Ethnic Land Rights in Western Ghana: Landlord–Stranger Relations in the Democratic Era

Ethnic Land Rights in Western Ghana:Landlord–Stranger Relations in the Democratic Era

Catherine Boone and Dennis Kwame Duku

ABSTRACT

In Citizen and Subject (1996), Mahmood Mamdani denounced the ‘bifurcatednature’ of the African state which, in his account, imposed ethnic hierarchyand chiefly despotism on rural dwellers while reserving democratic citizen-ship for the urban minority. Have twenty years of ‘decentralized democracy’in many countries washed away these distinctions? This article takes up thisissue in an analysis of the politics of land allocation and landlord–stranger re-lations in Western Ghana. An analysis of historical trajectories, and our ownfield observations and interviews in two Western Region districts, suggestthat at the local level, the bifurcated character of political authority that wasidentified by Mamdani persists in the domain of economic rights. The recordalso shows that state policies and institutions, rather than working to chipaway at ethnic hierarchy and chiefly authority, work at least in part to repro-duce these features of the local political economy. In both non-democraticand democratic eras, Ghana’s central government has played an importantrole in shoring up chiefly and ethnic privilege in the land domain. Theselocal hierarchies influence the practical meaning of democracy and economicliberalization for rural citizens, and should be explored more systematicallyin future studies of democratic and electoral politics in Ghana and elsewhere.

INTRODUCTION

In Citizen and Subject (1996), Mahmood Mamdani denounced the ‘bifur-cated nature’ of the African state which, Mamdani argued, imposed ethnichierarchy and chiefly despotism on rural dwellers while reserving demo-cratic citizenship for the urban minority. It is fair to ask whether twentyyears of democratic politics in Africa, and even ‘decentralized democracy’in many countries, have had any impact on these distinctions. In this article

We would like to acknowledge support for this research from the Long Chair in DemocraticStudies at the University of Texas at Austin, and from the American Council of Learned So-cieties, which provided funding that launched the project in 2006. Professors James Essegbeyof the University of Florida, Gainesville, and Beatrix Allah-Mensah of the University of Ghanaprovided invaluable support. The authors thank those in Western Region who gave their timeand effort to further this work, as well as the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for theirexcellent contributions. Thanks also to Dr John V. Cotter of St Edward’s University in Austin,Texas, who drew the map.Development and Change 43(3): 671–693. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2012.01778.xC© 2012 International Institute of Social Studies.Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA

672 Catherine Boone and Dennis Kwame Duku

we look to Ghana — one of the most celebrated and successful of Africa’snew democracies — as a bellwether case in this regard. The emergence ofa relatively strong democratic regime at the national level in Ghana would,presumably, be mirrored in steady movement toward more liberal politicaleconomies at the local level. Movement toward more liberal local politicaleconomies in Ghana could be taken as both an effect and a cause of thedeepening of the nation-wide democratic transition, and could perhaps alsobe taken as a harbinger of similar developments elsewhere.

This article takes up this issue in an analysis of the politics of land al-location and landlord–stranger relations in Western Ghana. The analysis ofhistorical trajectories as documented in the secondary literature, and ourown field observations and interviews in two Western Region districts, sug-gest that at the local level, the bifurcated character of state authority thatwas identified by Mamdani persists in the domain of economic rights. Theempirical record also shows that state policies and state institutions, ratherthan working to chip away at ethnic privilege and chiefly authority, work tohelp reproduce these features of the local political economy. In both non-democratic and democratic eras, Ghana’s central government has played animportant role in shoring up chiefly and ethnic privilege in the land domain.1

The first section of the article shows how Western Ghana’s chieftaincy-centred land tenure regime structured the settlement history of this region,and tracks the effects of perceptions of growing land scarcity on landlord–stranger relations in this part of Ghana. The second section shows how,under growing land pressure, chiefs and indigenes have succeeded in rollingback or narrowing the acquired land rights of ethnic strangers. The thirdsection underscores the role that the central government has played in theshoring up of the land rights of chiefs and ‘ethnic insiders’ at the expenseof the acquired rights of ‘ethnic outsiders’. The effect of central governmentsupport for chieftaincy on local balances of power is particularly visiblehere: during (relatively brief) episodes of government support for migrants,migrants have gained ground in their efforts to organize collective actionand to assert their land claims in the local arena. The fourth section thengoes on to show that in two target districts in Western Region, Ghana’smain institutions of decentralized governance — the District Assemblies —systematically leave land allocation and land adjudication matters to chiefs.In Ghana, decentralized, democratic local government does not provide aforum in which migrants can overcome the structural political disadvantagethat currently leaves them vulnerable to chiefs’ and indigenes’ efforts to rollback their acquired property rights.

The case sheds light on local realities of power and hierarchy that shapethe functioning of official democratic institutions at the local level. Such

1. There is inconsistency in this across both space and time (see Berry, 2002; Boone, 2003;Lentz and Nugent, 2000; Lund, 2008; Rathbone, 2000). See below for this dynamic inWestern Region.

Ethnic Land Rights in Western Ghana 673

relationships have remained mostly invisible in behavioural studies ofdemocracy and public opinion in Ghana and other African countries, and inelection studies that focus on electoral processes and institutions only. Suchstudies tend to assume, albeit highly implicitly, that secure private propertyrights help guarantee the political autonomy of voters and citizens at thelocal level, and that the structure of local political economies is uniform,and uniformly liberal, across national territories (see, for example, Brattonet al., 2005). Because Ghana is rightly recognized as a strongly democraticcountry in the sub-Saharan Africa context, it is what political scientistswould describe as the ‘least likely’ place to find the democracy-limitingeconomic institutions and hierarchies analysed in this paper.2 This makes ita compelling case study.

ETHNIC LAND RIGHTS AND SETTLEMENT HISTORY IN WESTERNGHANA

In Western Ghana, ethnic identity is a political or legal status that deter-mines the terms under which you acquire and hold property. As Boni (2005:82) explains, in this chieftaincy-centred land tenure regime, an ethnic sta-tus must be ascribed to each individual: classifying each farmer by ethnicstatus or membership is necessary for the implementation of the tenurialand taxation regimes. These tenurial and tax regimes rest on a distinctionbetween two basic categories of land users — citizens of the Western Regionchieftaincies on the one hand, and strangers on the other.3 In the politicalhierarchy that is so established, citizens of the chieftaincies (referred to hereas ‘indigenes’, or people who see themselves as autochthonous to the areaor as original inhabitants), are recognized as ‘customary freeholders’ andas constituting the ‘landowning community’. This leaves the strangers (alsoknown as outsiders, or ethnic outsiders) in a position of structural disad-vantage when it comes to acquiring land and defending acquired land rights(even property held under land title).4 Since the mid-1980s, these political

2. See Van Evera (1997). We do not seek to prove that the prevailing wisdom is wrong; rather,our findings point to the need to deepen and refine analyses of democracy’s scope, limitsand dynamics in rural African contexts, and provide hypotheses about how to do so.

3. As one resident of Wassa Akropong explained (9 August 2010), ‘No matter how long onehas stayed in the area, a migrant is still a migrant’.

4. Kraxberger (2005: 24) provides these working definitions for Nigeria, which, in their broadoutlines, travel well to the Ghanaian case: ‘an indigene is a person tracing . . . ancestrythrough a particular area . . . (i.e., local government, traditional political domain). A non-indigene is anyone resident outside his or her area of . . . ancestry. [Strangers and settlers]live outside their ‘homeland’ (i.e., place of . . . ancestry)’. In Western Ghana, the groupswe are calling ‘strangers’ are often called either ‘settlers’ or ‘tenants’ by locals, dependingon the identity of the speaker. It is in the interests of citizens of the local stools to callthe ethnic outsiders ‘tenants’ to underscore their subordinate status in relations of landownership and land use. On land rights and landlord–stranger relations in Ghana, see


relations have been tested, and reaffirmed with the backing of the centralstate, under conditions of rising competition for land.

Western Ghana is the country’s newest cocoa frontier. As open forest landwas exhausted in eastern Ghana and in Ashanti, and as the cocoa economydeclined there, waves of in-migrants from these regions pushed into WesternRegion, starting in the 1950s (for a map of the country showing the regions,see Figure 1). Logging companies cleared the way by laying roads andchopping down vast swaths of forest.5 Cocoa output increased rapidly. By1984/85, the West was producing more cocoa than Ashanti Region. The newmillennium saw large increases in cocoa output in the West. In 2003/04, thisregion produced twice as much cocoa as Ashanti.6

Cocoa production came to Western Region when population densitieswere low and indigenous populations had little interest in export-crop pro-duction. The Akan chieftaincies of this region — first in Sefwi, where thelargest of three chiefdoms is Sefwi-Wiaso, and then to the south, in Wassa-Amenfi paramountcy and the Juabeso-Bia District — allowed outsiders topurchase land-use rights to what were sometimes vast tracks of land withinthe chiefly jurisdictions.7 In-migrants who purchased land from WesternRegion chiefs in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s often acquired possession ofland in exchange for cash.8 Some entered into farm-sharing relationships

Berry (1993); Kasanga and Kotey (2001); Lund (2008); Onoma (2010); Ubink and Amanor(2008).

5. A rich literature documents this process, which has displayed some dramatic variations inland tenure regimes, relationships and conflicts as the cocoa frontier has moved throughspace and time. See Amanor (1994); Austin (2005); Berry (1993, 2001); Boni (2005:171–2); Hill (1963). The productive life of a cocoa plantation is about fifty years. In southernGhana, by the time the trees begin to die, the fertility of the soil is often depleted. Cocoafarmers often abandon these lands to food crops and create new plantations elsewhere, onvirgin farmland that is newly cleared of forest. This is where they can capture the ‘forestrent’ generated by the natural fertility of the soil. The expansion of cocoa production overmore than a century has thus cut a counter-clockwise path across the southern part of thecountry, starting in the original cocoa areas of the southeast, heading in a northwesterlydirection into the Ashanti Region, continuing the northwesterly course into the Brong AhafoRegion, and then cutting southward into Western Region.

6. For 1984/85, see Addae-Mensah (1986: 48); for 2003/04, see Teal et al. (2006: 11).7. These Akan chieftaincies of the West were less centralized, less powerful on the national

stage, and less rooted in cocoa production than their Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo Region coun-terparts. Boni (2000: 577) argues that they were manipulated and weakened by Nkrumah,but stabilized by his successors. (More on this below.) Some early land contracts conveyedthousands of acres of land. Some of these purchases went to land-buying companies (groupsof farmers who pooled their money) (Boni, 2005: 92–3, 171–2).

8. In the 1950s, ‘these early contracts declared that once the chief’s part [of the new farm —often a third] was handed over, the tenant acquired exclusive bona fide property exceptfor timber and mineral resources. Boundaries on these contracts were “typically vague”,nonetheless, it is most likely that often large tracts, on the order of some hundred or eventhousand of acres or, in local terminology, a few “square miles”, were conveyed’ (Boni,2005: 93). According to Addae-Mensah (1986: 35–6), 58 per cent of the migrant farmersin Wassa held land under outright purchase.


Figure 1. Map of Ghana, with Regions

with chiefs and chiefly families with the understanding that land accessso acquired would transform into freehold title (possession) that could bepassed on to the in-migrant’s heirs (Boni, 2005: 92).9 Landholdings of mi-grants were often surveyed by professional surveyors, and transactions weredocumented (Alhassan and Manuh, 2005; Benneh, 1988: 6).10 Properties

9. On farm-sharing contracts, see Austin (2005: 423); Takane (2002: 18–21, 100).10. Interviews with agents of the Customary Land Secretariat and farmers in Wassa Amenfi

(11–15 July 2009).


so acquired were often subject to continuing payment of a land tribute tothe office of the chieftaincy. Addae-Mensah (1986: 37) noted that ‘individ-ual ownership of land by migrants is much higher in this region than in[neighbouring] Ashanti [Region]’, where outsiders gained access to land viasharecropping arrangements rather than through purchase.

By the 1970 census, 53 per cent of the population of Wassa Amenfi wasborn outside the district. Studies from the 1990s reported that somewherebetween one-third11 and two-thirds12 of all farmers in this district were in-migrants, mostly from Ashanti Region or Eastern Region of Ghana. Manysources from the mid- to late-1980s and early 1990s reported that most ofthe cocoa farms in Western Region, and most of the larger farms, are ownedby non-indigenes (Addae-Mensah, 1986: 48; Migot-Adholla et al., 1993:106).13

As commercial production spread in Western Region, indigenousfarmers — commoners and subjects of the Sefwi and Wassa chiefs —also became cocoa producers. They often found themselves in competitionfor land with in-migrants, who continued to buy parcels and larger tracts ofland from chiefs who were willing to alienate ‘communally-owned land’ tooutsiders in exchange for payment (Boni, 2005: 68–70).14 As land pressureincreased in the West and virgin forest land grew scarce, this region emergedas a hot-bed of land conflict (Boni, 2005: 2).15 Addae-Mensah (1986: 37–8)captured the locals’ sense of indignation:

11. Alhassan and Manuh (2005: 10) wrote that ‘the migrant population of Wassa Amenfi districtwas estimated at 40% in 2000, and that about one-third of the population is settler, migrantfarmers’.

12. Migot Adholla et al. (1993:106) wrote that in Wassa, 33 per cent of the farmers areindigenous and the rest are mostly-Ashanti migrants. An early 1960s study that reportedthat in the New Suhum area of Wassa, ‘98.6 percent of land was cultivated by migrantlabor’ (Amanor, 1994: 46). It stands to reason that the proportion of in-migrants woulddecrease over time, with the slowing of in-migration and natural population increase on thepart of the indigenous population. The population of Wassa Amenfi District in 2000 was234,000. The population of Western Region was 1.9 million (Alhassan and Manuh, 2005:11).

13. Benneh (1988: 6) notes that ‘Wassa citizens’ farms are known to be smaller than those ofthe migrant farmers’.

14. Boni (2005: 85) explains that chiefs often took an initial sum plus yearly agricultural tribute.15. Migot-Adholla et al. (1993: 104) wrote that ‘in Wassa, the heart of Western Region, land

markets are [now] inactive because they are constrained by supply’; 45 per cent of farmersreported that it was impossible to ‘obtain additional land for their children’. They reporteda population density of 30/sq.km for this region c.1990, with median farm size in 1987of 13.3 ha (cocoa plus food crops, sometimes in several parcels) (ibid.). Alhassan andManuh (2005: 10) wrote that ‘[w]ith increasing population and land scarcity, tenants andindigenes compete for scarce land. There are pronounced land use conflicts among tenantsand indigenes’. For Western Region as a whole, Addae Mensah (1986: 42) gives the 1984population density as 46/sq.mile, representing a 131.4 per cent increase over the 1970–1984 period. This author gives the all-Ghana average for 1984 as 133/sq.mile, and the 1984Brong-Ahafo average as 70/sq.mile.


[My] Wassa-Amenfi study has shown that the youth who enjoy customary freehold orusufruct are finding it difficult to obtain land for farming on their communally-owned landdue to the reckless alienation of interest to stranger settlers. At [sic] areas where sale ofland for farming is rampant, most of the forest have [sic] been sold outright to wealthystrangers including aliens to cultivate. The indigenous citizens have been faced with shortageof farmland to grow their annual foodstuffs. The feeling of alienation is usually exhibitedin the distribution of farmland which is titled in favor of the non-members of the landowning communities. Instances could be found where hungry farmers have illegally beenencroaching upon reserved forest to grow foodstuffs.

Benneh (1988: 4) made the same observation: ‘Youth are becoming alarm-ingly aware of the rate at which they are losing land to strangers’.

By the 1980s, chiefs were also feeling the pinch. Boni (2005: 109–10)explained that pressure on them has come from two sides. On one side, theywere suffering from declining revenues, ‘because with the exhaustion of theforest, there were no longer interests to alienate, and because the chiefs failedto receive the expected revenues from the annual cocoa tribute’. On the otherside, chiefs were accused by their subjects of betraying their communities byselling off the communal patrimony of stool lands, which are supposed to beheld in trust for members of the autochthonous community (Addae-Mensah,1986; Alhassan and Manuh, 2005: 26–8; Boni, 2005).

RESPONSES TO RISING COMPETITION FOR LAND: NARROWINGOF STRANGERS’ LAND RIGHTS

As land pressure and land values have risen, the chiefs of Sefi-Wiawso andWassa Amenfi have sought to reassert authority and control over land thatthey had ceded to migrants in earlier decades. Exploiting their positionsas ‘both land guarantors and judges’ (Benneh, 1988; Boni, 2005: 109–10),chiefs have ‘attempt[ed] to reclaim prerogative from the tenant/settlers’(Government of Ghana, 1999).16 Migrants have experienced this as a roll-back of their acquired rights: starting in the 1980s, many have felt that theyhave been swindled or defrauded by chiefs who have reneged on contractsand demanded increasingly arbitrary extractions.

In Sefwi-Wiawso in 1986 and 1987, outsiders who had acquired land viapurchase in earlier decades saw their property invaded by local youth tryingto take back land claimed by local citizens, sometimes with the encourage-ment of the chiefs (Boni, 2005: 103–4, 119).17 In the face of periodic episodes

16. See also Benneh (1988: 5). See below for a discussion of the character of these disputes.17. Several of the Sefwi-Wiawso assembly members interviewed for this study (see below)

remembered the stranger–indigene confrontations of 1986–87. In their view, these conflictswere caused by strangers who were cheating on their land boundaries, and resisting chiefs’attempts to survey the land properly (because this would reveal that strangers had extendedtheir farms beyond the boundaries originally agreed upon with the chiefs who sold theland). One told the story of the heirs of a stranger who were vindicated when they dug up


of land-related violence, some in-migrants fled the region. The governmentintervened to quell tensions, but Sefwi-Wiawso earned a reputation as ‘achiefdom marked by chronic host–migrant conflict’ (Fred-Mensah, 1999:953). In Wassa Amenfi, tensions between in-migrants and chiefs also foundexpression in 1984 and 1985 in the local political arena, with the formationof an Association of Stranger Farmers of Wassa Amenfi (Benneh, 1988: 6).A local migrant who was interviewed for this study recalled that the Asso-ciation’s aim was ‘to unite all the stranger farmers in the area to fight fortheir interests in terms of land rights. However, the chiefs saw the threat theywould pose and therefore made efforts to persecute the leaders’.18

Boni (2005: 2) wrote that ‘[i]n recent decades, with the exhaustion ofavailable virgin forest, struggles have intensified as land pressure has becomea growing concern’. Migot-Adholla et al. (1993) picked up on these tensionsin a comparison of three commercial farming areas of Ghana in the late1980s: they found that land parcels in their Western Region study site (inWassa) were twice as likely to be affected by land disputes as parcels inthe other two regions (i.e., Ejura, 100 km north of Kumasi, and Anloga,on the Atlantic coast 150 km from Accra). They observed that migrantsin Western Region ‘may suffer from extreme levels of tenure insecurity’and that ‘the protection of migrants’ [land] rights is an extremely sensitivepolitical issue. . . . In the case of Wassa, uncertainties over the rights ofmigrant farmers versus the autochthones remain unresolved’ (Migot-Adhollaet al., 1993: 111, 115).19

Uncertainty and tension put migrant farmers at a clear structural disad-vantage. According to Alhassan and Manuh (2005: 28, 30), in 2003 over90 per cent of all land disputes were settled outside the courts — that is,among farmers themselves, or by chiefs who have a stake in reassertingtheir control over the land and/or in settling disputes in favour of their

the bottles that had contained the liquor their father had shared with the chief from whomhe had purchased the land — the migrant farmer had secretly planted the empty bottles onthe corners of his property as proof of the agreed-upon limits. The Sefwi-Wiawso assemblymembers that we interviewed believed that the chiefs and the indigenes had prevailed inthese struggles of the mid-1980s — they had succeeded in reasserting control over theirland. This is less of an issue in Sefwi-Wiawso nowadays; there are few new in-migrantsbecause of land shortage. Several interviewees remembered a 1990–91 conflict that hadpitted migrants, who had encroached on forest reserves and forest concessions, againstthe state. Some chiefs were implicated: the government blamed them for giving migrantspermission to use (or for selling) land that was off limits to farming. This had erupted intoviolence and about eighty farmers were arrested.

18. Interview conducted by the second author in Twi, in Wassa Amenfi East District (27 July2010).

19. They found that 9.5 per cent of all parcels in the Wassa site were affected by land disputes.Although we do not seek to explain cross-regional variation in this paper, it can be notedthat such variation can reflect differences in perceived land scarcity or demand for land,and/or differences in the political balance of power between different groups of land-seekers(land-claimants). See Boone (2011); on litigation, see also Benneh (1988: 5–6).


(autochthonous) subjects. ‘Even court judgments are usually left to the win-ner to enforce’ (ibid.).

Migrants’ structural political and economic disadvantage was evident inthe 1980s in the harassment of stranger framers and arbitrary extractionsfrom them by local chiefs. Such dynamics remain visible today, and canbe seen in social processes that produce and enforce political hierarchyat the village level. In July 2009, we spoke to one migrant farmer whosecocoa plantation, founded in 1975, was located on the lands of a villageapproximately 5 miles from Wassa Akropong.20 He described his recentexperience: ‘Yes, land is becoming scarce around here and there is tensionbetween locals and migrants. For one thing, the chiefs now take more, suchas charging us more for holding our traditional [Ewe] festivals in this area.The chiefs over-charge us. It has become worse recently; perhaps chiefs aremore in need of money than they were before’.21

In Western Region of Ghana, rising pressures on the land and indigene–migrant tensions have not produced large-scale or sustained ethnic vio-lence, or uni-directional movement toward stronger private property rights.22

Rather, land competition and land-related tension in this region has pro-duced the steady erosion of the land rights acquired by in-migrants in earlierdecades. As Boni (2005: 99) put it, their ‘titles have weakened over time’.23

Although outsiders have not been expelled en masse from Sefwi-Wiawsoor Wassa Amenfi, or excluded from land access, the reassertion of au-tochthonous land rights has been the clear trend since the late 1980s inSefwi-Wiawso, and since the late 1990s in Wassa Amenfi. ‘Now the samechiefs [who granted land in earlier decades] are saying that they never soldthe land outright, but gave it for use for a limited time’ (Alhassan and Manuh,2005: 33).24 Chiefs have forced migrants to renegotiate titles to establish newterms more favourable to indigenes or chiefs, taken back land from the heirsof in-migrants who have passed away, sought to reappropriate uncultivatedportions of parcels sold to outsiders, sought to repossess land that migrantshad sub-let to third parties, prohibited in-migrants from selling land to whichthey hold title, not recognized land titles acquired through the purchase ofland from indigenous landholding families (rather than from chiefs), and not

20. He had 18 acres under cocoa. In Wassa District c. 1990, average farm size was 13.3 acres.(Migot-Adholla et al., 1993: 104).

21. Authors’ on-farm interview with cocoa farmer and official in local Pentecostal Church(14 July 2009).

22. On the theory that land scarcity will work to produce more exclusive and negotiable privaterights, see Platteau (1996).

23. Boni finds that in Western Region, ‘chiefly prerogatives have expanded over theyears . . . [and these are imposed even on strangers] who acquired their title decades ago,on more liberal terms’ (2005: 106).

24. The disputes concern the nature of the original transaction (governing use, sale, bequeath-ment, boundaries, and division of the proceeds over time), whether it was properly executed,whether the terms of the original contract (themselves perhaps in dispute) have been hon-oured over time.


honoured titles that do not bear the signature of the paramount chief himself(Boni, 2005: 103–4).25

This process gained momentum in 2003, when Wassa Amenfi became oneof several pilot districts of Ghana’s national Land Administration Project(LAP), which aims at the registration of customary land rights. A CustomaryLand Secretariat was established in the district capital of Wassa-Akropong,seat of the Wassa Amenfi paramount chieftaincy, to gradually take over andextend the work that had been centred until then in the nearby office ofthe Stool Lands Administrator.26 In the paramountcy at Wassa-Akropong,one Divisional Chief (who also served as Secretary to the Omanhene)27 andanother palace official explained the goals of the land registration process —not yet fully underway — in these terms:

We plan to have all migrants registered as tenants on fifty year leases, counting from whenthe farm was created, even if they purchased the land from a local family. The terms of thenew lease will be between the chief and the tenant. We [the chiefs] will reclaim land if wefind any lapses, cheating, or fraud [such as under-declaring the size of the parcel] in theoriginal agreements, or any sub-lets, or if we find the land is under-used . . . or if royalties tothe stool have not been paid. We plan to renegotiate all the tenancies. . . . Everyone feels thatland scarcity is coming.28

Through this process, migrants who acquired title via what they thoughtwas ‘outright purchase’ in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s are redesignated as ‘ten-ants’. Many of them will find that these retroactive tenancies have alreadyexpired and will thus require renegotiation with the chiefs.29 The chiefs’assertiveness reflects the force of government backing. Migrants are encour-aged to re-survey their land by agents of the Customary Land Secretariat,who tell the farmers that this process will protect parcels from future litiga-tion.30 Some stranger farmers with large holdings are encouraged to make

25. See Takane (2002: 40) for Bepoase, which is in Wassa Amenfi.26. As the LAP coordinator in Brong-Ahafo region, Sandy Anthony Mensah, put it in an

interview published in the Ghanaian Chronicle, ‘traditional authorities should be ensuringthat people do not become landless in their own communities . . . . [T]he tenure rights ofcustomary freeholders must not be compromised’. He stressed that the new Customary LandSecretariats were to strengthen customary land administration, and that as administrativeunits, they were ‘owned by land-owning communities’ (‘Stool Lands Revenues are notSolely for Chiefs’, Ghanaian Chronicle 12 September 2008, posted on AllAfrica.com,accessed 1 May 2009).

27. Meaning ‘paramount chief’ in the Twi language.28. Authors’ interview, Wassa Akropong (13 July 2009).29. Interview, CLS/LAP, Akropong (11 July 2009). As Addae-Mensah (1986: 36) explained,

‘Non-members of the landowning community would prefer to acquire farmland by outrightpurchase to entering into land tenancy arrangements with landlords. The latter agrarianstatus is usually regarded as a subordinate status for the tenants’. The CLS/LAP in WassaAkropong covers the entire Wassa Amenfi Traditional Area, not just the (new) WassaAmenfi East District.

30. From the authors’ on-farm interviews with eleven in-migrant farmers (three male spokesper-sons did the talking), Wassa Akropong hinterland (14 July 2009). They believe the CLS


concessions to land-hungry Wassa citizens by entering into farm-sharingarrangements with land-poor locals through abunu (half-share) contracts. Amember of the Wassa Amenfi East District Assembly (an indigene) offeredthese observations on this process:

The chief claims that all stranger farmers who have stayed on their land for more than fiftyyears should come and re-negotiate a new agreement. The new agreement costs between1,500 and 1,800 cedis. Those who fail to do so would forfeit half of the land . . . . This isunconstitutional because the chief is taking advantage of obsolete bye-laws of the traditionalcouncil . . . . [Yet] the respect given to chiefs in the area has made it impossible for any proteston this matter. The only option available for farmers is submission.31

In Western Ghana, in a chieftaincy-centred land regime, rising land com-petition finds social and political expression in tension that runs along theindigene–stranger cleavage. In part, this reflects systematic efforts on thepart of chiefs to deflect the blame of indigenous Wassa communities fromthe chiefs themselves, who are held responsible for selling land to outsidersin the first place. By accentuating immigrants’ subordinate political statusand the provisional nature of their land rights, chiefs deflect blame for landscarcity onto strangers, weaken the claims of ‘outsiders’, assert the claimsof ‘landowning communities’, support indigenes in their struggle to wardoff landlessness, and reassert and reaffirm the chiefs’ own power and le-gitimacy. In the current democratic era, the central government has gonefar in backing them up in this process (while acting to constrain egregiousabuse).

THE MAKING AND REMAKING OF THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT’SCOMMITMENT TO THE CHIEFS

In Ghana’s Western Region, chiefs have not always held a clear upperhand over migrants who were able to purchase land (and document theirpurchases) in earlier decades. The course of land politics in this region isinstructive because it provides stark evidence of the role of central govern-ment in shoring up (or eroding) the customary powers of Ghana’s traditionalchiefs. Rarely in contemporary Africa is the hand of the state in the makingof the customary authority so obvious.32

Nkrumah-era legislation strengthened the position of migrants through-out southern Ghana by weakening the abusa systems of crop and farm

representatives are agents of the central state. However, the Divisional Chief claimed thatthe CLS staff is paid by the paramountcy, and that they are former employees of the Officeof the Stool Lands Administrator.

31. Interview in Twi by the second author with indigenous local community leader in his 40s,Wassa Amenfi East District (27 July 2010).

32. See footnotes 35 and 36.


sharing.33 The coup that overthrew Nkrumah in 1966 reversed these re-forms. Boni (2005: 97, 100) writes that the 1966 coup ‘was celebrated withjubilation by most of the Sefwi chiefly establishment. . . . [C]hiefs regainedwhat they considered their “customary prerogatives” . . . From the 1970s on-ward they sought “to re-appropriate portions of uncultivated lands grantedto tenants”’. In this they were helped by Ghana’s 1979 constitution, which‘consolidated communal land tenure systems . . . by guaranteeing the insti-tution of chieftaincy’ (Ninsin, 1989: 176–77).34

In the mid-1980s the political pendulum swung from the chiefs backto the migrants. In 1986 the Rawlings government again ‘tried to securetenants’ land rights [by] stimulating the registration of agricultural titles’(Boni, 2005: 107). At the time, the Sefwi Traditional Council was pushingagainst the ruling PNDC by attempting to pass a series of local regulationsaimed at increased extractions against migrants (ibid.: 117, 119). Migrantsin Sefwi-Wiawso, strengthened by the government’s support, confrontedthe chiefs: they formed a farmers’ union to ‘protect tenants rights’ and op-pose the Sefwi Traditional Council’s initiative (ibid.: 119). Violence ensuedas ‘Sefwi chiefs sent villagers to dispossess strangers’ (ibid.). The conflictprovoked central government intervention in the form of an investigativecommittee (the April 1987 Asare Committee), which authored a report thatwas ‘sympathetic to the tenants’ (ibid.: 119). Boni writes that ‘the chiefsappeared defeated, but continued to exercise considerable authority locallyand maintained their privileges with regards to land rights and tenants’ taxa-tion. The issue gradually moved off the government’s agenda’ (ibid.: 120).35

33. Benneh (1988: 5) mentions the 1962 Rents Stabilization Act (Act 109), amended in 1963,which was repealed by the military government in 1966. See Ninsin (1989: 167–70);Government of Ghana (1999).

34. Ninsin describes a general pattern in Ghana since the late 1960s ‘of frantic attempts . . . torevest communal lands in the appropriate authorities, and conserve them’ (1989: 176). TheAliens Compliance Act of 1969 can perhaps be read as contributing to this.

35. Post-colonial Ghana has been the theatre of overt and sustained political/policy strugglesover whether (and if so, how) to shore up the chieftaincy-centred land regimes that wereinherited from colonialism. The Nkrumahist-tradition regimes (Nkrumah and the earlyRawlings) have been populist and nationalist (centralist), and have leaned toward curbingchiefly prerogative, while the Danquah-tradition regimes have been eager to invest inchiefly power and regional prerogative. In part, these conflicting preferences grow out ofthe divergent interests of different segments of Ghanaian society, be they defined by regionor in class-like terms. The regional cleavages tend to pit migrant-accepting regions wherechieftaincy is strong, such as Ashanti, against migrant-sending regions where chieftaincy isweak or weaker, like Volta and the North. Class-like tensions align those representing theinterests of peasants, tenants, migrants, workers and commoners against those of the elite,who are often large landholders and/or wielders of land prerogatives. What is at stake iswho controls the land, and thus, how to allocate the wealth that has come from the land inthe form of revenues from timber, cocoa, gold and peri-urban real estate development (seeBerry, 2001; Lund, 2008; Nugent, 1999; Rathbone, 2000). Analogous but less conspicuousbattles also mark the history of Senegal, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Uganda and even Kenya,to mention a few notable post-colonial cases.


Members of the Sefwi-Wiawso District Assembly who were interviewed forthis study remember the 1986–87 episode as resulting in victory for thechiefs and the indigenes, who were able to reassert their rights over muchof the disputed land.36 A similar drama unfolded in Wassa Amenfi, with asimilar outcome: ‘[The chiefs’] agenda succeeded, leading to the demise ofthe [Wassa Amenfi] Tenants Farmers Association’.37

The most recent chapter in this story is the introduction of the LAP thatwas approved by the national government in 1999 and introduced in WassaAmenfi in 2003. It clearly affirms the land authority of chiefs and primacyof autochthonous communities’ land rights, ‘seeking to protect landholdingcommunities and their descendants from the risk of losing land or becomingtenants on their own land’ (Ouedraogo et al., 2006).38

STRANGERS’ MARGINAL POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AT THE LOCALLEVEL

In-migrants’ capacity for collective political action to defend their acquiredland rights seems to have peaked in the mid-1980s. This is when the centralgovernment took the migrants’ side in their confrontations with the chiefs,and when district politics were rocked by the formation of a Tenant FarmersAssociation in Sefwi-Wiawso and an Association of Stranger Farmers inWassa Amenfi. These organizations atrophied in the wake of governmentaction to defuse the crises of the mid-1980s, as the pendulum of centralgovernment support swung back in favour of the chiefs (and protecting theland-rights of indigenes).

In Wassa Amenfi today, migrants are ‘strongly networked’39 withinsome localities (villages), but apparently not across localities (Alhassanand Manuh, 2005: 18). In many communities, ethnic outsiders do have aspokesman who represents them in their relationship with the village chief(i.e., the chief who exercises jurisdiction over the village territory in whichthey are settled).40 It seems, however, that collective action to defend or ad-vance their rights as landholders and land-users stops there: they are dealingonly with the most local of chiefs, rather than with higher-ranking chiefs, the

36. On the interviews, see the following section. Rathbone (1996: 520–21) explains that theopposite outcome emerged in Akyem Abuakwa in the 1950s, when migrants won electedoffices. Their victory contributed to the momentum of Nkrumah’s political party, whichwas aligned against the paramount chieftaincy in this region. This has not been the dominantoutcome in Ashanti and Western Regions in the post-colonial period, however.

37. Interview in Twi by the second author with an in-migrant to what is now Wassa AmenfiEast District, who arrived in 1974, in X, WAED (27 July 2010).

38. See also Alhassan and Manuh (2005: 18–20).39. July 2009 interviewees said that in their locality, this was not the case.40. Interviews in Accra (4–8 July 2009); Western Region farm interviews (12 and 14 July 2009);

Local Amenfi West Cocoa Services Division (Ministry of Agriculture), Asankrangwa(12 July 2009); secondary school teacher, Asankrangwa Secondary School (12 July 2009).


District (or higher-level) administrative authorities,41 or politicians or partyorganizers representing either the West or the migrants’ home regions. Thissuggests that in the cocoa-producing districts of Western Region, the ethnicoutsiders accept a definition of local authority structure, and of their placewithin it, that puts them at considerable disadvantage vis-a-vis the chieflyhierarchy and indigenous Westerners.

There is a striking disjuncture. In Ghana’s presidential elections, in-migrants in Western Region vote freely at polling stations near their placeof residence, and tend to vote for parties based in their home regions (as isthe tendency in Brong-Ahafo and Ashanti Regions as well).42 This seemsto be testimony to the integrity of their rights of democratic participation innational-level proceedings. However, at the local level, in the local politicalarena where their material interests seem to be engaged in the most immedi-ate ways, migrants do not engage in collective action. They do not appear toseek to engage the provincial administrative or political authorities aroundthe land issues that are the source of ongoing political tensions with chiefsand indigenes.

This observation found support in a qualitative survey that we conductedin July, August and October 2010.43 We interviewed nineteen District As-sembly (DA) members in Western Region: ten from Wassa Amenfi EastDistrict Assembly (WAEDA),44 and nine from Sefwi-Wiawso District As-sembly (SWDA). This constituted 27 per cent of all Assembly members forthe two districts (i.e., 19/69).45 Ghana’s District Assemblies were createdby the Rawlings government in 1989 (to replace the old District Councils).Two-thirds of the members are elected in formally non-partisan local elec-tions; the remaining one-third is appointed by the president (Ayee, 2004).46

They serve for four-year terms (unpaid). The DA is supposed to function as

41. Berry (2001: 180) reports that migrants do call in the District Administration in Sekeyearea.

42. See Arthur (2009: 59, 69). He reports that in Western Region, the NPP and the NDC eachreceived 47 per cent of the vote in the first round of 2008 presidential elections.

43. The study was designed by the first author and carried out and adapted to local circumstancesby the second author.

44. Wassa Amenfi District was split in two in 2004, creating Wassa Amenfi East and West. Thename of the new districts is often spelled ‘Wasa’ but often also appears as ‘Wassa’. We haveretained the latter for more consistency over the historical time period under consideration.

45. There are three DAs in the Sefwi-Wiaso Traditional Area, i.e., within the jurisdiction ofthe Sefwi-Wiawso Paramount Chieftaincy.

46. The interviews provided much evidence that both elections and appointments to the DAsare infused with partisan politics, with the ruling party appointing its own militants to DAseats and placing them in key positions (such as sub-committee head) when possible, andthe opposition organizing and in some cases funding its militants’ and loyalists’ campaignsfor DA seats. Many interviewees claimed to be loyalists and/or active members of eitherthe NPP or the NDC. This squares with Gordon Crawford’s general observation that thenon-partisan nature of Ghana’s DA system ‘is effectively a myth’ (2008: 132), and withthe fact that competition between Ghana’s main parties has long been very tight in thecocoa-producing districts of Western Region.


an advisory council to the local District Chief Executive. DAs were origi-nally billed as partially-democratic organs of decentralized administration,but because of their limited powers and lack of budget autonomy, they havenot lived up to the high expectations that accompanied their inauguration.47

For our purposes, they represent the lowest level (most local) instances ofthe modern state, both in its administrative and its democratic incarnations(Crook, 1994: 343; Ofei-Aboagye, 2004: 753).

Interviews aimed at finding out whether this most decentralized instanceof Ghana’s formally democratic state sought to counterbalance the role ofchiefs, or ‘democratize’ local economic rights, by intervening directly in theallocation of farmland in Wassa Amenfi East and Sefwi-Wiawso Districts. Ifthe DAs were found to be active in land allocation matters, then our argumentabout the predominance of chiefs as land allocators of farmland would beat least partially undermined. Interviews also asked whether migrants wererepresented on the DA, and whether the DA was a forum open to thoseseeking to protect or advance the land-related interests of migrants. Domigrants have the political option of going to the DA to seek redress for landgrievances, in an attempt to offset the weight of chiefs in land allocationmatters? We have argued above that in the chieftaincy-centred land tenureregimes of this part of Western Ghana, migrants’ options in land-relatedconflicts are limited to Hirschman’s ‘exit’ and ‘loyalty’. We sought to testthis argument by seeking evidence to the contrary. Finally, intervieweeswere asked about Unit Committees (UCs), the most local (i.e., village level)of the political groupings formally connected to the central state. Do UCsgive political voice to migrants or do they serve as a political arena in whichthey organize to advance/protect their land-related interests?

Interviewees were District Assembly members who were randomly se-lected (every third name, or failing that, the name listed above or belowthe target name) from the roster of assembly members provided by theregistry officer in each of the two DA offices. Of these, we were able tointerview eight out of ten randomly selected DA members from WAEDA,supplemented by two non-randomly selected substitute members. In SWDA,we interviewed seven out of twelve of our randomly selected DA members,

47. As interviewee #8 put it, ‘The agenda of the DA is set by the central government and theDA is only there to rubber-stamp it’ (Wassa Amenfi East, 27 July 2010). This opinionresonates with academics’ conclusions; see Crook (1994: 339, 355–7). Kasanga and Kotey(2001: 9) write that Ghana ‘is politically balkanized into 110 districts effectively controlledby the President in Accra’. Crawford (2008: 132) writes that ‘[P]ower of the governing partyover local development and these local organs [District Assemblies and Unit Committees]is very strong . . . . The non-partisan nature of the DA system is effectively a myth, but onethat serves to conceal mechanisms for ongoing central control and ruling party control’.Crawford adds that the 2003 Local Government Service Act (LGSA), which was supposedto decentralize the responsibilities of line departments to the DAs, invoked resistance andwas not implemented (ibid.: 133). The 1992 Constitution added at least two chiefs to eachDA.


including two whose names were above or below a targeted member’s name,and also two non-randomly selected SWDA members. We also interviewedone DA member (an in-migrant) from a neighbouring district. All inter-views followed a semi-structured, open-ended question format. They wereconducted by Dennis Duku in the Twi language. Most meetings took placein the home of the DA member because ‘these people are not elites [i.e.,they do not work in offices], they are ordinary people’, farmers, teachers,etc.48 Two DA members were from chiefly families; one resides at a chief’spalace.

The modal DA member was a man (79 per cent of those interviewed, or15/19)49 in his 40s or 50s (68 per cent) who is indigenous (autochthonous)to the locality he is representing in the Western Region (84 per cent). Inall, there were three migrants in our sample of nineteen DA members. Twoof the three DA members who identified themselves as in-migrants to theWestern Region were elected, and one (a woman) was appointed to the DAby the NDC government. Almost all of the DA members were landholdersin these localities, and owners of cocoa farms in particular (18/19).50 Ofthe fifteen who reported the size of their cocoa holdings, fourteen fit theclassic definition of a smallholder: 25 per cent held 5–10 acres (5/19), and32 per cent held 10–25 acres (6/19).51 The largest total acreage was claimedby an assembly member in Sefwi-Wiawso with 42 acres of cocoa and a22 acre palm oil plantation. Only four of the nineteen (21 per cent), however,described ‘farming’ as their occupation or profession. Most were teachers orschool administrators (6/19). Others were salaried workers (4/19), or shopor taxi business owners (2/19). We do not have any information on off-farmincome for three of the nineteen.52

Information gathered in these interviews squared with other evidence toconfirm that in Western Region: (1) the functioning of decentralized andsemi-democratic local government does not impinge upon the land preroga-tives of chiefs; (2) DAs are not fora for the airing of landlord–stranger issuesor tensions, or for the political organization of ‘stranger populations’ seeking

48. Field notes from an interview with a professional who hails from this area. To reach theinterviewees at their homes or, in a few cases, their shops, the second author travelled bytaxi, bicycle, foot, motorbike and pirogue throughout Sefwi-Wiawso and Wassa AmenfiEast Districts.

49. Ofei-Aboagye wrote that in 2002, the government raised the gender quota for women onthe DAs to 50 per cent, but that none of the DAs met that standard: ‘Adherence to quotadirectives varied considerably from district to district’ (2004: 754).

50. One was referring to farms owned by his father, another was referring to farms owned byher husband.

51. One DA member with 20 acres of cocoa also reported that he had 20 acres of palm oil trees.52. Overall, the profile of the assembly members conformed to Crook’s 1994 observation,

for two Ghanaian DAs that he studied, that the assembly members were ‘locally rootedcommunity leaders and activists. It cannot be said that they were from the “absentee” urbanelite so typical of local politics in countries such as Cote d’Ivoire’ (Crook, 1994: 358).


voice in the local political arena; and (3) Unit Committees have functionedas village-level institutions that reflect the landlord–stranger hierarchy.

All of the interviewed DA members from our two target districts inWestern Region confirmed forthrightly that in their areas, chiefs own stoollands and handle land matters having to do with farmland, especially is-sues arising between strangers and indigenes. Seventeen of the nineteenbelieved that chiefs should be allowed to handle land matters. For example(interviewees’ commentary translated from Twi by Dennis Duku, tagged byinterview number):

Land cases involving migrant and indigenous farmers are usually dealt with by the chiefsbecause they are the custodians of the land. The Customary Land Secretariats are doingwell . . . . Farmland matters are lodged at the chief’s palace. (#2)Before the creating of the WA District, chiefs were responsible for handling farmland disputesand this has not changed . . . . I do not see why the DA should usurp this role played by thechiefs . . . . The DA does not have any policy which regulates land use . . . . [This is because]the lands are for the chiefs and not the DA. (#3)The land here belongs to the chief of X. The DA does not have any policy on land for farming.The chiefs have done very well on these issues and should be allowed to continue their goodwork. (#4)It is only the chief and his elders who handle [land] matters, or the courts if the chief provesincapable of resolving it . . . . The DA does not discuss indigene-migrant disputes because thechiefs have been doing a good job in that direction . . . . Land here is very scarce . . . (#5)It is not in the interest of peace for the DA to settle land disputes because this is the realm ofthe chiefs. Chiefs control the land. The LAP has enhanced the chiefs’ role. (#7)The most peaceful way to live in the district is for the migrant farmers to respect the traditionallaws regulating land. (#14)Chiefs are the custodians of the land and therefore should be allowed to manage them withoutany interferences from the DA.53 (#16)Peaceful resolution of land conflicts should be left in the hands of the chiefs. The position ofthe chiefs should be strengthened. (#18)Chiefs should settle all land disputes because they are the custodians of stool lands and theyare properly placed to adjudicate such matters, not the law courts. (#20)

Two members of our targeted DAs, one migrant and one indigene, dis-agreed with the majority of the interviewees on this point, and argued thatthe government of Ghana should remove discrimination against migrants inland policy:

For peace and fairness to reign in the area in terms of land management, laws should beenacted which eliminate all forms of discrimination against stranger farmers. The currentprocedure for acquiring land discriminates against the migrants and until this is done awaywith, peace will be an illusion. (#12)The practice of asking tenant farmers who have purchased land to re-negotiate [the terms ofsale] is not fair to the tenant farmers. [This DA member had reported the problem] to the DA

53. This interviewee did not like the idea that government should make a policy that allowsall Ghanaians to purchase land in any part of the country. This is because it will lead to‘foreigners’ [Ghanaian migrant farmers] taking over land belonging to poor indigenousfarmers. He wanted the status quo maintained. Land is scarce in the area.


but nothing had been done about it . . . . In some cases the indigenes, having realized the follyof selling their inheritance to strangers, go to the extent of unorthodox methods to get theirland back. (#19)

The one DA member we interviewed from a neighbouring district, an in-migrant from Volta region, also argued against the status quo, saying that hebelieved that ‘the government should enact a law which makes it possiblefor any Ghanaian to purchase land in any part of the country’.54 A WassaAmenfi East assembly member endorsed the principle that chiefs shouldhandle land matters, but noted that he did not agree with the chiefs when‘they are out to cheat the farmers’, a problem that he identified as thecause of ‘growing tension between some stranger farmers and the chiefof X’.55

Assembly members were asked whether migrant farmers were organizedpolitically in their constituencies, and whether migrants engaged in collectivepolitical action in their constituencies. One DA member who was himselfa migrant recounted that he had been recruited to run for the position by adelegation of farmers from a local village of migrants, but that he was notable to attend all the DA meetings and did not plan to seek re-election. Whileseveral DA members recalled the formation of migrant and tenant farmers’associations in the mid-1980s, and the tumultuous clashes with chiefs thatensued, all the interviewees said that no migrants’ organizations exist now.56

As one DA member explained, migrants live quietly on the margins of townsor townships, ‘or in hamlets dotted all over the area’.57 Two DA memberssaid that migrants should organize, because they would be better off if theydid so. An interviewee who was quoted above said that ‘the only optionavailable for farmers is submission’.58

Unit Committees are town- or village-level councils made up of ten electedmembers and five appointed members.59 Some interviewees described theUCs as reincarnations of the former Town Development Committees, andsome described them as today’s version of the old communal-labour as-sociations that were headed by chiefs. In recent years, the role of at leastsome of the UCs in town planning has been eclipsed by the DAs. Six of thenineteen DA members interviewed reported that UCs were functioning intheir localities to organize and oversee communal labour projects (sweeping

54. Interview #17, 37 year old male member of the DA of a neighbouring district, native ofVolta region (23 October 2010).

55. Interview #8 (27 July 2010).56. Several of the Sefwi-Wiawso assembly members remembered the stranger–indigene con-

frontations of the mid-1980s described above.57. Interview #6, WAEDA member (10 July 2010).58. Interview #8 in Twi with local community leader (an indigene) in his 40s, Wassa Amenfi

East District (27 July 2010).59. Positions on the UC, like the DA positions, are unpaid. See Crawford (2008: 123, 126).

Several (4/19) of the sitting DA members that we interviewed were former UC members.


streets, cleaning drains, and ‘implementation of self-help projects’).60 Ina few cases, the UCs allocate village-level sites for market stalls, schoolsand boreholes. Three SWDA interviewees61 reported that in their localities,migrants were more reliable participants in weekly communal labour orga-nized by the UC than the indigenes, because good participation helped themigrants to avoid paying fines and being sent to court. Indigenes, by contrast,are not motivated to participate by such fears. Many complain and criticizethe UC leaders. Nine DA members reported the UCs were moribund in theirlocalities, with two linking this development to the coming to power of theNDC government in 2009. It seems that in the WAEDA and SWDA areasof Western Region, the UCs do not function as local institutions or forafor representing or advancing the interests of migrants. Rather, it appearsthat in some localities, the politically and economically vulnerable status ofmigrants is taken advantage of by those working through the UC to recruitvolunteers for communal labour projects.

CONCLUSION

In southern Ghana as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, there is a tensionbetween the existence of formal political democracy and unitary citizenshipregimes at the national level, and local-level property regimes (the so-calledcustomary land tenure regimes) which affirm chiefly or other authority-basedprerogatives over land access and land transfer, and which create ethnichierarchy in the allocation and enforcement of property rights.62 Alongwith much of the growing literature on ethnic citizenship and landlord–stranger land relations in Africa,63 the findings presented here raise questions

60. Interview #6, WAEDA member (10 July 2010).61. That is, two SWDA members and one DA member from a neighbouring district.62. Various forms of what Chimhowu and Woodhouse (2006: 346) refer to as ‘what is com-

monly termed “communal” or “customary tenure”’ prevails across much of the 90 percent of land in sub-Saharan Africa that is not held under private title (the 90 per centfigure is cited by Chimhowu and Woodhouse). See Boone (2007, 2011) for analyses ofvariation in African land tenure regimes and their political effects. This work proposesa rough typology of land regimes that distinguishes between family- and lineage-based‘customary’ controls over land allocation and dispute adjudication, chieftaincy- or other(neo)traditional authority-based controls over allocation and adjudication, and direct statecontrol over land allocation and adjudication. The vernacular or informal land markets thatare the centrepiece of Chimhowu and Woodhouse’s (2006) analysis operate across all ofthese land-regime ‘types’. The typology is a rough heuristic designed to capture structure,commonality and variation across land regimes, and to capture similarity and variation intheir political implications and effects.

63. See for example Claassens and Cousins (2008); Dorman et al. (2007); Kraxberger (2005);Kuba et al. (2003); Manby (2009); Nyamnjoh (2006); Poteete (2009); Ubink and Amanor(2008). See also Jacob and Le Meur (2010), which takes up these issues in an even broadercomparative frame, juxtaposing case studies from Asia, Africa and Latin America.


about how local-level electoral and citizenship dynamics are influencing thequality and direction of larger, national-level political changes. Studies ofdemocratic participation, especially in elections, should be more sensitiveto these local and sometimes region-specific dynamics, which are illiberaland may go far in defining the practical meaning of democracy for Africa’srural majorities.

These findings about the role of government and government institutions inthe districts of Western Ghana cast doubts on arguments about the persistenceof chieftaincy and ethnic hierarchy in Africa that have been advanced explic-itly by Jeffrey Herbst (2000), and that pervade much of the literature. Herbsthas placed the analytic spotlight on the limited territorial reach of the Africanstate, and attributed the persistence of ‘local states’ centred on chieftaincy tocentral governments’ failure to penetrate remote rural localities. In WesternGhana, government intervention in local politics, rather than lack thereof, isa source of the chiefs’ political staying-power. Affirmation of chieftaincy inthe Ghanaian constitution (and in the ongoing Land Administration Project)are national-level political measures that confirm state recognition of neo-customary authority and ethnic rights. In Ghana, a level of formal insti-tutionalization of chieftaincy hierarchies that is high by African standardsthus co-exists with a commitment to formal democratic procedure that isalso high by sub-Saharan standards.64 This suggests that even governmentssuch as Ghana’s, which have embraced liberal multi-partyism at the nationallevel, may find it useful to accept the persistence of ‘fractured citizenship’regimes (Boone, 2007; Kraxberger, 2005) which protect the land rightsand political predominance of indigenes, restrain the full commodificationof land, and institutionalize non-democratic authority — including at leastsome degree of what Mamdani (1996) called ‘decentralized despotism’ —at the local level.

As for Ghana’s Western Region, political judgement on the part of localand national leaders, along with wider conjunctural conditions, will be criti-cal in determining whether social and political tensions over land rights canbe managed, and whether the prevailing political and institutional arrange-ments will be supportive of social stability and economic progress in thefuture.

64. Although Ghanaian chieftaincy hierarchies score high by African standards on measuresof formal institutionalization and state recognition at the national level, the phenomenon ofstate recognition of neo-traditional authorities as land allocators is not unique to this case.Such arrangements prevail in sub-national territories in many African countries (northernCameroon, and the middle and upper sections of the Senegal River Valley are examples).On multiparty democracy, Freedom House, for example, counts Ghana as one of a handfulof sub-Saharan countries that it categorizes as ‘Free’ (www.freedomhouse.org, accessed11 November 2011).


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Catherine Boone is Professor of Government at the University ofTexas at Austin (Batts 3.128, A1800, Austin, TX 78712, USA; e-mail:[email protected]). She is the author of Political Topographies of theAfrican State: Territorial Authority and Institutional Choice (Cambridge,2003) and a book manuscript entitled Property and Political Order: LandRights and the Structure of Politics in Africa.

Dennis Kwame Duku holds a BA in Political Science from the Universityof Ghana, Legon, Accra. He is now Senior History Teacher and Coordinatorat the Roman Ridge School, PO Box GP 21057, Accra, Ghana; e-mail:[email protected].

Documents

Ethnic Land Rights in Western Ghana: Landlord–Stranger Relations in the Democratic Era