|
|
Asantehene: power and
self-restraint
By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong
“Of all the manifestations of power, restraint
impresses men most,” - Thucydides
Both as America’s first African-American Secretary of
State, National Security advisor, and chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, kept an
epigram of Thucydides, the Greek thinker, in his
offices. In his years in office, Powell has to deal with
complex networks in every foreign-policy squabble.
Powell has to deal with North Korea and was alone in
Europe's defence scheme; he was dove among hawks on
Iraq, and an internationalist among isolationists on
Kosovo and the Balkans.
But Powell soldiered on, advising against some
un-American tendencies and demonstrating the fact that
“might is right” isn’t always right and that
self-restraint is the real might is right.
The powerful Powell’s self-restraint practices came to
mind when I read about Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II,
angrily threatening to arrest the Techimanhene,
Oseadeayo Ameyaw Akumfi IV,” “if he dares travel through
Kumasi… I am closely watching with keen interest and I
will arrest the so called Techimanhene and bring him to
the Manhyia Palace whenever he storms Kumasi if the
government fails to take action against him for
kidnapping Tuobodomhene.”
The Tuobodom conflict had claimed three lives, for sheer
stupidity, and pitched the big Techiman against the
small Tuobodom, and traditionally over how the Tuobodom
chief owes traditional allegiance to the almighty
Asantehene and not to the tiny Techimanhene, and opened
up the deadly old African ancient tribal wounds and rage
carried over into modern Africa. Traditionally, by
kidnapping and disgracing the Tuobodom chief in public
because he is an Asantehene’s subject, the Techimanhene
had also disgraced the Asantehene and his people.
In ancient times, the whole Brong Ahafo had been under
the powerful Asante Kingdom through conquest, now it is
part of the modern Ghana amalgam but the ancient traces
still run through, occasionally popping up and
disturbing modern Ghana, as the
Asantehene-Techimanhene-Tuobodomhene quarrel
demonstrates. And if not contained wisely, it can be
deadly and crumple Ghana, as other African states’
disasters show.
This has made the Asantehene, unarguably Ghana’s most
powerful King, and other traditional rulers entangled in
the complexes of tradition and modernity. Unable to
disentangle himself from traditional ancient traces, the
Asantehene threatened to deal with the cocky
Techimanhene, which is unGhanaian, and runs counter to
modern Ghanaian laws and global civility, and dents the
Asantehene’s worldwide image where the rule of law, and
not threats, of which African Big Men are notoriously
known for, drives the development architecture, of which
the Asantehene has been appropriating shrewdly through
the World Bank and other international organizations,
for his national development ventures.
The Asantehene’s outbursts tell how that the Ghanaian
nation-state is yet to deeply modernized some of the
ancient traces of its traditional foundations,
especially where traditional rulers have had absolute
power and are driven by their primordial caprices.
Despite being seem in higher esteem, the regulations of
the modern Ghanaian nation-state make the Asantehene,
and any traditional ruler for that matter, equal before
the law, and democracy, as anti-dote to traditional
tyranny that has sent some African societies to flames,
effectively cuts the proverbial Big Man to size, making
him behave like any other citizen, no matter the
person’s station in life.
The Asantehene is by nature a liberal person and has
been working to deepen Ghana’s budding democracy, but
his Tuobodom utterances expose the fact that the
unhelpful African Big Man syndrome is a developmental
disease that has to be cured through rigorous rule of
law, freedoms, democracy, and human rights. And aside
from enforcing modern development principles, part of
the solutions in dealing with the conundrum between
tradition and modernity may be the Collin Powell
practices of Thucydides’ self-restraint axiom. That may
be the therapy for Asantehene’s frenzy and Ghana’s
progress.
Kofi
Akosah-Sarpong, Canada, March 21, 2010
|
