Page 78 - Afrika Must Unite

ACHIEVING OUR SOVEREIGNTY 63

Assemblies, Ashanti was omitted and special regulations were
introduced giving it powers superior to those of the other Regions.
Everywhere else the head of the Region was to be chosen by the
House of Chiefs. In Ashanti, the constitution specifically stated
that ‘the Asantehene shall be the Head of the Ashanti Region’.
W hat kind of democracy were the British laying down on the eve
of their departure, in designating the person who was to be the
effective governor of a particular Region? W here was the
respect for our sovereignty ? O ur independence was supposed to
give us sovereignty over our own affairs. But there we were, a
democratic Government, limited by constitutional provisions,
designed by the retiring power, to a designated individual to
conduct the highest executive post in the most delicate national
territory. It was so openly a device to concede to the opposition
party the opportunities they had been deprived of by their
defeat at the polls that it was difficult to believe the British
could have been so deceitful to their m uch-vaunted respect for
democracy.
The choice of the Asantehene for this special elevation was
deliberate. He was known to share the views of the National
Liberation M ovement, whose politics of violence had made our
final steps to independence so immensely difficult. Considerable
suspicion as to his original connections with the M ovement had
been current since its inception, because his chief linguist, the
m an closest to him in the affairs of the Ashanti state, was a
founder member and its Chairm an. The Asantehene had
worked well with the British, even though his uncle Prempeh I
had fought them in the Ashanti wars earlier in the century and
had been exiled to the Seychelles islands for his African
patriotism. For his services to the British in carrying out their
colonial rule, the Asantehene had been knighted. His position as
the spiritual and temporal head of Ashanti gave him the in­
fluence of a feudal lord over all the chiefs of the Region and over
the local people, and made him extremely powerful. By seeking
to safeguard his continued authority in the new G hana through
specific clauses in the constitution, the British were not only
repaying him for services rendered and making good in part the
promise of the N .L.M . to crown him King of Ghana, but were
entrenching the greatest focal point of disintegration within our