Notas sobre las teorías de la distribución del ingreso

Although the 1994 violence started in Nanun, it spread over the entire eastern half of the Northern Region within two days. The Konkomba/Nanumba conflict of 1994 has to be understood in the context of events since 1991 in adjacent East Gonja and East Dagbon, where respectively Nawuri called for a separate district and Konkomba demanded a separate traditional council.

The Gonja area is ethnically heterogeneous and when the Gonja Youth Asso- ciation changed its name into Gonjaland Youth Association in 1991, many ethnic minorities interpreted this as a territorial claim, especially Nawuri who claimed autochthony to Kpandai town (Bogner 2000: 190-191). After a disputed plot allocation in this town between Nawuri residents and the town’s Gonja chief in April 1991, Gonja warriors chased all Nawuri from Kpandai but in June, Nawuri

20 _{NDA/DISEC/C/02/vol.3/42 Org. Secr. KOYA to The Regional PNDC Secretary (26-06-1989)}

‘Report on the Peace Talk Trip Made to Bimbilla District by ‘KOYA’ Three Man Delegation Headed by Anthony Adam Bukari 21st – 25th June 1989’.

21

NDA/DISEC/C/02/vol.4/6 Bimbilla-Na Abarika Attah II to The PNDC District Secretary (15-01- 1990) ‘Request for the Banishment of Seven Families’.

22 _{NDA/P/28/Vol.2/2 BNI/Bimbilla to BNI/N.R. (23-08-1988) ‘PNDC D/S Nanumba’; respectively}

NDA/DISEC/C/02/vol.3/53 Zonal Org. Asst. Wulensi to The PNDC District Secretary (09-11-1989) ‘Rumour about Konkomba/Nanumba Conflict’.

23 _{NDA/E/11/vol.2/57 Secretary Nanumba Youth Association to KOYA President (11-01-1990) ‘Joint}

NYA-KOYA Executive Meeting on 13th January at Bimbilla’; NDA/E/11/vol.2/56 Secretary Nanumba Youth Association to The PNDC District Secretary (09-01-1990) ‘Joint NYA and KOYA Executives Meeting 13th January, 1990’; NDA/E/11/vol.2/49 Secretary Nanumba Youth Association to The PNDC District Secretary (15-12-1989) ‘Joint Meeting of KOYA Executives and NYA Executives’.

24 _{NDA/DISEC/C/02/vol.3/1 ASPCL/Bimbilla to PNDC Dist. Secretary (30-02-1988) ‘Police Mes-}

sage’; NDA/CONF/3/n.n. ‘Minutes of Joint D.I.S.E.C.S. of Nkwanta and Bimbilla Districts Held at Nkwanta on 20th-21st July, 1989’; NDA/DISEC/C/02/vol.4/n.n. ‘Minutes of Joint DISEC Meeting between Nkwanta and Nanumba Districts of the Northern and Volta Regions from 22nd-24th Feb- ruary, 1990’.

25 _{NDA/DISEC/C/02/vol.4/n.n. Ag. PNDC Regional Secretary (Volta) to The PNDC Regional Secre-}

retook the town. Konkomba, who were a demographic majority in the Kpandai vicinity, had stayed neutral until two Konkomba men were hit by Gonja fire (probably incidentally). In May 1992, Konkomba came in direct confrontation with Gonja, and this eventually eclipsed the Nawuri case. While Konkomba defeated Gonja in the area around Kpandai, they were forced to flee from West- ern and Central Gonja.26

Kpandai is only ten kilometres south of Nanun and especially Chamba, which had emerged as a Konkomba stronghold after 1981, received many refugees, while hundreds of Chamba residents took up arms to Gonja.27 Moreover, throughout 1992 and 1993, the Konkomba/Gonja violence fed conspiracy theo- ries of an upcoming large conflict between chiefly and non-chiefly ethnic groups of the Northern Region. In Tamale, leaflets circulated warning for new Kon- komba attacks on Kpandai and on the future Konkomba takeover of Bimbilla and Yendi (Bogner 1996: 169, ff; 2000: 191).28

It was in this context, and only months after Ghana’s return to civil rule, that in June 1993, KOYA sent a petition to the National House of Chiefs asking to upgrade the Saboba chief, who had been reluctantly installed by Dagomba in 1989, to paramount status with a separate traditional area.29 Redirected by the House of Chiefs, KOYA sent a slightly adapted version to the Ya Na (Dagomba paramount chief) in October.30 The KOYA petitioners, claiming to represent all Konkomba and calling on the truth in the name of ‘Mother Ghana’, wrote that their ‘denied traditional Independence’ had ‘rendered Ghana’s Independence from the British in 1957 meaningless to them’. Their call for an independent paramount chieftaincy, could be misinterpreted by some, but it would only stimulate northern development.

26 _{The Government reacted to the 1991 violence by setting up a Committee of Inquiry, but its recom-}

mendations, granting autonomy to Nawuri, were never implemented (Bogner 2000: 190; Schmid 2001: 29).

27 _{NDA/INT/13/21 Assemblyman Sabonjida to The District Chief Executive (25-05-1992) ‘A Report}

from Sabonjida’.

28

One pamphlet, the authenticity of which must be seriously doubted, showed that Konkomba were involved in a separatist movement: ‘The National Liberation Movement of Western Togoland’ (06- 06-1989) (in: Akapule (n.d., b)).

29 _{Uchabobor et al to The President, National House of Chiefs (29-06-1993) ‘Petition of Chief, Elders}

and the Youth of Konkomba Land to the National House of Chiefs for the Creation of Paramount Stool for Konkomba Land to be Known as ‘Ukpakpanbur’. On the 1989 installation, see Kotin, A.T.O. (Chief’s Secretary) to The President, Eastern Dagomba Traditional Council (07-05-1989); Ya-Na Yakubu II to Bowan Kwadin (12-06-1989) ‘Notice of Nomination, Election and Installation of Chabob-Bor, Ubor Bowan Kwadin of Saboba – Your Letter Dated 7th May 1989’.

30 _{Wujangi, Kenneth (KOYA) to The Ya-Na (19-10-1993) ‘Petition for the Creation of a Paramountcy}

Three days later, the Dagomba paramount chief Ya Na firmly rejected the KOYA request.31 Calling Konkomba acephalous, nomadic and Togolese,32 he denied KOYA claims of indigeneity and demographic dominance in northern Ghana. He also renounced cultural-linguistic difference as a valid criterion for paramount chieftaincy and KOYA’s statement that Konkomba subjection to Dagomba chiefs was a colonial invention. The Ya Na made reference to David Tait to prove that Konkomba were ‘among the aucefuloss [sic] societies’.

Even though KOYA petitioner Kenneth Wujangi gave safety assurances on a 6 November press conference in Accra,33 many Dagomba, but also Gonja and Nanumba, feared a Konkomba revolt. Government representatives made several attempts in late 1993 to mediate in the conflict but these failed because all parties were suspicious of Rawlings: Konkomba saw the Government as the protector of the ‘majority’ groups, while the latter blamed Rawlings for personally setting Konkomba and other non-chiefly groups up against them.34 The best example of failed Government mediation was the 1 December speech of the Presidential Advisor on Chieftaincy Affairs in the Northern Region House of Chiefs, in which he warned the chiefs that Government would not allow individuals to use chief- taincy for causing trouble, after which he was attacked by a Dagomba mob out- side the building.35