The Legendary Kwasi Akuffo, King of Akuapem, Gold Coast (Ghana)

KOFI AYIM

It is possible to say that the loss of power and prestige of the paramount chief in Akuapem today as compared with the Akwamuhene or the Okyenhene in Akyem Abuakwa is due more to the work of the Basel Mission Society than to any other single factor.

-M.A. Kwamena-Poh,

Government and Politics in the Akuapem State, 1730-1850, page 122

PROLOGUE

Every ethnicity, race, and creed in the world has its cultural ways to worship their God and enforce codes of law and morality, but when one culture comes in to superimpose its way on another group, then that group is recreated, remolded, and rethought, and its people come to behave like the imposters or proselytizers.

The African people experienced this phenomenon probably more than those on any other continent. Prior to the advent of European colonialism, Akuapem, like all other parts of Africa, had its own form of government under leaders with their councils and a set of traditional processes, procedures, and protocols that all were expected to adhere to or face punishment.

Because it was a communal system of living, offenders, especially serial transgressors, brought shame not only upon themselves but also upon the large extended family that characterized the sociocultural setup of a given community.

The strictness and uncompromising nature of, say, a king in implementing rule of law and administering justice often brought him resentment from elements within the community. Indigenes who perceived a king’s leadership as harsh or tyrannical would either move out of the community, if they could afford it, or perpetually be at the mercy of an unforgiving ruler and hoping never to break a law.

It was this group of people who eventually found “salvation” in newly established communities and belief systems, such as colonial Christianity, which came with its own set of rules. Among the goals of European evangelism was to win and convert souls of heathen natives.  And souls they won.

It was ex-slaves, communal and social outcasts, the have-nots and the do-nothings who were embraced by the missionaries, because no person of substance would voluntarily join a new faith of foreign persuasion. 

These homogeneous groups of people formed the bedrock of a Christianized community and separated from the rest of the people. Besides mission work, early missionaries to Africa had one potent weapon: skills.

They came with skills such as carpentry, masonry, farming, and others.  Not only did the initial native converts learn the trades taught them by their Christian masters, they also learned their language. Soon the one-time social outcasts became interpreters for their masters and the traditional leadership, and assisted with all manner of interactions.

Literacy was a reflection of Christianity, and vice-versa, while illiteracy was a reflection of heathenism. Hitherto, the truants in the community had all of a sudden sobered up and would speak and act in a dignified manner.

Not only were they Christianized, but they also affected Europeanism in culture—manners, dress, and diet—and distanced themselves from the cultures of their native land.  Further, they became skilled artisans and earned a better living than the average native. The writing was on the wall for the non-converts. 

As many, including royals, sought to gravitate to the Euro-Christian way of life for its quality and class, they became resistant to their own traditional laws, and sometimes openly defied laid-down procedures, such as communal labor.

The authority and power of the king was in dire danger because it was being challenged covertly by the Christian mission houses through overt activities by the natives, who vigorously recruited non-converts. The converts were bold in their assertions and operations because they had the power of the missionaries behind them. 

In retrospect, the missionaries used the natives to fight against the traditional establishment with a goal of weakening their power for ease of Christianizing the populace. The power play between church (Basel Mission in Akropong) and state (the kingship) was dicey.

The king faced a two-pronged onslaught to fight against: staving off the threat of converts weakening his authority and holding on to the rule of law over his non-convert indigenes who threatened to be converted.

The king was also acutely aware of the potential development through western education that only the Mission House could run. Caught between a rock and a hard place, up the creek without a paddle, the king allowed the Mission House to continue its work unabated.

Chinua Achebe, in his world-acclaimed novel Things Fall Apart, summed up in part the objective path to the European goal:

The whiteman is very clever

He came quietly and peaceably with his religion

We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay

Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one

He has put a knife on the things that held us together

And we have fallen apart

In an internet radio program hosted by this author on the theme “The Impact of Foreign Religion on African Religious Beliefs” in May 2017, the guests Professor James Small and Dr. Eleanor Moody-Shepherd observed that Christianity, such as experienced in Akropong Akuapem and elsewhere through the lens of contemporary Africans, was not uplifting for Africans because it removed the natives from their own cultural identities and put them into a completely different realm and unnatural environment.  

The missionaries’ interpretation of Christianity was buried in ideas about prosperity. In fact the missionaries, whether by default or design, paved the way for colonialization after the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was abrogated and Europeans still wanted a way into Africa.

Colonial Christianity in Africa made the natives submissive and virtually without recourse to traditional authority, which was a goal of the missionaries in the first place. In this regard, it was more destructive and debilitating to Africa in terms of development.

Ancient Christianity, which started in Africa, was not the same religion as that which was brought to Africa by European interests. European Christianity was presented to Africa with a European cultural motif that revolved around attacking African culture rather than complementing it.

The intricacies of African cultural values were destroyed by Europeans in order to perpetuate their own. It is therefore obvious that Europeans used Christianity as a weapon of domination and control in Africa.

They understood that there could be no room in a given community for two faiths, indigenous religion and Christian religion. To directly attack indigenous religion was too great a risk and challenge for the missionaries to take, so they chose to attack the culture and gradually replace it with a European one.

So in essence, it was a cultural war that European Christianity waged. It is still extant today, except that it is being fought not by Europeans but by indigenous Africans: the Missionaries left a debilitating legacy for Africans to continue.

Currently, in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa, there is rejection of anything African, including languages, by most churches.

European domination and cultural imperialism were masqueraded as Christianity. The Europeans worked hard to separate converts from non-converts.

They set up schools and announced that those who wanted to get better (European) jobs must go to school but, to be admitted, one had to renounce one’s given birth name and adopt a European name. King Kwasi Akuffo fell into the “trap,” hence his European names Frederick William, names that did not even have consanguineous relationship with Christianity. 

Akuapem paramountcy has had its share of challenges among Akan kingdoms. Internal and external dissensions started in earnest probably during the reign of King Addo Dankwa I.

His involvement in the assassination of his predecessor, King Kwao Saforotwe (Kakradaa), and loyalty to Asante invited unnecessary and unwanted attention to himself both from factions of Akropong royalty and from Akuapem at large. It was during his time that the Basel Mission started its work at Akuapem.

Dissensions from the divisional royal hierarchy became more pronounced about a century after the formation of Akuapem, when it was firmly believed that the power of Akwamu had waned and therefore could not attack Akuapem again.

It was from this period that opposition to traditional laws and rules imported by the ruling Akyem royalty, the occupants of the highest traditional office of Akuapem, started to be boldly questioned and/or resisted.

Both internal and external shenanigans facilitated the removal of King Akuffo in 1907; the abdication of King Owusu Ansa in 1914 (some contend he was poisoned) and his younger brother King Ofori Kuma I (J. B. Koranteng Esq.) in June 1919; and the eventual second coming of King Kwasi Akuffo in 1920.

Even then, it was not until 1922 that the British Colonial Court recognized his kingship. But then he died “all of a sudden” in 1927. King Ofori Kuma I’s attempt to re-occupy the throne was not successful; Addo Dankwa II was chosen instead.

King Kwasi Akuffo’s problems could be partly attributed to Christianity in Akuapem. The queen mother, Nana Akua Oye, a devout Christian and wife of a minister, became a thorn in his flesh.

Nana Akua Oye, for obvious reasons, refused to consent to her older son Owusu Ansa for the vacant Asonko Stool and rather settled on Kwasi Akuffo, her nephew. She argued that her sons were too young.

The real fact, however, could be found in the fact that Nana Oye, a devout Christian, was married to Reverend Koranteng and their son, Owusu Ansa, was a catechist/teacher; for a Christian family to descend into a non-Christian “heathen” community was too much of a challenge to Queen Mother Akua Oye and her husband.

Being the Asonkohene,  or heir apparent, propelled Kwasi Akuffo to the kingship when his uncle the king died. The Asonko stool (for heir apparent to the throne) thereby became vacant, and Kwasi Akuffo was probably unwilling to appoint Owusu Ansa as his Asonkohene.

Instead, he brought the property and the throne of the Asonkohene directly under himself, which made for the beginning of King Kwasi Akuffo’s conflicts with the queen mother, among other critics. He was eventually destooled by the queen mother and the kingmakers.

During the inquiry into Akuffo’s destoolment, ex-king Kwasi Akuffo attempted to extricate the Nana Oye faction from the Royal House of Akuapem by pointing to the fact that they had virtually vacated their role by going into a self-imposed exile in Kumasi, Asante. 

The attack on Kumasi by the British in the late 1890s/early 1900 war might have precipitated their return to Akuapem. Further, there was the case of a royal from Nana Akua Oye’s faction (the Nketiaa Royal House) who sold part of Akropong to some Europeans for 3,000 pounds sterling.

Then there was the Amma Ogyaa royalty, exiled to Tutu from which Addo Dankwa III belonged.  Ex-king Kwasi Akuffo was aware of the “blemish” of the other two royal houses and could have put the Sakyiamabea royalty into a sole position as the royal house, but that was not to be.

Nana Kwasi Akuffo fought his way into exile and fought his way back again for his second reign. Unfortunately, he died all of a sudden when plans had been hatched to destool him a second time.

Long after the Akwamu had been chased out of the mountains of Akuapem, and a century later, several of the Akuapem kings faced huge internal challenges, especially from the indigenes, but the challenges of King Kwasi Akuffo were acutely unique in the Akan kingdom of the then Gold Coast.

The author/writer is the editor of Amandla.

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