5 MARCO LEGAL
5.7 NORMA TÉCNICA DE INTEROPERABILIDAD DE REUTILIZACIÓN DE RECURSOS DE LA
It is without doubt to say that traditional authorities in the communities are and continue to play a crucial role in the peoples’ livelihoods. Much of it is because of their relevance to land allocation. Due to the fact that chieftaincy is a hereditary institution, and that subjects are expected to follow their rulers, most people find it difficult to hold their chiefs accountable. With this increased land conversions and sales, I tried to understand and gauge the knowledge and general feelings towards the institution in relation to land (See table 5.9)
Table 5.9: Respondents’ knowledge about chieftaincy institution and its roles
Variable Community Status (%) Total
Indigene In-migrant
Relevance of Chiefs
Arbitration 6.0 4.9 5.3
Land management/allocation 60.2 43.0 49.3
Conflict management 9.6 8.5 8.9
Maintenance of law and order 0.0 2.8 1.8
Making customary laws 1.2 6.3 4.4
Embodiment of culture 7.2 5.6 6.2
Community development 15.7 28.9 24.0
Public rating of Chiefs
Good 47.0 66.2 59.1
Bad 53.0 33.4 40.9
Total (225)
Source: Field data Ghana April 2009 – March 2010
Indeed the chieftaincy institution and the queen mother institution play major roles in the Ghanaian society but opinion of community members differs on the relevance of these two traditional institutions with respect to land administration. For instance, 49% of the total respondents mentioned that land allocation and management is a very relevant role for chiefs while the least relevant one was that of maintaining law and order with 2%. However, local chiefs have better public rating among in-migrants than among indigenes.
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With the above stated reasons as to why the members still view the institution as relevant in land administration in spite of the fact that their leaders continue to take land from them, it prompted me to understand and discuss the accountability mechanisms in place within the institution. It is interesting to note that there exist traditional and local means of holding chiefs accountable in land matters. However with the demonstration of chiefs converting land without considering the subjects source of livelihood, it can be said that it’s because there are minimal accountability mechanisms to provide checks and balances on chiefs’ administration on the one hand and a lack of accountability on the other.
During the pre-colonial and colonial era, most African societies had their leaders rule by consulting with the elders. The elders were there representing the views of their people. A chief could not do anything without consulting his elders. This structure has been maintained ever since and happens to be within the structure of the Awutu traditional authority. However, with the increasing cases of land conversion and selling of land by chiefs while community members are complaining about this situation, one wonders whether there are mechanisms to control the chief’s behavior in land administration? This prompted me to investigate into the situation. There are two main checks on the administrative powers of chiefs as mentioned by community members. First is the one where the chiefs take decisions in council with their elders or sub chiefs. The second one is the possibilities of removing from position a chief that is not functioning according to demands of his office. This process is known as destoolment. However these seem not to be functioning effectively in the increased demand of land for residential purposes in Ofaakor communities since community members initiated none of them.
According to customary law and tradition, a chief can only govern the community, if he acts with the consent of the whole community represented by the principal councillors from all major families of the community which is called as council of the elders or the chief’s council. The chief’s council is traditionally supposed to be the real governing body of the town and its surrounding villages. The members of this governing council are usually the heads of the various clans. The council is presided over by the chief. The councilors are the representatives of the people, and, as such, have to confer with them on any issue that is to be discussed in the council. The chief is obliged to act on the advice and with consent of his councilors, whom he has to summon regularly. The councilors are assumed and expected to freely discuss all matters affecting the town or state. And, in any such atmosphere of free and frank expression of opinions, disagreements are inevitable. But in the event
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of such disagreements the council would continue to listen to arguments until a consensus was achieved with the reconciliation of opposed views. And so it is assumed that every command and every move that is adopted by the chief has been discussed and agreed upon by his councilors. It was constantly argued by the elders that, no important decision was passed by the councilors without first consulting their people. The councilors and the people are in daily life expected to have a symbiotic relationship. However, most people in the community feel and expressed dismay by this process. One indigene in Ofaakor expressed his frustration that
“These elders do not consult us. They operate the same way like politicians or current parliamentarians who think they know best what we the locals want, as is the case now in most, if not all, Ghanaian towns where you have land issues. The decisions they make in many cases are far from what we want concerning land. What we want is that they must stop selling our land. But if they still insist to continue selling land then, the least they can do is that they must help in building more school blocks, clinics, construct roads and bring clean tap water to our community” (Interview, 1st December 2009).
It was also a bemoaning situation that I found out in Ofaakor communities as most of the elders of the council were those that were selected from the royal family only and not from all major families of the community. It was also observed that in Bentum, Oklu Nkwanta, Gada and Kovor Torgah as they were migrant farmer communities their elders did not form part of the council of elders. In this area the high priest is part and parcel of the council. In such situations due to his traditional authority based on religious, spiritual and ritual power, it made it difficult for the council members to openly criticize him. Besides, even when they do, the chiefs often are not bound to respond to the criticisms. It was observed by community members that their council of elders have been so far been co-opted by their chiefs by either sharing the benefits from land administration with them so as to indirectly, removing their incentives to effectively check the use of power and if necessary stand up against the chief.
Regarding the destoolment of a chief, in this community, the basic principles guarding the selection or rejection of a chief and the workings of the chieftaincy institution is similar to the Akan tradition and chieftaincy set up which is also basically the same across Ghana. As indicated in Chapter 4, in Ghanaian society, the chief is the head of the community. The community is also the traditional area of his jurisdiction. A chief is selected for unique qualities that make him an excellent representative of the community. Traditionally, chiefs are ranked. At the summit of the institution is the king, whose title may differ from one ethnic group to another, followed by the paramount chiefs and their subordinate chiefs. The chief makes decisions on behalf of the community, but only after consulting
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with his council. The social and political power of a chief may depend on the ethnic composition and wealth of the community. As chiefs obtain their position through enstoolment (coronation) so they can lose it through destoolment. The enstoolment process begins when the families contending for the position have agreed or decided upon the person to be appointed. The decision becomes final when the Queen Mother approves the selected person as capable of leading and representing the community. The role of the Queen Mother in the process is important as her consent is essential for enstoolment. Once approved, he undergoes secret rituals performed by the Queen Mother, supported by the elders of the community. The public aspect of the enstoolment process is activated by the introduction of the chief to the community at a traditional durbar. The chief pledges his oath of allegiance to the community, to respect and protect it at all times and above all to uphold its traditions.
According to tradition, a chief can be destooled for breaking the oath of allegiance to the community. When the people of a community want to press de-stoolment charges against their chief, a case can be brought for arbitration to another higher chief or for adjudication to the traditional council. Removing a chief thus always requires the involvement of other chiefs who in most cases are not of the same rank but higher. This can be complicated because paramount chiefs often have a direct interest in who occupies the village stools, mainly because of their claims to a share of the villages’ land revenues partially thus bias or partiality is already introduced; and it is chiefs judging their fellow chiefs. Often the charges against the chief on trial, such as not using enough stool land revenue for community development are also an item of contestation. Obviously, the personal interest of higher chiefs in such cases could stand in the way of objective and impartial judgments. Besides the fact that fellow chiefs always have to be involved, an additional obstacle to destoolment is that, according to customary law charges cannot be brought by commoners, but only by the ‘kingmakers’, that is those sub-chiefs and members of the royal family who are in charge of selection and enthronement of a chief. As discussed above, these sub-chiefs are often restrained by their proximity to the chief or co-opted and therefore not likely to take the lead in actions against the chief. The main customary checks and balances on chiefs which are ruling in council with the sub-chiefs and the possibility of destoolment are thus not effective. One can add to this the fact that chiefly accountability is extremely low. In this community to ask a chief to account is often considered a vote of no confidence and most people will not dare to do that unless there are incontrovertible evidence of serious misrule by the chief.In fact most people are afraid that should
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they initiate the move they might end up being chased away from the communities since most of the studied community members are a good proportion are in-migrants.
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6
Power Dynamics in Land Administration: Chiefs vis-à-vis Government
Institutions
6.1
Introduction
The previous chapter shed more light onto the complexity of holding chiefs accountable at the local level. More especially with the community members’ own means of resisting the pressure of the chiefs selling their land. In this chapter, an examination of some mechanisms put in place at the national level is made, in order to meet the objective of analyzing the formal accountability mechanisms that exist at the national level through their various land agencies. This objective tries to answer the question, ‘what formal accountability mechanisms are in place to facilitate chiefs’ accountable in land matters and how effective are they?’ This chapter, therefore, tries to demonstrate government initiatives that have been deployed over time to enhance accountability mechanisms in customary land management. This stems from the colonial antecedents such as the District Assembly (DA) through the Town and Country Planning Department (TCDC), the Office of the Administrator of Stool Lands (OASL) and the donor supported programme of the Customary Land Secretariat (CLS). In this chapter the focus is on the expected functions of these land agencies (DA, TCDC, OASL and CLS) in the communities in relation to traditional authorities and their actual efficiency which is aimed to provide checks and balance in the customary land administration. In order to provide a deeper explanation, a case study approach of the CLS is undertaken by assessing the execution, its roles and responsibilities which is aimed at providing checks and balances of the customary land administration by combining tradition and modernity. The case study analysis, demonstrates the threats, challenges and power relations within the land administration. It concludes with a summary of potential means of strengthening this initiative.