Word: ashantis
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Under the law his powers were limited, but no one could have made more use of them. Like Ghana's Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, who has waged relentless war against the traditional tribal power of the Ashanti chiefs in his homeland, Toure tackled the tribalism that plagues all of Africa. He summoned the French commandants de cercle-the French equivalent of the British district commissioners -asked them what they thought of the chiefs who were running Guinea's 240 cantons. The commandants were delighted to help: this chief was lazy, that one corrupt. As a matter of fact...
Tasseled Umbrella. Nkrumah has moved more cautiously, but just as effectively, against the nation's No. 1 chieftain, Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyeman Prempeh II, the Asantehene or King of the Ashanti. His rich cocoa-growing and gold-mining territory furnishes the bulk of Ghana's revenue, and in the days before independence his well-stuffed treasury financed the political opposition to Nkrumah. But the Asantehene has lost the support of his young men, who prefer modern politicking to ancient tribal loyalties, and is increasingly worried by governmental investigations into the management of land and property under his control...
...Rhodesias (where there are more white settlers), insisted that the Colonial Office continue to rule Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland until the two countries were ready for independence. When the federation went through, Banda sold his practice, moved to the Gold Coast, to Kumasi in the land of the Ashanti. There he became a friend of Kwame Nkrumah and an admirer of Ghana's fight for independence. Finally, this year, he decided that the time had come for him to go home and become a Nkrumah to his people...
Even the powerful Asantehene, King of the Ashanti, whose golden stool is believed to have come down from heaven, was not too big for the Prime Minister. Over the months, Nkrumah has created six new senior chiefs in Ashanti to challenge the Asantehene's rule, is now ready with a bill to set up, in accordance with the constitution, Houses of Chiefs to act as advisers to the government. When the bill becomes law, the Asantehene will lose his absolute power to make and break his own vassal chiefs. He will be merely the titular head of an advisory...
...storm of anxious outcry among Britons who had most ardently urged Ghana's readiness to take its place in the British Commonwealth of Nations. But Nkrumah persisted, and last month was rewarded when his party gained a surprise majority in local elections in Kumasi, the traditional stronghold of Ashanti opposition. The chiefs' hold was broken, and Ghanaians appear to have accepted the change with no more than a murmur...