The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame

"The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah": Becoming/Being Gã, Straddling "Spaces," and Negotiating Boundaries in the Gold Coast Christian "Model Town" (Abokobi), ca. 1860–1980

Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor

Journal of West African History, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2020, pp. 1-27 (Article)

Published by Michigan State University Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/756144

[ Access provided at 4 Jun 2020 10:22 GMT from University of Basel ] article VVVV

“The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”: Becoming/Being Gã, Straddling “Spaces,” and Negotiating Boundaries in the Gold Coast Christian “Model Town” (Abokobi), ca. 1860–1980 ernest sasu kwame sewordor University of Ghana

abstract By the mid-nineteenth century, Basel Mission (BM) evangelical activities on the Gold Coast had expanded beyond the Accra littoral and this significantly informed the establishment of many Pietist Christian urban enclaves or Salems for African converts. Salems therefore became sites that epitomized Basel missionary encounters on the Gold Coast. Abokobi, as an envisioned “Model Town,” is key because it was the only Salem established completely outside the sociopolitical ambit of an existing Accra polity. Abokobi is thus uniquely positioned for examining how intercultural exchanges shaped contested memories and for revealing the ways that African women of slave ancestry renegotiated identity and belonging. The assumption that the Christian outlook of Salems was enough to blur ethnic, hierarchical, and gendered differences is questioned in this study because such a notion misleads and shifts scholarly enquiry away from understanding the nuances of the everyday experiences of families of servile ancestry in Abokobi and other BM religious centers. résumé Vers le milieu du XIXe siècle, les activités évangéliques de la Mission de Bâle (MB) sur la côte de l’Or s’étaient étendues au-delà du littoral d’Accra, ce

Copyright © 2020 Michigan State University. Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor, “‘The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah’: Becoming/Being Gã, Straddling ‘Spaces,’ and Negotiating Boundaries in the Gold Coast Christian ‘Model Town’ (Abokobi), ca. 1860–1980,” Journal of West African History, Vol. 6, Iss. 1 (2020): 1–28. ISSN 2327-1868. All rights reserved.

1 2  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor qui a fortement contribué à la création de nombreuses enclaves urbaines piétistes chrétiennes ou Salems pour les convertis africains. Les Salems sont donc deve- nus des sites incarnant les rencontres des missionnaires bâlois sur la côte de l’Or. Abokobi, en tant que « ville modèle » envisagée, est essentielle car elle était le seul Salem établi complètement en dehors du cadre sociopolitique d’une structure existante d’Accra. Abokobi a donc une position particulièrement utile pour exa- miner comment les échanges interculturels ont façonné des souvenirs contestés, et pour révéler les façons dont les femmes africaines d’ascendance esclavagiste ont renégocié leur identité et leur appartenance. Les hypothèses selon lesquelles la perspective chrétienne des Salems était suffisante pour brouiller les différences ethniques, hiérarchiques et de genre sont remises en question dans cette étude. En effet, une telle notion induit en erreur et empêche la recherche scientifique de comprendre les nuances des expériences quotidiennes des familles d’ascendance servile à Abokobi et dans d’autres centres religieux BM.

Introduction

In October 1977, a petition reached Basel, Switzerland, from a woman resident at Abokobi, a small, historically Christian town located about sixteen miles north of Accra, in Ghana. The petition recounted her past, when she was entangled in social bondage as a child and her subsequent living arrangements with Basel missionary Rev. Michael J. Seeger, who “adopted” her and in whose direct service she remained until it partly changed after her marriage to Ebenezer Bekrah in 1898.1 This woman was Adinyantala (a.k.a., Johana Nyewuame Bekrah or Awo Naa).2 According to her petition, she was a native of a village called Batsonsa, near Sandema, which is situated in the Builsa State within the Upper-East Region of present-day Ghana. From there, she was captured by slave raiders while playing with other children and together they were enslaved in about 1872. She was about twelve years old at the time. Awo Naa and the other children were transported on foot and after several days reached Krachi, a village near the River Volta, where she was purchased by another slaver. From this point, not only was her destiny altered, but her future as well. She was put on a canoe to Ada.3 Further, Awo Naa recalled that she was rescued during a British government clampdown on slavers at Ada. After being kept at a police station for a while, she was put under the care of Basel missionary Seeger, who subsequently developed a close paternalistic relation with young Awo Naa as well as two other rescued girls.4 In 1890, Seeger’s transfer from Ada led to the relocation of the girls to Abokobi, where Awo Naa was baptized and christened “Johana.” The petition closed with some requests: first, for an intervention on her behalf by the BM to “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  3 be granted a piece of farmland, and second, for merchandise to be sent her from the surviving Seegers, her “borderless kinfolks,” connected by historic encounters through the BM work on the Gold Coast.5 This evidence reveals how indigenous notions about patron–client relations shaped existing understandings of kinship. Moreover, it shows a hierarchical Abokobi society that emphasized missionary patronage as crucial for contemporary ideas of negotiating the social power that shaped senses of identity and belonging for families of slave ancestry, such as the Bekrahs. This article is situated in the context of the evolving relationship between the British colonial administration and the BM as reflected in some British policies in the pre- and postcolonial periods. The question of slavery caused anxiety for both the Basel missionaries and the British colonial administration. Thus, since the second part of the nineteenth century, serious attempts to curb “undesired” customs informed both spatial and social change.6 The history of slavery and slaveholding in Abokobi is key because it provides insight into some of the ambiguities and contradictions of BM practices on the Gold Coast.7 This article posits that social exchanges and identity formations were engendered through socio-spatial categories to which formerly enslaved non-Gã people (in particular, women) who settled at Abokobi were consigned. Hence, it is simplistic to assume that the Christian outlook of Salems was enough to blur the ethnic, hierarchical, and gendered differences that were manifest in the daily lived experiences of families of servile ancestry at Abokobi. Although this condition marginalized the town-quarter ethnic “strangers” (i.e., Zongo-bii )8 collectively, the Bekrah family is used as a case study to interrogate the spatial implications of interethnic and -akutso interactions in Abokobi. For this purpose, the life stories of selected members of the Bekrah family are explored. The oral testimonies gathered provided insights into the (re)constructions of identity following the incorporation of “strangers” into Abokobi, with particular emphasis on the implications of social bondage, gender, and cultural politics. Abokobi, a predominantly Gã town,9 had become a host community for ex- slaves, in particular, shortly before and after the abolition of indigenous slavery in 1874 by the British colonial administration.10 The immigration of ex-slaves neces- sitated spatial reconfigurations as new markers of both imagined and real borders that culminated in the creation of the Zongo akutso. The incorporation of people of slave ancestry into the social space of free men and women in Abokobi had profound cultural implications. Mental constructions were also affected because “despite such possibilities of social integration, the slave origins of a person still remained in social consciousness.”11 An appraisal of the case of Awo Naa provides an illustration for untangling these complex realities thoroughly. 4  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor

Historiography and Theoretical Framework

There is a significant body of historiography on missionary activities on the Gold Coast, yet little on how missionary encounters during British colonialism shaped Accra’s urban social past.12 The most notable works by pioneering mission historians are works that emerged in the 1960s: Noel Smith’s The Presbyterian Church of Ghana 1835–1960 , Hans W. Debrunner’s A History of Christianity in Ghana, J. Kofi Agbeti’s West African Church History, and Francis L. Bartels’s The Roots of Ghana Methodism.13 At least two major limitations can be observed in these early works. First, and most critical, is what Paul Jenkins recently noted as a “comfort zone”14 phenomenon—i.e., history written predominantly by churchmen from a convenient standpoint that allows acerbic reviewers to rightly label these works as hagiographies. These works focused on European missionary-created sources and constructed narratives from perspectives that delimited the presence of Afri- cans. Thus, although professional historians were missing from the pioneering phase of missionary scholarship, those produced were one-dimensional, with limited attention to African agency. Second, because these early works were originally intended to paint a specific picture of church history, emphasis was laid on examining the social impact of missionary encounters on solely the Gold Coast. Thus, these works do not examine how negotiations between African Christian converts and European missionaries informed the evolution of new Christian urban spaces like Abokobi in response to European colonial urban policies beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century in Accra. The congregational (or one-dimensional) approach to investigating missionary encounters in precolonial and colonial Gold Coast partly explains this historio- graphical gap. This is not to excuse but to explain that scholarship about Chris- tian Missions on the Gold Coast has been, until recently, dominated by authors affiliated with official church positions and this has serious implications for the narratives offered.15 Likewise, pioneer works have focused on individual mission organizations with little emphasis on the relationships with the colonial estab- lishments that were usually the facilitators of evangelical missionary operations.16 The fundamental relevance of these works notwithstanding, this one-dimensional emphasis conveniently prevents capturing the nuanced realities and interpreta- tions of how missionary cultural notions about urban space-making shaped their activities on the Gold Coast. With this in mind, yet departing from this scholarly tradition (as this article attempts), it is important to investigate the complex networks involving British colonial, Basel missionary, and Gã agency in negotiating urban spaces and practices manifested by the establishment of Abokobi. Spatial theory provides the central framework for this article. Social space entails more than a fixed physical arena in which historical events unfold. In “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  5 this article, “space” means an entire range of social realities. Social space-making include the (mis)understandings of political actions, class, gender, economic activities, religious, and cultural practices as well as the representations of these dialectical social realities through built forms and the creation of bounded set- tings such as the establishment of Abokobi as a Christian urban enclave.17 These ideas shaped this article’s attempt to understand how the Zongo quarter emerged as a component of Abokobi’s urban space and its evolution as a negotiated phenomenon. This foundation will provide insights for reevaluating the contextual shifts and explain how the Zongo women imagined, understood, and crossed or used space(s) within the Abokobi society. In essence, although spatial theory conceptualizes human interactions within a defined physical landscape, it also embraces the idea of a constantly shifting (re)presentation for imaginations and informs this article’s demonstration of how Zongo women helped shape Abokobi’s social space.18

The BM, Ending Indigenous Slavery, and the Establishment of the Abokobi Zongo

In 1860, the discussion about the BM’s position on indigenous slavery gained far more urgency than before. After receiving correspondence and following some deliberations, the Home Committee introduced the “Amendments Regarding Slavery.” This regulation was preceded by what Peter Haenger termed the “first phase” (i.e., 1828–43) of the fight against domestic slavery by the BM. Haenger explained that the European Basel missionaries “treated it not as a complex social structure in their individual areas but as a ‘heathen problem’ whose solution was to be deferred to the distant future when the word of God would finally break through.” This position encouraged “their toleration of slave ownership within the missionary community and in their employment of slaves as porters and plantation workers.”19 This point probably reflects Rev. Zimmermann’s simplistic evaluation of the aftermath of the abolition of indigenous slavery a decade later in 1875.20 When the time for the supposed “breakthrough” finally came, it was obvious that indigenous slavery was not only a case of the suppression of human liberty and freedom: indigenous slavery was a complex system that had for centuries been gradually incorporated into the African social order.21 The Home Committee was bent on removing what they considered a social ill from Gã society. The challenge for the Home Committee was that the BM’s position about the ways to curb slavery appeared to be only lip service. This was true despite the fact that the Home Committee’s decisions about slavery were based on information gathered from 6  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor observations by European Basel missionaries in different parts of the Gold Coast. Among the European Basel missionaries themselves, there was no clear view as to how to deal with the matter. According to Debrunner, three broad responses were dominant: 1) those who affirmed slave practices, 2) those who opposed it, and 3) those who compromised by taking a middle stance, i.e., were sympathetic to both positions. Each strand was encouraged by different groups of Mission agents.22 The result was the “Amendments Regarding Slavery.” The regulation was meant to be implemented by a commission composed of missionaries Carl Frie- drich Aldinger, Elias Schrenk, and Johann Adam Mader, “who had made an effort not to oppose the committee of the general inspector too openly on the question of slavery.” Therefore, it becomes clear that the “pietistic spirit of obedience and gratitude to God and one’s earthly superior [which] permeated the Basel Mission’s policy of slaves liberation” was a factor that shaped BM policy and thinking.23 The rate at which ex-slaves were immigrating to the Abokobi community had increased by the 1860s.24 Like many BM Salems, the Gã have historically been a receptive people, accepting and even incorporating “strangers” into their town quarters.25 By the 1860s, BM enclaves in the Accra plains included Apenkwa, May- era, and Abokobi. These were known to be safe havens for slaves—commonly of Dagomba and Grunshi ethnicity—in flight.26 The official repudiation of indigenous slavery in by the BM and the British colonial office, in 1860 and 1874, respectively, was key to the migrations. This condition reshaped identities, informed space-making/marking, and affected gender and sexuality. As Peter Haenger has demonstrated, Euro-African Basel missionaries in Abokobi in the 1860s and 1870s influenced multicultural interactions.27 These social changes show that, by the second half of the nineteenth century, Christian urban enclaves in the Gã hinterland had become sites shaped by complex interethnic and cross-cultural experiences and negotiations. The increasing immigration of former slaves who became a part of Abokobi was sporadic or without any particular shape. The circumstances under which these newcomers settled in Salems varied and continued to change. For instance, between 1888 and 1914, groups of ex-slaves were reported to have moved into the Accra hinterland and settled within some exclusive Christian communities in search of protection from re-enslavement and improved social status. About the same time also, upheavals occurred at Kukurantumi, which caused the fear of loss of life. Such an environment of insecurity prompted the decline of the Christian community when ex-slaves began to leave. “At the outbreak of the trou- bles the ex-slaves all fled and have settled themselves around Abokobi” noted a Mission report.28 The evidence further noted: “Since the Kukurantumi members of the church looked down on the slaves and made them do all the work, things are now moving very slowly.”29 In places such as Anyinam the declining number “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  7 of congregants was traced “to the regular moving away of the ex-slave christians [sic]” so that “in 1888 the[y] numbered 12.” It was subsequently lamented that if former slaves “go down to the Coast they lapse from christian [sic] practice.” How- ever, only “few” of the Anyinam ex-slaves were known to “link themselves up with the group from Kukurantumi which has settled at Abokobi.”30 We can deduce that slave networks across the Gold Coast developed around this time. This trend facilitated the continuous relocation of ex-slaves to Salems that were receptive to people of a servile past until they (sometimes) reached the Accra coast and were incorporated into commercial activities.31 By the second half of the nineteenth century, the parishioners at Abokobi included a significant number of ex-slaves. This situation obviously garnered the attention of European Basel missionaries concerning settlement arrangements for the ex-slaves. Akosua Perbi argues that the residential pattern for slaves in Gold Coast societies was unregulated, save slaves owned by royal families. Perbi suggests that only royal families separated their slaves by settling them in a sep- arate town quarter.32 However, the Gã converts at Abokobi were conscious of the implications of a mixed settlement with ex-slaves and encouraged the establishment of the Zongo akutso (lit., “town quarter”; pl., akutsei). Yet, the making of the “stranger” quarter did not merely reflect the spatial alienation of ethnic “strangers” from the living quarters of European Basel missionaries and the predominantly Gã akutsei. It also reinforced a reimagined sense of “otherness” customarily embedded in the akutsei social organization evident in Gã culture, which strongly emphasized difference.33 In addition, it projected an intrinsic consciousness among Gã converts regarding how they understood and adapted their customary urban practices and social organization to the Abokobi Christian enclave. The creation of the Zongo in Abokobi, therefore, contradicted Christian notions of oneness, that is, a monolithic idea that emphasized an all-inclusive community of Christian converts without boundaries. This was because the settlement was partly organized along racial, hierarchical, and ethnic lines, which highlighted complex differences instead of harmony. By establishing the Zongo, the European Basel missionaries and the Gã had in fact become collaborators separating ethnic “strangers” or “others” from the core Gã parishioners. This had political and hierarchical implications in the sense that the inhabitants of the Zongo—largely without real political power—were conveniently segregated.34 Because there were almost no avenues the Zongobii could use to negotiate their way into social and political prominence (save through kinship ties and social networks) they were also limited in asserting claims of eligibility for the ultimate chiefly office, the Abokobi maŋtsɛ (i.e., chief), because chiefly authority and kinship were tied. This lack of socioeconomic power was replicated regarding access to land, especially for female Zongobii. Though the 8  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor

Bekrah family originally had a piece of farming land, by the time the petition was written, the landed property that had promised security for socioeconomic ascendance no longer existed.35 Therefore, the possibilities for social ascendance were elusive for the Zongobii because not only did their systemic marginaliza- tion partly deprive them of socioeconomic improvement, but these opportunities were almost nonexistent.36 In the first two decades following the establishment of Abokobi, the converts organized themselves into a small group of houses that evolved to become the Yitelɛmli (“uptown”) akutso. This spatial arrangement did not significantly shift from customary Gã sociospatial practices on the Accra littoral. Solidarity among the earliest Gã settlers was primarily expressed along ethnic lines and was shaped by kinship or association to a particular ŋshɔnaamaŋ (lit., “seaside town”) or another. This notion partly defined what it meant to be a “proper” Gã at Abokobi and also underlined thinking about identity. This idea informed the separation of the Zongobii when they started settling at Abokobi since the 1860s. In the subsequent parts of this article, the extent to which such mental mappings informed sociopolitical action in matters relating to the negotiation of secular power and authority as well as cultural politics will be examined.

Bondage in Abokobi and Reimagining Social Space via “The Humble Petition”

In 1898, Awo Naa, then a maidservant of Rev. Seeger, married Ebenezer Bekrah. The couple had arrived and settled at different times in Abokobi, where they met and married.37 Both Ebenezer Bekrah and Awo Naa were ex-slaves, and therefore referred to in the latter’s petition as being “of the same category.”38 This cat- egorization suggests, as Eleonora Ago Bekrah confirmed, two things. First, that social identity in Abokobi was closely tied to hierarchical differences. This further strengthened European Basel missionary authority over the Zongobii because the missionaries insisted on intra-akutso marriages.39 At the time, the 1884 Mar- riage Ordinance—strongly influenced by the Basel and Wesleyan Mission—was yet to be passed. Nonetheless, Mission station practices were guided by the Gemeindeordnung (1865), which included rules for approved conduct concerning marriage. It is important to note that because apprenticeship and formal Western education were the two main avenues that determined the profession/career of BM converts, most Zongobii—commonly policemen, farmers, maidservants, and to a limited extent, teachers—remained low on the social ladder for generations. Consequently, the Zongobii more or less remained on the margin of professional careers, with implications for wealth created by the first-generation settlers and “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  9 later inherited by their descendants. Second, before the influx of ex-slaves into Abokobi in the second half of the nineteenth century, the slaves at Abokobi were mostly females—some of whom were locally owned.40 This period preceded the Home Committee of the BM’s implementation of the “Amendments Regarding Slavery” in 1860 and later legislation by the British colonial administration in 1874. These promulgations, especially the latter, created a problem of resettling freed slaves. Thus, many ex-slaves left the Akan interior for parts of the Accra plains and the Gã littoral, Salems in particular. The resulting presence of many spinster ex-slaves at Abokobi was perceived by the European missionaries as having serious implications for social cohesion. For the missionaries, this did not excuse instances of sexual immorality and even “whoring” involving female ex-slaves, but exposed the challenges membership of the ex-slave “category” to the Abokobi society posed. At Abokobi in the 1860s, for instance, Nils Holm’s (an Euro-African BM agent) slave, called Dede, was expelled “for whoring.” In the early Abokobi society, the marital and sexuality of freed slaves (especially women) was tightly ordered by European missionaries.41 These spatially bounded social inventions had not shifted much by the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet, Awo Naa’s petition of September 1977 shows how some women, tied by the common thread of social bondage, actively asserted agency through established patron–client relations. For Awo Naa, therefore, any attempt at effecting social change that reordered Abokobi’s patriarchal social construct (sustained by ethnically inspired akutsei) meant reestablishing old influential relations with Basel missionaries overseas if she was to succeed. But the gains that the petition may have yielded for Awo Naa and her family remain unclear. Nonetheless, three years after her passionate appeal to Basel, Awo Naa passed on.42 As Serena Dankwa cogently states: “To acknowledge the diverse ways in which women exercised agency in an early colonial context, it is useful to con- sider young ‘commoner’ women as a group of its own.” She adds that, “Unlike mission trained youngmen (juniors) who were vested with the skills to engage with ‘the world of modernity’ outside the confines of the congregation, young women were not readily offered new routes for social advancement within the colonial economy. Their wombs remained their socioeconomic ‘bellies,’ and motherhood a cultural site of women’s resistance.”43 Likewise, Awo Naa originally had no fewer than ten children, yet lost several to death at tender ages.44 If historical patron–client relations presented new avenues for women, especially those of “categories,” then Awo Naa’s attempt to capitalize on her connec- tion to the Seegers becomes clear. Furthermore, Awo Naa’s effort demonstrates how women who ordinarily lacked social capital utilized opportunities presented by paternalist networks established with influential adult male European Basel missionaries—even decades after such relations may have ended.45 10  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor

Awo Naa’s petition is a deeply important piece of evidence. Despite being presented as the work solely of Awo Naa, it appears Haenger was right to suggest that the petition may have been written with the consent of her entire family. As a postscript to the petition, Theodore Kofi Bekrah, the petitioner’s oldest child, certified that he had read and interpreted the contents of the petition in the Gã language to his mother who “seemed perfectly to understand and approve the same before affirming her mark.”46 We can deduce that Awo Naa did not compose the wording of the petition, but certainly consented to and approved it. The relationship between Awo Naa and Rev. Seeger was truncated in the late nineteenth century when Seeger retired and returned home to Europe, and was ended in 1917 because of World War I. World War I inflicted severe hardships on Awo Naa and her family. It is critical to note that Mission schemes and designs in many, if not all, parts of Africa solidified a patriarchal and patronizing order following Judeo-Christian notions of organized society and gender roles. This premise, for instance, shaped Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí’s contention that women’s education was not central to Mission work in Yorùbáland in southwestern Nigeria.47 This was self-evident in Bekrah’s recollection of arrangements made by Rev. See- ger for her senior brother’s schooling at Akropong as part of an extended plan to make Theodore T. Kofi a reverend minister.48 Unlike men, women were usually prepared by Mission education and training to become housewives of Mission agents and the lay African men within the Salem community: nothing beyond the nuclear family. This partly explains why Awo Naa had no formal Western education and highlights the petition’s lack of emphasis on educational plans for any of her children but Kofi Bekrah. Just as the petition suggests about the family economy of the Bekrahs, Ghana was also in serious socioeconomic and political tumult due to a series of military coups. A careful reading of the petition reveals its emphasis on several trying episodes predating 1977. This is useful for understanding Awo Naa’s aspirations and the intention that informed the composition of the petition. It is indicative of the tragedies she had previously suffered—for instance, the demise of some of her children in the early 1900s, her husband’s death in 1946 without leaving any property, and the loss of family farmland to the Abokobi church.49 The petition’s temporal distance from these episodes is crucial because it coincided with socioeconomic hardships in Ghana. The petition can be partially seen as a strategic bridge used by Awo Naa, perhaps in the urgency of desperate times. Yet, the petition’s timing does not negate the powerful historical memory and reflections it evoked in her attempt to improve the lot of her family and herself. “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  11

“Strangers” or “Converts”? Sociopolitical Action, and the Fluidity of Sociospatial Negotiations

By the 1860s, the Abokobi converts included some ex-slaves, and as a result this led to the establishment of a Zongo that reshaped social organization and had spatial implications. It is unclear precisely when the Zongo was established. Yet, the influx of ex-slaves influenced their more systematic incorporation, which emphasized separating the non-Gã “strangers” from the predominantly Gã “others.”50 As noted before, the Gã have historically demonstrated a consciousness about the ethnic difference between themselves and “others.” Moreover, Marion Kilson indicates that the group of Gã considered as “proper” or “pure” consists of those who immigrated from Ayawasu to settle along the Accra littoral in the seventeenth century. Non-Gã people who subsequently migrated to or settled in various Accra littoral towns are not considered “pure” Gã. This reinforced notions about how Abokobi’s social space evolved. Furthermore, it strengthened the ethnic delineation that was facilitated through organized akutsei established along ethnic lines. Although the Gã converts predominantly settled in the Yitelɛmli and partly Shishilɛ (“down- town”) akutsei, the Zongobii were carefully settled in a newly invented “Zongo” akutso. This reveals the subtle, yet deeply embedded, meanings that influenced notions of spatial arrangements and the sense in which the predominantly Gã parishioners emphasized their distinct Gã-ness.51 These processes undermined the overarching Christian identity that membership of the Abokobi community was envisioned to provide.52 Nonetheless, the ethnic borders and spatial delimitations that the akutso rep- resented were contested by the Zongobii. Yet, this was only possible through cross-akutso marriage at the beginning of the twentieth century because physical relocation was restricted, as marriage was patrilocal.53 These underlie the nature of intercultural and akutso relationships, which were often mutual, reciprocal, but unequal for the Zongobii.54 The Zongobii were perceived as a subject class by the predominantly Gã Abokobimɛi. Therefore, they were expected to be loyal and subordinate to the interest of the dominant social classes. According to Haenger, the first half of the 1860s in the Gold Coast witnessed serious economic challenges. Although indebtedness was widespread, access to land even by some Mission cat- echists was difficult. A stringent land administration system was introduced at Abokobi in the 1870s, which reflected and deepened the existing hegemony. This system of land administration under the supervision of the church is still the practice at Abokobi and explains why the inhabitants of Abokobi have remained but tenants of the church.55 Sara Dorman, Daniel Hammett, and Paul Nugent admit the “problematic colonial legacy” and how that engendered elitist dominance over indigenous societies. 12  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor

This is also the reason behind missionary attempts to “transform” African societies and the hierarchical implications thereof. By 1917, patriarchal adult male Gã had taken direct control of Abokobi church and society, following the removal of the BM from the Gold Coast by the British colonial administration.56 For the new Gã leaders, inventing ethnic strangers was crucial for concretizing the definition of Abokobi membership and emphasizing difference as fundamental to claims by anyone becoming/being an Abokobinyo.57 By effectively making ethnic identity primal to who belonged entirely or otherwise in Abokobi, the Gã majority of the town had carefully set the stage for ethnically inspired dominance of the “Model Town” that had been intended to blur such tensions. The Zongobii in Abokobi must be examined as important historical actors by accounting for their agency (individual or collective) as core to the sociospatial transformations of the town, and thereby relocating them away from the periph- ery of existing academic work.58 This is because the oversimplification embedded in the marginalized (and implied binary) notion of the Zongobii blurs the complex ethnic diversity of the Abokobi town and how that shaped social interactions and change. The Zongobii were not a homogeneous ethnic group as commonly noted by their Gã neighbors.59 As previously noted, the “stranger” quarter was actually made up of Dagomba and Grunshi people.60 However, this truth did not appear to be relevant for either European Basel missionaries or the Gã converts who identified the entire “stranger” quarter dwellers stereotypically as Zongobii. The invention of a homogeneousZongo ethnic identity appeared to limit the otherwise nuanced discourse because it was essentially for political convenience.61 Such cultural inventions indeed “assure ‘natives’ privileged access to reproduc- tive resources and political power ahead of ‘strangers.’”62 It further indicates a profound bearing on what it meant to be an Abokobinyo. Being Abokobinyo was (and remains) popularly recognized as intimately connected to the notion of Gã- ness. Nii Samuel Adjetey Mohenu, the current Abokobi maŋtsɛ, is articulate on this point:

Now, the other thing is that, well, if we [ethno-Gã Abokobimɛi] had known what the picture will be; if our ancestors knew how the picture will be, they would have pro- tected us with certain things. You see, it is [one] thing being indigenous Abokobian and it is another thing seeking the good interest of Abokobi. . . . We know that the Basel missionaries came here to establish Abokobi but they did not establish Abokobi by themselves and for themselves and themselves all the time. They made it and left to people who are not Basel missionaries or they are not from Basel; but they are from here. So naturally, and for all intent and purposes, there are people who are the indigenous or otherwise what we call shikwɛlɔi—you understand?—shikw ɛlɔi abii [i.e., “children of natives”].63 “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  13

Nii Mohenu’s contention verifies the existing ethnic difference in Abokobi and informs Awo Naa’s indication of a layered understanding of being a member of the Abokobi town or an Abokobinyo based on imagined constructs of identity. Membership of the Zongo, therefore, also informed one’s identity construct and strategies for negotiating and maintaining better socioeconomic conditions. Nonetheless, ethnic solidarity among the Zongobii was crucial in sustaining cultural identity and mediating social boundaries. Thus, for the Zongobii, the notion of personhood was closely attached, foremost, to the nuclear family, and then to networks of families, as the foundation upon which the “stranger” akutso identity may be defined. This notion was even more important within the nuclear family where the most intimate affinity was possible. Again, as Bekrah said, her parents often emphasized that she and her siblings were their only family. Yet, the twentieth century opened new possibilities for families who sought more than the ethnic solidarity the Zongo provided. In this light, the Bekrahs, for instance, made a successful attempt to trace their ancestry.64 As a result, sociocultural hegemony, as defined outside theZongo akutso, dictated economic opportunities for the Zon- gobii, especially with respect to acquiring land as personal property. In this view, the motivation for Awo Naa’s petition is again clarified. That is, to find solidarity outside Abokobi with the descendants of her one-time patron, Rev. Seeger. The establishment of the Gold Coast Colony in 1873–74, coincided with the British-led military expedition (together with some native coastal allies) against the Asante. Prior to the Asante-Anglo War of 1873–74. British conscription inspired much enthusiasm among slaves and ex-slaves alike.65 Despite some ini- tial tension, many slaves and ex-slaves were enlisted as mercenaries.66 At the same time, it appears the Zongo population had become a significantakutso in Abokobi, at least numerically. More importantly, the situation afforded the Zongobii a chance to participate in the Glover War.67 Indeed, the participation of Christian converts of the BM in warfare adventure was not new. As John Kwadwo Osei- Tutu reminds us, Carl Christian Reindorf—a BM agent-cum-kingmaker of the Ashante Blohum akutso in Osu—led a Christian para-military group (the asafo) a number of times in support of the British colonial administration.68 Though Osei-Tutu discusses Reindorf’s conscription of mercenaries from Abokobi in 1858, other sources note the continued participation of Abokobi converts in subsequent British expeditions.69 Following the British victory over the Asante, the colonial administration compensated the mercenaries from Abokobi through the Abokobi maŋtsɛ at the time, Nii Okpoti Kofi. The participation of theZongobii in the Glover War presented the potential for socioeconomic and political advancement for both the enslaved and former slave population in Accra in its hinterland. In Abokobi on March 4, 1949, for example, it was recalled of Opinta land,70 in the minutes of the Koishi (i.e., a local chiefly 14  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor court), that, “. . . after the Glover War the Government presented the Abokobi Mantse and his people that went to the war with a certain amount of money and that with that money, the Opentang land was bought so that the land known as the property of the Basel Mission should not be so . . . [subsequently, it was] advised that this matter be left with the Mantse and his elders for necessary inves- tigation.”71 It is interesting to note that the matter of the Opinta land subsequently disappeared from the Koishi and Session (i.e., a local church court) minutes, if not completely, then for a long time.72 Though the conditions under which the matter came up remain unclear, Awo Naa’s demand for farmland is perhaps suggestive that land, which could be used as capital for socioeconomic uplift for the Zongobii, was strategically controlled by dominant groups because it had serious implications for accessing social power. In a number of interviews there appeared to be conflicting understandings about the right and entitlement to Opinta land. This was, however, not related to the ownership because existing indentures (or legal contractual records) show that the purchase was in the name of the BM and not individuals.73 It is suggestive that either the Zongobii, who contributed funds for purchasing the land, were on the one hand reimbursed completely, or, on the other hand, that claims to the land by the Zongobii may be solely founded on a presumed reward for the key role their ancestors’ played in securing the land. The law in the Gold Coast customarily encouraged a close relationship among land ownership, trusteeship, and forms of land tenure.74 As a result, as a “stranger” akutso, the Zongobii were not admitted as land owners.75 This partly explains their aggression in the 1940s to seize the opportunity when it was possible. Moreover, being mindful of the contribution of their ancestors in securing the Opinta land, their contestation made sense because it provided a chance to exert not only economic and sociopolitical power, but more important, to renegotiate their cultural identity and stress ethnic solidarities. In addition, it is possible to read politically charged meanings into this peculiar affair. The land in Abokobi was central to political action; thus, the respective sides in the matter were expressly sentimental—perhaps motivated by the will to control not just Opinta land, but to impress a greater sense of authority over a significant portion of Abokobi lands—lands that would be in the hands of a single akutso and, by implication, one dominant ethnic group. For the Zongobii, it may have been a case of fairness and what was due them. However, it is not difficult to imagine that a successful claim to Opinta land would have opened up a new source of socioeconomic power for negotiating “respectability” and reinventing new sociopolitical realities like contesting for the office of Abokobi maŋtsɛ. How- ever, a subtler meaning to this position may be that the firstZongobii were given land free of charge when they joined the Abokobi community. Furthermore, it was in the name of the community that the Zongobii participated in the Glover “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  15

War. Thus, the otherwise legitimate claim by the descendants—of the “people that went to the war”—will be interpreted as constituting persona non grata. These social changes reveal the complexity of notions of belonging, expressed through competing claims over land, in the contexts of social bondage, cultural politics, and colonialism. Indeed, these shifts were further shaped by local notions of favored Gã custom and knowledge that were convenient for sustaining Gã dominance.76 With the beginning of the twentieth century came renewed importance of the central role of land as a source of social power. Thus, land increasingly became a tool for the Gã ethnic majority for controlling society as well as fueling ethnic tensions to the disadvantage of the Zongobii in Abokobi.

The Dialectics of Servile Ancestry in the Christian “Model Town” of Abokobi

Abokobi was predicated on the assumption that it should become a so-called “model town”—a Christian utopia where the inhabitants would live a life of simplicity, personal discipline, and devotion, following European examples such as Kornthal and Whilhelmsdorf.77 The vision of reinventing a Pietist Christian urban order at Abokobi was not completely realized.78 The rigid but contested ethno-exclusionist foundation upon which the Zongo akutso was established meant that the idea of an all-inclusive Christian community was lost by the late 1860s. If marriages among the earliest Zongobii were limited to choices inside the “stranger” quarter, the Zongobii were de facto both spatially and ethnically “contained.” Aside from Awo Naa’s case, certificates of marriage demonstrate, for instance, that Rev. Seeger gave his consent for one of his maidservants—Augusta Noviasi—to enter into a nuptial relationship with one Solomon Boafo (or Buafo) in 1897.79 These ambiguities were firmed up under informal European Basel missionary hands and sustained by the long established Gã sociospatial organization and urban culture. Such practices therefore reveal the dialectical character of the so-called model town and its contradictory implications in Abokobi. Evident in Maŋtsɛ Nii S. A. Mohenu’s testimony is a historical truth for ethno-Gã Abokobimɛi that, “it is [one] thing being indigenous Abokobian and it is another thing seeking the good interest of Abokobi.”80 Furthermore, it is important to note that the historical incorporation of “strangers” into Gã society underpinned Gã notions of “otherness.”81 Also, there was an overarching shared Christian identity that was popularly conceived as extending to all converts of the society, which provided a sense of belonging and communion in Abokobi. But, the latter did not completely blur the subtle mentality that marginalized the Zongobii at crucial times, irrespective of the possibility of incorporation into 16  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor the Abokobi society.82 Thus, for the “strangers,” incorporation into Gã society was a layered process, because what it meant to become Gã straddled between ethnic links—beginning with non-Gã identity, and then appropriating varying degrees of “Gã-ness” through associations with the Gã converts at Abokobi. Negotiating these complex layers of identities and affiliations for the Zongobii had practical limitations.83 The testimony of Elizabeth Yaley Tawiah, a granddaughter of Awo Naa, demonstrates this point further. Her mother, Sophia Beatrice Tawiah Bekrah, married a Gã-Mashi man, George Tawiah, who resided in the Yitelɛmli akutso of Abokobi. Because George Tawiah was Gã and therefore subscribed to the custom of patrilineal succession, Elizabeth confidently asserted her Gã identity. Answer- ing a question about if she was a Gãnyo kroŋŋ (“pure Gã”), she responded in the affirmative despite noting that her mother was non-Gã. Hence, Zongo women marrying into Gã families clearly had an advantage over their male counterparts in becoming/being Gã and its attendant implications for sociocultural negotiations. It has been shown that the notion of becoming/being Gã was essential in identity formation at Abokobi. It follows that one should question the extent to which this condition shaped the social position and cultural roles of the Zongobii within the town. Despite the generally gendered, ethnic, and racial consciousness evident in BM encounters and history on the Gold Coast, the spatially removed Salems were intended to be free of such prejudice because they were open to all African converts.84 As Marijke Steegstra shows, this perception led to the admis- sion of persons perceived as “fallen,” who bore the brunt of public ridicule and moral disdain.85 Such prevailing concerns about the sense of belonging within BM enclaves shaped understandings or meanings of identity with dire conse- quences for women. As such, the perceived “otherness” of the Zongobii in Abokobi reflects a contemporary view that shaped identity with implications for the roles the Zongobii played in the extended society beyond their akutso. Beyond the Zongo akutso, these ideas informed how they interacted with the other people of different ethnicity, notably the Gã. An effective approach for questioning the agency of theZongobii in Abokobi society and cultural politics can be broached by imagining the extent to which the Zongobii could assume “Gã-ness.” Having dealt with this, it becomes clear how customary Gã practices in Abokobi informs our understanding of the nuances of ethnic identity such as the conditions that fashioned an easy (or otherwise) claim of a Zongonyo to Gã ethnicity. This understanding brings us to some fundamental issues: first, the demographic constitution of the pioneer Zongobii; second, how the Zongobii subsequently diffused—primarily through nuptial relations—into other akutsei. These issues will help us unpack the character of the nascent Zongo in the late nineteenth century and how social changes influenced “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  17 the evolution of interethnic exchanges in Abokobi. A review of several statistical records and marriage certificates among (or sometimes including) Zongobii suggested that women constituted the majority of the early Zongo quarter in the late nineteenth century.86 If wombs remained the socioeconomic “bellies” of women in Salems as Owusu contends, then the Zongo women were predisposed to having more children because they, more than women of other ethnicity in Abokobi, needed social advancement due to their ultra-marginalized position in Abokobi. It is important to note, however, two defining factors that shaped these statistical assumptions, one being mortality (which was particularly high in the Bekrah family87), and second being the probability of expulsion from the town by the church leadership. In 1907, for instance, Augusta Noviasi (wife of Ben- jamin Oko Boafo) was “excluded” (i.e., denied Eucharist). Yet, it is not impossible to imagine how complete removal from the Mission station would have reshaped marital life and sexuality in view of the strict segregation of the Zongobii by the European Basel missionaries as a way of checking acts (like “whoring”) considered as deviating from Christian-prescribed expression of sex-related tendencies.88 Zongo women were more actively engaged in nuptial relations than their male counterparts. For instance, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the cen- sus records covering 1910 to 1921 indicated that among pioneer Zongo families it was the Bekrah and Boafo lineages who had resided in Abokobi the longest. Besides their continuous stay in the town since they first settled, they also appeared frequently in marriage documents.89 It becomes evident that Rev. Seeger’s transfer to Abokobi in 1890 facilitated several of the original Zongo marriages due to his patronage of the three girls (rescued slaves)—young Awo Naa, Augusta Noviasi, and Margaret Kwale. Due to the potential benefits of their social link to the See- gers, such as protection against re-enslavement, their relocation to Abokobi when the Seegers were transferred was reasonable. Later at Abokobi, the girls married only with Seeger’s consent as their “guardian.”90 It is important to note that this early trend, which emphasized tightly “contained” intra-Zongo marriages, began to shift in the early twentieth century. The new situation, as previously noted, was more relevant for Zongo women marrying into Gã families than it was for Zongo men.91 The explanation is that such new relationships promised sociocultural ascendency and the possibility of asserting some degree of Gã ethnic identity.92 For the Zongobii, the notion of becoming/ being Gã was possible in various ways, including adopting Gã language and culture. Also important was the route via inter-akutso marriage (which was particularly important to Gã men); the “adoption” or patronage of an influential Gã family living in Abokobi; and the adoption of Gã names or/and naming pat- terns. Eleonora A. Bekrah, for instance, testified to the patronage and friendship between her family and the one-time Abokobi maŋtsɛ, Nii Immanuel Okpoti Kofi 18  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor and their voluntary use of Gã names. For the Zongo men, marriage may have been used to contest rigid notions about belonging and ethnicity in Abokobi. Yet, in the late nineteenth century, the major issue for the Zongo men marrying outside their akutso was perhaps more about being able to openly question being “contained” than securing a willing female partner as wife outside the Zongo akutso. In general, the marriages of male Zongobii were few, appearing predominantly in the Boafo family. In 1893 and 1897, two different men, both named “Solomon Boafo,” married Lydia Amah and Augusta Noviasi. Lydia Amah was not a Zongo woman. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of inter-akutso marriages involving Zongo women had increased. This signified the new context for renegotiating an increased sense of Gã identity for the Zongo women after the exit of the Basel missionaries in 1917. By that time, Gã cultural identity had become fluid, as indicated by an increasing number of recorded marriages between Gã men and Zongo women. For instance, two daughters of Ebenezer Bekrah, The- odora Abla Bekrah and Comfort Akwele Bekrah, married Simeon Kwaku and George M. A. Manieson in 1918 and 1931, respectively. Though these social changes partly influenced upward mobility for some Zongobii in the first few decades of the twentieth century, it did not break the core of the mapped-out sociocultural and spatial boundaries in Abokobi because the society was still predominantly Gã, and therefore patriarchal. Thus, children from marriages between the Zon- gobii and ethno-Gã Abokobimɛi could only assume succession roles in Gã families if they were male. This positioned potentialZongo wives of Gã men at an advantage compared to their male counterparts.93 Becoming/being Gã had both gendered and sociocultural dynamics. Although the former was fixed, the latter allowed for negotiation because it depended on varied and sometimes complex changing conditions. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth century, notions of cultural identity in Abokobi evolved, but only slowly. This trend meant that the ethnic minority Zongo akutso faced a double barrier—limited land access and ethnic exclusion—that seriously restricted sociocultural and economic ascendency. However, Zongo women were innovative at negotiating these social realities.

Conclusion

This article focused on the experiences of a group of people of ex-slave ancestry at Abokobi, emphasizing the case of Awo Naa and her family. This approach revealed how families of servile ancestry explored networks with European Basel missionaries in order to become relatively “prominent.” Yet, without adopting “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  19 careful strategies to renegotiate Abokobi’s tenuous social space, the Bekrah family would have had a more difficult time when they attempted to re-engineer per- sistent notions of minority identity and their social rung. The petition of Awo Naa provides a testimony of these episodes. In order to facilitate improved access to landed property and creatively explore historic patron–client relations in order to legitimize belonging, we saw Awo Naa use innovative approach by local standard (i.e., a petition) to attempt reaching socioeconomic power in the late 1970s. Nonetheless, Awo Naa’s story only partially represents the toils of other families of the Zongobii at Abokobi (including the Adenus and Taspahs). More importantly, through the use of written evidence (such as a private petition) and oral testimonies from important female voices, it provides us with the opportunity to understand and feel the lived experiences of those with servile ancestry in Abokobi since the late nineteenth century. It is possible to use this case as a microcosm that links up with other life-stories in different parts of the Gold Coast and the Atlantic world to show the changes in the day-to- day experiences of former slaves in presumably free societies, including Salems.94 notes

For Eleanora A. Bekrah, Dr. Ebenezer Aryeetey, and Dr. Victoria E. Smith. 1. D-10.125, “Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah from Abokobi, Ghana,” September 30, 1977. Basel Mission Archives, Switzerland (BMA). 2. Eleonora A. Bekrah, interview by author, December 7, 2015. After her captivity, “Nyewuame” was added to her own name. Later when she became a Christian at Abokobi, she was christened “Johana.” I choose to use the name “Awo Naa” because that was the name by which she was known to her family and therefore has historical significance in the context of this article. 3. Though Eleonora Ago Bekrah contested her mother’s authorship of the petition, historian Peter Haenger believes that the petition was written with the consent of the entire family to the “Secretary of the Basel Mission.” I confirmed Haenger’s position after carefully perusing a copy of the original petition that I so hap- pily received from Paul Jenkins (the former chief of the BM Archive). See Peter Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders on the Gold Coast: Towards an Understanding of Social Bondage in West Africa, edited by Paul E. Lovejoy and J. J. Shaffer, trans- lated by Christina Handford (Basel: P. Sclettwein Publishing, 2000), 121. Eleonora A. Bekrah, interview by author, April 1, 2016. 4. Eleonora A. Bekrah reiterated the point that Rev. Seeger had grown so fond of her mother that when Awo Naa was baptized, she was christened “Johana” after Seeger’s late wife. Eleonora A. Bekrah, interview by author, December 7, 2015. Richard Kwei Ablorh, interview by author, February 12, 2016. 20  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor

5. The BM was an international, nondenominational evangelical Christian organization founded on Protestantism. The organization’s core values were embedded in what was considered the Württemberg variety of piety: a combination of individual devotion, personal reflection, conversion, and a deep sense of Christian fellowship according to the teachings of the Bible. See Noel Smith, The Presbyte- rian Church of Ghana 1835–1960 (Accra: Ghana Universities Press), 19–23. 6. For example, the 1884 Marriage Ordinance, 1888 Native Cemeteries Ordinance, 1892 Native Customs Ordinance and so forth. See John Parker, Making the Town: Gã State and Society in Early Colonial Accra (Cape Town, South Africa: David Philip, 2000); Marijke Steegstra, “‘A Mighty Obstacle to the Gospel’: Basel Mis- sionaries, Krobo Women, and Conflicting Ideas of Gender and Sexuality,”Journal of Religion in Africa 32, no. 2 (May 2002): 200–230; Stephan Miescher, Making Men in Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 260. 7. To effectively contextualize/historicize this period, works including Robert Strayer, “Mission History in Africa: New Perspectives on an Encounter,” African Studies Review 19, no. 1 (April 1976): 9; Parker, Making the Town; Hermann W. von Hesse, “Euro-Africans, Afro-Brazilians and the Evolution of Social Space in Nineteenth- Century Accra” (M.Phil. diss., University of Ghana, 2014) are relevant. 8. “Zongo” historically refer to a community of “strangers.” This “othering” identifies Ghanaian ethnic groups that are Muslim and considered inward-looking. They are usually believed to be northerners whose cultural orientation contrasts with that of the “southerners”—who are commonly considered by the Gã to be Chris- tian and outward-looking. For an in-depth discussion in the context of the Accra littoral, see Deborah Pellow, “The Power of Space in the Evolution of an Accra Z on g o,” Ethnohistory 38, no. 4 (Autumn 1991): 414–50. 9. The Gã-Dangme people are the indigenous ethnolinguistic group of what is now the Greater Accra and parts of the Eastern Region of Ghana. They inhabited the Accra Plains, which is to the west of what is termed, the Dahomey Gap—an intrusion of savannah and shrubs that cuts across the West African forest zone, between Accra in the west and Badagry in what is now southwestern Nigeria in the east. See Parker, Making the Town, 2; Marion Kilson, African Urban Kins- men: The Ga of Central Accra (London: C. Hurst and Company, 1974), 4. 10. See ADM 11/975, “Memorandum on the Vestiges of Slavery in the Gold Coast,” Pub- lic Record and Archival Administration Department (hereafter, PRAAD)-Accra. 11. Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders, 4. 12. Some exceptions however are, Parker, Making the Town; John Parker, “The Cul- tural Politics of Death and Burial in Early Colonial Accra,” in Africa’s Urban Past, ed. David M. Anderson and Richard Rathbone (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), 205–21; Pellow, “The Power of Space,” 414–50; Deborah Pellow, Landlords and Lodgers: Socio-Spatial Organization in an Accra Community (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002); von Hesse, “Euro-Africans”; Ato Quayson, Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itinerary of Transnationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  21

13. See Hans W. Debrunner, A History of Christianity in Ghana (Accra: Waterville Publishing House, 1967); J. Kofi Agbeti,West African Church History: Christian Mission and Church Foundations: 1842–1919, Vol. 1 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986); and Francis L. Bartels, The Roots of Ghana Methodism (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1965). Others worth note are Michael A. Kwamena-Poh, Vision and Achievement (1828–1978): A Hundred and Fifty Years of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (Accra, Ghana: Waterville Press, 2011); Schweizer, Survivors on the Gold Coast. 14. Paul Jenkins, “Legends and Silences: The Public Image of Basel Mission History,” in Mission Possible? The Basel Mission Collection Reflecting Cultural Encounters, ed. Anna Schmid and Kathrin Fischer (Basel, Switzerland: Museum der Kulturen Basel, 2015), 55. See also Seth Quartey, “Preface,” in Missionary Practices on the Gold Coast, 1832–1895 (Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press, 2007), xix. 15. A study by Robert Strayer partly represents an emergence of academic interested in mission scholarship that has shifted its focus to concentrate on the nuanced “practices” of missionaries by revealing the implications for gender, agency, power. Strayer, “Mission History in Africa,” 1. See also Ulrike Sill, Encounters in Quest of Christian Womanhood: The Basel Mission in Pre-Colonial Ghana (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2010); Quartey, Missionary Practices. 16. David Maxwell, “Christianity,” in Oxford Handbook of Modern African History, ed. John Parker and Richard Ried (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 164. 17. Allen E. Howard, “Nodes, Networks, Landscapes, and Regions: Reading the Social History of Tropical Africa 1700s–1920,” in The Spatial Factor in African History: The Relationship of Social, Material and Perceptual, ed. Allen E. Howard and Richard M. Shain (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 25–36; John K. Osei- Tutu, “‘Space,’ and the Marking of ‘Space’ in Gã History, Culture, and Politics,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, n.s., nos. 4 & 5 (2000–2001): 55–81. 18. Quayson, Oxford Street, 4–5. 19. See Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders, 18. 20. Paul Jenkins (ed.), “Zimmermann, unaddressed, dd. Abokobi 26 July 75; Dieterle to Basel dd. Aburi 22 Jun 72,” in “Abstracts of Basel Mission Gold Coast Cor- respondences, 1852–1898” (Legon, Ghana: 1970). For new studies that explore the nuances of the abolition of indigenous slavery in the Gold Coast, see, for instance, Michael Owusu-Frimpong, “Abolition of Slavery in Cape Coast from 1874–1910” (B.A. diss., University of Ghana, 2016). 21. Some scholars have insisted that it was not until “The Abolition of Slavery Decla- ration Ordinance” of 1928 that the Gold Coast colonial authorities made tenable strives on clarifying the legal status in order to curb the legal implications of domestic slavery. See Perbi, “Servitude and Chieftaincy in Ghana,” 272; Marika Sherwood, After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 1–2. 22. Debrunner, A History of Christianity, 172–73. 23. Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders, 22–23. 22  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor

24. Slaves who settled within Abokobi historically immigrated in a sporadic pattern over a period of time in the second half of the nineteenth century. As noted previously, some came from Kukurantumi and Anyinam. As Eleanora recalled, an earlier group of ex-slaves of northern ethnicity, including her father, came from the Kwahu area. Eleonora A. Bekrah, interview by author, March 8, 2016. 25. Irene Quaye, “The Gã and their Neighbours, 1600–1742” (Ph.D. diss., University of Ghana, 1972), 247–48. 26. The places where ex–/or runaway slaves are known to have taken refuge include the cottages of indigenous priests/priestesses as well as missionary enclaves/quarters. Achimota and Christian, a village near Legon, are sites where slaves took refuge. See A. A. Perbi, “Servitude and Chieftaincy in Ghana: The His- torical Evidence,” in Chieftaincy in Ghana: Culture, Governance and Development, ed. Irene K. Odotei and Albert K. Awedoba (Accra, Ghana: Sub-Saharan Publish- ers, 2006), 374; Parker, Making the Town, 160; EC 6/1, “Abokobi and the Basel Mission,” PRAAD-Accra; Robert Addo-Fening, Akyem Abuakwa, 1700–1943, from Ofori Panin to Sir Ofori Atta (Trondheim, Norway: Norwegian University of Science and Technology [NTNU], 1997), 194. 27. Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders, 75–99. 28. Paul Jenkins, ed., “Akyem 1888–1914,” in “Abstracts of Basel Mission Gold Coast Correspondences, 1852–1898” (Legon, Ghana: 1970). 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Nonetheless, Addo-Fening notes an interesting reverse migration pattern of people from places on the coast, including Abokobi, into the Akyem belt where they could enjoy the fruits of the emerging commercial economy on the Gold Coast in the late nineteenth century. Addo-Fening, Akyem Abuakwa, 131, 234. 32. A. A. Perbi, “Slavery and Ghana’s Pre-Colonial Social Structure,” in Slavery Across Time and Space: Studies in Slavery in Medieval Europe and Africa, ed. Per Hermæs and Tore Iversen (Trondheim, Norway: NTNU, 2002), 163. 33. See Osei-Tutu, “‘Space,’ and the Marking of ‘Space,’” 60. 34. For extended conversations on the roles of people with servile ancestry in Ghana, see A. A. Perbi, “Power and Responsibilities of Freed Slaves and their Descendants in Colonial and Post-colonial Ghana,” in The “Traditional” and the “Modern” in West African (Ghanaian) History: Case Studies on Co-Existence and Interaction, ed. Per Hermæs (Trondheim, Norway: NTNU, 2005), 115–226; A. A. Perbi, “The Abolition of Domestic Slavery by Britain: Asante’s Dilemma,” Legon Journal of Humanities 6 (1992): 1–23. 35. Eleonora Ago Bekrah, interview by author, April 1, 2016. Perbi concluded that, “Traditionally slaves were not supposed to own land. Any land they farmed or used during their lifetime reverted on their death to the stool or family to which the land [originally] belonged.” A. A. Perbi, “The Legacy of Indigenous Slavery in Contemporary Ghana,” FASS Bulletin 1, no. 1 (1996): 89–90. See also for a case “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  23

relating to southern Africa, A. Atmore and S. Marks, “The Imperial Factor in South Africa in the Nineteenth Century: Towards a Reassessment,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 2, no. 1 (1974): 116. 36. Pellow, The Power of Space, 418–20. 37. Information from their marriage certificate dated 1898 indicates that by then Ebenezer Bekrah had spent four and a half years in the community whereas Awo Naa had been in Abokobi for seven years. This corroborates information provided by Eleonora A. Bekrah about the arrival of different waves of (ex)slaves. Eleonora Ago Bekrah, interview by author, April 1, 2016. 38. Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders, 181. 39. See Stephan F. Miescher, “‘Called to Work for the Kingdom of God’: The Chal- lenges of Presbyterian Masculinity in Colonial Ghana,” in Readings in Gender in Africa, ed. Andrea Cornwall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 187; Miescher, Making Men in Ghana, 135, 260, and fn. 90. 40. See Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders, ch. 2; Akosua Adoma Perbi, A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana from the 15th to the 19th Century (Accra, Ghana: Sub- Saharan Publishers, 2004), 170–71; Pernille Ipsen, “‘The Christened Mulatresses’: Euro-African Families in a Slave-Trading Town,” William and Mary Quarterly 70, no. 2 (April 2013): 383. 41. Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders, 91–94. See also Sill, Encounters, 187–91. 42. I am grateful to Paul Jenkins for sharing with me insightful details about his personal experiences with the Bekrah family, which was very useful as I attempted to contextualize my analysis. Jenkins informed me that though the petition was directly addressed to the BM leadership, he doubted if the leadership would have understood the petition. According to Jenkins, the Mission “had no contact with the Seeger family.” As a result, Jenkins responded in the name of the Mission. He also visited once and continued to support the Bekrah family, sometimes with cash, until Awo Naa passed on in 1980. Paul Jenkins, email correspondence with author, September 20, 2016. 43. Serena Owusua Dankwa, “‘Shameless Maidens’: Women’s Agency and the Mis- sion Project in Akuapem,” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 19, no. 63 (2005): 115. 44. D-10.125, “Humble Petition,” September 30, 1977. 45. Dankwa, “‘Shameless Maidens,’” 115. 46. D-10.125, “Humble Petition,” September 30, 1977. 47. Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 130–32; 138–39. 48. Eleonora Ago Bekrah, interview by author, March 8, 2016. 49. D-10.125, “Humble Petition,” September 30, 1977. 50. Kilson, African Urban Kinsmen, 6. 51. See von Hesse, “Euro-Africans,” 3–4. 52. Eleonora A. Bekrah, interview by author, March 8, 2016. 24  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor

53. Ibid. When a couple got married, the wife moved in with her husband, who (if a Zongo inhabitant) invariably kept his wife within the Zongo akutso. This point appears to depart from some scholarly views that aver notions of physical and political territoriality in Gã society as existing only in the perceptual sense. Per- haps this holds for interactions among completely Gã-oriented akutsei. See Osei- Tutu, “‘Space,’ and the Marking of ‘Space,’” 65. 54. See Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders, 91–94; EC 6/1, “Abokobi and the Basel Mission,” PRAAD-Accra; Eleonora A. Bekrah, interview by author, March 8, 2016. 55. Nicholas A. Odoi, A Brief History of Abokobi (Accra, Ghana: Presbyterian Press, 2004), 1. 56. The departure of the BM from the Gold Coast marked the end of direct Mission supervision over the Abokobi station. No European BM agent was put in charge of Abokobi henceforth and thus began the appointment of a series of African head pastors, beginning with Rev. Daniel Ablorh. Yet, this change did not sever the links between Abokobi and the BM completely even after Ghana attained political independence in 1957. 57. This became particularly clear in chiefly politics. Sara Dorman, Daniel Hammett, and Paul Nugent, “Introduction: Citizenship and its Casualties in Africa,” in Mak- ing Nations, Creating Strangers: State and Citizenship in Africa, ed. Sara Dorman, Daniel Hammett, and Paul Nugent (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007), 19–20; Private collection of Ebenezer A. Aryeetey (EAA): Minutes of the Native Court of Abokobi, (January 1914–July 1935). 58. Such marginalized groups are what Sam Hickey termed “citizens at the margins.” Sam Hickey, “Caught at the Crossroad: Citizenship, Marginality and the Mbororo Fulani in Northwest Cameroon,” in Making Nations, Creating Strangers: State and Citizenship in Africa, ed. Sara Dorman, Daniel Hammett, and Paul Nugent (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007), 84. 59. This erroneous perception is also shown to have persisted on the Accra littoral. See Parker, Making the Town, 165. 60. Quayson, Oxford Street, 192–93. See also, Raymond Dummett and Marion Johnson, “Britain and the Suppression of Slavery in the Gold Coast Colony, Ashanti, and the Northern Territories,” in The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 89. 61. Jean Allman, “Be(com)ing Asante, Be(com)ing Akan: Thoughts on Gender, Iden- tity and the Colonial Encounter,” in Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention, ed. Carola Lentz and Paul Nugent (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2000), 113. 62. Hickey, “Caught at the Crossroad,” 83. 63. Nii Samuel Adjetey Mohenu, interview by author, June 14, 2016. 64. Eleonora A. Bekrah, interview by author, April 1, 2016. Eleonora A. Bekrah recalls her brother’s successful journey to the Upper-East Region of present-day Ghana. He reportedly even found and returned with some family members to Abokobi to a happy welcome and celebrations. “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  25

65. The War, sometimes called the “Sargrenti War,” is a corruption of the name of the leader of the British army that invaded Kumase in 1874, Sir Garnet Wolseley. At Abokobi however, it was called the “Glover War” because Wolseley’s subordinate, Captain John H. Glover, led a part of the British army and used a route through the eastern districts of the Gold Coast. This may explain how the Abokobi mercenaries joined the campaign and why Glover’s name remained in popular Abokobi memory. “Glover War” will therefore be used for the remainder of this article as meaning the Asante-Anglo or Sargrenti War of 1873–74. See EAA: Minutes of the Mass Meeting at Abokobi (February 1949–November 1951); Roger Gock- ing, The History of Ghana (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), 34. 66. Parker, Making the Town, 68–71. 67. Though the participation of converts from Abokobi in previous wars as mercenaries is known, it is unclear as to how many Zongobii fought in the Glover War (probably three-quarters of the families, as some interviewees claimed). But as some written and oral traditions attest, the participation of the Zongobii in the Glover War returned enough economic fortune to secure a parcel of land (142 acres) from James Kwabla Opinta at $142 in 1873. This tradition has sometimes led to claims by the Zongobii. Ebenezer A. Aryeetey, interview by author, October 4, 2014; Richard Kwei Ablorh, interview by author, February 12, 2016; Alex Sowah Duah, interview by author, April 1, 2016; Abraham Okang Sowah, interview by author, July 20, 2016. 68. John K. Osei-Tutu, The Asafoi (Socio-Military Groups) in the History and Politics of Accra (Ghana) from the 17th to the mid-20th Century (Trondheim, Norway: NTNU, 2000), 93–97. 69. Some records claim that ex-slaves from Abokobi participated in the Awuna War (1866), Akwamu War (1860–70), and the Glover War (1873–74). Prior to the Anglo-Asante War, evidence shows that in the 1860s Captain John Glover recruited Hausa and Yorùbá people (mostly slaves) to form a militia for the purpose of protecting the British colony of Lagos. See Quayson, Oxford Street, 192–93; EAA: Sowa Kwabla Oddoye, “Biographical Sketch of Nii Immanuel Okpoti Kofi Dadensuroja: First Chief of Abokobi,” 4. 70. See indenture agreement between James Opinta from Abokobi and Christian Buhl, March 10, 1873, Presbyterian Church of Ghana Holdings-Accra (PCG Holdings). See also, “Transfer of Immovable Property by the Board of Basel Mis- sion Trustees. No. 278, 28 September 1920,” PCG Holdings. It is not entirely clear how the funds for the purchase of the Opinta land by the Abokobi congregation was raised. However, oral testimonies revealed that some Zongo families were instrumental in this venture. However, the respective contributions by the Zongo people were apparently refunded by the Abokobi church. Richard Kwei Ablorh, interview by author, February 12, 2016; Abraham Okang Sowah, interview by author, July 20, 2016. 71. EAA: Minutes of the Mass Meeting at Abokobi (February 1949–November 1951). John Parker has convincingly shown how the issue of financial compensation 26  Ernest Sasu Kwame Sewordor

dramatically revealed the entrenched slave culture of Accra during the Glover War. In view of Parker’s evidence, it remains highly probable that mercenaries from Abokobi may have received money after the War. Parker, Making the Town, 68–71. 72. Eric George Ashie Antonio Snr., interview by author, June 22, 2016; Abraham Okang Sowah, interview by author, July 20, 2016. 73. See, “Transfer of Immovable Property by the Board of Basel Mission Trustees. No. 278, 28 September 1920,” PCG Holdings; Indenture agreement between James Opinta from Abokobi and Christian Buhl, 10 March 1873, PCG Holdings. 74. Pellow, “The Power of Space,” 423. 75. R. J. H. Pogucki, Report on Land Tenure in Customary Law of the Non-Akan Areas of the Gold Coast Colony, Part I (Accra, Ghana: Accra Lands Department, 1952), 27. 76. D. C. Penningroth, “The Claims of Slaves and Ex-Slaves to Family and Prop- erty: A Transatlantic Comparison,” American Historical Review 112, no. 4 (2007): 1049–55. 77. See Smith, The Presbyterian Church, 19–23. 78. This new position refines a previous contrary claim. See Ernest S. K. Sewordor, “The Evolution of the Basel Mission and its Impacts in Abokobi, m. 19th Century–20th Century” (B.A. diss., University of Ghana, 2014), 40. Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí reminds us that missionaries were primarily focused on “transform[ing] . . . African societies, not preserve them.” Oyèrónkẹ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (Minneapolis: University of Min- nesota Press, 1997), 128. 79. The Boafo family was one of the pioneer AbokobiZongo families. See the marriage register and church statistics available at the Zimmermann Memorial Congregation Holdings, Abokobi (hereafter, ZMC Holdings). 80. Nii Samuel Adjetey Mohenu, interview by author, June 14, 2016. 81. Osei-Tutu, “‘Space,’ and the Marking of ‘Space,’” 65. 82. Nii Samuel Adjetey Mohenu, interview by author, June 14, 2016. 83. Elizabeth Yaley Tawiah, interview by author, September 24, 2016. 84. See Dagmar Konrad, “The Mission Station,” inMission Possible? The Basel Mission Collection Reflecting Cultural Encounters, ed. Anna Schmid and Kathrin Fischer (Basel, Switzerland: Museum der Kulturen Basel, 2015), 69–75. 85. Marijke Steegstra, Dipo and the Cultural Politics in Ghana (Accra, Ghana: Woeli Publishing Services, 2005), 72. 86. Of the major Zongo families, no fewer than five women are known to have married either into (on two counts) or out (on three counts) of existing Zongo families from 1897 to 1931. See marriage register and church statistics in ZMC Holdings. 87. In two years, the family had lost two children; Julius Kuma (d. 1906) and Seth Kwabla (d. 1907). See baptismal records in ZMC Holdings. This confirms Awo Naa’s lamentation in her petition. 88. See Sill, Encounters, 187–191. “The Humble Petition of Johana Nyewuame Bekrah”  27

89. See ZMC Holdings. 90. These girls were perhaps the same girls that Eleonora A. Bekrah testified were put under Rev. Seeger’s care at his Ada post and who were subsequently relocated to Abokobi with Rev. Seeger following his transfer around 1890. Eleonora A. Bekrah, interview by author, December 7, 2015. Noviasi married in 1897, Nyewuame was engaged the following year, and Kwale followed in 1900. In these nuptial arrangements, it was only Kwale who married outside the Zongo quarter—to Emmanuel Quaye, a goldsmith from Christianborg. See marriage records in ZMC Holdings. 91. Elizabeth Yaley Tawiah, interview by author, September 24, 2016; Kilson, African Urban Kinsmen, 6. For further insight, in particular in the context of Kwahu, see Miescher, Making Men in Ghana, 115. 92. Eleonora A. Bekrah, interview by author, December 7, 2015. 93. See also, Marcia Wright, Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life-Stories from East/ Central Africa (New York: Lilian Barber Press, 1993), 2. 94. See Anne Bailey, African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silences and the Shame (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005); Wright, Strategies of Slaves; ch. 4 in particular presents a story similar to Awo Naa’s case. ernest sasu kwame sewordor graduated with an MPhil from the University of Ghana’s Department of History (2017), where he was a Graduate Assistant (2016-2018). He is a PhD candidate in Urban Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research interrogates law and capital as infrastructures that shaped the translation of colonial imaginations into territorial claims in mining districts in the Gold Coast.