Page 99 - Afrika Must Unite

84 AFRICA MUST UNITE

anachronism, but when it is possible for the Asantehene to advise
the chiefs within the Kumasi State Council ‘to change according
to the times’, I think we are fully justified in our decision to
m aintain the tradition. Addressing the Council on 24 M ay i960,
the Asantehene was reported to have said that

it was impossible at this stage of the country’s development to
forecast that the former privileges, coupled with a large number
of attendants, would ever be enjoyed by any modem Ghanaian
chief. The Asantehene observed that with the increased number
of new schools in every hamlet of Ghana, chiefs would not find it
easy to have attendants such as umbrella bearers.1

In Ghana, a chief without his umbrella bearer is an unthink­
able phenomenon. For the most powerful param ount chief in
this country to warn that chiefs will, by reason of wider educa­
tional facilities, in due course be denied one of the main symbols
of their office, is tantam ount to warning of the natural attenua­
tion of chieftaincy under the impact of social progress. If, in the
interregnum, chieftaincy can be used to encourage popular
effort, there would seem to be little sense in arousing the anta­
gonism which its legal dissolution would stimulate. The adapta­
tion of our chiefs to what must, for them, be distressing exigencies
created by the changing relations in the national polity, has been
remarkable. We could wish that other forces with vested interests
might have proved as adaptable.
M ore obstructive than chieftaincy were the entrenched clauses
in our independence constitution concerning the appointment,
promotion, transfer and term ination of appointment of civil
servants. Disagreeable to us in the extreme, they had the effect of
surrounding each civil servant with a barricade which the
government was allowed to scale only with the greatest difficulty.
The new constitution retains the status and financial pro­
visions of the earlier one. Powers of appointment and dismissal,
however, have been transferred to the President, who exercises
them through a Civil Service Commission. Only those who are
disloyal or incompetent need fear this change, all the rest will be
strengthened by it. For promotion, which formerly came from
1 Daily Graphic, Accra, 25 M ay i960.