipulated at 13.000 cowries as 'pre-nuptial dowry', in addition to farmwork for the bride's father, and three cows (in instalments) after the birth of the second child. The 'Dagarti' bride price was fixed at a maximum of 50.000 cowries before marriage and 19.500 cowries (or a cow) 'on the betrothal of the first bom girl' NAG, ADM 61/5/11 (Lawra District Record Book, pp. 388–93).
67. The head of the house was expected to provide the bridewealth for the first wife of his dependents, but successive wives were usually dowried by the groom himself. Even the first wife could indirectly be dowried by the groom himself, from the proceeds of labour migration 'shown' to his father. Few pre-1930s documents specify bride prices. For 1908 there was no obligation to work on the in-law's farm, but three fowls and seven shillings (probably equivalent to about 7000 cowries) were stated as pre-nuptial payment for the 'Lobi', plus 'three cows in the event of a child being born' (GNA 61/5/11, Lawra District Record Book, 296). Evasion of such rules, through the capture of the bride, seems to have been at the root of many feuds reported in early colonial documents. For the 'Dagari' in French Territory, Tauxier, Le noir du Soudan, 366, mentioned 10.000 cowries and one annual day of labour during three years, while six decades later, Dabire, Nisaal, 158, stated 12.000-30.000 cowries and up to ten hens, one goat, one sheep, and three cows as the customary dowry. See also J. Goody, ' “Normative”, “Recollected” and “Actual” Marriage Payments among the LoWiili of Northern Ghana, 1951-1966', Africa 39, 1969, 54-60.
68. See also Gaspard, Inheritance and Marriage, and Kpiebaya, Dagaba Traditional Marriage.
69. See Lawra District Record Book, NAG, ADM 65/5/11, 291–95.
70. PRO, CO 96/600, No. 34483, enclosure 5 in Gold Coast No. 413 of 19 May 1919.
71. Oxford, Rhodes House Library (RHL), Mss. Afr. s. 593. Diary of the Acting Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories, entry of 27 Sept. 1932.
72. See Naameh, The Christianisation, 188–98 on typical conflicts.
73. See Der, 'Missionary Enterprise in Northern Ghana, 1906-1975: A Study in Impact'. Doctoral thesis, University of Ghana, Legon, 1989, 223–76 for details on the missionaries' attitudes towards 'indigenous cultures'.
74. NAG, ADM 56/1/301, Christian Converts 1932; on the mutual accommodation see, for instance, the detailed report of 9 March 1937, RHL, MA s.454.
75. See the examples in McCoy, Great Things Happen 63-69, 149-65.
76. This is particularly evident with respect to the controversial representation of pre-colonial political organisation, such as the question of whether chiefs really existed - see Rattray, The Tribes of Ashanti Hinterland vols 1 & 2 (Oxford 1932); R. St J. Eyre-Smith, A Brief Review of the History and Social Organisation of the Peoples of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (Accra, 1933); and 'Comments on the Interim Report on the Peoples of the Nandom and Lambussie Divisions of the Lawra District', Unpublished manuscript, 1933; Goody, 'Fields of Social Control', 75-104; Some, 'Organisation Politico-sociale', 16-41; B.G. Der, 'The “Stateless Peoples” of North-West Ghana: A Reappraisal of the Case of the Dagara of Nandom. Unpublished manuscript, Department of History, University of Cape Coast; Hébert, Esquisse; Dabire, Nisaal; and Lentz, 'Histories and Political Conflict', for further details.
77. In 1989 none of the nurses in the Nandom hospital was astonished about a girl almost bleeding to death in consequence of an excision. An exception is H. Labouret, Les tribus du Rameau Lobi (Paris, 1931), 307–309, whose gruesomely detailed description is virtually never referred to by subsequent authors.
78. See, for instance, L. Girault, 'Essai sur la religion des Dagara', Bulletin de l'institut frangais d'Afrique noire 21, B 3–4, 1959, 329-56; Naameh, The Christianisation; Dabire, Nisaal and Bekye, Divine Revelation, to name just a few of the numerous dissertations written by catholic priests on 'Dagara religion'; see J. Goody, 'Religion, Social Change and the Sociology of Conversion', in J. Goody (ed.), Changing Social Structure in Ghana (London, 1975), 91–106, and R. Some, La Conception Dagara de Dieu en Question, Papers in Dagara Studies 1(3), 1991, 30–43, for a critical view of whether oral religious practice can be systematised (in a written account).
79. Lentz, 'Home, Death'.
80. Vail, The Creation, 15.
81. A. Behrends, 'Some of us: Lebenssituationen gebildeter Dagara/Dagaaba Frauen in Upper West Ghana'. Unpublished fieldwork report, Department of Anthropology, Free University of Berlin, 1992.
82. As is to be expected, accounts of this and related conflicts differ considerably, and the above abridged version might well be contradicted by some of the activists; it is beyond the scope of this article to elaborate further this point.
83. See, for example, the seminal work on the Yoruba by J.D.Y. Peel, lljeshas and Nigerians: The Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom (Cambridge, 1983).
84. Lentz, 'Home, Death'.