Sexuality and Prostitution Among The Akan of The Gold Coast 1650-1950 A.D. (1997)

The Past and Present Society
Sexuality and Prostitution among the Akan of the Gold Coast c. 1650-1950
Author(s): Emmanuel Akyeampong
Source: Past & Present, No. 156 (Aug., 1997), pp. 144-173
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society
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SEXUALITY AND PROSTITUTION
AMONG THE AKAN OF THE GOLD
COAST c. 1650-1950*
Obi
mfi
bea
akyi
ntu ne tam
(No
one can
pull
the loin-cloth off a woman without her
knowledge)1
Prostitution in Africa has been
presented
as a
capitalist,
often
urban, phenomenon.
It
portrays
the labour
opportunities (or
lack
thereof)
that women face in
towns,
their
struggle
for individual
autonomy
and accumulation of
wealth,
and the
significant
roles
that
they play
in the social
reproduction
of male
wage
labour.2
Existing
studies assume that urbanization
promotes
the
anonym-
ity
considered
necessary
for
prostitution,
and that urbanization
and
rapid
social
change
were themselves
products
of colonialism.
Urbanization,
industrialization and
proletarianization
thus
pro-
vide the socio-economic
setting
for
prostitution.
An article that
explores prostitution
and the
politics
of sex in
the Gold Coast from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries
within the broader framework of
gender
and
power
relations
presents
a
picture
that contrasts with those of available studies.
It underscores the salient fact that urbanization and urbanism
*
This article was first
presented
as a
paper
at the African Studies Association
Meeting
in Orlando in November 1995. The author is indebted to David Owusu
Ansah,
Adam
Jones, Jean Allman,
Thomas
Dutoit,
E.
Ofori-Akyea
and Emmanuel
Gymimah-Boadi
for their invaluable comments.
1
Twi
proverb.
2
For a
good
introduction to the literature on
prostitution,
see Luise
White,
The
Comforts of
Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi
(Chicago, 1990),
ch. 1. White's
work is an
in-depth
treatment of
prostitution
as a form of female labour in colonial
Nairobi. It examines the commodification of domestic services
(including,
but not
limited
to, sex),
the roles of
prostitutes
in the social
reproduction
of
migrant
male
wage-labour,
class
formation,
and accumulation
among
different
types
of
prostitutes.
For other
significant contributions,
see
Janet
M.
Bujra,
'Women
"Entrepreneurs"
of
Early Nairobi',
Canadian
Ji African Studies,
ix
(1975); Janet
M.
Bujra, 'Production,
Property,
Prostitution: "Sexual Politics" in
Atu', Cahiers d'e'tudes
africaines,
lxv
(1977);
Benedict B. B.
Naanen,
'"Itinerant Gold Mines": Prostitution in the Cross
River Basin of
Nigeria, 1930-1950', African
Studies
Rev.,
xxxiv
(1991). Also,
discus-
sion of
prostitution
is scattered in several studies of social formation in urban Africa.
Relevant works include Abner
Cohen,
Custom and Politics in Urban
Africa:
A
Study
of
Hausa
Migrants
in Yoruba Towns
(Berkeley
and Los
Angeles, 1969);
Kenneth
Little,
African
Women in Towns
(Cambridge, 1973); John Iliffe,
The
African
Poor: A
History
(Cambridge, 1987).
SEXUALITY AND PROSTITUTION AMONG THE AKAN 145
pre-dated
colonial rule in the Gold Coast. The historical record
also
points
to the occurrence of
'prostitution'
in
rural,
face-to-
face communities in the Gold
Coast,
thus
revealing intriguing
links between
sexuality, political
and moral
economy.
These
issues are examined in this article within the broader framework
of
gender
and
power
relations.
It is
striking
that
early
accounts of
prostitution
in the Gold
Coast
emphasize
its
presence among
the south-western Akan of
the Gold and
Ivory
Coasts.
Although
the
arguments presented
here have wider
implications
for the southern Gold
Coast,
the
Akan serve as a
specific
case
study.3
For the
purposes
of this
article, prostitution
is defined as the commodification of casual
sex. This avoids the
imposition
of a
rigid
framework
upon
the
complex gender
relations of the southern Gold
Coast.4
It also
enables us to hear the voices of the
protagonists
as
they
vied to
construct and contest
sexuality, prostitution,
avenues of accumu-
lation and social
identity.
A
distinguishing
feature of
prostitution
in the Gold Coast is
the relative absence of male
pimps.5
Mention can be made of
male intermediaries like the
'pilot boys'
of Sekondi-Takoradi in
the
1940s,
but
they
were more like 'brokers' who
brought poten-
tial clients to
prostitutes
for a commission.6 Their activities
peaked during
World War
II
with the
presence
of
foreign
sailors
and soldiers. But the
pilot boys
lacked the control that character-
3
This
essay
focuses on the
Akan, although
references are made to other southern
peoples
in the Gold
Coast, especially
the
Ga-Adangme
and the Ewe. The Akan
constitute the
largest
ethnic
group
in
present-day
Ghana. The Ga inhabit Accra
(the
current
capital
of
Ghana)
and its environs. The
Adangme
live to the north and east
of the Ga. The Ewe are located further east of the
Adangme.
Unlike the matrilineal
Akan,
the
Ga-Adangme
and Ewe are
patrilineal.
The Akan also
possessed
a more
elaborate
political culture,
and Akanland was the site of active state formation between
1650 and 1750. These
societies, however,
share
important
commonalities in their
cultures and histories that
promote
an
analysis
of southern Gold Coast societies as if
they
were
part
of a
single
world. See Emmanuel
Akyeampong, Drink,
Power and
Cultural
Change:
A Social
History of
Alcohol in
Ghana,
c.1800 to Recent Times
(Portsmouth, 1996),
ch. 2.
4 cGifts' and 'rewards' are
prominent
features in
gender
relations in the southern
Gold Coast. Even
among
the
matrilineal Akan,
women
speak figuratively
of their
children,
as if
they belong
to the
fathers,
and of childbirth as a service that women
provide
for men. In
songs
that were
sung during nubility
rites
(bragoro)
in
Asante,
domesticity
and reward were
linked,
and men were even
expected
to reward women
after sexual intercourse: Peter
Sarpong,
Girls'
Nubility
Rites in Ashanti
(Tema,
1977),
24-5.
5 White, Comforts of Home, 1,
also comments on the absence of
pimps
in
Kenya.
6
K. A.
Busia, Report
on a Social
Survey of
Sekondi- Takoradi
(London, 1950),
108.
146 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 156
izes the
relationship
between
pimps
and
prostitutes.7'
Instead,
prostitutes
in the Gold Coast sometimes formed informal associ-
ations for mutual
support; moreover, they
controlled their sexual-
ity
and their
earnings.
Therein lies one
important
difference
between
prostitutes
and what I refer to as the
'public
women' of
the
pre-colonial
Gold Coast. Public women were often female
slaves
acquired by
the
political
6lite
of Akan
villages
and
towns,
and
compelled
to
provide
sexual services for the local bachelors.
Their institutionalized role -
indeed,
their
very
existence
-
sheds
important light
on how
perceptions
of
sexuality
informed
gender
relations.
Examining public
women
alongside prostitutes
facilitates a
deeper understanding
of the
permutations
of
gender
relations within the
changing political
context of the
pre-colonial
and colonial
periods.
The
apparent disappearance
of
public
women from the late nineteenth
century
is an
important part
of
the
puzzle.
Did colonialism exterminate this institution? Or did
it
just
mutate into a more
'acceptable'
or less
recognizable
form?
Furthermore,
the commodification of casual
sex, especially
in
colonial
towns,
and the
pursuit
of wealth
by single women,
expanded
received notions of
sexuality
and assailed the cultural
norms that
underpinned gender
relations. Thus the
implications
for
marriage
must also be considered.
I
PROSTITUTES AND PUBLIC WOMEN IN THE PRE-COLONIAL ERA
European
residents and travellers
among
the south-west Akan
groups
of the
Esuma, Nzima,
Evalue and Ahanta between the
seventeenth and nineteenth centuries documented the existence
of
prostitution.
Referred to as 'whores' or
'prostitutes',
some of
these women
were,
more
accurately, conscripted public
women
coerced into what was
definitely
a social institution
designed
to
alleviate sexual
pressures among
unmarried
young
men.
Indeed,
Adam
Jones
has wondered if this was not 'institutionalized
rape',
and has used 'whores' and
'prostitutes' cautiously
in
referring
to them.8
7
This element of coercion is
acknowledged
in the criminal code of the Gold Coast
under
'procuration':
Laws
of
the Gold Coast
Colony (Accra, 1920), i,
bk
III, pt 7,
sect.
185: National Archives of Ghana
(henceforth NAG) (Accra),
ADM 4/1/118.
8
Adam
Jones, 'Prostitution, Polyandrie
oder
Vergewaltigung?
Zur
Mehrdeutigkeit
europiischer
Quellen
tber
die
Kiiste
Westafrikas zwischen 1660 und
1860',
in
Adam
Jones (ed.), Aussereuropdische Frauengeschichte:
Probleme
der
Forschung
(Pfaffenweiler, 1990).
Our main sources on the
public
women of the
pre-colonial
era
are
Olfert
Dapper (1668),
Willem Bosman
(1702),
and
Jean
Godot
(1704).9
Their
descriptions
are set out in
detail,
as their accounts
are crucial to the
analysis
of
sexuality
and
political economy.
Dapper's
comments related to Axim in the 1660s:
Although
the Blacks
along
this coast and in the interior
marry
as
many
wives as
they
can
maintain,
it is
customary
in
Atzijn [Axim]
and
all
the
surrounding areas,
as far as the
Quaqua Coast,
for
every village
to maintain
two or three
whores,
whom
they
call Abrakrees.
They
are initiated and
confirmed for the conduct of this work
by
their Kabaseros or headmen
in the
presence
of a
large
crowd of
people,
in the
following
manner. First
they place
these
whores,
who are certain
purchased slaves,
with
many
foolish and ridiculous ceremonies
upon
a straw mat and
display
them.
Then one of the oldest
among them, standing up,
takes a
young hen,
opens
its beak with a knife and lets a few
drops
of blood
drip
on her
head,
shoulders and arms. At the same
time,
she utters
upon
it terrible
adjurations, saying
that
[she?]
shall die unless she
accept
as lover for three
of four kakraven
(worth
two or three
stuivers), notwithstanding
the
applicants
be of rich
means;
and this without
excluding
their own blood
relatives.
Everything
she
gains
in this
way
she must hand to the
Kabasero,
and in return she
enjoys
the
liberty
of
being
allowed to take
any food,
whether it stands in someone's house or in the
market,
for her
sustenance,
and
nobody may prevent
her from
doing so, upon
a fixed
penalty.
When
this has
happened,
one
person
from the crowd is sent to one side with
her
and, upon
their
return,
testifies that she has been found to be not a
man but a woman. Then her
companion, namely
the other Abrakree or
whore,
takes her
home;
she is
washed,
and a clean bed-sheet is
wrapped
around her. She then sits down on the
mat,
a bracelet of beads is
put
on
her
arm,
and her
shoulders,
arms and breast are
painted
with lime or
chalk.
Finally
this Abrakree is
put
on a stool and carried
by
two
young
men on their
shoulders; they
run into the
village
with much
cheering by
those
following them,
and
they greatly enjoy
themselves
dancing
and
drinking palm
or bordon wine. On
eight
consecutive
days
thereafter she
goes
to sit at her
appointed place,
where all
passers-by
must
give
her two
or three
kakraven.10
9
Olfert
Dapper, Naukeurige beschrijvinge
der
afrikaensche gewesten,
2nd edn
(Amsterdam, 1676);
W.
Bosman,
A New and Accurate
Description of
the Coast
of
Guinea,
Divided into the
Gold,
the
Slave,
and the
Ivory
Coasts
(London, 1705); Jean
Godot, 'Voyages
de
Jean
Godot'
(Paris, 1704): Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris,
MS
franqais 13,380-1. I
am
grateful
to Adam
Jones
for
translating
the relevant sections
of
Dapper
on
my
behalf. Godot's
description
is
paraphrased
from Adam
Jones's
article on
prostitution
in
pre-colonial
Gold Coast: Adam
Jones, 'Prostitution,
Polyandrie
oder
Vergewaltigung?'.
The citations from Bosman are from the 1705
English translation,
with the
necessary
corrections from Albert van
Dantzig's
textual
comparison
of the Dutch and
English
versions. This
appeared
in several instalments
in
History
in
Africa
from 1975. The sections relevant to this
essay
are from Albert
van
Dantzig, 'English
Bosman and Dutch Bosman: A
Comparison
of Texts
-
IV',
Hist. in
Africa,
v
(1978).
10
Dapper, Naukeurige beschrijvinge
der
afrikaensche gewesten,
106.
It is
noteworthy
that even the nominal remuneration of the
abrakree went to the
chief.
The institution did not
promote
the
accumulation of wealth
through
the sale of
sex;
it
represented
a
public
service.
However,
these
public
women
enjoyed
the free-
dom to take
goods
or food from homes or the
market-place
without fear of
punishment.
Bosman's
description
of
public
women in
Axim,
almost four
decades
later,
confirmed
Dapper's
earlier
account, despite
some
differences in detail:
When the Mancevos find
they
want a common
whore, they go
and
petition
the Caboceroes that
they
will
please graciously
to
buy
one for the
publick:
upon
which
they buy
a beautiful female
slave,
or else the Mancevos
buy
one themselves. The woman no matter
by
whom she was
bought,
is
brought
to the
publick market-place, accompanied by
another
already
experienced
in that
trade,
in order to instruct her how she should
deport
herself for the future: which
being perfectly accomplished,
the Novice is
smeared all over with
earth,
and several
offerings
offered in order that
she
may
be
happy
in her future station and earn much
Money.
This
over,
a little
Boy, yet
immature for love
affairs,
makes a feint or
representation
of
lying
with her before all the
people
both
young
and
old; by
which 'tis
hinted to her that from this time
forwards,
she is
obliged
to receive all
persons indistinguishable
who offer themselves to
her,
not
excepting
little
boys.
Then a little out of the
way,
a hut is built for
her;
in which she is
obliged
to confine herself for
eight
or ten
days,
and
lye
with
every
man
who comes thither: After
which,
she obtains the Honourable name of
Abelcre
or
Abelecre, signifying
a common or
public whore;
and she has a
dwelling place assigned
her near one of her
Masters,
or in a
separated
part
of the
Village,
she
being
for the remainder of her life
obliged
to
refuse no man the use of her
Body; though
he offers never so small a
sum."1
Bosman added the
qualifying
information that the Akan 'countries
of
Commany [Komenda], Elmina, Fetu,
Saboe
[Asebu], Fantyn
[Fante?], etc.,
have none of these whores'.12
Bosman's
account
discusses relations between the
young
men
(mancevos)
and the
chiefs or elders
(caboceroes),
two
important political
constituencies
in the Akan oman
(community
or
polity)."3
The
political
and
economic
significance
of these
public
women in such communities
will be
explored
later.
Godot, writing
after a visit in
1701,
offered a third
significant
description
of the institutionalized role of
public
women in
Assini,
"
Bosman,
New and Accurate
Description of
the Coast
of Guinea, 212;
van
Dantzig,
'English
Bosman and Dutch
Bosman',
230.
12
Ibid.,
214.
13
That these terms held similar
meanings
in
nineteenth-century
Fante
society
is
confirmed in
John
Mensah
Sarbah, Fanti Customary
Laws
(London, 1897), 10; J.
E.
Casely-Hayford,
Gold Coast Native Institutions
(London, 1903),
33. But it is acknow-
ledged
that the
meaning
of these terms
may
have
changed
over time and
space.
to the west of Axim
(present-day Ivory Coast). According
to
him,
the
king
of Assini maintained six
young
women in
every
village
and town who
gave
themselves to bachelors. In addition
to these
six,
the French Governor was also
obliged, according
to
his
means,
to maintain one or two more. These women went
through
the towns and
villages
of Assini and did not risk
turning
anyone away
for fear of severe
punishment.
In order to be
disting-
uished from other
women, they
wore a
piece
of white linen
around their heads.
They
lived on the outskirts of the towns and
villages,
where
they
welcomed all bachelors. Married men who
were
caught patronizing
them were
heavily
fined. It was forbid-
den for these women to demand
anything
from their male
visitors,
although they
could
accept gifts
when offered.14
These three
descriptions
have
differences,
but
they
share
important
themes. All
emphasize
that these women
(abrakree
or
abelcre)
were
purchased slaves,
outsiders who had no choice in
their
assigned occupation.'"
Their
acquisition
and
prescribed
roles
were
closely
defined
by
the
political establishment,
and their
services were reserved for the bachelors
-
a vocal
political
con-
stituency.
Elaborate
public
ceremonies marked their initiation
into their
public
roles as abrakree or
abelcre.
And even their token
honoraria were
beyond
their control.
Indeed,
Godot further men-
tioned that when
they
were too old to
work,
the
king
of Assini
increased their
pensions
and
they
were allowed to live the rest of
their lives in
peace.16
It is
apparent
that
they
were
conscripted
public
servants.
II
THE POLITICAL AND MORAL ECONOMY OF SEX
IN PRE-COLONIAL GOLD COAST
Claude Meillassoux has examined the economic basis of
kinship
in West
Africa,
and how social stratification
along gerontocratic
lines
develops
in face-to-face communities." In Akan
society,
14
Godot, 'Voyages
de
Jean Godot', 278-89,
cited in
oder
Vergewaltigung?',
131-2.
15
Slaves were
emancipated
when the Gold Coast was declared a British
colony
in
1874.
Emancipation
was extended to Asante when it was
formally brought
under
British rule from 1901.
16
oder
Vergewaltigung?',
132.
17 Claude
Meillassoux, 'The Social
Organization
of the
Peasantry:
The Economic
Basis of
Kinship', JI
Peasant
Studies,
i
(1973-4),
81-90.
male elders controlled land and
agricultural production.
Labour
was drawn from
wives, younger kinsmen,
slaves and other
dependents.'is
Graduation to adulthood was mediated
by
rural
male
elders,
who decided when obedient
young
men had reached
independence. Then,
the elders
granted
the
young
men
land,
secured them
wives,
and aided them in
constructing
their
separate
huts. Ewe and
Ga-Adangme
societies exhibited the same fea-
tures.'9
The
importance
of female economic
production
and biolo-
gical reproduction
bolstered
polygyny,
and the accumulation of
women became an
integral aspect
of the
ideology
of wealth and
power in these societies.20
In
essence,
there was
unequal
access to
women, turning
them
into valuable economic
goods. Wealthy
men in Akan
society
invested in the
sexuality
of women.
Writing
on the coastal Fante
in
1853,
Brodie Cruickshank remarked:
It is
customary
for these
[wealthy men]
to
keep
a number of
women,
whom
they
call their
wives, among
whom are included
pawns
and
slaves,
as well as free
women,
for whom
dowry money
has been
paid,
and who
are in
consequence,
to be considered the most
legitimate
wives. But as
far as
answering
the
purpose
of
establishing
a
charge
of
adultery,
the
pawns
and slaves are as serviceable as the most
legally-married
women in
Christendom.
Indeed,
it is notorious that
many
of these women are maintained for the
express purpose
of
ensnaring
the
unsuspecting
with their
blandishments,
and
carry
on their infamous trade with the connivance of their
husbands,
who
frequently
bestow
upon
them a
portion
of the fine of the
damages
imposed,
as a reward for their successful
enterprize,
and an
encouragement
for future
infidelity.21
In
early nineteenth-century Asante, wealthy
men
arranged
child-
marriages (oyere akoda),
a sure means of
entrapping
on
adultery
charges unsuspecting
men who even
affectionately
touched the
is See,
for
example,
Ivor
Wilks,
Forests
of
Gold:
Essays
on the Akan and the
Kingdom
of
Asante
(Athens, Ohio, 1993),
chs.
1-3;
and his
reponse
to A. Norman
Klein,
'Slavery
and Akan
Origins', Ethnohistory, xli (1994);
Ivor
Wilks,
'
"Slavery
and Akan
Origins?"
A
Reply', Ethnohistory,
xli (1994).
19
G. K.
Nukunya, Kinship
and
Marriage among
the Anlo Ewe
(London, 1969), 40;
Hugo Huber,
The Krobo: Traditional Social and
Religious Life of
a West
African People
(St Augustin, 1963),
24.
20
See,
for
example,
T. C.
McCaskie,
'State and
Society, Marriage
and
Adultery:
Some Considerations towards a Social
History
of Pre-Colonial
Asante',
Jl African
Hist.,
xxii
(1981).
21 Brodie
Cruickshank, Eighteen
Years on the Gold Coast
of Africa,
2 vols.
(London,
1853), i, 325-6; J. Dupuis, Journal of
a Residence in
Ashantee,
2nd edn
(London,
1966),
37.
(cont.
on
p. 151)
infant.22
Indeed,
in
pre-colonial
Asante,
there was an
impression
that no woman was 'free'. An Asante
proverb
stated: mmea
se,
'wo ho
ye fe' a,
ene
ka
(when
the women
say (to you) 'you
are a
handsome
fellow',
that means
you
are
going
into
debt).23
Different social
dynamics
in the
smaller,
less centralized commu-
nities of
Axim,
Assini and Ahanta
underpinned
the institution of
public
women. Axim in 1660
probably
had a
population
of about
five hundred
inhabitants.24
Polygamy by wealthy
male elders in
such small communities caused a serious imbalance in sex ratios -
more social than statistical
-
and a
potential rupture
in social
relations between the elders and the
young
men. The institution
of
public
women
pre-empted
this and reinforced the status
quo,
maintaining
the structures of
gerontocracy
and
patriarchy.
Though public
women were meant to alleviate tensions in
domestic, intergenerational politics, they also, ironically,
became
pawns
in Euro-African
trading relations,
as Bosman
reported
at
the turn of the
eighteenth century:
For
example,
if our factor at Axim has
any dispute
with his subordinate
negroes,
no
way
will more
effectively bring
them to reason than
by taking
one of these whores into
custody,
and
confining
her in the fort: For as
soon as this news reached the Mancevos
ears, they go
with
flying
sails to
the
Caboceroes,
and
earnestly
desire them to
give
the factor
satisfaction,
that
they may
have their whores set at
liberty again; urging
as a reason
why they request
it in such a
pressing manner,
that
during
their
imprison-
ment,
those men who have no
wives,
will be
put
to the utmost
necessity
for a
woman,
and be
prompted
to run the
danger
of
lying
with men's
wives.25
The bachelors and their
'flying
sails'
[flags?] may
refer to the
asafo military companies
that were a central force in coastal Akan
politics,
or the
'flying
sails'
may
describe the haste of the
young
men.26 In either
case,
this is unlike interior
Asante,
where
judicial
22
T. E.
Bowdich,
Mission
from Cape
Coast Castle to
Ashantee,
3rd edn
(London,
1966),
302.
Adultery
was defined
liberally
in Asante
society
and included even
touching
someone's wife. But it was not uncommon for Asante men to be affectionate
towards children. Such
unsuspecting
men were
brought up
on
adultery charges
when
they
touched an
oyere
akoda.
23
R. S.
Rattray,
Ashanti Proverbs
(Oxford, 1916),
133.
2
oder
Vergewaltigung?', 126,
137.
25
Bosman, New and Accurate
Description of
the Coast
of Guinea,
213.
26
Although the origins and
early history
of the
asafo
are still
unclear,
the institution
had become
recognizable by
the mid-seventeenth
century
and had
perceptible
European
influences. On the
asafo institution,
see Ansu
Datta,
'The Fante Asafo: A
Re-Examination', Africa,
xlii (1972); I. Chukwukere, 'Perspectives
on the
Asafo
Institution in Southern
Ghana', Ji African Studies,
vii
(1980); George
N.
Preston,
'Perseus and Medusa in Africa:
Military
Art in
Fanteland, 1834-1972', African Arts,
viii
(1975),
36-7.
and coercive instruments facilitated the subordination of
young
men. The result was that in Asante the
young
men cohered into
a restive and rebellious social
group.27
Thus,
the institution of
public
women
among
the south-west
Akan served as an
important stabilizing force; however,
it also
presented
two
problems:
it could devalue
marriage
as a social
institution;
and
spiritual
and social crises could result from the
sanctioned
promiscuity
of
public
women due to the
perceived
spiritual (and
thus
volatile) power
of
sex,
menstruation and
pro-
creation.28 As Eugenia Herbert has emphasized, 'sexuality is too
powerful
a
force, socially
and
cosmologically,
to leave
unregulated'.29
The Twi words for
promiscuity
are
revealing:
nea edi
afra
or
afuntumfra (that
which is
jumbled
or huddled
together)."3
Promiscuity
was
perceived
as
something
out of
place;
it was an
anomaly. Similarly,
the Twi
proverb,
mmarima ni ho
a,
mmaa
basia
yi
won ho
kyere (when
men are
absent,
women
expose
their
nudity), expresses
the Akan conviction that female
sexuality
must
always
be
controlled, obviously by
male and female elders. The
proper
context for the fulfilment of sexual desires was
marriage,
and
monogamy
and
fidelity
were stressed for women. While the
state of
being single, asigyafo
or
ahokwafo, applies
to both adult
men and
women,
Akan
thought
associates this status with men.
Men
may
defer
marriage
for financial
reasons,
but adult women
are
expected
to
marry. Indeed,
for women
marriage
defines
adulthood. Unmarried women were referred to
through
euphemisms
-
for
example, Nyame ayewa (God's
little
wife).31
An Akan woman who refused to
marry rejected
the social
ordering
of the Akan
world, which, obviously,
was
very
male-orientated.
In the late 1920s and
1930s,
chiefs of
villages
in Sefwi Wiawso
27
Jean
M.
Allman,
The
Quills of
the
Porcupine:
Asante Nationalism in an
Emergent
Ghana
(Madison, 1993),
ch. 2.
28 See
Mary Douglas, Purity
and
Danger:
An
Analysis of
the
Concepts of
Pollution
and Taboo
(London, 1966);
Thomas
Buckley
and Alma Gottlieb
(eds.),
Blood
Magic:
The
Anthropology of
Menstruation
(Berkeley, 1988).
For the Asante
context,
see
Emmanuel
Akyeampong
and
Pashington Obeng, 'Spirituality, Gender,
and Power in
Asante
History',
Internat.
Jl African
Hist.
Studies,
xxviii
(1995).
29
Eugenia
W.
Herbert, Iron, Gender,
and Power: Rituals
of Transformations
in
African
Societies
(Bloomington, 1993),
227.
30
J.
G.
Christaller,
A
Dictionary of
the Asante and
Fante
Language
called Tshi
(Chwee, Twi) (Basel, 1881).
31
Sarpong, Girls'
Nubility
Rites in
Ashanti,
16.
and Asante rounded
up spinsters,
detained
them,
and insisted
that
they marry
in the shortest
possible
time.32
These contradictions and tensions were resolved
through
the
rituals that surrounded the initiation of
public
women. The
danger
of their
promiscuity
was
spiritually
neutralized. A
woman's
spirit (kra)
has
great
influence on her
sexuality
and
procreation.33
Indeed, Jones
examined the
etymology
of the label
abrakree or
abel(e)cre assigned
to
public women,
and commented
on the
possible
combination of
aba'a,
abea
(woman)
and
akyere
(a person
to be
sacrificed)
- in Nzima
akyere
is
akele
-
making
the
public
women
religious
sacrifices.34
This
helps
to
explain
the
need for the
religious
rituals that surrounded the institution of
public
women.
Pointing
to the obvious ritual
significance
of
-
inter alia
-
the blood
sacrifice,
the
marking
with
hyire (white
clay),
the white
towel,
and the initiate's
position
on a straw mat
(in Dapper's account), Jones
concluded:
These elements indicate
strongly
that the "whore" was far from
being
close to her
European analogue
of a demi-mondaine. It is true that she
had no free will in
choosing
her
job
and her status was
probably very
low.
Nonetheless,
the "foolish and ridiculous ceremonies" did not have
the
purpose
of
humiliating
her or
treating
her as an outcast. Rather
they
served to
integrate
her and to
give
her a
recognized position
or new status
within the
community.
For that reason she had to be
ritually purified
(through
the chicken's blood that
dripped
on her head and
body, through
the
washing
of her
body
and
marking
of it with white
clay)
and sub-
sequently displayed
in
public
and celebrated.35
In
addition, Jones perceptively highlighted
the
parallels
between
the rites
initiating
the
public
women and
puberty
rites and the
installation of
chiefs.36
Still,
it is also
apparent
that these rituals
were
supposed
to
frighten
the
public
women into
accepting
their
unpalatable
functions. As Claire Robertson
pointed
out in her
study
of
post-proclamation slavery
in the Ga town of
Accra,
owners sometimes 'invoked fetish to
keep
their slaves with
32
Penelope
A.
Roberts,
'The State and the
Regulation
of
Marriage:
Sefwi Wiawso
(Ghana), 1900-1940',
in Haleh Afshar
(ed.), Women,
State and
Ideology:
Studies
from
Africa
and Asia
(London, 1987); Jean
M.
Allman, 'Rounding Up Spinsters:
Gender
Chaos and Unmarried Women in Colonial
Asante',
Ji African Hist.,
xxxvii
(1996).
33 Sarpong,
Girls'
Nubility
Rites in
Ashanti,
18.
3
oder
Vergewaltigung?',
129.
35 Ibid.,
137.
36
On
puberty rites,
see R. S.
Rattray, Religion
and Art in Ashanti
(Oxford, 1927),
ch. 7; Sarpong,
Girls'
Nubility
Rites in Ashanti. On the installation rites of
chiefs,
see
R. S.
Rattray,
Ashanti Law and Constitution
(Oxford, 1929).
them'.37
But what
Jones
did not
mention,
which is
important
for
our
purposes,
are the
parallels
between the initiation of
public
women and
marriage
rites
among
the Akan.
In
fact,
there are marked similarities between the initiation
rites of the
public
women and that of
indigenous priestesses.
The
graduation ceremony
of
priestesses
of the Akonnedi shrine in
Larteh underscores the
importance
of the market as ritual
space,
and the
significance
of
beads, hyire (white clay)
and white cloth
in
bodily adornment.38
Also
significant
is the fact that for Akan
priestesses,
as A. B. Ellis has
highlighted, priesthood
and
promis-
cuity
were
closely
intertwined.
Priests
marry
like
any
other members of the
community
and
purchase
wives;
but
priestesses
are never
married,
nor can
any
"head
money"
be
paid
for a
priestess.
The reason
appears
to be that a
priestess belongs
to
the
god
she
serves,
and therefore cannot become the
property
of a
man,
as would be the case if she married one. This
prohibition
extends to
marriage only,
and a
priestess
is not debarred from sexual commerce.
Priestesses are
ordinarily
the most
licentious,
and custom allows them to
gratify
their
passions
with
any
man who
may
chance to take their
fancy.
A
priestess
who is
favourably impressed by
a man sends for him to her
house,
and this command he is sure to
obey, through
fear of the con-
sequences
of
exciting
her
anger.
She then tells him that the
god
she serves
has directed her to love
him,
and the man
thereupon
lives with her until
she
grows
tired of
him,
or a new
object
takes her
fancy.
Some
priestesses
have as
many
as half-a-dozen men in train at one
time,
and
may,
on
great
occasions,
be seen
walking
in
state,
followed
by
them."39
It is a reflection of the
creativity
of the Akan chiefdom or
state,
that the sexual
politics
that
pervaded
the relations of elders and
juniors
could be resolved
through
an institution of
public women,
an institution
legitimated
and rendered unassailable
through
its
parallels
with the
practices
of
priesthood.
A. Van der
Eb,
the General Director of the Dutch West India
Company
in the Gold
Coast, actually
described
public
women in
Ahanta as 'fetish women' in his 1851 memorandum on the cus-
toms of this
region. They
were slaves
bought by wealthy
men
and women and
given
as
gifts
to the
public.
His
description
of
their initiation
emphasizes
its
religious
overtones and
parallels
37
Claire C.
Robertson,
'Post-Proclamation
Slavery
in Accra: A Female
Affair?',
in
Claire C. Robertson and Martin A. Klein
(eds.),
Women and
Slavery
in
Africa
(Madison, 1983), 222, 228;
see also G. K.
Nukunya's appendix
to Robertson's
contribution on Anlo-Ewe
slavery (243-4).
38
Kofi Asare
Opoku,
West
African
Traditional
Religion (Jurong, 1978),
75-90.
39
A. B.
Ellis,
The
Tshi-Speaking Peoples of
the Gold Coast
of
West
Africa (London,
1887),
121-2.
with
marriage
rites. These
slaves,
as soon as
they
reached mar-
riageable age,
were initiated
by
the
priests
and
priestesses. They
were made available to
every
man for the
payment
of a small
amount in
gold-dust, except
for the men who first
slept
with
them after the initiation. These men were
obliged
to
pay
a
larger
sum which was used for the
purchase
of new
girls
for the
profes-
sion. Of this
fee, part
was
given
to the male or female owners.40
The
comparison
between
tiri
ka
(the
debt
paid
off
by
a
groom
on behalf of his bride's
family
in an Akan
marriage)
or dwa
tiri
(the dowry given
to the married woman herself as
capital
in
trading)
and the
larger
sum
paid by
the man who first
slept
with
a
public
woman is
revealing.41
In a sense,
the
public
woman was
the 'wife' of the bachelors of the
community.42
Godot mentioned
that a married man who
slept
with one of the
public
women in
Assini was
subjected
to a
heavy
fine. This fine could be seen as
the
equivalent
of
ayefere
sika
(the
fine for
adultery)
for
sleeping
with the bachelors' 'wife'. The initiation rites of
public
women
encapsulated
in a distilled form the rites of
nubility, marriage
and
priesthood. Nubility
and
marriage
rites
granted
a woman
access to sexual intercourse. Akan
priestesses
were 'married' to
the
deity
and could not be taken or owned
by
a man. But
they
were
granted
sexual licence and could
proposition any
bachelor
they
found attractive. The
spiritual
and social contradictions
inherent in the functions of
public
women were thus resolved
through
their initiation ceremonies.
The various accounts of
public
women also differ in
important
respects. They
could be
purchased by chiefs, European gov-
ernors, wealthy
men and
women,
or bachelors.
They
lived near
their masters'
dwellings
or on the outskirts of towns. It is unclear
whether
they
were the
outright possessions
of the bachelors or if
they just
had
usufructuary rights.
But social
institutions,
even
among people
with a shared culture like the south-western
Akan,
do not
replicate
themselves
exactly.
It is
possible
that the variant
40
As cited in
oder
Vergewaltigung?',
133.
41
See Emmanuel
Akyeampong, 'Alcohol,
Social Conflict and the
Struggle
for Power
in Urban
Ghana,
1919 to Recent Times'
(Univ.
of
Virginia
Ph.D.
thesis, 1993),
ch.
2; Rattray, Religion
and Art in
Ashanti, 78; Takyiwah Manuh, 'Changes
in
Marriage
and Funeral
Exchanges among
the Asante: A Case
Study
from
Kona, Afigya-Kwabre',
in
Jane Guyer (ed.), Money
Matters:
Instability,
Values and Social
Payments
in the
Modern
History of
West
African
Communities
(Portsmouth, 1995).
42
oder
Vergewaltigung?',
raises this
possibility
when he
compared
the institution on the Gold Coast with
parallels
in
Whydah
and
Dahomey.
forms of
public
women
among
the
Esuma, Evalue,
Nzima and
Ahanta were derived from the same
practice
but
developed along
unique
historical lines.
Aside from these institutionalized
public women, European
observers also documented the
presence
of
prostitutes
in
pre-
colonial Akan societies. Pieter de Marees
(1602)
believed coastal
Akan women to be
prone
to
'whoredom',
and
especially promis-
cuous where Dutchmen were
concerned.43
Jean
Barbot described
etiguafou (prostitutes)
as
'distinguished
from the others
by
their
fine
appearance
and their
clothing'."
Bosman also mentioned
Elmina, Fetu,
Asebu and
Fantyn (Fante?)
women who
dispensed
sexual favours for a
negotiated price.45
Bowdich
commented on
early nineteenth-century
Asante
practices:
Prostitutes are numerous and countenanced. No Ashantee forces his
daughter
to become the wife of the man he
wishes,
but he
instantly
disclaims her
support
and
protection
on her
refusal,
and would
persecute
the mother if she afforded
it;
thus
abandoned, they
would have no resource
but
prostitution.46
We lack information on such women to
compare
them with
public
women. But
they
were not
slaves; they
were insiders with
kinship
ties who had been forced into
prostitution
because
they
asserted their
autonomy.
A less
publicized
view of female control
over their
sexuality
existed in the
pre-colonial
Gold
Coast,
as
asserted
by
the Twi
proverb
that
opened
this article: obi
mfi
bea
akyi
ntu ne tam
(no
one can
pull
the loin-cloth off a woman
without her
knowledge).47
As
colonialism,
the
proliferation
of
towns and the extension of the market
economy changed power
relations, demography
and the
economy
of the Gold
Coast,
women found more
spaces
within the
emerging
social order to
assert their
autonomy,
to accumulate wealth on their
own,
and
to define
marriage
and what
they expected
of it. Prostitution was
one of several
options
available to
migrant
women in towns.
Urban
prostitutes
in the colonial Gold Coast
definitely
differed
from the abrakree or
abelcre
of the south-west
Akan,
but
striking
43
Pieter de
Marees, Description
and Historical Account
of
the Gold
Kingdom of
Guinea,
trans. and ed. Albert van
Dantzig
and Adam
Jones (Oxford, 1987), ch.
7.
4
Jean Barbot,
Barbot on Guinea: The
Writings of Jean
Barbot on West
Africa,
1678-1712,
ed. P. E. H.
Hair,
Adam
Jones
and Robin
Law,
2 vols.
(London, 1992),
ii, 495.
45 Bosman,
New and Accurate
Description of
the Coast
of Guinea,
214.
46
Bowdich,
Mission
from Cape
Coast Castle to
Ashantee,
303.
47
Rattray,
Ashanti
Proverbs,
132.
parallels
in their modus
operandi suggest
that we need to look for
continuities in the cultural norms that
underpinned gender
rela-
tions and examine the role of the state as a mediator.
III
MIGRANT LABOUR AND PROSTITUTION IN COLONIAL GOLD COAST
Studies of
prostitution
in colonial and
post-colonial
Africa
agree
that
prostitutes
were often outsiders with no
kinship
ties in the
communities where
they practised
their
profession.48
The
expan-
sion of commerce and
industry
within the colonial
economy
attracted male
migrant
labour and increased the
presence
of
Europeans
in towns.
Although
the colonial urban
economy
was
essentially
a male
economy,
the
unwillingness
of the colonial state
and
capital
to
provide
for the social
reproduction
of their labour
force,
and the sexual imbalance in
working-class towns,
created
economic
opportunities
for women in the interstices of the colo-
nial
system. Elderly
informants in the
railway
town of Sekondi
noted of the
early
twentieth
century:
'Some of these
[male]
migrants
didn't even have
rooms,
so
they spent
the
night
with
prostitutes
then went to work the next
day'.49
In the Gold Coast
census of
1901,
Sekondi had a male
population
of
3,469
and a
female
population
of
626,
a ratio of five men to one woman.50
Kenneth Little has
pointed
out that one of the 'main
ways
in
which women subsist in town is
by rendering
sexual
services'.51
Indeed,
this was an
important
initial
strategy
for
newly
arrived
women. The sale of sexual services could secure
migrant
women
their
first, temporary place
of residence. Unlike the sale of food-
stuffs or
liquor, prostitution
did not
necessarily require start-up
capital. Eventually,
the
prostitute
could move to her own resid-
ence. The need for
security
and social networks
encouraged pros-
titutes,
often from the same ethnic
group,
to settle close
48
Busia,
Social
Survey of
Sekondi-
Takoradi, ch. 8;
Ione Acquah,
Accra
Survey
(London, 1958), 72-4;
Martin Chibuzo
Nwosu, 'Prospect
of
Curbing
the
Spread
of
Sexually
Transmitted Diseases and Aids
through
Settled Prostitutes'
(Univ.
of Ghana
B.A.
thesis, 1989); Little, African
Women in
Towns; White, Comforts of
Home.
49
Interview with Laurence
Cudjoe, J.
K.
Annan, Arhu,
and
Joseph
Kofi
Ackon,
Sekondi,
27
May
1992.
50
Census
of
the
Population,
1901
(Accra, 1901), 53;
NAG
(Accra),
ADM 5/2/2.
51
Little, African
Women in
Towns,
40. See also
Beverly Grier, 'Pawns, Porters,
and
Petty
Traders: Women in the Transition to Cash
Crop Agriculture
in Colonial
Ghana',
Signs,
xvii
(1992),
322.
together.52
This
encouraged
the construction of ethnic sexual
stereotypes by
other ethnic
groups,
as well as conscious
attempts
at self-definition within ethnic
groups
and a contest over the
meaning
of
prostitution
and the control of
sexuality. Gradually
these
perceptions
would influence
marriage
and other
gender
relations in towns.
In
1925,
Kadri
English,
headman of the Hausa
community
in
Ussher
Town,
in the centre of the colonial
capital
of
Accra,
wrote
to the District Commissioner of Accra
concerning
his uneasiness
about the increase in
prostitution among
Hausa women. It was
an
important opportunity
for him to
express
his definition of
Hausa social
identity:
As
you
are aware
Sir, chastity
is essential in Mohammadanism
especially
among women; prostitution
is a
thing
outside our creed
-
good
Hausa
women who were
living good
lives in Northern
Nigeria change
for the
worse on arrival on the Gold Coast
colony
in which evil influences are
somewhat
paramount.
He
wisely
linked his
petition
to colonial concerns about health
and finances:
Venereal disease is too common
among my people
and unless a law is
enacted
by you
or the authorities
enforcing
the
repatriation
of all Hausa
women without husbands to their
homes, immorality
will be on the
ascendant and
indubitably defy
the
praise-worthy
endeavours of the
Health
Officers.53
The
prominence
of Muslim
prostitutes
in Nairobi and
among
Hausa communities in southern
Nigeria
contradicts Kadri's asser-
tion that
prostitution
was alien to Muslim Hausa women and that
it was a result of the 'evil influences' of the Gold
Coast.54 Indeed,
in
Nairobi, prostitutes
converted to Islam and underwent
training
in Islamic decorum as a trade
strategy.
While it must be
emphas-
ized that Islam does not condone
prostitution,
it is
likely
that
Kadri found it difficult to
accept
the assertiveness of these Hausa
women and was embroiled in conflict with them. He
sought
the
colonial
government
as an
ally
in this conflict. In
addition,
news-
paper reports
that
categorized prostitutes
as
mostly
from
Nigeria
52 On Nigerian prostitutes in the colonial Gold
Coast,
see
Naanen,
'Itinerant
Gold Mines'.
53
Kadri
English,
Hausa tribal
ruler,
to District Commissioner of
Accra, [Ussher
Town
(Accra)],
13
May
1925: NAG
(Accra),
ADM
11/1/922,
no. 35.
54 Bujra,
'Women
"Entrepreneurs"
of
Early Nairobi', 226-30; White, Comforts of
Home; Cohen,
Africa,
ch. 2.
may
have
spurred
his
action.55
The
preponderance
of Krobo
prostitutes
in colonial and
post-colonial
Asante also
encouraged
the folk tradition that Okomfo
Anokye,
an
indigenous priest
instrumental in the
founding
of the Asante nation and
state,
had
cursed Krobo women with
prostitution.56
K. A. Busia's social
survey
of Sekondi-Takoradi in the late
1940s revealed 127 known
prostitutes, only
9 of whom were from
the
indigenous
Ahanta ethnic
group.57
The establishment of a
railway
head at Sekondi in 1898 and a
deep
water harbour at
Takoradi in 1928 transformed these
tiny
Ahanta
villages
into the
bustling, multi-ethnic, working-class city
of Sekondi-Takoradi.
Here, prostitutes
found an
important
niche.
They
came
princip-
ally
from
Cape
Coast and
Axim,
with a
significant
contribution
coming
from
Nigeria
and Liberia.
Ione
Acquah's survey
of
prosti-
tutes in the centre of Accra in
August
1954 revealed a different
ethnic mix.
Acquah
counted 213
prostitutes,
and conducted inter-
views with
70,
all of whom were from
migrant
tribes. Of
these,
most were Ewes
(56);
there were
only
3
Adangme,
5 Guans and
6 from French
Dahomey.58 Acquah assigned
economic
pressure,
social isolation and the
anonymity
afforded
by
the
large
towns as
causes for the
proliferation
of
prostitution
and
'lapses
in tradi-
tional standards of
morality'.59
Like
Acquah,
Busia saw
prostitu-
tion as evidence of the
collapse
of sexual
morality
and
highlighted
economic
pressures
and social isolation as the
key
factors in this
transformation.60
IV
PROSTITUTION,
AUTONOMY AND ACCUMULATION
Acquah
and Busia assumed that
prostitution
was a
novel,
urban
phenomenon
that reflected the
collapse
of the traditional moral
order with the advent of colonial
capitalism.
From the evidence
in this
article,
this was
obviously
an erroneous
impression.
What
was new about urban
prostitution
in the colonial Gold
Coast,
55
Cf. Gold Coast
Times,
29
Aug. 1925; Naanen,
'Itinerant Gold
Mines', 60-1,
points
out that the Gold Coast was a
popular
destination for
prostitutes
from
Nigeria.
56
Personal communication from Emmanuel
Gyimah-Boadi,
5 Nov. 1995. On
Krobo
prostitutes
in
Obuasi,
see
Nwosu, 'Prospect
of
Curbing
the
Spread
of
Sexually
Transmitted Diseases'.
57
Busia,
Social
Survey of
Sekondi-
Takoradi,
107-8.
58 Acquah,
Accra
Survey,
73.
59 Ibid.
6
Busia,
Social
Survey of Sekondi- Takoradi,
107-8.
though,
was its
explicit
connection to
independent,
material accu-
mulation
among
women. What men and other women found
fascinating
and
horrifying
about this
development
was that the
women who were
prostitutes
had
voluntarily stepped
outside the
traditional social and
spatial
constraints
imposed
on women to
facilitate accumulation. It is clear from Anita Mensah's account
of
prostitution
in Sekondi-Takoradi in the 1930s and 1940s that
new
images
-
of
autonomy, acquisitiveness
and even a touch of
glamour
-
had influenced old
perceptions
of
prostitution:
By then,
Kru
people [from Liberia]
were the dominant
group
in Takoradi.
The other
growing
area was
Nkontompo
in Sekondi. There
many
women
resided. The men who worked at Takoradi lived in
compounds,
for
example
the
present
New
Takoradi,
and when
they
wanted women came
down from the
compound
at New Takoradi to
Nkontompo
in Sekondi.
So the nickname
'Nkontompo Headquarters' emerged. Many single
women lived there. In this
period,
some of the
young
men who visited
Nkontompo
would fall in
love,
and ask the women to
quit
the business
of
prostitution
and come to
join
them at New Takoradi as wives. I saw
this
happening myself.
It came to a time that Kru women took over
Takoradi.61
It is unclear how a
neighbourhood
in Sekondi
acquired
the name
Nkontompo,
but
nkontompo
in Twi refers to 'deceit' or 'false-
hood',
and the sexual conduct of
freelance, single
women
may
have
bequeathed
the title of
'Nkontompo'
to their residential
area. Inhabitants of Sekondi-Takoradi were fascinated with them:
They
were
mostly
Fante women from
Cape
Coast.
They
were not
[indi-
genous]
Ahantas.
Only
Auntie Lamle was from Dixcove
[Nzima].
Auntie
Lamle became almost a role model for
wayward
women.
Many young
women became attracted to the business. If
you
were not
properly
trained
as a
young girl, you
could
easily join
the
Nkontompo
women.
Later,
the
Nkontompo
women moved to a hotel at Cassava Farm
[Takoradi]
called
'Columbia Hotel' in the mid-1940s.
Many
women hired rooms in that
neighbourhood. Then,
the colonial
government
was
very
strict on
prosti-
tution. If
they caught you
as a 'harlot
woman', they
took
you
to court. If
you
couldn't
pay
the
fine, you
were even
jailed.
The
prostitutes
realized
that it was because
they
had concentrated in a
particular
area that the
colonial
police easily picked
them
up. They began
to
disperse
from the
Cassava Farm area to other
places.
That
very
'Columbia'
area,
women
from Ho
[Volta region]
came to settle as
prostitutes.
A
Nigerian
called
Geoffrey
also established a hotel where
prostitutes
were based. That is
how women ended
up
in
Takoradi.62
Mensah's account confirmed that most
prostitutes
were
outsiders,
but also that
they
were
beginning
to attract
indigenous
women
through
their
independence
and their
glamourous lifestyle.
Even
61
Interview with Anita
Mensah, Takoradi,
16
Aug.
1994.
62
Ibid.
more
importantly,
in
male-dominated, working-class
centres like
Sekondi-Takoradi, prostitutes
were considered
eligible marriage
partners.
The absence of social barriers between
'prostitutes'
and
'respectable
women' in
working-class
leisure activities in
Sekondi-Takoradi facilitated the
exchange
of beliefs and manner-
isms. Social life in Takoradi in the 1930s and 1940s revolved
around
spots
like Columbia
Hotel,
famous for its dances. The
'Liberian
Bar',
owned
by
a Liberian in
Takoradi,
was another
active social
spot
in the 1930s and 1940s. Krus were excellent
drummers and
guitar players,
and
they
had a first-rate brass band
in
Takoradi,
the 'Taboo Brass Band'. As
prostitutes
and non-
prostitutes patronized
these
places,
mannerisms were
exchanged.
The
ability
to chew
gum
and make it
snap
was introduced into
Sekondi-Takoradi
by
Kru
women,
but it
expanded
to become
the
badge
of female nonchalance. With their social
drinking
at
popular
bars and their fashionable
clothing,
Kru and
Nigerian
women became the
pace-setters
where female
autonomy
was
concerned.63
Central to the
alluring image
of
prostitution
in urban Gold
Coast was the fact that these women were
accumulating
wealth
for
themselves.64 It needs to be
pointed
out that not all
prostitutes
became
wealthy.
Some returned to
villages
without
any money,
their health
impaired by
venereal diseases.
However, Acquah
discovered in her interviews with
prostitutes
that none of them
earned less than ?10 a
month,
and some earned as much as ?30.
They charged
an
average
of 2s. for sexual
intercourse,
and from
4s. to ?1 for a full
night.65
From the standard
charge
of
2s.,
prostitutes
in Ghana earned the
epithet
of 'two-two' women.66
In terms of accumulation and
wealth, prostitution
had
definitely
expanded
the material horizon of women:
63
Cudjoe, J.
K.
Annan, Arhu,
and
Joseph
Kofi
Ackon,
Sekondi,
27
May
1992.
64 Bujra,
'Women
"Entrepreneurs"
of
Early Nairobi', 232, points
out that in 1943
almost half the number of houses in
Pumwani,
Nairobi's oldest
existing
African
settlement,
were owned
by
women who had accumulated wealth
through prostitution
and beer sales. Women in rural
Atu,
a coastal
village
in northern
Kenya,
invested
their wealth in
houses, gold
ornaments and
public
feasts:
Bujra,
'Sexual Politics in
Atu',
15. But
prostitution
and accumulation were not
necessarily
correlated. Hausa
prostitutes
in the Sabo
quarter
of Ibadan
gained autonomy
rather than wealth:
Cohen,
Africa,
66-7.
65 Acquah,
Accra
Survey,
73.
6
Cf. David
Brokensha,
Social
Change
at
Larteh,
Ghana
(Oxford, 1966),
140.
Twenty-two
owned houses. Their values
ranged
from ?40 to ?900.
Twenty-two
had one
sewing
machine each and two others had two.
Only
one
prostitute
had
any savings.
She had ?25
deposited
in the Post Office
Savings
Bank.
The results show that these
prostitutes
were
comfortably placed
and
compared favourably
with men in other fields.
They spoke openly
of their
activities and seemed to suffer
little,
if
any, disapprobation
in
town."67
Perhaps
more
revealing
of
popular perceptions
of this new mode
of accumulation were the names that
people
in Sekondi-Takoradi
assigned
to
prostitutes.
The older
group
of
prostitutes,
constituted
mostly
of Krus and
Ibos,
were called 'UAC' after the United
African
Company,
an old
expatriate company
that dominated the
commercial life of the Gold
Coast.68
The new and
younger group
of
prostitutes
were named 'Leventis' after the
expatriate company
A. G.
Leventis.69
It is
significant
that these
companies
controlled
the commercial life of Sekondi-Takoradi. The UAC were led
by
a
Cape
Coast woman called Akwele and the Leventis
by
the
Nzima
woman, Lamle.70
Notwithstanding
these definite
changes
in the nature of urban
prostitution
Coast,
there were also
interesting
continuities from the
pre-colonial
era in the
spatial
location of
prostitutes,
the use of ritual and the
perceived
need for
spiritual
protection,
and the desire of
prostitutes
for official affiliation or
recognition.
From the
descriptions
of
public
women in the
pre-
colonial Gold
Coast,
it
appears
that
they
often lived on the out-
skirts of
villages
and towns.
They occupied distinct, separate
spaces
from the local inhabitants of a
community.
Prostitutes in
the colonial Gold
Coast, likewise,
lived on the boundaries of
towns.
Elderly
informants have confirmed this for
Sekondi.71
Areas like
Nkontompo
were on the outskirts of
town,
but
prosti-
tutes who married workers in Sekondi-Takoradi were
incorpor-
67 Acquah,
Accra
Survey,
74.
68
The United African
Company
was formed in 1929 from the
merger
of the
African
Association,
the Eastern
Company
and the
Niger Company.
All of these firms
had been active in Gold Coast commerce for
years.
On the
history
of the United
Africa
Company,
see Frederick
Pedler,
The Lion and the Unicorn in
Africa:
A
History
of
the
Origins of
the United
Africa Company,
1787-1931
(London, 1974).
69
A. G. Leventis was a
Cypriot trading
firm. It disassociated itself from the
oligopolistic
activities of British firms like the
UAC,
and its
shops, significantly,
were
spared by
looters
during
the famous riots of
February
1948: Dennis
Austin,
Politics
in
Ghana,
1946-1960
(London, 1964),
71.
70
Cudjoe,
et
al., Sekondi,
27
May
1992.
71
Interview with Opanin Kofi
Twi, Opanin
Kweku
Makuronka, Opanin
Kwabena
Nketsia and
Egya
Ekow
Baidoo, Sekondi,
20
May
1992.
ated
spatially
and
socially, resolving
their
liminality.
Krobo
prostitutes
in Obuasi lived at
Tutuka, away
from the town
centre.72 Although prostitutes in Kumasi, the capital of Asante,
now live in the town centre of
Adum,
in the nineteenth and
early
twentieth centuries Adum used to be on the border of Kumasi
proper.73
Religious
ritual remained
important
in the lives of
prostitutes,
especially
when
they sought
social
reintegration
into their old
communities.
Acquah
was informed of this
by prostitutes operat-
ing
in Accra:
If
they
visited their relatives in the rural
areas, however, they might
be
expected
to
'purify'
themselves before
they
were able to be
accepted
back
fully
into the
village
life. One stated that she had to
provide
a
sheep
and
rum for the
performance
of some rites each time she visited her
village
before she was allowed
by
the chief and the fetish
priest
to
participate
in
public
functions and celebrations. This reveals that
prostitution
constitutes
an infraction of custom and is still
severely
frowned
upon
in the rural
areas,
even
though
in the
large
towns it is
generally accepted
as one of
the
ways
women have of
earning
a
living.74
The
purification
of
prostitutes
before
they
were
reincorporated
into their old communities was
particularly designed
to neutralize
the malevolent
spiritual
forces that
might
follow them into the
village
as a result of their numerous sexual contacts with
strangers.
Some
prostitutes sought spiritual protection
from rural shrines
before
they departed
for the
city
to
practise
their
profession.
Margaret
Field encountered this
during
her field-work at the
shrine of Mframaso in
Brong
Ahafo in 1956-7:
One modest-mannered but
quietly
business-like woman who said she was
a
prostitute
in Kumasi and asked for success in her work. As she was not
married, approval
was
readily given
to her
enterprise.
When I
sought
to
know the
general
climate of
opinion concerning this,
I was told matter-
of-factly,
'It is her work. When a man has to
stay
in a town like Kumasi
one of the
things
he
may
need is a woman. Also travellers need somewhere
to
stay
the
night'.75
The
irony
is that male sexual
needs,
as
opposed
to female sexual
needs,
have
always
been
recognized
in Akan
society.
Public
women and
prostitutes
met this
acknowledged
need.
72
Nwosu, 'Prospect
of
Curbing
the
Spread
of
Sexually
Transmitted Diseases'.
73
See the
papers
and
maps
from the
'Symposium
on the
City
of
Kumasi',
Research
Rev.
Suppl.,
v
(1993);
interview and tour of 'historic' Kumasi with Albert Mawere
Poku,
20
Aug.
1994.
74
Acquah,
Accra
Survey,
74.
75
M.
J. Field,
Search
for Security:
An
Ethno-Psychiatric Study of
Rural Ghana
(Evanston, 1960),
123.
Public women were
acquired,
sanctioned and
regulated by
the
political
establishment in a
community,
whereas
prostitutes
in
the colonial and
post-colonial
era had asserted their
independence.
But the need for
political recognition
remained
important
for
prostitutes
Coast,
as the
following example
from Kumasi illustrates. In
1943,
the District Commissioner for
Kumasi forwarded a
petition
to the Chief Commissioner
for Asante from Ataa
Baasi,
headwoman of the 'Baasifuo
Community',
an
organized
band of
prostitutes living
in and
around Odum street in Kumasi. The
group sought recognition
from the colonial
government:
After the
[restoration
of
the]
Ashanti
Confederacy [1935],
we did not
hide ourselves. We
appeared
before Nana Asantehemaa
[the queen
mother],
and
Otumfuo, Osaagyefuo,
Asantehene
[king
of
Asante]
in
Kumasi,
and introduced ourselves to him and
explain[ed]
to him our
unity
with our aim to substantiate to him
Otumfuo, Asantehene,
that our
acts and
doings
in the
City
of
Kumasi,
are not of the same scale as that
of the Corner-Side women
[ambulant prostitutes]. Otumfuo, Asantehene,
having accepted us,
handed
[us]
over to one of his chiefs called Oheneba
Bempah-Worakosehene
of Kumasi. Oheneba
Bempah
had since then
becomes
(sic)
our chief
patron.76
Although
the Asantehene
acknowledged
the
presence
of the com-
munity
in
Kumasi,
he
gave
it no
legal recognition.
Hence the
petition
to the colonial
government.
This was not
necessarily
a
futile
gesture.
French colonial rule in
Congo
Brazzaville sanc-
tioned the activities of
prostitutes
and even established official
brothels
during
World War II to cater for the sexual needs of
soldiers.77
The Baasifuo
Community
wanted the colonial
govern-
ment to
grant
it a license and access to medical attention for a
fee. It
justified
its relevance in
very
familiar terms: it would deal
only
with natives
(not Europeans)
and
charge very
moderate
rates;
it would maintain strict
supervision
over its
prostitutes'
health;
its members would
reject any
and all
marriage proposals;
and
finally,
its
presence
would be beneficial to old and
young
bachelors. The
government
declined the
request.
The
arguments
advanced
by
the
community resonate, however,
with the
philo-
sophy
that
underpinned
the institution of
public
women
among
the south-west Akan in the
pre-colonial
era. The Baasifuo
76
'Petition from Ataa Baasi,
Headwoman of the Baasi-women or
Community
in
Kumasi,
for herself and about 30 other women
company', Kumasi,
1943: NAG
(Kumasi),
item
2,339.
77 Phyllis
M.
Martin,
Leisure and
Society
in Colonial Brazzaville
(Cambridge,
1995),
139-40.
Community
was
advocating
its case based on old Akan cultural
norms that
regulated gender
relations
-
men had
acknowledged
sexual needs.
There is the
possibility
that the
categories
of
public
women
and
prostitutes
had become conflated in colonial Asante. The
important
role of the Akan state in
mediating sexuality
and
gender
relations cannot be
ignored.
The
timing
of the Baasifuo's
request
is instructive.'"
Prempeh, king
of
Asante,
and his
principal
chiefs
had been
deported
to the
Seychelles
when Asante was colonized
by
the British in 1896. He was allowed to return to Asante in
1924 as a
private
citizen. He was
subsequently
made
king
of
Kumasi in
1926,
and his
successor, Prempeh II,
was installed as
Asantehene in
1935,
when the Asante
confederacy
was restored.
It is
significant
that in the
power
vacuum between 1896 and 1935
there is no record of
prostitutes seeking
such official
recognition.
When the British
government
restored the Asante
confederacy
in
1935,
an obvious shadow of its former
self,
the Asantehene
sought
to extend his
jurisdiction through symbolic
acts
meaning-
ful to residents of the Gold Coast. In that
very year,
wives of
nhenkwaa
(servants)
of the Asantehene in different
parts
of what
had been the old Asante
empire
claimed that
they
had been
seduced
by
local men. District Commissioner A. F. L. Wilkinson
of Wiawso commented on
developments
in Wiawso: 'It seems
obvious that the wives of the Asantehene's Nhinkwas are distrib-
uted round the
country
and that whenever one of them is
"seduced" ?16 is claimed and
goes
to form
part
of the
Asantehene's revenue'.79 The colonial
government's investigation
revealed that the Asantehene's
messengers
had also been active
in
Adjumaku (Central Province),
Oda
(Central Province),
Mpraeso (Eastern Province),
and
Pepease (Ashanti) collecting
adultery
fines.8o
Wilkinson believed this was about
revenue,
but
sexual
politics
was also the
key
to status and
power politics
within
Asante,
and to the territorial definition of
Asante.8'
The limits of
Asante
territory
were reflected in the
geographical
extent to which
the Asantehene could demand
money
for
adultery. Recognizing
78
The
following argument
owes much to an
insightful
discussion with
Jean
Allman.
79
District Commissioner A. F. L. Wilkinson to A. C.
Duncan-Johnstone,
Commissioner of Western
Province,
30
July
1935: Rhodes
House, Oxford,
MSS Afr.
S.713
(Wilkinson Papers).
80
Memorandum,
District Commissioner's
clerk,
30
July
1935: ibid.
81
Jean
M.
Allman, 'Adultery
and the State:
Gender,
Class and Power in
Asante,
1800-1950'
(paper presented
at Harvard
University,
Mar.
1996).
the
spirit
of
past
times in the activities of the
Asantehene,
the
Baasifuo
Community
in
Kumasi, 'talking
the
talk', presented
itself for the Asantehene's official
approval.
It
certainly
fit into
the social structure of the old Akan state. The Asantehene
entrusted it to the care of a sub-chief.
The
irony
of the situation lies in the fact that the Baasifuo
Community
had turned cultural norms that
recognized
male
sexual needs and denied the existence of similar needs
among
females to the service of female accumulation. It was a subtle
play
on female
dependence
in an era when
they
were
probably
anything
but
dependent.
Women had
long
been aware of the
intimate connection between
political patronage
and wealth in
Akan
society.82
The Baasi
Community presented
what was defin-
itely
a
radically
altered version of the institution of
public
women
for official
approval.
In the
1950s,
Ataa Baasi
joined
the com-
moners'
party,
the Convention
People's Party,
in the nationalist
struggle
for
independence."83 Maybe
renewed
political recognition
for institutions such as hers would come with an
independent
African
government.
V
CONTESTING SEXUALITY AND MARITAL OBLIGATIONS
IN COLONIAL GOLD COAST
Colonialism, by weakening
the
political authority
of chiefs and
male
elders, especially
their
ability
to
impose
coercive
sanctions,
acted
inadvertently
as an
important catalyst
in the
restructuring
of
gender
relations. In
addition,
the colonial cash
economy gener-
ated new economic
opportunities
for rural and urban women.
Female accumulation reinforced the desire of women to assert
their
autonomy
and to define their
expectations
in
marriage.
Yet
colonial
rule, especially
with the introduction of indirect
rule,
was
supposed
to facilitate the subordination of women in the
domestic realm." But the structure of colonial rule
presented
82
See T. C.
McCaskie, 'Accumulation,
Wealth and Belief in Asante
History: I,
To
the Close of the Nineteenth
Century', Africa,
liii (1983);
T. C.
McCaskie,
'Accumulation,
Wealth and Belief in Asante
History: II,
The Twentieth
Century',
Africa,
Ivi
( 1986).
83 See Ashanti
Pioneer,
27
Apr.
1955.
Unfortunately,
Ataa Baasi had
passed away
by
the time I
began
fieldwork in Ghana in 1992. The information on her in the
nationalist
press
is
very sketchy.
84
See
Jean Allman, 'Making
Mothers:
Missionaries,
Medical Officers and Women's
Work in Colonial
Asante, 1924-1945', History Workshop Ji,
no. 38
(Autumn 1994);
Grier, 'Pawns, Porters,
and
Petty
Traders'.
women with avenues for
negotiating autonomy.
The dual
legal
structure of British and
customary
law courts was
important
as
it enabled women to
strategically manipulate
the law in their
favour."5
How these economic and
legal opportunities
in the
colonial Gold Coast intersected with
changing
notions of sexual-
ity
-
especially through prostitution
and leisure activities
among
migrants
in towns
-
to
reshape
female
expectations
in
marriage
is a
promising
line of
inquiry.
The interwar
period was,
in
par-
ticular,
an era of active social
exchange
between urban and
rural areas.86
The
exploitation
of female labour was crucial in the economic
transformation that
underpinned
the rise of the Gold Coast as the
world's
leading producer
of cocoa
by
1918. In their various
capacities
as
pawns
-
as
wives, daughters
and nieces
-
women
provided unpaid agricultural
labour on cocoa farms and served
as
porters
in
carrying
cocoa
bags
from interior farms to coastal
merchants."7
From
being exploited, unpaid labour,
women -
even in the rural areas where indirect rule had
re-empowered
male elders
-
gradually
found
openings
in the colonial
economy
and asserted their
autonomy through establishing
their own cocoa
and food farms. Rural women
increasingly
withdrew their labour
from
exploitative
husbands and uncles.
Sexuality,
marital
obliga-
tions and the
concept
of
family
in matrilineal Akan
societies,
became
fiercely
contested.88
Whether rural-urban contacts and the sexual
autonomy
of
85 Roger Gocking, 'Competing Systems
of Inheritance before the British Courts of
the Gold
Coast',
Internat.
Ji African
Hist.
Studies,
xxiii
(1990);
also his 'British
Justice
and the Native Tribunals of the Southern Gold Coast
Colony', Ji African Hist.,
xxxiv
(1993).
86
See,
for
example,
Emmanuel
Akyeampong,
'What's in a Drink? Class
Struggle,
Popular
Culture and the Politics of
Akpeteshie (Local Gin)
in
Ghana, 1930-1967', Ji
African Hist.,
xxxvii
(1996);
Gareth
Austin, 'Capitalists
and Chiefs in the Cocoa Hold-
Ups
in South
Asante, 1927-1938',
Internat.
Ji African
Hist.
Studies,
xxi
(1988); Jarle
Simensen,
'Nationalism from Below: The
Akyem
Abuakwa
Example',
Communications
from
the Basel
Africa Bibliography,
xii
(1975).
87 Gareth
Austin,
'Human
Pawning
in
Asante,
1800-1950: Markets and
Coercion,
Gender and
Cocoa',
in
Toyin
Falola and Paul E.
Lovejoy (eds.), Pawnship
in
Africa:
Debt
Bondage
in Historical
Perspective (Boulder, 1994); Grier, 'Pawns, Porters,
and
Petty
Traders'.
'
See
esp. Jean Allman,
'Of
"Spinsters",
"Concubines" and "Wicked Women":
Reflections on Gender and Social
Change
in Colonial
Asante',
Gender and
History,
xxx
(1991);
see also her
'Fathering, Mothering
and
Making
Sense of Ntamoba:
Reflections on the
Economy
of
Child-Rearing
in Colonial Asante'
(paper presented
at the African Studies Association
Meeting, Orlando, 1995);
also her
'Rounding
Up Spinsters'.
migrant
women in
towns, including prostitutes,
contributed to
the radicalization of rural women
(for example, through
their
trips
to coastal towns as
porters)
in their relations with men has
not been
explored.
In the Obubra Division of the Cross River
Basin in
Nigeria, young
women from the
village
of Efut fled 'into
prostitution
when
they
were asked to
engage
in
palm produc-
tion'.89 For rural Atu women on the
Kenyan coast, prostitution
and
marriage
existed in a dialectical
relationship.
The relative
proximity
of the town of
Mombasa,
and a tradition of Atu
prosti-
tution in
Mombasa,
enabled some women to
reject unsatisfactory
marital situations. But this female
empowerment
had an adverse
effect on
marriage,
for it made the institution
fragile.90
Abner
Cohen
pointed
out in his
study
of Hausa
migrants
in Ibadan:
'through frequent divorce, many
women oscillate between
prosti-
tution and wifehood a number of times in their marriage career'.91
Prostitution
presented
an
escape
route from the
exploitation
of
female labour
through marriage.
The rhetoric of rural male
elders,
in
describing
the assertiveness of women in the colonial Gold
Coast,
confirmed that
they
had made the connection between
prostitution,
female accumulation and marital
instability.
In the
early 1930s,
in what was
perceived
to be a
period
of acute social
chaos and
decay,
several Asante chiefs ordered the arrest of all
unmarried women over the
age
of fifteen.
They
were to be
released if
they agreed
to
marry
a man in the
village
-
obviously
with the man's consent: 'This
chaos,
often articulated in the
language
of moral
crisis,
in terms that
spoke
of women's uncon-
trollability,
of
prostitution
and venereal
disease, was,
more than
anything,
about
shifting power relationships.
It was chaos
engen-
dered
by
cash and
cocoa, by
trade and
transformation'.92
'Prostitution' had become a label men
deployed against
female
assertiveness. Akan culture defined
marriage
and motherhood as
the ultimate
goal
for women. Male
hegemony
was threatened
when women
opted
out of
marriage. Jean
Allman's interviews
with some of the female victims in these seizures confirmed the
89
Naanen, 'Itinerant Gold
Mines',
64.
90
Bujra,
'Sexual Politics in
Atu',
31.
91
Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban
Africa,
51.
92
Allman, 'Rounding Up Spinsters',
198. On the
language
of
stereotype
and
public
morality
in
gender relations,
see Villia
Jefremovas,
'Loose
Women,
Virtuous
Wives,
and Timid
Virgins:
Gender and the Control of Resources in
Rwanda',
Canadian
Jl
African Studies, xxv (1991).
This discourse is in
reality
a contest over
labour,
resources
and
surplus.
economic basis of this
gender
conflict: men had become
miserly
and
lazy, yet
keen to
exploit
female labour.
Marriage
had become
unattractive,
divorces
frequent.
But this is not to trivialize the
widespread
concerns about
prostitution
and venereal disease in the colonial Gold
Coast,
especially
from the 1920s. Even the
interior, predominantly rural,
state of Sefwi Wiawso
-
in the wake of mechanized
mining,
road construction and cocoa
production
-
was transformed into
a
bustling
hive of economic and social
activity
in the 1920s and
1930s. Incidence of venereal disease increased
phenomenally,
and
prostitutes
were blamed for this
development. Penelope
Roberts
has summed
up
the situation:
The introduction of cocoa had
provoked
new
conflicts
between
spouses
leading
to
'wife-stealing'
and desertion
by
wives. The crisis in the rural
economy
coincided with an
upsurge
of
opportunities
for trade for some
women. The association between trade and
prostitution
and the
spread
of
venereal disease were seen as results of these
conflicts."9
Crucial in this
gender
crisis in Sefwi Wiawso
was, again,
the
struggle
to control female labour
through
the institution of mar-
riage,
which had little material return for wives. The colonial
economy generated
different
types
of economic
opportunities
for
men and
women,
which fed into the
existing
division of labour
by
sex and the
separate property
interests of
spouses.94
Female
accumulation
strengthened
female sexual
autonomy, enabling
women to
prune
the male-dominated institution of
marriage.
Not
coincidentally,
female
accumulation,
female sexual
autonomy,
prostitution,
venereal disease and witchcraft were seen to be
connected. Successful female traders were often accused of witch-
craft and the
epithet
'UAC' came to embrace not
only prostitutes
involved in
accumulation,
but also traders
suspected
of witch-
craft.95 The
early
twentieth
century
with its
rapid
socio-economic
change,
and the concomitant
gender 'crisis', supported
the
numerous anti-witchcraft cults that
proliferated
in the Gold
93
Roberts,
'State and the
Regulation
of
Marriage',
57.
9
Trading
in
Ghana, especially
in
foodstuffs,
has been a female affair and an avenue
for
independence
and economic
self-sufficiency:
Deborah
Pellow,
Women in Accra:
Options for Autonomy (Algonac, 1977);
Claire C.
Robertson, Sharing
the Same Bowl:
A Socioeconomic
History of
Women and Class in
Accra,
Ghana
(Bloomington, 1984);
Gracia
Clark,
Onions are
my
Husband: Survival and Accumulation
by
West
African
Market Women
(Chicago, 1994).
9
Brokensha,
Social
Change
at
Larteh,
146-9.
Coast.96 The crisis was
grave:
the cultural norms that
underpinned
gender
relations were under
siege.
Akan, Ga-Adangme
and Ewe cultures viewed wealth and
power
as male
prerogatives.97
Two
Twi
proverbs
underscore this belief:
obaa
yen guan a,
obarima na oton
(when
a woman rears a
sheep,
it is the man that sells
it);
and obaa twa bommaa
a,
etweri barima
dan mu
(even
if a woman
possesses
a
talking-drum [the privilege
of
chiefs],
she
keeps
it in a room
belonging
to a
man).
Women
themselves were viewed
by
men as a form of
wealth,
and their
sexuality
and economic
potential
were subordinated to men.
Women were
compelled
to
pursue
motherhood and accumulation
within
marriage.
But the Twi
saying,
baabi
ye
sum na wode sika
pe
ho
a,
eho tew
(if money
is scattered in a dark
place,
the
place
brightens up), appealed
to both men and women. It was
only
the
lack of economic
opportunities
that made women
quiescent
in
their subordination to men.
Children,
in and out of
wedlock,
were coveted in Akan and Ga culture. Men
usually
'outdoored'
their
children,
even if
they
did not
marry
the mothers or the
woman's relatives claimed and named the child.98 It was the ritual
of
naming
that made a child a social
person.
Women in the
colonial Gold Coast now claimed sexual
autonomy, acquired
wealth,
and had children outside
marriage.
For some Gold Coast
women, property
offered firmer
security
than
marriage. They
would have identified with the remark of a
Kenyan ex-prostitute:
'My
house is
my
husband'.99
Marriage
and
prostitution
were not
mutually
exclusive. In
Kumasi in
1943, Asatu,
married to a soldier on active
duty,
was
arrested on
prostitution charges
and fined ?5 or one month with
hard labour.100 In the face of the
possible argument
that these
were women with weak moral
fibre,
it is instructive to note that
even women who had had active contact with missionaries and
had attended strict mission
schools,
such as Mmofraturo in
colo-
96 Field,
Search
for Security;
T. C.
McCaskie,
'Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Asante:
An
Essay
in the Social
History
of an African
People',
Hist. in
Africa,
viii
(1981).
9
See,
for
examples,
M. E.
Kropp Dakubu, 'Creating Unity:
The Context of
Speaking
Prose and
Poetry
in
Ga', Anthropos,
xlxxxii
(1987), 519; McCaskie,
'State
and
Society, Marriage
and
Adultery'.
98
T. C.
McCaskie,
'Konnurokusem:
Kinship
and
Family
in the
History
of the
Oyoko
Kokoo
Dynasty
of
Kumase',
Jl
African Hist., xxxvi,
3
(1995), 377; Robertson,
'Post-
Proclamation
Slavery
in
Accra',
236.
9
Bujra,
'Women
"Entrepreneurs"
of
Early Nairobi',
224.
o00 Superintendent
of Police
(Ashanti)
to Chief Commissioner of
Ashanti, Kumasi,
27
Aug.
1943: NAG
(Kumasi), 'Prostitution',
item
2,339.
nial
Kumasi,
considered this the
age
of female
independence
and
sexual
autonomy.
One such
product
of Mmofraturo was Ama
Dapah
who was removed from the school
by
her mother who
believed that 'if
you kept going
to school
you
would be unable
to have children'. Her
story
was recorded
by Jean
Allman:
Ama
eventually
had her first
child,
but did not
marry
the father. Nor did
she
marry, according
to Asante custom or
by
colonial
ordinance,
the
fathers of her other twelve children ... Ama claims that she
preferred
this
arrangement
because of the
flexibility
it
gave
her: 'if
you
kicked
me,
I would
just
leave
you!
That's it ... If
they
weren't
good,
I
just
left'.
Ama
Dapah supported
her
children, including paying
their school
fees,
through
her work as a trader. She
always
lived in her
family
house and
her mother looked after the children when she was out. She never lived
with
any
of her 'husbands'.'10
The colonial Gold Coast witnessed an
important
social and cul-
tural revolution in
gender
relations. Central to this revolution
was the construction and contestation of female
sexuality.
'Prostitution',
as a
trope
that described female
assertiveness,
female
accumulation,
and the sale of sexual and domestic
services,
was crucial in this transformation.
VI
CONCLUSION
Public women
certainly
differed from
prostitutes
in their
pre-
colonial and colonial manifestations. But
they
fit into a
political
and moral
economy
that was
indigenous.
What was
unique
about
prostitution
in the colonial Gold Coast was that
prostitutes
asserted their
autonomy
and their control over their own sexual-
ity,
and
independently
accumulated wealth.
They
were an aberra-
tion from the
indigenous political
and moral
economy. They
broadened the horizons of women and men in the
conceptualiz-
ation of
promiscuity. By moving sexuality
out of
marriage they
became social revolutionaries. It is not coincidental that the Twi
words for
prostitute
and adulteress are
synonymous: obeaguaman;
owareseefo.
Slaves and
prostitutes
were outsiders in the communities in
which
they
lived. Their social
marginality,
as Robertson has
argued
in
respect
to
slavery, 'might bring
the freedom of
society's
indifference'.'02 Their sexual
promiscuity
could be
ignored. Just
10'
Allman, 'Making Mothers',
37.
102
Robertson, 'Post-Emancipation Slavery
in
Accra',
241.
as slaves in
pre-colonial
African communities worked
alongside
their owners and shared a similar
quality
of
life,
so did the social
interaction of
prostitutes
and other
women, especially
in colonial
towns like
Sekondi,
blur social
distinctions.1'03
Female accumula-
tion
brought
women
greater autonomy.
The
expanding opportun-
ities for women in the colonial cash
economy overlapped
with
changing perceptions
of
sexuality
and sexual
autonomy
to recon-
figure
female
expectations
in
marriage.
Prostitution was not dir-
ectly responsible
for this
change,
but it formed
part
of the broader
social context. Prostitutes not
only acquired
wealth
through
their
profession,
but it did not exclude childbirth and
parenting.
Even
marriage
was not
precluded;
it
represented only
one
option
for
the
prostitute.
In
many ways, prostitutes
served as a model of
independent
female accumulators who had children and chose
their mates.
As economic
opportunities
for women
expanded
with the end
of colonial
rule,
so did female
autonomy
in
gender
relations. R.
S.
Rattray
has enumerated six forms of
marriage
in
pre-colonial
Asante, including mpena awadie,
in which lovers lived
together
and could have children without
performing
the
necessary
cus-
tomary
rites.104
In
independent Ghana, Dorothy Vellenga
found
names for
twenty-four
forms of heterosexual relations
among
the
Akan.5os
In
contemporary Ghana,
some
young
women
prefer
to
enter sexual relations with older
men, 'sugar daddies',
with the
explicit goal
of
accumulating
wealth. These women are often
students and
professionals
such as
teachers,
secretaries and
receptionists. Many
found
marriage,
as
culturally defined,
unattractive.'06
In the
history
of
gender
relations in the Gold Coast and contem-
porary Ghana,
women have been
compelled
to
express
their
sexuality
and
pursue
wealth and
autonomy
within the confines of
marriage. Ruptures
have occurred
along
fault
lines,
when chan-
ging political,
economic and social conditions have
provided
women with
opportunities
to
step
outside
marriage
in their
103
See, in general, the essays
in Suzanne Miers and
Igor Kopytoff (eds.), Slavery
in
Africa:
Historical and
Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, 1977).
14
Rattray,
Ashanti Law and
Constitution,
23-30.
'0o5 Dorothy
Dee
Vellenga,
'Who is a Wife?
Legal Expressions
of Heterosexual
Conflicts in
Ghana',
in Christine
Oppong (ed.),
Female and Male in West
Africa
(London, 1983),
145.
106
See Carmel
Dinan, 'Sugar
Daddies and
Gold-Diggers:
The White-Collar
Single
Women in
Accra',
ibid.
definition of self. Public women and
prostitutes represent junc-
tures
along
the fault lines of
gender
relations. Public women were
disempowered by being deprived
of their sexual
autonomy; pros-
titutes
empowered
themselves
by asserting
their control over
their
sexuality.
That
they acquired
wealth in the
process
was also
not novel in traditional Akan
society.
It is a more fruitful line of
inquiry
to examine
prostitution
as a contested
sphere
in
gender
relations than to view it as
merely
an
example
of female social
deviance.
Harvard
University
Emmanuel
Akyeampong

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