Evaluación de la calidad de mano de obra

‘For the ultimate test of the legitimacy of any political system is its ability to provide fertility, to ensure that the crops grow, that the people prosper and are content […] The

concern of the ancestors for their descendants will never cease’.127

I was sitting on the friendly, if slightly wonky bench at Loving Brother’s Store just down from the National Commission for Civic Education office in Ho. Loving Brother’s Store was my local drinking spot and one which I frequented almost every day at some stage, usually with Korsi after we had used the office toilet in the morning and sometimes at other intervals throughout the day. Simon’s, or ‘seeemons’ as we came to call it, was a compact wooden structure. With a sitting area around three metres in length and just a couple of benches, it was suited to the quick customer turnover that came with being situated near so many offices, the fire station, prison and water-works company. More often than not, people came in for a quick tot or cigarette, often not even sitting down before returning to work. I often spent some time there, chatting to Simon and various regulars who had become friends. They all knew me and I was perhaps overly familiar with the rhythms of the small spot. Opening at around five am, a steady of people would arrive, coming to fill up their empty plastic bottles with fiery akpeteshi to take to the farm. As it approached eight, various workers would pop in, some to have a tot, others simply to buy and smoke a single cigarette. Throughout the day, people came in and out, sometimes staying for a few hours until the evening when Simon could finally have some rest in his personal room next door.

Rarely empty, except for a lull in the afternoons, there were, nevertheless, real regulars and it was these regulars who became close friends and with whom I shared laughter, tears, song, nicknames, a goat and many tots of akpeteshie. The living dead were certainly remembered here. This was a place where, in Francis Nyamnjoh’s words: ‘You can risk a glass too many and make a bit of a fool of yourself without the fear that you might be taken advantage of’ (Nyamnjoh 2002: 111). This is a chapter about morality and I shall soon describe some of the animated discussions about morality that took place at Simon’s. However, Simon’s was also a place of ‘moral

140 conviviality’ (Fontein 2011) itself. A place where many regulars had tabs going, myself included, where customers could sleep safely if they had to and where lottery wins and wages alike transformed themselves into tots for us all. Although in the first few months, I was often buying others drinks, they all came back to me.

My good friend and one of my adopted grandfathers, Joviality,128 is sadly now dead. A half blind night watchman, he had lied about his age in order to keep his job and what was left of his salary after loan deductions. Sometimes I helped him with money and food, and sometimes just to see him on his way to work safely. He was constantly in financial trouble and one of the many people whose ignorance appeared to be abused by employers and banks alike. Korsi was often helping him try to resolve these problems. In fact, Simon’s was often like a consultancy office, with Korsi drafting letters for people who had not been properly paid or who had been unfairly dismissed or transferred for no given reason. The fact that the NCCE was rarely funded enough by the government to conduct its research and civic education programmes did not stop Korsi. Constitution always in hand, he was ever ready to discuss what exactly being a Ghanaian citizen should involve. Everyone who frequented Simon’s was aware of his role in the NCCE and many people knew he was the son of Zikpitor. In this sense, people appreciated Korsi as a resource of information and as someone with intelligence and unshakeable principles, some of which, as we shall see later, occasionally landed him in trouble.

The usual figures were assembled at Simon’s when a rather interesting conversation began. As with many conversations, this one was a response to what we had been listening to on the radio. Kwame Senyo, a much loved presenter, made the point that now everyone believed Jesus’s blood had been shed, there was the assumption that anyone could do anything and then ask for forgiveness. He argued that the uptake of the yevo system of administration and justice had been the problem. Where people kept their traditional system of law, he argued, there was order. Once the radio programme started to draw to a close and much to the amusement of the other drinkers at Simon’s, Joviality asked us all: ‘So, what is the difference between education and civilisation?’ After the chuckling had died down, Fo Nani explained that Christianity started a long time ago. It came from the Anlo and the Fante areas of Ghana. Not impressed with this response, Joviality asked him: ‘You are saying that

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civilisation came from the coast?’ From behind the bar, Simon interjected: ‘We need a dictionary. Eileadh, can you not explain?’ Seeing me looking slightly lost, Fo Nani stepped and said:‘Christianity and civilisation – they move together’. Becoming increasingly incensed, ordering another tot and offering some to the living dead, Korsi asked Fo Nani whether he was trying to say that their ancestors were not civilised.

Korsi’s questioning resulted in further debate. Simon and Joviality claimed that the ancestors were not civilised because they had to pound fufu on a flat stone and set fire with stones. Another old man disagreed, arguing that this showed just how civilised they were, adding: ‘Now we are paying for mobile phones - those days our grandfathers just looked into a calabash of water to see and speak to the person’. A woman in her 60s joined in the debate by saying: ‘They say that Europeans brought us civilisation but they didn’t realise that we were already civilised. With their ideas we have become over civilised and that has led to the destruction of everything’. A younger man called Lewis then joined us, a friend of Korsi’s. He said in a matter of fact manner: ‘Look, this is no civilisation. Look at our government. They talk democracy but act dictatorship. Everything they do is only to fill their own pockets. If you talk, someone will make sure you never move forward in your job. They will just pull you down.

The debate was becoming quite animated by this point, with another man starting to get angry, pointing at the nearby Pentecostal church and complaining that even the churches were corrupt, with ‘money mad’ Pentecostal pastors running off with money and brainwashing people into turning against their own families. Turning to me, he said: ‘Do you think the Holy Spirit is giving money to these hypocrites? No. they are still going in for the same witchcraft and juju to make their money. If you want to get rich quick in Ghana and you are not a politician, just start a church. Or an NGO. Or even better – both!’ This was a piece of advice I had heard before and would hear again.

Finally, Korsi had his chance and he asked for a second time, whether people thought the ancestors were not civilised. Pushing the point further, he said: ‘if this system we have now is so civilised, why are people coming to disturb me and the old man with their problems at dawn? Every day, they are coming to the old man, from the police station, the courts and even WAJU129. Now they are even coming from the

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churches! Why? Because they know that you don’t have to pay a bribe to see justice. We don’t joke with the ancestors.’ Grinning and offering a small amount of akpeteshi

to the ancestors, Lewis said: ‘As for you Korsi, you know you are right. In the old days if your father told you to do something you did it because that was the law. In fact any elder. They will tell you that every child is my child. But when this democracy came, our elders who were formulating those principles forgot that democracy doesn’t come to discipline your child. Now you see these nyamanyama130 youths stealing and even killing but they will say their money is a gift from God. If you talk they will just tell you are Satan!’ Everyone nodded knowingly. Mention of misbehaving and nyamanyama

youth quickly brought consensus to the group.

Sitting relatively quietly up until this point, I was trying to keep up with the pace of the conversation. I was dazzled by the movement between ‘house level’ and ‘farm level’,131 and what felt like swift shifts in scale between maintaining some kind of discipline and moral order in the house and maintaining it on a national level. Finally, I asked why, if the traditional system was the best one, anyone bothered with the others. I quickly received my answer. A young woman, Abla, who often came to Simon’s in the mornings bragging of her paid sexual services to various local and usually married men, told me: ‘The traditionalist has to obey the rules more-this is why the church is so appealing to people. These days we have a choice in which religion to choose and Christianity gives you more freedom. We just go to church for the music and for fucking. As for today, morality is a market! It is our human right to choose and tradition is not easy o. Tradition is colo’. Lewis interrupted her, tutting:

‘As for you young people, all you talk about is your rights and your lefts. What of their responsibilities? Eh Korsi? Their citizen responsibilities? Not giving Korsi a chance to respond, Abla simply retorted: ‘I’m aware’, before sucking up her plastic packet of gin, waving a quick goodbye to me and sashaying out of Simon’s.

Introduction

While the first section of this thesis concerned itself with traditional authority as a particular form of temporal authority and producer of an alternative time-shape and temporal consciousness to that promoted by the state and Pentecostals, the second

130 _{Rough and badly behaved}

131 _{House level before farm level was a common piece of advice to remind people that they needed to}

143 section will deal more explicitly with some of the moral tensions which arose through the co-presence of these different leaders and their often conflicting claims about moral personhood, as people attempted to navigate their way through the challenges of everyday life. Political leaders and, increasingly, Pentecostal pastors, were often accused of selfishness, greed and involvement in witchcraft – in short, immoral practices which emphasised the importance of the individual, often at the expense of their relationships with others and obligations towards kin. Indeed the perceived proliferation of practices which undermined the values of relational personhood, arguably captured by the logic of witchcraft, was often cited by people as a reason for why the traditional authorities were increasingly being regarded as essential if there was to be any future at all. Unlike other leaders, I was often told, traditional leaders, through their connection to the living dead, were moral leaders. As representatives of the ancestors, they stood for a morality rooted in the ideal relationship between ancestors and their descendants, a relationship which was perceived to stand in opposition to the lone figure of the witch. This chapter will therefore consider traditional authority as moral authority through a discussion of the importance of the ancestor/descendant relationship as a model for moral personhood along with the particular obligations which were honoured through it.

We already have an understanding of some of the reasons why, on temporal grounds, the traditional authorities were increasingly valued as development leaders and ‘future builders’. However, the wider aim of this chapter is to show that development, progress and ensuring future well-being was equally experienced by people as a moral project, or, as was often the case, an immoral project. Moral futures were described to me as being as much about the reproduction of good persons and social life as having access to economic and material development and the opportunity to prosper. Michael Jackson’s observation that because human existence is always at once social and ethical, fulfillment and well-being consists in our capacity to realise ourselves in relation to others, rings true here (Jackson 2011: 60). Indeed, perhaps the very reason why ‘home level’ and ‘farm level’ were moved between with such ease within discussions concerning morality was precisely because the reproduction of good persons was recognised as being imperative if there was to be any viable future at all.

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The Anthropology of Morality, Obligation and Freedom

Just as I was dazzled at Simon’s by the shifts in scale during discussions about morality, so too have I found writing about morality difficult to circumscribe. Where does morality begin and where does it end? Can morality be defined in any way which makes it distinct from the general notion of the social and, if it cannot, is it, as an analytical tool, analytically vacuous? (Holy 1996: 168).132 The value of morality as an analytical tool distinct from the social continues to be debated within current anthropology (Laidlaw 2002; Robbins 2007a, 2007b, 2009; Yan 2011; Zigon 2007, 2008).133 The new anthropology of morality argues that Emile Durkheim stretched the notion of morality too thinly through his idea of morality as the codified representation of society.134 In a recent article, Yunxiang Yan pointed out that the new anthropology of morality seems to suggest that an anthropology of morality with a more specific focus is dependent upon a move away from Durkheim.135

Attempting to provide some alternative models, Joel Robbins and Jarrett Zigon, while often disagreeing on methodological issues and whether the focus of studies of morality should be individuals or the social/cultural, have nevertheless both agreed that there are two main types of morality or moral experience. The first, which refers to the ways in which people act morally by adhering to the norms of their society, is described by Robbins as the morality or reproduction and by Zigon simply as morality (Robbins 2009: 278). The second type of morality, Robbins calls the morality of freedom and Zigon calls ethics. In this moral space, the people within it recognise that there is no single norm that can guide their behaviour in order for it to be moral. Here we find multiple moralities or various conflicting values, with the people involved aware of their freedom to choose their course of action and their ability to claim

132 _{Ladislav Holy raised this concern about the dangers of introducing new concepts with specific}

reference to attempts, by some anthropologists, to replace ‘kinship’ with the more general concept of ‘relatedness’ but I think a similar argument could be made here even if we acknowledge that morality is certainly not a new concept as such within anthropology.

133 _{James Laidlaw’s arguments are less concerned with morality and more explicitly concerned with the}

anthropology of ethics and freedom. Morality for Laidlaw is presented as part of a Durkheimian legacy and one in which ‘Durkheim's 'social' is, effectively, Immanuel Kant's notion of the moral law, with the all-important change that the concept of human freedom, which was of course central for Kant, has been neatly excised from it’ (Laidlaw 2002: 212).

134 _{Yunxiang Yan (2011) provides a thorough and critical examination of recent debates concerning}

Durkheim, morality and the social:http://aotcpress.com/articles/move-durkheim-reflections- anthropology-morality/. Questioning the extent to which an anthropology can or, indeed should, move away from Durkheim, Yan also proposes more anthropological focus on immoralities.

145 particular actions and values as moral ones (Robbins 2009: 278).

Harri Englund has noted that one outcome of the recent focus on ethics as a way of escaping a Durkheimian morality has been the disappearance of studies of obligation (Englund 2008: 34). This, he argues, is arguably a result of the perception that past studies of morality and, in particular obligation, gave rise to an overly simplistic interpretation of social control (Englund 2008: 34). While not proposing a return to Durkheim, Englund is able to recover moral obligation for anthropology, this time through the work of Max Gluckman for whom, Englund argues, moral obligation is not separable from the material and affective practices that constitute persons. The ‘existential import’, as Englund puts it, which is at the heart of moral obligation, is ‘itself contingent on historically specific circumstances, evoking rules and norms that are entirely compatible with conflict and emergent relationships’ (Englund 2008: 34- 35). Importantly, he argues, what has perhaps been overlooked in studies of morality and obligation is that this existential compulsion may be constitutive of, rather than external to, the givers and receivers (Englund 2008: 36).

This chapter seeks to outline what being a ‘good person’ (amenyo) or a ‘bad person’ (amevor) involved in contemporary Ho, arguing that underlying various and often competing moral were ideas about the different forms that personhood could and should take. I argue that tensions between accumulation, distribution, freedom and obligation were central to contemporary debates about morality136 and that it was these tensions that the traditional authorities were often described as being best placed to resolve, through their connection to the living dead. As I argued in chapters three, traditional authority, as a particular form of moral authority was always also a form of temporal authority. It was precisely because the community of the living dead was made up of once living and now living dead kinspeople, who had knowledge and