It struck me that the attitude toward these “destooled” chiefs was remarkably like that of their attitude toward the dead itself: nothing but harm could be expected from them, it seemed. And, being alive, they were not nearly as easily propitiated as the dead. It often occurred to me, while in the Gold Coast mulling over these mystic matters, that a dear dead friend, or brother, or father would be of much more benefit to the living than a living, sentient dear friend, or brother, or father. The dead had access to spirits that, for a reason no one could really satisfactorily explain, insisted on hanging around and haunting the living. I was certain that there was some gross misinterpretation here, for I could not conceive of a dead Ashanti, if he had any real intelligence at all, wanting to hover spiritually amidst these mud huts and rain and poverty and disease when he had entry to all the vast and interesting worlds far from the sodden high rain forest of British West Africa….
There is, however, one great stroke of luck which the Akan dead have performed for the living. Since it is supposed that the dead and not the living own the land upon which the living dwell, the living are not at liberty to dispose of that land. If there is any issue about which an Ashanti will fight, it is about the disposition of the land upon which he lives, for he does not feel that it belongs to him. He is merely holding it in trust, cultivating it, and, when he dies, it is to be passed on to his or the tribe’s children. This fact, plus that of the climate, has kept the white settler out of the high rain forest and has spared the inhabitants of the Gold Coast the agony of Kenya’s Mau Mau making a war to recapture stolen ancestral lands….
The dubious nature of land ownership has, however, mitigated against social and economic development in other directions. Since nobody in particular owns the land, no bank will advance money upon it. Land can be leased only, except in certain sections of the Colony area where Christianity has taken shallow root. Hence, though the British have gobbled up most of the rich gold and diamond mines, their right to those properties is limited to designated stretches of time.
The tracing of boundaries between plots of land was always a matter of sharp conflict. Land litigation is, therefore, one of the most widespread sources of legal activity in the Gold Coast. Lawsuits over narrow and almost profitless bits of land have been known to drag on year after year and the legal expenses would rise far beyond the value of the land in dispute.
The African attitude in legal matters is strange, one might almost say, idealistic. When he goes to law it is not only to obtain what he thinks is his right, but he wants that right done in a certain and particular manner. There was a story of an American who gave his “t’ief” man, that is, the man who slept on the porch of the American’s house at night and watched for thieves, a Sears, Roebuck catalogue. A friend of the “t’ief” man borrowed the catalogue and, after many warnings, refused to return it. The “t’ief” man approached his American employer and told him that he was forthwith starting legal proceedings against his friend for the recovery of the catalogue. The American, feeling that such massive legal machinery was not needed to recover so trifling an object, offered to replace the catalogue, but the “t’ief” man would have none of it. He insisted upon going through with his legal action and did eventually repossess his valued catalogue, much to his pride and joy. He felt that he had vindicated himself, had proved his “right,” which, to him, was a precious thing indeed.
Typical of a broader outlook and a more intelligent order of chiefs is one called the Efiduasihene, Nana Kwame Dua Awere II. Efiduasi is a little village (population indeterminate) of swish huts and is the center of trade and agriculture for an area which has a radius of ten miles. Sitting in his stuffy little office surrounded by his illiterate elders, the chief complained bitterly that his people were leaving the land in droves to go to the cities where life was more interesting. He frankly admitted that life in the villages was hard, that there were no modern amenities to lighten the burden, no conveniences for transportation, communication, etc. Yet, he pointed out, the government was crying out for the villages to grow more food.
The chief is president of the local council which has a membership of twenty-one, all of whom are members of the Convention People’s Party. He has achieved a rare sort of psychological detachment about his position and spoke about it without lamenting.
“It’s hard for people to understand that what has happened to us in the past was done by the chiefs. The rise of our way of life was inspired by the chiefs. All crafts were under their leadership; the goldsmiths, the silversmiths, the blacksmiths—all trades were at the behest of the chief, and the people were loyal to him.” He paused and pointed openly to the half-clad men who sat around him, smiling and not understanding a word of what was being said. “Now, take these men…All of them are older than I am. Yet I’m their chief. They serve me willingly. I don’t ask them to; their serving me is the meaning of their lives. They want me to dress up in these bright garments. It’s their sense of what’s good; they yearn for something to serve, to fight for, to maintain…. You see? Their loyalty to the Stool is deep and genuine. They cannot grasp politics. Yet, history is making severe demands upon us and we are not prepared. How will this illiteracy fit into the machine age?
“Yet, I don’t see the end of the chief. He’s closer to the people than anyone else. I’m convinced that it will take a long time for the social habits of the people to die out. The clan spirit is strong. We must find a way to bridge that gap….”
As the chief propounded the problem, there were in full view his huge state drums which he used to call his people together. And he knew that telephones and wireless and newspapers were taking the place of those drums. But could the new means of communication equal in emotional value the things that the drums said, drums which could, at a moment’s notice, throw a people into anger, joy, sorrow, or the stance to fight and die? That was the problem. The base upon which the new order had to build was so slight…. How could these people be taken from these ancestral moorings and be made to live contented lives in a rational industrial order?
“You are an American,” the chief said to me. “You fellows are, in a sense, our brothers. You’ve made the leap. What do you think of our chances?”
He was an intelligent man, an ex-schoolteacher, and I didn’t want to misguide him. He had me stumped. The problems involved were stupendous. Above all, I had to disabuse him of the illusion that American Negroes had attained a kind of paradise, had solved all of their problems.
“Nana,” I said, “you don’t have a race problem as severe as ours. Your problem is much simpler and yet much harder, and much more important…. The American Negro has done no reflective thinking about the value of the world into which he fought so hard to enter. He just panted to get into that world and be an American, that’s all. The average American Negro is perhaps the least qualified person on earth to guide you in matters of this sort.
“I’m black, Nana, but I’m Western; and you must never forget that we of the West brought you to this pass. We invaded your country and shattered your culture in the name of conquest and progress. And we didn’t quite know what we were doing when we did it. If the West dared have its way with you now, they’d harness your people again to solve their problems…. It’s not of me, Nana, that you must ask advice. You men of Africa must be able to tell the West something about how to live. Get it out of your head that we are all happy and have no problems. That’s propaganda….
“If you go into the industrial world, Nana, go in with your eyes open. Machines are wonderful things; love them for what they can do for you; but remember that they cannot tell you how to live or what aims you should hold in life. If you have no sense of direction before you embrace the world of machines, machines will not give you one….”
I was convinced that the meaning of the industrial world was beyond that chief. He could grasp it with his mind, but he could not feel or as yet know the emotional meaning of the lives of wage workers in Chicago or Detroit. The question
facing him was a bigger one than merely becoming modern. Must he leave behind him his humanity, such as it was, as he moved into that industrial world, as he built his Volta Projects? Or could he take it with him? Must his culture, though condemned by the West—a culture evolved under unique conditions and over long centuries—be cast unthinkingly aside as he embraced plumbing, printing, and politics?
And what would the Akan religion be if grafted, in its present state, onto the techniques of atomic energy? The West had taken hold of the world of modern techniques with its old humanity intact, and now, in Paris where I lived, men were huddled together in indecision, numbed with despair, facing a myriad of possibilities, none of which they wanted, all of which sickened them….
The pathos that rose from my talking to Africans about their problems was that their minds were uninformed—thanks to the contribution of a British education—about the bodies of knowledge relevant to their situation, bodies of knowledge which other peoples had erected at a great cost of suffering, toil, and sacrifice. Hence, I felt that almost any decision that the Africans would make, perhaps for some time to come, would be a hit-or-miss proposition, that they would have to tread ground already laboriously trampled by others. But there was no turning back; historic events had committed the Africans to change…. For good or ill, the die was cast. The game was up. What had been done, could not now be undone. Africa was moving….
Thirty-Eight
Most of the Africans I’ve met have been, despite their ready laughter, highly reserved and suspicious men. It would be easy to say that this chronic distrust arose from their centuries-long exploitation by Europeans, but that explanation would not elucidate the total African attitude. They never seem to feel that they have judged a man rightly unless they project some ulterior motive behind his most straightforward conduct. I’m willing to admit that, through the centuries, the Africans have had to bear the brunt of coping with the cream of Europe’s confidence men; but I’m persuaded that Europe’s smooth chicanery served but to augment elements that were already lodged deep in the heart of African culture. I submit that the African’s doubt of strangers, his panic in the face of reality has but peripheral relations to objective reality. Behind the most ordinary happenings the African is inclined to suspect the miraculous; to him casual signs point away from present facts.
Unless you exhibit strong, almost passionate emotion, the African is never quite sure that you are honest. Consequently, he possesses an inordinate faith in the force of mere words to dispel or hide facts. With many Africans words assume an omnipotent power…. Knowing that the outside world is curious and perhaps scornful of their magical beliefs, being devoid of a written history, they have devised, out of psychological necessity, methods of verbal jockeying to cast doubt into the minds of those who would try to know them. For example, in questioning one of the chiefs about the rituals of his people, I was told with a superior smile that:
“You don’t know all of our secrets. You can’t know them all.”
“But,” I told him, “Rattray and others have written pretty clearly about your religious practices.”
“Oh, Rattray…. We didn’t tell him everything. We told him some things. But we never tell anybody everything…” he said.
I was convinced that the many anthropologists who had studied Ashanti had put down, by and large, the basic truth of their religious customs, and I think that the chief knew this. He was trying to make me believe that the Ashanti had secrets behind secrets; and if I pried out those so-called secrets, he could at once allude to still other and more dreadful secrets behind those secrets, and so on. But what value have these secrets? Obviously, to his mind, a “secret” possessed the psychological value of intimidating others, of making them think that any move they might make against him would be met with some countermove of a surprising nature…. In short, in his eyes, you were an enemy until, by his own standards, he had decided that you were not.
At times this denial of plain facts on the part of chiefs became laughable. One chief would tell me a story that was flatly and passionately contradicted on the same day by another chief in a neighboring state. These effacings of reality went so far as to include objective evidence. For instance, with an anthropological volume under my arm showing clear photographs of “blackened stools,” one chief defiantly informed me:
“There are no such things as blackened stools! There are no such things and there never were any! That’s a fiction invented by the British to smear us!”
All of this dodging and denying is, of course, aided by the fact that there is no written history. If the Ashanti had a concrete manner of ascertaining what went on yesteryear, they might have escaped the more bizarre aspects of their religion, its more bloodthirsty phases. With a vivid account of what they had done, uncolored by the emotionally charged recital of a “linguist,” they might have been able, perhaps, to remember their bare, objective actions and, in remembering them, they would have been made to pause and wonder, would have been able to get beyond the circling coils of abject fear….
Dr. R. E. Armattoe of Kumasi, an African doctor educated in England and Germany, and who has lived in the United States for a time, told me:
“You have to open your mind to believe that these people believe some of the things that they do believe.”
“Does human sacrifice still exist?”
“It does.”
“It’s hidden, then?”
“Yes; they don’t want the British or outsiders to see or know about it.”
“What do the British do about it?”
“Nothing, as long as it’s kept out of sight.”
“What reasons do the Ashanti offer for doing it now, this killing of innocent people?”
“It’s to appease the dead ancestors. They fear that their ancestors will return.”
“That sounds like a psychological compulsion.”
“Could be.”
“What method do they use in this killing, that is, sacrificing?”
“You see, they have a way of seizing you quickly, running your cheeks and tongue through with a long knife so that you cannot speak. They cut off your head and take your blood in a brass pan and bathe the bones of their ancestors with that blood, mumbling and praying the while:
“‘Dear father, here is some blood for you, to strengthen you….’”
“Do they seem calmer after such deeds?”
“My friend, I’ve never got that close to it…. I can only tell you what they have told me about that part of it. But when they speak of it, they’re exultant, adamant. They get some kind of conviction out of it.”
“Does the mood vanish after the deed, or can you detect traces of it in their everyday life hereabouts?” I asked.
“Well, when you talk to some of these people, you might notice that often they have a calm, abstracted air. That means that even while they are talking to you, they are listening, waiting to hear the advice of their ancestors…. Now, if you should telephone anybody here in Kumasi at night, late—and if that person is an oldtime African—no one will answer your ring until after you’ve rung at least three times.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s said that the dead ring twice. Only a living person will ring three times,” Dr. Armattoe told me.
“Is that, then, why they don’t want to talk about this thing?”
“Yes, and as long as they don’t and can’t talk openly about it, it means that they are still under the spell of it,” he said.
Later, in talking to a British doctor who asked to remain anonymous, I learned that Dr. Armattoe’s words were true.
“We don’t publicly acknowledge it,” the British doctor said. “But we try to interfere as little as possible with the religious habits of these people. Of course, all kinds of persuasion are brought to bear upon the local Africans to stop this business of human sacrifice; but it happens. When a big chief dies, the local police collect a barrel of human heads and haul them, like carting furniture, to
the police stations. What can we do?”
If you fear your ancestor, it’s because, psychologically, you feel guilty of something. But of what? That guilt, no matter how confused or unconscious, stems from one’s having wanted to kill that dead ancestor when he was alive. In the life of the Akan people the thought that is too horrible to think finds its way into reality by identifying itself with the dead ancestors. Killing for that dead ancestor is a way of begging forgiveness of that ancestor; their own murderous conscience assumes the guise of their ancestor’s haunting them….
If the human sacrifice—and that of animals: bulls, sheep, goats, and chickens—does not represent displaced hate of the living, why then is blood the gift that will appease the dead ancestor? The staunch conviction that the dead ancestor wants blood is their inverted confession of their own lust for blood. So they feel that by killing a stranger and bathing the bones of an ancestor in the blood of that stranger, the ancestor will, for the time being, hold off haunting them, will leave them in peace. Through such collective compulsive murders their emotional tensions are resolved.
Their homicidal attitude toward the stranger is evidence of their present but deflected lust to kill the not-yet-quite-dead but prospective ancestor whose edicts they hate deep in their hearts. The tight vise of taboo-ridden tribal life, holding the hearts of simple, non-reflective men in a strait-jacket, finds its apogee of protest, its psychological balance in venting its hate and lustful rebellion upon the stranger, but that stranger is symbolically the living dead which that heart hates and fears. So crime and forgiveness for crime are magically combined in a single act of ritualized violence…. Men whose hearts are swamped by such compounded emotional problems must needs be always at war with reality. Distrust is the essence of such a life.
Black Power Page 33