Traditional leadership in Ghana

[Okyeame Kwame]

Traditional Leaders’ Capability and
Disposition for Democracy:
The Example of Ghana
J. Maxwell Assimeng

1.0 Introduction
The slow growth and often stagnation in Africa's institution-building capacity has
been attributed to numerous factors. Perhaps the most poignant factor has been
perceived as the continent's apparent inability to effectually seek a viable synthesis
between tradition and modernity. Social and political instability has been experienced
by many African countries since the attainment of political independence
from the late 1950s onwards. Such instability has adversely affected the pattern
of economic growth and meaningful modernisation. Meanwhile, the movement
towards global democratisation has found African countries in an apparent hesitant
and ambiguous posture in terms of actual democratic practice. Despite elegant
constitutional formulations that enshrine democratic precepts, the empirical
functioning of democratic institutions has remained problematic. Clearly, such a
problem cannot be examined adequately without a thorough examination of traditional
rule and its appurtenances, and the psychological dispositions of traditional
rulers towards authority and its exercise.
In Ghana, traditional rule finds expression in forms such as religious leadership,
lineage headship, leadership in extended families, and chieftaincy. Chieftaincy is,
however, the fullest expression of traditional rule in its institutionalised form. It
embodies: the cardinal characteristics of prescribed kinship and lineage succession
to office; awe and sacredness of office and office holders; specific forms of
contractual relationships between chiefs and their subjects; and institutionalised
procedures for decision-taking and implementation at the levels of local community
and local participation.
But what kind of democracy might one ascribe to the operation of traditional
rule, and what capability and disposition did traditional leaders have, and continue
to have, for democratic enunciations and practice? What is the role of traditional
rulers in a West African state such as Ghana? And in what ways can traditional
rule contribute to the democratisation process in the country? These and
other questions occupy this paper.

2.0 The Nature and Types of Traditional Rule
The question of the structure of traditional rule, and the extent to which such rule
embodies democratic principles, has engaged the attention of many people for a
long time. This paper contributes to an explication of this issue, as African countries
continue to search for an appropriate place for traditional rule and local participation
in the administration of their countries.
The issue of native rule is historically a worldwide phenomenon, and the situation
in Ghana is not entirely unique. In all known human societies, there are
mechanisms that ensure the prevalence of order and stability, and protect the
boundaries of society from external attack and from internal subversion. There is
also a fair knowledge in human society about those who should – and do – wield
power, the basis upon which such power is wielded, and the consequences of
non-compliance to rules and regulations. There are recognised arrangements for
the distribution of power and authority; there are also recognised mechanisms
that ensure obedience to the normative and generally binding arrangements of the
society. The political institution is seen, in this regard, as one of the functional
prerequisites of a social system (cf. Aberle and others,1950).
According to Radcliffe-Brown’s well known preface to African Political Systems,
“In studying political organisation, we have to deal with the maintenance or
establishment of social order, within a territorial framework, by the organised
exercise of coercive authority through the use or the possibility of the use, of
physical force.”
Social anthropologists who have studied the governmental structure of traditional
communities have usually divided the pattern of such governments into:
• centralised societies; and
• stateless or segmentary lineage societies.
In centralised societies, there is an administrative organisation which serves as the
framework of the political structure and its functioning. Such a centralised administration
or organisation is lacking in societies that we identify as having minimal
government. Centralised societies are properly called “states” and are characterised
by the following:
• a clearly demarcated authority
• administrative machinery
• judicial institutions.
All these go to indicate the existence and working of a government. Here we do
find cleavages of wealth, privileges, and social and political statuses corresponding
to the distribution of wealth and authority.
Stateless societies do not have the above mentioned structures in any sharply
demarcated forms, but this does not imply the absence of mechanisms that ensure
order and stability and regulate relations amongst individuals and social groups.
Nonetheless, the extremely minimal nature of power; and the diffusion of such
power among several virtually autonomous segments of the entire community –
has led to the characterisation of stateless societies. These “tribes without rulers”
include the iKung Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in Namibia, the Tiv of midsouthern
Nigeria, and the Tallensi and Kokomba of Ghana. (c.f. Middleton and
Tait,1958). This characterisation, however, initially appears misconceived; it creates
the impression of the existence of anarchy and chaos in such communities.
Whatever the designation and form of the polity, the point is that in every community
there is need for an institution that will serve to protect the community
against force and fraud, and prevent and try to eliminate tendencies towards arbitrariness
and violence. In addition, it is essential to ensure the fulfillment of legitimate
contracts and of relations which such contracts, verbal or otherwise, established
among human beings. It is within the context of the political institution –
especially in the form of its legal or customary expression – that wrongs are punished,
and disputes settled.

2.1 Traditional rule: diversities of authority
All of the several tribal communities in Ghana possess patterns of instruments for
ensuring territorial independence from external control and for order and cooperation
in their internal affairs. Each community ensures that its integrity as a
community is not jeopardised. Students of political evolution in Ghana have generally
used the Akan and the Tallensi to exemplify:
• a pyramidical political structure, one the one hand; and
• an acephalous, diffused political system, on the other.
The traditional political organisation of Ashanti has been very well studied;
although allusion will be made to the Ashanti in this paper, it should be acknowledged
that works by Busia (1951), Rattray (1921,1929), and Arhin (1985) are yet
to be bettered. Apart from the rather unique role of the Asantehene, and of the
Golden Stool in welding virtually autonomous traditional states and amanhene
together, there is very little in which the Ashanti differ from other Akans in their
political set-up.
But before we examine in detail the nature of the traditional political order in
Ghana as a whole, we need to emphasise some essential notions that have been
inherent in the political order. First, the idea of chieftaincy. According to the late
“The kingly office springs from a period in native history when there was continual
warfare among the different tribes inhabiting the country. The choice of
a king was most probably determined by the personal valour, intelligence and
capability of the individual to lead the forces of the community in times of war.
Such an individual was undoubtedly the best man the community could produce.”
Casely Hayford had noted earlier (ibid, p.32) that:
“At the head of the native state stands prominently the chief (king) who is the
chief magistrate and the chief military leader of the state. He is first in the councils
of the country, and the first executive officer. His influence is only measured
by the strength of his character.”
A second feature is that in the political system of the traditional order, recruit-
ment to office has been by ascription. The process of recruitment has been on the
basis or pattern of clan and lineage relationship. Nevertheless, even among the
matrilineal Akan, for instance, we have examples of stools that are succeeded to
patrilineally. These are known as Maama Dwa, and are occupied only by sons and
grandsons of the stool. Examples are the stools of Ashanti Akropong (near
Kumasi), and Adum (Kumasi). Such stools would have histories peculiar to them.
The third feature of traditional rule is the sacredness of office, and for that matter,
the person of office bearers. Thus offices (and personages) are set apart from
ordinary mundane phenomena.
A fourth feature is that the behaviour pattern of any such chief was hemmed
throughout in tradition, myths and taboos. These in turn served to validate that
the exercise of his authority was mainly through myths and tradition; and owing
to the religious-secular nature of political office, the incumbent was seen as more
than human. In Ghana, this was particularly so in the cases of the Awoamefia of
Anlo, and the Yagbonwura of the Gonja state. A fifth characteristic of traditional
political rule was the significance of age which was regarded as being related to
the level of wisdom that had been attained by an individual. Finally, while incumbents
of office could be questioned about the way the system was manipulated,
rarely did people question the structure of the society and its institutions as such.
In other words, one experienced enough rebellion but scarcely revolutions. The
foregoing features have been enumerated because they have a bearing on the
democratic nature of traditional rule, as we shall examine later in this paper.
Warfare is essential in the understanding of the origin of several political entities
in Ghana, and indeed of traditional state formation as a whole. Several strangers
and slaves were incorporated into tribal “citizenship” for that matter. It was highly
objectionable for a person’s ancestry to be constantly and publicly probed into.
It is in this regard that the chief is said to be a chief of all people in a particular
community irrespective of lineage, clan or place of origin. This is in spite of the
fact that the chief is himself recruited, as in the case of other incumbents of office,
from a certain family or lineage of the society.
The family has, in other words, been the basic unit for recruitment into positions
of chiefship. To a large extent, therefore, the role of the chief was an extension
of the role of the family lineage head. The wider political entity of the village or
the territorial unit was a sort of a family writ large. Society comprised a number
of unilineal ebusua descent groups. As in the case of efiefoo (that is to say, a
household), the larger society was headed by the efiewura or odekuro. The chief
served as the focus of the unit of the community; he used his office to counterbalance
the tendency of each of the lineage groups to seek its own advantage
without reference to the common weal of society as a whole.
Elders on the chief’s council tended to be only interested in the welfare of their
own lineage. Although the chief had his own lineage in the village, it was his duty
and responsibility to reconcile these sectional, and often competing, interests of
the elders. This unifying role, and the subordination of lineages and villages was
symbolically expressed in the chief’s ritual acts as the principal intermediary between
the community as a whole, and the royal ancestral spirits, and for which
the chief sat on a blackened stool. It is incorrect to liken the political structure
and social relations of the Akan social organisation to the feudal experience of
medieval and early modern Europe, as Professor Potekhin (1960) has tried to do.
Not all communities in Ghana possessed the kind of traditional rule with clearly
demarcated authority structure and lines of hierarchy together with an effective
judicial and punitive system. In her instructive analysis of the structures of government
in less complex societies, Lucy Mair (1962:62) makes the following observations:
“Government can be ‘minimal’ in a number of different ways. The political
community, the aggregate of people who look to a common source for decisions
as to how they shall act, may be very small. The number of recognised
positions of leadership may be very small. The extent to which people holding
such positions of either leadership or authority may be very small.”
The onset of colonialism has radically restructured the ritually based political
arrangements. Where chiefs did not exist previously, such as the Tallensi and
Kokomba, chiefs were “appointed” for such communities. Thus this paper concerns
itself mainly with the structure and functioning of traditional rule that has
long historical and mythical antecedence, with the Akan of Ghana as a paradigm.
Let us first define the term “chief”, since that is the term with which much of our
discussions will deal:
“A person elected or selected in accordance with customary usage and recognised
by the Government of Ghana to wield authority and perform functions
derived from tradition or assigned by the central government within a specified
area.” The definition presupposes that two conditions must be satisfied before a person
can be a chief. The first condition is that he must have been selected by his people
– by the kingmakers, to be precise – through the normal traditional procedures.
There were usually a number of contestants in the royal family to choose
from, and the person selected must have had such personal qualities as humility,
generosity, manliness and physical fitness.
The other condition that needed to be fulfilled was that the person elected must
be recognised by the central government. The recognition given by the central
government used to take the form of a publication in the Local Government Bulletin
– normally referred to in official nomenclature as “gazetting”. Gazetting of
chiefs began in the colonial days and was maintained until the promulgation of
the 1992 Constitution. Under the Chieftaincy Act of 1971, for instance, it is
clearly stated that: “No person shall be deemed to be a chief . . . Unless he has been recognised as
such by the Minister by notice published in the Local Government Bulletin.”
Certain advantages flowed from the accordance of official recognition to the person
who was appointed a chief. One was that he received government backing in
the event of a dispute over his occupancy of the office. The second advantage was
that official recognition entitled the incumbent to a monetary allowance from
public funds. While the conferment of official recognition to chiefs bestowed some advantages
it nevertheless carried some disadvantages. The measure could be used, and was
indeed used, by the government to make chiefs subservient to it. As the Memorandum
on the Proposals for a Constitution for Ghana stated: “. . . The perpetuation of this practice . . . Would only tend to make the chiefs mere puppets and playthings in the hands of politicians.”
The CPP Government, for example, used the right to make and unmake chiefs
depending on whether the chiefs supported it or not. The early 1960s saw a spate
of executive instruments which enstooled, destooled, demoted and promoted
chiefs who were either loyal or disloyal to the government. In many cases the
actions of the government went contrary to traditional usage (cf. Kumado,1990-
92: 194-216). We should note, however, that under the 1992 Fourth Republican
Constitution, the power to recognise a chief now lies not with the government,
but with the National House of Chiefs.


2.2 Structure of chieftaincy
There are different classes of chiefs in Ghana and each chief has powers and
authority appropriate to his status. A typical traditional area has a hierarchy of
chiefs. At the lowest level, we have the village chief (the odekro) while at the highest
level, we have the paramount chief (the omanhene). Between these two grades
of chiefs are divisional and sub-divisional chiefs. A member of a particular class
of chiefs is subordinate to the member of the next highest class of chiefs. As
Chalmers, Chief Magistrate and Judicial Assessor of the Gold Coast stated in
1872: “Every village has its headman, who exercises a sort of patriarchal rule over its
few inhabitants; he again, as well as the villagers, is subject to some chief who
has control over three, four or more villages; and this chief is again the subject
of the chief or king of a large district.”
One should also note that a member of a particular class of chief is independent
of, or coterminous in status and authority with the other members of his own
class of chiefs. Thus the Adansihene in Ashanti is equal to, and is never dependent
upon, the Nsutahene in any way. There is, however, an exception to this classification
in the case of the Ashanti. Over and above the paramount chiefs, we have
the Asantehene. Although he is himself the paramount chief of Kumasi, the
Asantehene is acknowledged by the other Ashanti paramount chiefs as superordinate
to them all. The Asantehene, in this sense, is primus inter pares among the paramount chiefs
of the Ashanti Kingdom. The Asantehene has come to be so regarded because historically
he, as the paramount chief of Kumasi, helped to unite all the Ashanti
paramountcies to form a loose confederacy to overthrow an outside enemy.
This pre-eminence of the Asantehene might have been a factor in his election as
the permanent president of the Ashanti Regional House of Chiefs. In contrast to
the Ashanti House of Chiefs, the other Regional Houses of Chiefs rotate the position
of presidency among the member-paramount chiefs. Although the Asantehene
has no jurisdiction outside the Ashanti region, it might be said that the preeminent
position he holds over the Ashanti paramount chiefs might have made
the representatives of all the Regional House of Chiefs elect him as the first
President of the National House of Chiefs in the country.
The perennial disputes between the Ga Mantse, on the one hand, and the La
Mantse, Teshie Mantse and the Nungua Mantse, on the other, relate to a similar
problem where the Ga Mantse, purely out of practice, has become a super-paramount
chief among the paramount chiefs in the Greater-Accra Area. The type of
relationships that exist among the different grades of chiefs in the country has
serious implications for chiefly participation in local administration.
Instead of the chain of command smoothing the relationships among the traditional
rulers, it has rather become a source of dispute among them in various parts
of the country. In many cases, the situation has had a debilitating effect on the
capacity of chiefs to promote development in their areas.

3.0 Chieftaincy in Modern Political Administration
The integration of traditional rule in the modern political order of decentralisation
has been of immense interest to scholars of political participation and social
mobilisation. Thus, an essay on the democratic disposition of traditional rule cannot
avoid a discussion on traditional and modern systems of local administration.
We now know who a chief is and what the structure of chieftaincy is. These
insights should help us understand the role that chiefs should play in local and
national affairs. Our understanding of the role of chiefs may be enhanced if we
also made clear the meaning of the term “local government”. We will steer clear
of textbook formulations and rather consider the thinking or orientation that has
influenced the development of local government systems in Ghana.
On close examination of the historical development of local government in the
country, one can discern two basic orientations. From 1951 to 1959, local government
was conceived largely in terms of the democratic right of the local people
to run their own affairs. This right consisted in the people’s ability to select
their own representatives who then became the policy-makers or law-givers as far
as the affairs of the local areas were concerned. The right also consisted in the
people’s capacity to determine what services to provide, what taxes to impose,
and how the proceeds of these taxes should be used. The type of local government
that obtained then was akin to the British local government system with its
emphasis on the principles of democracy, representation, devolution and responsibility.
This was not surprising since it was from the British that Ghanaians took
their cue for most of the country’s political and constitutional development.
Discounting the hey-days of Nkrumah’s regime when there was virtually no local
government, and looking at the period from 1966 to the mid 1980s, local government
has been conceived more in terms of the efficient administration of services
in the localities, than in terms of affording the local people an opportunity
to exercise their democratic right to govern themselves locally.
There is less emphasis on the words “local” and “government” and more on the
words “efficient” and “administration”, as evidenced by the decision of the Busia
Government to change the name of the Ministry of Local Government to that of
the Ministry of Local Administration.
The decentralised public administrative structure recommended by the Mills-
Odoi Report and the Third Report of the Electoral Commission had much to do
with this orientation. Central and local government structures were fused into
one unit through a process of institutional integration and manpower absorption,
and the distinction between central and local was abolished.
A monolithic structure was set up at the district level, which was given the name
District Authority, and to this authority the whole gamut of government activity
was assigned. Heading this outfit was the district chief executive who was given
wide powers to administer the affairs of the whole district.
This type of local government bore some semblance to the French Prefectural system
which regarded local government agencies as extensions of the central government
to the localities. Since the conception of the district assembly arrangement, however, a non-partisan
but largely elective representation has come to serve as the highest political
structure at the district level. Up to 30% of district assemblymen are appointed
by the President, in consultation with traditional rulers and other identifiable
bodies.

4.0 Democracy in Traditional Rule
The major issues that serve as a basis of this discussion are:
• the extent to which traditional rule in Ghana can be said to be democratic;
and
• the capability and disposition of traditional rulers to be democratic.
These two issues are worthy of discussion because an institution that is democratic
is likely to influence its operatives. It should be noted, however, that an institution
can be democratic without necessarily being operated democratically,
whereas persons with democratic temper could shape the nature and destiny of
institutions even when such institutions have inherent authoritarian tendencies.
Although many of the essential features about traditional rule are interrelated, it
might suffice, in the examination of chieftaincy, to isolate the following features:
• The basis of recruitment.
• The nature of contractual relationships between leaders and subjects.
• Transparency in the operation of leadership, decision-making and implementation.

4.1 Basis of recruitment
In any community where traditional rule is prevalent, there is a clear perception
about who qualifies to rule. In the dominant Akan matrilineal situations, a chief
must hail from one royal clan, or, in case of rotatory kingship, two royal clans.
Any person outside such a royal clan is ineligible for the chiefly status. Thus, in
examining the democratic nature of chiefship, it should be noted that the position
is not available to all able-bodied citizens. In some respects, this arrangement
may vitiate modern, popular notions of democracy.
But there are reasons why citizens do not complain about this apparent exclusivity.
First, there are myths and oral history that legitimise the position of a clan as
a royal clan. In the words of Max Weber (1957), legitimacy to chiefly office is
“through ‘always’ having possessed the authority, the best example being the title
held in monarchical societies” (Lipset,1994:8).
Second, within the royal clan a number of eligibles exist, thus giving rise to competition
for office, and therefore room for choice. It is then up to the citizens to
nominate, elect, and install a candidate who satisfies the aspirations of the citizenry.
Although a queenmother and kingmakers have the right to make their
choice, an unpopular candidate is likely to incur the displeasure of the citizenry.
Should the position of chiefship be open to all clans within the community? That
could be a democratic ideal; but such an ideal could, for instance, come up against
the relationship between chieftaincy and land ownership.

4.2 Contractual relationship between leaders and subjects
In the preceding section, we mentioned installation. A critical feature of installation
to traditional leadership is oath-taking. An oath connotes a solemn declaration,
and in chieftaincy this involves basically a declaration by the chief to:
• serve his people
• seek their advice
• follow customs and tradition, and
• rule with their consent.
Busia (1951:12) provides an example of a typical oath:
“I ask your permission to speak the forbidden oath of Thursday. I am the
grandson (i.e. Descendant) of Anye Amoampong Tabraku. Today you have
elected me: if I do not govern you as well as my ancestors did; if I do not listen
to the advice of my elders; if I make war upon them; if I run away from battle;
then have I violated the oath.” If this oath is broken, the consequence is destoolment. Although destoolment processes are at times complicated, the very potential of destoolment, and the
potential of impeachment (the beginning of destoolment proceedings), are
enough evidence that a chief cannot sit on the necks of his subjects. A chief is tolerated
and adored to the extent that he respects his subjects, and acts as the
embodiment of his subjects’ aspirations. Ghanaian traditional communities are littered
with examples of destooled chiefs.

4.3 Transparency in leadership, decision-making and implementation
There appear to be many myths surrounding the manner in which affairs concerning
the public domain are handled in traditional societies. There is a feeling
of secrecy, especially as such feeling is entertained by those who are far removed
from the administration of traditional rule. The fact of the matter is that all manner of activities affecting public life are exercised in the open. Political and juridical administration is the responsibility of
everyone. The palace of the chief is perpetually open for general discussions of
affairs concerning the community. This is especially in cases of judicial administration where every able-bodied citizen has a right to offer an opinion. Despite the clear existence of hierarchy and
status in such administrations, all kinds of opinion are entertained, vigorously
pursued and subjected to scrutiny. Citizens who cannot make open submissions
speak through their lineage elders, and women generally prefer to speak through
the queenmother.
The preceding notion of hierarchy and the mention of elders should bring us to
a discussion of the asafo companies. Asafo companies constitute the “fighting
bodies” of communities, usually with their own heads of “asafo chiefs”. In no system
of traditional rule can the asafo companies, under whatever form of designation,
be ignored. Generally their consent is needed in matters such as payment
of levies, communal labour, and, as was the case in pre-modern times, in decisions
on warfare. As Busia (1951:9) has noted: “The commoners or young men (mmerante), as they are called in Ashanti, played an important part in election. They would come as members of their
respective lineages, but they also formed an unofficial body having a recognised
and effective way in which they expressed their will, not only about the election
of the chief, but on all matters effecting the tribe.” It will not be too accurate to regard the asafo companies as “opposition” groups to the rule of elders. Instead, a more accurate designation is to regard them as
integral with, and supplementary to, the efforts of traditional rulers.

5.0 Democracy, Traditional Rule, Political Culture and Modernisation
The quotation with which this paper began emanates from Professor George Aryittey,
a Ghanaian Professor of Economics at the American University in Washington
D.C.. His sentiment represents a reflection of the anger and frustration with
which African intellectuals and foreign sympathisers view what they perceive as
reverses in the continent’s democratisation process. Obviously, the quotation
needs to be examined against the socio-political context of the African modern
state. Such an expression, however, also provides a sad repetition of the erroneous
impressions which some travellers and pseudo-anthropologists entertained
about the nature of rule of famous traditional leaders such as the Ooni of Ife, the
Oba of Benin and the Asantehene of Ghana. As far as traditional rule in Ghana is
concerned, in none of the analyses (Busia,1951; Adu Gyamfi Ampem,1994; Danquah,
1952; Assimeng, 1981) is there any evidence that a traditional ruler can persist
in ruling when he has lost his or her legitimacy.
Although the traditional manners of government look awesome and fearful when
seen from outside, and although the pomp and pageantry around the leaders
make them look impregnable, a closer study reveals otherwise. Indeed, in many
regards traditional rulers appear as loving slaves to their office. There is no movement
of theirs which is not controlled by custom, tradition and taboo. In palace
deliberations, for instance, the chief talks last – and what he says is usually a summary
of what has been said by other elders and counsellors. Besides, the traditional
leader only speaks through a linguist, a titled palace official versed in customary
usages and oratory. In such regards, any tendency to depart from consensus
decisions will be straightened out by the linguist in the course of his presentations.
Thus, we should generally characterise traditional rule – the way Danquah (1928:
12) has done – as a form of government “lying midway between absolute monarchy
and monarchical democracy”.
Since the paper examines the capacity and disposition of leaders for democratic
practice, let us examine the psychological position of the leaders themselves and
the social circumstances in which they operate. In doing this, it seems appropriate
to examine traditional leaders in the olden times and occupants of traditional
leadership office presently. Chiefship positions in the olden days were usually occupied by elderly people
who were also mostly illiterate, but who were imbued with wisdom and could be
trusted to hold customs and traditions very dear. The ritual side of chiefship thus
found an exact fit with the traditional beliefs of such people who were, mostly,
neither Christian nor Islamic. To such people, the ritual roles of propitiating
blackened stools and skins provided no challenge to modernist beliefs concerning
paganism or animism. In addition, the wealth of the chief was made up of stool
farms as well as obligatory gifts of food, wine and specific parts of meat through
hunting. Just as wealth converged on the palace from several sources, so also did
every citizen have the right to subsist on the largesse of the chief. The chief’s
house, in other words, was always open.
The modern situation of chiefship incumbency is different. Chiefs are now literate
and modern. They now compete favourably with the new pattern of status
ranking and mobility aspirations in Ghanaian society. A recent stool at Asante
Mampong – a traditional area said to be second in status to the position of
Asantehene (in the Ashanti region) – is said to have attracted the following candidates:
university registrar, university lecturer, a medical officer (believed to be
practicing in the USA) and a prominent Accra businessman (Ghanaian Times,
Saturday, 24 August 1996, p1). Eventually the university registrar succeeded in
ascending to the stool.
The present crop of chiefs in Ghana now come from educational and professional
backgrounds that differ markedly from the mainly illiterate background of previous
chiefs. Paramount chiefs now have professions such as accountancy, law,
education, medicine, engineering and administration. Correspondingly, they have
more personal income than their forebears. But might this new spirit of modern enlightenment and possible financial autonomy predispose them to more democratic tendencies? Certainly, the three-tier
operation of chieftaincy in Ghana now appears more open, with deliberations
documented transparently in the form of minutes. At the traditional councils,
Regional Houses of Chiefs, and the National House of Chiefs, much openness is
now evident. Even at the judicial committees of these organisations, where the
most contentious litigations are constantly handled, appellate rights of litigants lie
up to the Supreme Court. Thus free judiciary can be said to exist, although
obtaining such justice can be rather costly and contortuous.
There have been instances, however, where many an Omanhene has revolutionised
the traditional judiciary system by insisting that cases be heard and disposed
of without much delay. Many traditional courtiers of course object to such
“justice delayed, justice denied” posturing. This is because they make their living
mostly out of the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring at the traditional courts.
Modernity in traditional rule is also accompanied by greater accountability and
even greater public interest in traditional rule. Because of the contemporary stress
on local initiative in development issues, traditional rulers are now effective part-
ners with district assemblies and local non-governmental agencies. In such concerted
efforts at development, negative and conservative orientations that characterised
traditional rule in yesteryears are now completely eschewed.
We are now left with the question of capability and disposition of democracy in
traditional rule. Here, we may perhaps gloss over the contentious assertion of
Sartori (1972:112) that democracy “is rather a by-product of the entire development
of Western civilisation”. The question that is addressed is: is traditional rule
democratic? The corollary to that is, on the assumption that traditional rule is not
democratic, does it have the capability for becoming democratic?
The status of a democratic polity is measured differently by different social and
political analysts. It might be a rewarding exercise if one could posit and refine
conceptually some essential categories in the definition of democracy. A research
instrument could then be operationalised and used to elicit from subjects under
traditional rulers an evaluation of the degree of democracy they perceive in such
rulers. But insofar as the entire Ghanaian polity is undergoing a democratisation
process (cf. Inkeles 1991:67-72) there is no way in which traditional rule or any
other kind of rule, can insulate itself from the wider process. Even if traditional
rule and its sacred features appear undemocratic, there is no doubt that – with
increasing education of incumbents and citizenry, socio-economic differentiation
at local level economies, growing secularisation of office, as well as attempts to
distinguish office from office bearers – one can begin to expect the enhancement
of democratic protocols in traditional rule.
Forms of rule – traditional, religious, political, etc. – can be democratic to the
extent that the political culture of the wider society is democratic. One might thus
conclude on the poignant note of Lipset (1994:3): “Democracy requires a supportive culture, the acceptance by the citizenry andpolitical elites of principles underlying freedom of speech, media, assembly,
religion, of the rights of opposition parties, of the rule of law, of human rights,
and the like . . . Such norms do not evolve overnight.”



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