Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2001)
ISSN: 1530-5686
LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!: THE YAA ASANTEWAA CENTENARY AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY
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Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2001) ISSN: 1530-5686 LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!: THE YAA ASANTEWAA CENTENARY AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY |
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Lynda R. Day
In the fall of 1999, I went to Kumase, Ghana as a Fulbright professor to teach two history courses at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. As a lecturer in African history, I was of course familiar with the Ashanti queenmother, Yaa Asantewaa’s last ditch effort to preserve Asante sovereignty in the Yaa Asantewa War of 1900, and I looked forward to visiting her town and gaining a better understanding of the cultural and historical context of her resistance struggle. As I expressed an interest in finding out more about Yaa Asantewaa, colleagues in my department informed me that preparations were then underway to celebrate the centenary of Yaa Asantewaa’s war in July and August of the next year. A committee had been formed and numerous experts and community representatives had come together to organize an ambitious commemorative event. I was invited to come to committee meetings and lend whatever expertise I might have to offer. Honored, I attended as many meetings as I could to both learn and share as much as possible. I hoped that my experience in planning cultural programs for the public would help me to bring something to the group. As an African American woman, I saw Yaa Asantewaa as one of my own cultural foremothers who should by all means receive her due recognition in the year of the centenary of her sacrifice. I was heartened by the idea that Yaa Asantewaa could generate so much interest and energy on the part of so many people who were not even historians.
It seemed clear that the year 2000, the centenary of Yaa Asantewa’s struggle to preserve Asante sovereignty, marked a new threshold in defining the legacy of the Ejisu queen. The centenary provided an opportunity for her public persona to be recognized, examined, and placed in the context of Asante history and by extension, the history of Ghana as a whole. The interpretation of Yaa Asantewaa’s place in history had s varied in each historical epoch. In the early days of the imposition of colonial rule and while she was still alive in the Seychelles as a political prisoner, the official narrative defined her as a dangerous subversive. No statues were allowed to be erected of her. The man who betrayed her was rewarded with the Ejisu stool and an impressive carved throne sent shipped to Ejisu by Queen Victoria herself. During the decades when colonial rule was ascendant, derisive songs were sung about her emphasizing how she had lost the war and run away to hide. Independence from colonial rule and the African liberation struggles of the 1960s, however, supported the narrative of Yaa Asantewaa as anti-colonial resister. The 1960 opening of girls’ secondary school named after her was an important mark of a newfound respect for Ejisu queenmother. But many of those who commented on the current fascination with Nana Yaa Asantewaa acknowledged that for much of the previous century, little attention had been paid to her.
Indeed, since most of the facts surrounding her life are sketchy and many of the events which made her famous are disputed or shrouded in myth, why has the Ejisu queen generated so much admiration? What shared or re-created memory of the queen has raised her to such a high level of recognition and acclaim? It is certainly true that under her supervision, an Ashanti army surrounded the English fort and the Governor’s party and cut them off from relief supplies or reinforcements for six months. But one re-telling of her role describes her as sitting on a shrouded horse in front of the fort with her face partly smeared with blood and clay, carrying a rifle in one hand and a chopping knife in the other, insulting the soldiers within the fort and challenging them to come out and fight. Others have suggested that as the designated Asante sahene (war leader) she directed the conduct of the campaign from afar and that she probably never went near the fort.1
Whatever the exact details may be of what she did in the war, the Yaa Asantewaa story has become a text which a wide variety of political actors interpret for their own purposes. This historical figure has come to represent many things to many people. She may be seen variously as an anti-colonial guerilla fighter, a role model for Black Women everywhere, a conservative royalist attempting to restore an outmoded imperial system, an African feminist, an antagonist to global capitalist expansion, a Ghanaian heroine, an Asante nationalist par excellence. By the centenary year, the Yaa Asantewaa legacy had crossed so many boundaries and had become so useful to so many people that the commemorative had become a vehicle for furthering a wide range of interests and agendas. And though several positive aims were core goals of the committee, it quickly became clear that numerous viewpoints and agendas, some of them contradictory, were being advanced through their work.2 As a result, many centenary events became sites of contested historical discourse. This paper seeks to explore the social construction of historical memory in the context of the development and execution of the Yaa Asantewaa commemorative activities in the Ashanti Region from 1999 through August 2000.
In spite of the many contradictions subsumed in the work of the Centenary Committee, each sub-committee worked very hard, and in August of 2000, the Yaa Asantewaa celebration was launched with great fanfare in the region and in the country at large. The weeklong celebration included a wide range of components, some of which were planned just for the launching, and others which were planned as projects slated for expansion in the future. The scheduled events included an international conference, a football match, the opening of the Yaa Asantewaa museum, a mass rally of women, a funeral and re-interment of Yaa Asantewaa’s remains, an interdenominational church service, a tour of the craft villages in the region, a mock battle at the Army Museum, a concert, a play, a beauty pageant, a gala dinner dance, and a book launching.
One of the dichotomies which the centenary event planning embodied were the competing interests of the national government and its National Democratic Congress (NDC) party on the one hand and those of the Ashanti region on the other. Several mediating vectors linked the two polar opposites however, demonstrating the myriad ways that political interests can converge and diverge simultaneously.
The composition of the Yaa Asantewaa Centenary Celebration Planning Committee reflected this duality. The working committee that convened from September 1999 through August 2000 was a hybrid of an earlier seven member committee that had been sponsored by the Asantehene, and more that a dozen other people that had been brought together by the Ashanti Regional Minister, an NDC stalwart and government appointee. The group that had been working under the auspices of the Asantehene had been asked by him to join the Regional Minister’s committee and thereby demonstrate a united effort to organize an ambitious multi-faceted program.
The need to demonstrate a united front reflected a desire to blunt long- standing and on-going tensions between the central government and the Ashanti Region, one that judicious, responsible leaders like the Asantehene and the Ashanti Regional Minister sought at every occasion to downplay. Nevertheless, the Yaa Asantewaa project as sponsored by the local representatives of the national government, embodied an inherent contradiction. To many people of the region, there was an inherent contradiction in celebrating a woman who resisted British rule since to many of them, and perhaps to the country at large, the national government is the successor to British colonial authority. From this perspective, Yaa Asantewaa could be seen as an oppositional force to the authority imposed by any government from Accra, from the south, from the Coast.
Positioning an Asante queenmother, though one long dead, as a national heroine carried inherently positive and negative consequences for the NDC, with both opportunities for political gain and potential minefields of political disaster. (For example, suspicion regarding the real support of the NDC government for the Yaa Asantewaa commemoration was raised when in the middle of the year, the popular Ashanti Regional Minister who had been promoting the project, was removed and replaced). On the one hand, focusing on the heroism and sacrifice of Yaa Asantewaa might stoke Asante nationalism, a constant source of unease for the party of Rawlings who had won election in 1992 and 1996 with little support from the Ashanti region. What if massively promoting and honoring a fighting Asante queenmother fired Asante nationalism and re-kindled its dormant fighting spirit? On the other hand, by casting Yaa Asantewaa as a national heroine, one given unqualified support by the government, could potentially tie the Asante more closely to the grand narrative of Ghanaian national purpose and patriotism.3
Interestingly enough, Jerry Rawlings and his wife Nana Konadu had already subtly undermined any strictly regional/ethnic claims by embracing the Yaa Asantewa legacy. since coming into office in 1979. Rawlings’ revolutionary rhetoric, and his own interest in distancing himself from the earlier corrupt bureaucracies that marked the succession of civilian and military governments since independence, had made it natural to identify himself with Yaa Asantewaa’s anti-colonial struggle. The members of the Yaa Asantewaa family related that they had never received any national recognition before Jerry Rawlings came to the funeral of their ancestor, the granddaughter of Yaa Asantewaa who died in the early 80’s. They were proud to show a visitor the photo taken of young-looking Jerry Rawlings in his military uniform at the bedside of Yaa Asantewaa’s granddaughter laid in state.4 Furthermore, in naming his daughter after Yaa Asantewaa, Rawlings had also effectively claimed this woman as his own family ancestor and had extracted her out of the ethnic particularity of Asanteness.
The potential for good or ill in the political fortunes of the NDC by focusing on an Asante heroine was especially pointed in 2000, an election year in which the twenty-year leadership of Jerry Rawlings would legally came to an end. If it were possible to garner support for the NDC in the Ashanti Region, such support could make all the difference in whether the NDC’s presidential candidate, Dr. Attah Mills, would have a good chance at succeeding in the elections, scheduled for December of that year.
Many of the maneuvers on the committee centered on ways in which the NDC and the First Lady Nana Konadu Rawlings would be represented or spotlighted during the festivities. For example, the event described as a “Durbar of Women,” while purporting to mobilize the masses of women in the Ashanti region and focus on their needs as well as their strengths, was at the same time an event which was organized through NDC’s affiliated women’s organizations, particularly the 31st December Women’s Movement, the NGO spearheaded by the First Lady and widely regarded as an organ of the NDC. Another large event, indeed the largest in terms of attendance, was the opening of the Yaa Asantewaa Museum at Ejisu on Thursday August 3, 2000. The opening day of the museum attracted a crowd of thousands, including a significant number of tourists and dozens and dozens of dignitaries. Musicians and dancers performed for hours in front of the appreciative crowd.
The special guest of honor was the First Lady, who had also brought two of her daughters, including the one named Yaa Asantewaa, to grace the occasion. The First Lady herself unveiled the bust of Yaa Asantewaa, which had been especially commissioned for the day. She was also the keynote speaker along with the Ashanti Regional Minister, the District Chief Executive, and the Offinsomanhene, the traditional ruler who is considered the patron of the town of Ejisu.
In some ways the support of the Nana Konadu Rawlings in uplifting the memory of Yaa Asantewaa could have meant much to the people of the region and could perhaps have endeared her to them through the Yaa Asantewaa project. First, everyone knew that the Rawlings’ had named one of their daughters Yaa Asantewaa, and having brought the daughter with her to the opening of the museum underscored the cultural and ancestral connection they had made. It was widely known that the elder Rawlings children were schooling in England, so bringing two of them to the event was an important gesture of respect for the ancestral roots while it humanized the First Lady by highlighting her role as a mother. Second, Mrs. Rawlings’ had demonstrated her personal interest in Yaa Asantewaa and support for the centenary celebration by personally going to the Seychelles on a quest for artifacts and information relating to Nana Yaa Asantewaa. And finally, her personal, and perhaps financial, commitment to the Yaa Asantewa legacy was unassailable with reports that the First Lady had commissioned a large scale Yaa Asantewaa statue which was being designed and cast in China. This statue was to be the centerpiece of a long-range project to landscape the park next to the Army museum and make it an attractive and tourist-friendly open space. Such an enormous undertaking, with its international dimension, was an awe-inspiring statement of the First Lady’s vision, power, and sense of duty.
Another manifestation of the duality of national consciousness versus regional sensibilities and the politics of the Yaa Asantewa legacy was the corollary event planning of the Asante Congress, which met during the first week in August in Kumasi as well. This was the second annual Asante Congress, attracting over one thousand representatives from Ghana as well as Europe and the United States. The theme of this year’s Congress was “Celebrating the Vision and Heroism of Yaa Asantewaa.” In spite of an agreement to coordinate the two programs and run one large series of programs, the Asante Congress planned many of its own events under that theme.5
Many good faith efforts on both sides were made to cooperate so that none of the events of the two groups would overlap or otherwise be in conflict, but in the end, the two series of events ran parallel and only occasionally converged as part of a single coordinated effort. One rather large-scale event, a gala dinner dance, which had been discussed as a sponsored event of the coordinating committee, in the end was held as an Asante Congress event. A major address by a United States based Ghanaian scholar was given during the week of the Centenary celebration, but as part of the Congress events. A long anticipated book offering original research on the exile of King Prempeh I and the Yaa Asantewaa War was launched the same week, but sponsored by the Asante Congress and not the Centenary Coordinating Committee.
Even though the activities of the two weeklong events did not always dovetail, the message regarding Yaa Asantewa was essentially the same. Speeches given by dignitaries during the Asante Congress stressed many of the same themes heard in other venues. Yaa Asantewa was hailed as a great Pan Africanist, leader of a cultural war, a “symbol of hope” for the dispossessed in African and the Diaspora. It was hoped that her qualities of bravery and sacrifice would inspire the youth of today to act accordingly. Intensified education for the girl child “to embrace the ideals of Yaa Asantewaa” was the call of the keynote speaker on the subject. And Otumfuo, the Asantehene seemed to be referring to her when he remarked that “Asante has a history that engenders a spirit of nation building, brotherliness, sacrifice, and devotion to the common good.”6
In spite of some miscues and behind the scenes wrangling, the events of the week demonstrated that the Yaa Asantewaa narrative could be successfully appropriated by both strongest proponents of Asante regional identity and by representatives of the prevailing political party.
One of the most complicated and thorniest sites of Yaa Asantewaa’s historical representation appeared in Ejisu, hometown of the Asante queenmother. Many of the complexities of Yaa Asantewaa’s public persona emerged from the intertwined political roles played by the leadership of the town. Most prominent of these figures was the Ejisuhene (Ejisu ruler) who chaired the Centenary Celebration Planning Committee and was its principal advocate and spokesperson. Ironically, however, for years the Ejisu king had been cool to projects that would have boosted the Yaa Asantewa legacy. For example, the Yaa Asantewa museum and tourist village, its architectural drawings long on file at the Ghana Tourist Board, had been proposed years before. But the king had not lent his support, and without the support of the Ejisuhene, such plans could not go forward.
Indeed, for many years leading up to the Centenary year, tensions had been simmering between the Ejisu king and the Yaa Asantewa House. In fact, the elders of the Yaa Asantewa House had actively contested his right to hold the stool resulting in costly litigation for both sides. But by the centenary year, the king had become a staunch supporter of the Yaa Asantewa legacy. In 1999, the king had agreed to head up the Centenary Coordinating Committee, probably at the urging of the Ashanti Regional Minister who had constituted the official government-sponsored planning group. He now actively backed any infrastructural improvements that were made or anticipated in the name of Yaa Asantewaa. Perhaps he had become convinced of the benefits of a tourist village, since ultimately the success of any tourist ventures would bring recognition and income to the town and by extension to the stool.
The museum and tourist village project were actively supported by the Regional Minister, the District Chief Executive and ultimately the Ejisuhene. The ground was broken for the tourist village in March? When it is completed, the tourist village is expected to contain not only the museum, but shops, restaurants, and a hotel. It is hoped that the tourist village will necessitate, and help pay for, infrastructure development such as improved access roads, better lighting, expanded plumbing and toilet facilities, and improved signage in the town.
During the centenary year, the Ejisuhene made a critical political decision which irrevocably tied his fortunes to that of the Yaa Asantewaa house. For many years, the stool of the female ruler of Ejisu had remained vacant. After much public speculation about whom he would choose for this key position in his administration, early in the centenary year, he finally chose a queen to sit on the long vacant stool. With excitement and anticipation growing to high emotional levels in the town, he chose a daughter of the Yaa Asantewaa House then living in America. The young woman was enstooled in February 2000, with the new stool name, Yaa Asantewaa II. The elders of the Yaa Asantewaa house, thrilled with the honor, insisted that since the choice had been made, “peace had been restored in the town.”7
By the centenary year, the king had clearly chosen to enthusiastically promote the name of Yaa Asantewaa and to claim as close an affiliation as possible to her life and legacy. While coordinating all the week’s myriad activities, the Ejisuhene devoted most of his energies to the most ambitious event sponsored by the Centenary Coordinating Committee, the funeral and reinterrment of the remains of Yaa Asantewaa scheduled for Friday of that week. As Chief Mourner, the Ejisuhene was responsible for running an event that attracted thousands of people including dozens of dignitaries and tourists who had travelled to Ejisu from Accra for the day. In coordinating the huge funeral, with himself cast as chief mourner, the king had positioned himself to declare Yaa Asantewaa his own “grandmother” and thus establish a close familial tie. Furthermore claimed to be the guardian of her “mortal remains,” thus placing himself closer to the body than any other person including her direct descendents.
One of the most important economic goals of re-invigorating the Yaa Asantewaa story and bringing it to the forefront of public consciousness through the centenary celebration, was to simultaneously launch a semi-annual festival to boost tourism in the Ashanti region. In an economic climate where tourism is the third largest foreign exchange earner, all stakeholders agree that packaging history for tourists contains enormous potential as an income generating activity. Tourism is already Ghana’s third leading foreign exchange earner, after minerals and cocoa. Mike Gizo, the former Minister of Tourism, in a speech in July of 2000, noted that 350,000 foreigners visited the country in 1999 and generated 340 million dollars for Ghana’s economy. The Minister projected that by 2010, Ghana would host approximately one million visitors generating an income of 1.5 billion cedis.8 The revival or creation of festivals is a key component in the strategy to attract tourists and lead to sustainable local development.
One sector that garnered direct governmental attention was in the policies with regard to tourism. In a climate where tourism is the third largest foreign exchange earner, promoting history to tourists looms large as an income generating activity and during the centenary year had become the focus of government officials at every level.9 The many activities sponsored or launched by government officials demonstrate how historical figures can take their place alongside gold and cocoa as national treasures to be touted, cherished, guarded, and sold. It is clear that all over the world, historic re-creation is a key component in boosting sustainable tourism. Of course marketing history is not without precedent, since packaging and promoting historical figures and historic sites is a tried and true technique.
All over the world, representations of history are subject to the interpretations and needs of the current moment. Historical accuracy may very well be sacrificed in the interests of promoting tourism or for maintaining the current political status quo.10 For the re-creation of the Yaa Asantewaa story similar or comparable historical compromises had to be made. For example, it was conveniently omitted from speeches and press releases that many kings did not join Yaa Asantewaa in her dramatic resistance movement. The man who betrayed Yaa Asantewaa to the British and was then appointed the Ejisu stool-holder was never mentioned. The museum building which is presented as a representation of her residence is not interpreted for the presence of slaves, though it is widely known that she had them.
The mock battle at the fort during the centenary week of the celebration demonstrated the myriad ways in which history can be packaged for a multitude of socially useful purposes. In many ways this event encapsulated the issues I addressed at the outset of this paper, and serves as an interesting nexus for considering such events for their value as history, and their potential for promoting a variety of politically motivated goals.
One way to consider the “mock battle” as it was constructed, is that it functioned more as a vehicle for building a consciousness of Ghanaian nationhood than as a mechanism for promoting tourism, and certainly more than as a mechanism for re- creating historical accuracy. Though some may have been afraid that the event would stoke the embers of Ashanti nationalism, the omnipresent role played by the regular Ghanaian army, led by a northern general, made this a government sponsored event, a national event. The government goal of women’s empowerment, as commonly articulated by the First Lady, was central to the program. The very public coverage of the afternoon’s events, with the many national and regional dignitaries, and GTV video cameras guaranteeing a national television audience, lifted the Asantes’ war against the British out of the realm of local legend and into the ranks of national myth. The staging of the mock battle ensured that a broad spectrum of Ghanaian society could be self-reflectively proud of its history.
To begin with, the mock battle was a fascinating and effective presentation of history as entertainment. The beating of the war drums quickened the pulse of the hundreds of observers and heightened our anticipation of the battle to come. The loud crackle and rattle of the muskets and the deafening sound of the cannons alternately startled, frightened, and amused the crowd. The sight of the “warriors” dressed in their smocks with their faces painted, their ancient but very fierce-looking guns charging the fort with no visible means of defense against the booming cannons being fired from within elicited our admiration and sympathy. Furthermore, the re-creation informed us, with no need for narration, why, at least on military grounds, a frontal assault on the fort was a heroic but ultimately losing venture. The numerous “wounded” men being carried off the field of battle after every cannon blast dramatized the losses the Asante people suffered for the dream of maintaining their independence.
One of the political goals of the government and the NDC, that of fostering women’s empowerment or highlighting women’s issues was admirably and perhaps considerably enhanced by the brilliant exhibition by the Yaa Asantewaa Girl’s High School Drill team. The discipline and skill they demonstrated with their crisp and complex moves made it abundantly clear that young women have the talent to perform well in areas of endeavor stereotypically restricted to men. And of course the subtext of the role of women in war or at least of one woman war leader was updated by the inclusion of the young women in modern military uniforms carrying modern weaponry. Having them as a “curtain raiser” to the mock battle, transformed the historical thematic subtext of a woman at war into a contemporary message of women’s empowerment, thus promoting a current goal of social and political policy. In this way, the program became a vehicle for making the past immediately relevant both to the present and to the future.
Another perhaps indirect effect of the spectacle was to raise the visibility of the Fort in the consciousness of the general public. Though billed as an event for tourists, there were in fact very few tourists in attendance. However, it may be more important that the event sustained the rapt attention of a couple of thousand Kumasi residents for several hours. In this way it very admirably had the effect of transmitting historical knowledge and awareness to the general public. It was good public relations for the army who trained the volunteers and conducted the “battle,” as well as for the Yaa Asantewaa Girl’s High School who not only fielded the excellent drill team, but who demonstrated their courage “under fire,” as the girls portrayed Asante warriors attacking the fort.
The depiction of the remarkably spry and agile “60” year old Queen Asantewaa, as played by a lithe 18 year old student problemitizes the question of the re-creation of historical memory. Will those who observed the “battle” now say with confidence that Yaa Asantewaa led the troops in battle? She was there in trousers and battle dress, carrying and shooting a musket. Is this the way the public wants to see their heroine? Would a tiny elderly woman not fit the bill as the Asante war leader? And did she have to be shown “in action?” Could this depiction serve the goal of drawing tourists to the dramatic spectacle? Was the goal of historical re-creation sacrificed to the needs of the tourists, to those of the public?
The many events of the Yaa Asantewaa Centenary Celebration used historical re-creation to reclaim history’s potential for empowering today’s community. Many of the events or programs took liberties with historical accuracy, but whether consciously or unconsciously, they used those interpretations in such a way as to make history advance the larger social goals of the moment. Several goals were being targeted: enhanced political legitimacy and popularity for the NDC in the Ashanti Region, attention to girl- child education, increased tourist revenue, enhanced legitimacy for the current Ejisu stool- holder, and recognition and honor to the family members of the Yaa Asantewa House. Thus, even though gross revisions may have crept into the representation of public history, it may be that it still met the purposes for which that history is meant to be applied.
The Yaa Asantewaa Centenary Celebration served as a node of historical re- creation through which policy-makers in the region attempted to self-consciously define “Asanteness” and make it relevant to universal grand narratives of nation- building, pan-Africanism, and women’s empowerment. The centenary became an opportunity to construct a history and culture that is meaningful both to the people of the Ashanti region as well as the many visitors they expect to come and be consumers of that culture.
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Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc.
Citation Format
Day, Lynda R. (2001). LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!: THE YAA ASANTEWAA CENTENARY AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: 1, 2.