Fante-The Middleman's Language That Creates The False Impression That Sekondi-Takoradi Is A Fante Land

I have been busy with other schedules so I write less about Ahanta in recent times but I come on social media and see a lot of facebook tags about write-ups making claims that Sekondi-Takoradi is a Fante land and they leave me bewildered. I would read some of them, laugh and scroll them over.

Some of the claims our Fante relations make on social media makes wonder if lands are still being acquired through conquests or discovery in present day Ghana? It appears our Fante kinsmen are still discovering lands on their way from Bono to the coast. They have now reached Sekondi-Takoradi and found the land uninhabited so they are claiming the land to be theirs.

In as much as these claims are false and preposterous, you dare not make a contrary opinion under such write-ups without enduring insults and virtuperations from our Fante siblings. Some of them are not kinds with words but that is typical of megalomaniacs who live in falsehood and feed their whims and caprices with wild claims to inflate their tribal superiority and egos. Just inflated baloons, nothing but air I must say.

In fact, I am not surprised that our Fante relations make claims that they own Sekondi-Takoradi. I have heard them making claims that they own towns in Cote D'Voire, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroun, Senegal, Angola, Guinea and other African countries because their people are there doing fishing and other sea businesses. In fact, wherever that the sea is, Fantes own the lands there. They are still discovering lands from Bono up to Antartica so the claims that Sekondi-Takoradi is their land is the least of their claims I have heard.

I think our Fante relations should also claim all the lands in the Central Region including that of Efutus, the Berekus, the Awutus and the Assins before crossing the Pra river to come and make wild claims that Sekondi-Takoradi is a Fante land for the reason that Fante language is widely spoken in Sekondi-Takoradi than the native Ahanta language.

It is admitted that Fante language is well developed in terms of scripts and commercially viable than the native Ahanta language due to colonial advantage but to say that Sekondi-Takoradi is Fante land is illogical, dishonest and unintelligible. Every language studies conducted in Sekondi-Takoradi show that there is a language shift from Ahanta to Fante where Ahantas in Sekondi-Takoradi are abondoning their native Ahanta language for Fante for convenience of communication.

Language shift happens all the time when cultures clash but the identity of the people always remain. Even the almighty Latin language has shifted and gone extinct and so does English language posses a threat to many native languages here in Ghana. As we move along and people continue to be educated in the English language, they will adopt the English language and leave their native languages for English but that will never make them English no matter how fluent they may speak the English language.

For all my life that I lived and schooled in Sekondi-Takoradi, we knew the metropolis to be called Shama-Ahanta East Metropolis until somewhere 2007 that the metropolis was renamed Sekondi-Takoradi after Shama District was carved out of it. Until that change of name, Sekondi-Takoradi and all it environs were known to be Ahanta East per local government records so what time did our Fante relations come to Sekondi-Takoradi from Bono to find the land uninhabited for them to make claims that the land is for them?

Takoradi and Sekondi fall under separate traditional councils but Takoradi as it is now, falls under Ahanta Traditional Council under the Badu Bonso stool at Busua. There has been several litigation for some people in Takoradi to break away from Ahanta Traditional Council but the cases are pending before House of Chiefs and the courts for donkey years without determination. Until the cases pending before the courts and House of Chiefs are determined, Takoradi will continue to be a division under Ahanta Traditional Council under the authority of Badu Bonso stool at Busua.

Even though Sekondi is a separate traditional council from Ahanta Traditional Council, the people of Sekondi still celebrate the Kundum festival, the annual festival of the Ahanta people. The Kundum festival has not been celebrated in Sekondi in recent years because there is no paramount chief at Sekondi at the moment. The very day that Sekondi will install a chief, Kundum celebrations will come to live like never before. The last time I was in the palace of Sekondi, I witnessed them pour libation and calling on all Ahanta gods and deities with reverence to their Ahanta ancestors.

The paramount chief of Essikadu, Nana Kobina Nketsiah has never shied away from the fact that he is an Ahanta but has admitted that he cannot speak the Ahanta language just like many Ahantas living in Sekondi-Takoradi. A simple search on google about Nana Kobina Nketsiah would prove that he is listed as one of the famous and influential Ahantas living at the moment. Every year, Nana Kobina Nketsiah celebrates the Kundum Festival just like all Ahanta chiefs do so what makes Sekondi-Takoradi a Fante land?

I will have a cause to believe that Takoradi belongs to Fantes the day that it will be removed from Ahanta Traditional Council, and be placed under any of the Fante paramountcies in Central Region. I will have a cause to believe that Sekondi is a Fante land the day that the people of Sekondi will announce that they no longer celebrates the Kundum Festival and stop pouring libation by calling on Ahanta gods and deities. Until then, it is just an illusion for a well thinking human being who knows the history of the Western Region to say that Sekondi Takoradi is a Fante land.

Ahanta just like other coastal tribes is well documented by the Europeans. When the European arrived in Gold Coast, they geographically and cartographically described Ahanta as the land between Pra and Ankobra rivers. The Portuguese were the first to document Ahanta upon their arrival. After the Elmina Castle, the second oldest colonial ediffice in Ghana is Fort St. Anthony built in Axim in 1515 and at the time Axim was considered to be Ahanta until it was carved away in 1912 by the British.

The renowned French Explorer Jean Barbort who toured the Guinea Coast of Africa from 1678 to 1712 described Ahanta as POPOLOUS, MARTIAL and POTENT. When Jean Barbot reached Ahanta on his explorations, he found Ahanta be more popolous than any tribe living on the Guinea Coast of Africa. He would describe them as martial because of their constant acts of warfares and constant confrontations with surrounding tribes. He also described Ahanta potent because of their system of governance which he described as federal and well structured with all the political authorities well defined. Jean Barbort would also go on to mention all the notable Ahanta towns including Shama, Sekondi, Takoradi, Busua among others.

Wilem Bossman, the famous Dutch Explorer also documented Ahanta heavily. Bossman for instance wrote heavily on the Ahanta-Adom wars of 1700s, and how the Adom warriors fought their way to.Sekondi which he described as a beautiful Ahanta town below the hill. Bossman would later write about the festivals, the food, customs and traditions of the Ahanta people. The Dutch even wrote about the vegetation and animals hence the reasons why " "Akokowhedie" is called Ahanta Francolin or Ahanta Spurfowl.

Verifiable records indicate that Sekondi and Essikadu together with Shama were all carved out of Ahanta by the English in 1912 after F.G Growther report. Welman (1930) gives a vivid explanation as to why the British reduced Ahanta into several paramount stools just to weaken the authority of Badu Bonso and reduce the threshold of Ahanta so that they could colonise them after intense resistance from Ahantas to be ruled by the English after the Dutch left in 1872.

According to Wellman (1930), after the wars of 1837/38 when Badu Bonso II was killed, for 10 years, the Dutch would maintain a heavy military presence in Ahanta, chasing and killing Ahanta royals whom they described as rebels. After all the atrocities committed by the Dutch against Ahanta, they would sell all their possessions to the British and hand over colonial administration to the British in 1872 after 215 years.

The arrival of the British would meet resistance from Ahantas particularly from the coast so the British would also bring their Royal Navy to bomb Ahanta towns along the coast. At the time, Busua has been fervently been fighting for the restoration of Badu Bonso as the overlord of Ahanta but the British kept insisting that the office of Badu Bonso has been disbanded in 1838 as a result of treason. The resistance got too intense for the British so they would eventually divide Ahanta into separate stools from Shama to Axim in 1912.

Mind you that Sekondi, Shama, Axim were all part of forces marshalled Gen. Jan Verveer to invade Ahanta in 1838 to kill Badu Bonso II so the British only deepened the cracks in Ahanta by creating paramount stools for them in order to keep Ahanta under their control. While Sekondi, Shama and Axim joined forces with the Dutch in the 1838 war, Takoradi remain a foothold of Ahanta, and mounted a spirited defense against the Dutch invasion. It is the reason why Takoradi was razed down into rubbles in 1838 when the Dutch invaded Ahanta.

Apart from Fantes who migrated into Ahanta for refuge during the Ashanti invasion of Fante lands in 1800s, Fante migration to Sekondi-Takoradi started much after the 1872 when the Dutch handed Ahanta over to the English. The English brought them as colonial middlemen because they had worked with them in Cape Coast which was the seat of English administration in the Gold Coast. Fante language would later find itself in schools because the British had made the Fante language scribable before coming to Sekondi-Takoradi.

Then came the constructions of the Harbour and railways which would make Fantes to move in tones to Sekondi-Takoradi in search of construction jobs, and whereas English became the official colonial language, Fante became the middle man's language and for people living in Sekondi-Takoradi. For one in those to speak to the English, one needed a Fante man to interpret what one wants to say to the English man. They became the foremen at workplaces, and become next important man after the English man due to colonial importation.

What am I saying? All that I am saying is that if the Dutch had stayed till 1957 when Ghana got independence, there was no way Fante would have become dominant language as it is in Sekondi-Takoradi and probably we the Ahantas may be speaking Dutch today instead of English so anytime you hear Fantes making claims that Sekondi-Takoradi is a Fante land, know that they have just arrived from Bono on their way to Antartica to discover more lands.

Fante language in Sekondi-Takoradi is nothing but a colonial residue. Whereas colonialism left Ahanta in rubbles, Fante thrived in Sekondi-Takoradi as a left over of colonialism.

Ahanta Apemenyimheneba Kwofie III