Book on Asantehene leadership in Ghana Offers a model for Africa
In 1992, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni published, What is Africa’s problem? Museveni did not say directly, but his short answer was “leadership”. Africa was, his admission, in crisis due to its loss of spirit; loss of traditional leadership and its postcolonial “questionable leadership”.
On 1st April, 2009, a book written by Mr. Kojo Yankah and published by Unimax Macmillan Ltd. was launched in Kumasi, Ghana. Entitled “Otumfuo Osei Tutu II. The king on the Golden Stool”, it seems to have a 21st century answer for Museveni. It talks to the spirit of Africa’s traditional leadership in the person of one Asantehene who rules the traditional kingdom of the Asante people. That spirit is very much alive and growing in a way that reflects powerfully on the ingenuity of Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.
Museveni is familiar with traditional rulers. When he came to power, he was confronted with a Kingdom ruled by the Kabaka dynasty of Buganda. It wanted the power and glory it lost to the state at independence returned. Museveni gave back the glory but not the power for obvious political reasons. Kojo Yankah’s book tell the story of how the power of one traditional kingdom is being exercised in a contemporary world where education and information technology rule.
Historically, the Golden Stool with its divine powers symbolized unity among separate chieftancies as they fought against the tyranny of their enemies who included the British. The connection between a stool and a people empowered a resistance movement of such significance that historically, only Shaka, King of a Zulu empire larger than the whole of Western Europe could compare.
Under Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the same unity symbolized by the mystical stool, manifests itself today in the fight against such enemies as poverty, disease, ignorance and conflict. It was their objection to injustice that led them to challenge the domination of the king of Denkyira and to fight to free themselves in the later part of the 17th century.
And it was because of their unwillingness to accept injustice that they decided to fight their way to the sea and deal directly with the European merchants, instead of having to operate through middlemen from the communities living near the coast.
Today’s injustices are being fought in the classroom and on the information superhighway. The Otumfuo Education Fund was initiated by its namesake and officially inaugurated on 13 November 1999, six months after he was sworn in as Asantehene, King of the Asante Kingdom. The fund was set up to redress the decline in educational standards, poor and inadequate facilities, lack of text books, poor conditions of service, lack of teachers and the financial stress on parents who could not pay fees.
Under “The Partnership with Traditional Authorities Project”, the World Bank provided a grant of $4.5 million to build the management capacity of chiefs, rehabilitate schools and build sanitation facilities in 41 communities, develop health education modules for traditional authorities to lead in awareness creation in HIV/AIDs and build programs to preserve traditional values and culture. In all cases traditional leaders played active roles in the implementation of the projects.
As he narrates these achievements in his book, Yankah effectively builds the profile of a traditional leader who is a far cry from the stereotypical African chief which is peddled in the Western media. Indeed, while King Mswati of Swaziland only commands media attention each year when he is “marrying yet another wife” after a “reed dance”, the King of Asante gains world attention when delivering talks at Harvard University addressing “Chieftaincy and Development in Contemporary Africa”. Lady Julie, Otumfuo’s wife, has an MA degree in International Humanitarian Law. Such a profile is markedly different from the stereotype.
The Asantehene’s conviction that Ghana should involve traditional rulers decisively in the development process reveals how figures like him, who are in the forefront of re-thinking and awakening values in her progress, are struggling to right many historical wrongs. It may interest Museveni to know that as the world is settling into the 21st century and globalization becomes inescapable, the King of Asante could represent a new breed of leaders.
Where leadership is needed that has the intelligence and capacity to anticipate wisely the possibilities of domestic as well as global social, economic or political change, comprehend its significance and effectively respond to it, evidence presented in the book suggests that Otumfuo Osei Tutu II fits the bill.
An appropriate sequel to Yankah’s pioneering work may talk to how the Asantehene’s example can be replicated in other African countries, especially those like Kenya and Zimbabwe where chieftancy as an institution was completely destroyed by white settlers and the dynamics of neocolonialism. A conversation around such issues at this time when the “global village” is reeling financially and seeking direction would be significant.
