Decisiones, formación y habilidades del CPC

When discussing the colonial state, it can be tempting to only list the policies of oppression, as above. However, it is helpful to also look at those opportunities created by the colonial state. Opportunity is expressed in this chapter through the character of Ananse, a popular folk-hero in Asante, and wider Akan, tradition. Ananse is a many- varied character, sometimes described as human, sometimes spider, who is son of the Nyame, the sky god. Ananse is a trickster, whose success relates to his great ingenuity and skill, and who is only ever captured in a trap of his own making (Danquah, 1944, p.

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199). The popularity of Ananse still exists to this day, being the subject of children’s tales in Ghana and abroad.

Our use of Ananse in this piece is to give full credit to the ingenuity displayed by indigenous peoples, whose greatest stand against colonialism came not from overt military resistance, but from individual strategies. This cunning, inventive and subtle intransigence demonstrates the adaptability of West Africans, and strikes at the core of opinion which views their ‘acceptance’ of colonialism with relative passivity. We will examine two of the most significant forms of resistance in the era of colonialism.

Exploitation of Financial and Political Opportunities

“Considerable facilities exist for the smuggling of spirits across land frontiers. Both in the Ivory Coast and in French Togoland railways run northwards from ports situated

near the Gold Coast frontiers.” (Report of the Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Consumption of Spirits in the Gold Coast, cited in Nugent, 2002, p. 85)

The most significant forms of resistance were dependent on the mobility of Africans, something which we have noted was not alien to them. There are two practices which proved most disastrous for the colonial governments, the first of which was the exploitation of divergent fiscal regimes. Unfortunately for the European imperialists, the parcelling of West Africa created the existence of a large number of borders, which they could not possibly hope to effectively monitor. This in itself would not have proven a great difficulty, had not the various colonial regimes operated their customs and fiscal policies in disharmony.

In his very detailed work of the Ghana-Togo borderlands, Nugent (2002) describes the incredible troubles wreaked by the high incidence of smuggling across the imperial frontiers. Despite the development of the British Customs Preventive Service (CPS), whose mandate it was to maintain order along the borders between British and French West Africa, the lack of personnel across such an extensive and rough terrain made the aims unattainable. Evidenced by the case of spirit smuggling in the 1920s, British officials were at a loss as to how they could implement the desired prohibition of

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certain forms of alcohol, without “a doubling in strength of the Preventive Service along the eastern frontier” (Nugent, 2002, p. 84).

Indeed, due to the lower French tariffs, there already existed a flourishing illicit trade in spirits (Nugent, 2002, p. 85). Nugent contradicts a common argument, that cross- border trading routes during the colonial era (and to this day) are simply a continuation of traditional trading patterns, and not the product of colonial borders. This assumption is simply false, and does not give credit to the African entrepreneurs who sought to take advantage of the monetary discrepancies and variable tariffs that the borders afforded. Nugent (2002) demonstrates that contraband trading routes were a direct result of the borders, and that “smugglers, who were a familiar feature of every border town, were not resisting colonial borders so much as reinforcing them through their day-today activities” (p. 103).

The problem of tax evasion also became quite serious, certainly for the French who had imposed direct taxation, at a time where the British had not followed suit. In the borderlands between the colony if the Gold Coast and Togo, this led to a situation where a farmer would cross the border to work in his fields during the day, and return to his home on the other side at night. Thus, the farmer could avoid direct taxation, and in his daily crossings, could smuggle contraband goods as well (Nugent, 2002, p. 102).

As for political opportunities, Africans took advantage of times of imperial weakening to demand greater autonomy from the more exigent practices of the colonial administration. An example of such concessions occurred during the conscription crisis of the First World War, whereby the French government was forced to grant soldiers certain freedoms upon their return from service. These included “exemption from the

indigénat, and from taxation, payment of allowances to their families and preferment for ex-soldiers in some government jobs” (Adloff, 1964, p. 178). Indigenous peoples began to take advantage of the benefits of politicizing themselves, through the

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machinery of government, elected or otherwise, as well as the forming of political associations and trade unions. The colonial state offered new avenues for subsistence as well as the gaining of rights and privileges.

The Use of Migration

“L’exode est l’arme des faibles.”15 (Asiwaju, 1976, p. 578)

Migration, more so than smuggling and tax evasion, was detrimental to colonial designs, and was heavily employed by those communities in relative proximity to imperial frontiers. As a statement of resistance, using migration as method of refuge was made possible by the differing colonial practices of the French and British governments.

In his excellent piece entitled “Migrations as Revolt”, Asiwaju (1976) provides an account of the movement of residents of Côte d’Ivoire and Upper Volta toward, in particular, the colony of the Gold Coast, prior to 1945. Among the causal factors for these mass movements, were the oppressive colonial impositions listed above, such as taxation, forced labour and conscription. These emigrants were not returned to Côte d’Ivoire by British officials, despite demands on the part of the French government, for the simple reason that the increased labour force was to Britain’s advantage (Asiwaju, 1976, p. 581). Moreover, the French were piqued by what they “considered to be undue publicity” on the part of their British peers toward these migrations.

Asiwaju (1976) maintains that these migrations were very significant in terms of numbers, despite the fact that accurate estimates are impossible to make. Obviously illegal immigrants would avoid the policed border posts, and attempts at the time to account for these migrants in the Gold Coast were hampered by the difficulty in distinguishing them from their ethnically similar kinsmen (Asiwaju, 1976, p. 589) However, the impact of these movements can be weighed in light of isolated data, an

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example of which is the migration of over 12,000 people from Assini to the Gold Coast between 1916-1917, and a staggering 80,000 French subjects from Upper Volta, Mali and Niger to the Gold Coast from the late-1920s to the early 1930s (Asiwaju, 1976, p. 590).

Evidence of these movements is found in the accounts of British officers, who at the time were very much aware of the reason for the flights, and were in no hurry to discourage the influx of French subjects. The increase in potential labourers could only be an advantage over the competing French. David Boyle, a District Commissioner posted in Asante was said to have written in his diary in 1916 that “the large number of French emigrants from Segu and the Senegal Niger country seems to point to some heavy taxing, forced recruiting, or other difficulties up there” (Fuller, 2000, p. 127).

This use of migration and other forms of resistance against the dominance of an exterior power is reminiscent of peasant resistance in other historical and geographic contexts. In his seminal work, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, James C. Scott (1985) demonstrates how subaltern peoples in Malaysia used a variety of tactics, from evasion to outright resistance, in the class struggle against the acceptance of the terms of their own subordination. In this same way, the system of colonial dominance imposed on African people was not passively accepted by the ‘subjugated’ classes. Rather the methods of resistance in and of themselves led to the creation of a colonial system that could not have been anticipated by either party.

The borders created and concretized during the latter 19th century and the early 20th century were not without their advantages, in light of certain oppressive practices of the colonial governments. Indeed, it is the resourcefulness of West Africans in their utilization of the borders, both for financial benefit, as well as for refuge, that hampered (in particular French) colonial designs. The indigenous populations were not

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uniformly passive, for indeed it is their ingenuity and skill which would maintain their survival and help to bring about their independence.