?Kyeame and the Golden Stool, Research Paper Example

In Speaking for the Chief: ?kyeame and the Politics of Akan Royal Oratory, author  Kwesi Yankah wrote: “Ultimately, it is often not the individual personality under whom the refuge or intervention is sought but his sacred stool, n’akonnwa, which inspires greater political and religious awe.” That statement is in a sense the basis of this short paper. I propose that the Golden Stool of the Akan, being the spiritual representation of any given sacred physical stool, is the concept on which ?kyeame is based. I then discuss a parallel example from the West.

Historical Background

I think that the practice of mediating speech with an ?kyeame began with war, or rather, rebellion. In the latter part of the 17^th century, along what the exploring Europeans called the Gold Coast (and what is now Ghana) were clans known as the Ashanti (or Asante), which were subgroups of the larger Akan. As Yankah points out, they inhabited the southern portion of the country (Yankah, 1995). They were oppressed by other groups of Akan (there were at least nine related Akan clans). The oppressed clans were unable to unite to overthrow their oppressors until they were visited by one Agyei Frimpon, who impressed them with his spiritual power. They entitled him Okomfo Anokye (okomfo meaning a priest, a guardian of ancestral shrines). This priest, according to the myth, called down from the heavens a Golden Stool distinctly unlike the stools already used by leading Akans during council meetings. This Golden Stool, called the Sika Dwa, was said to be from the heaven of the Akan’s leading god, named Onyame. Upon its arrival, the stool landed not on the ground but on the knees of the leading Ashanti king, one Osei Tutu, whose own power increased as a result. Yet, according to the priest, this Golden Stool was never to be sat upon by anyone, not even Osei Tutu, nor seized by hostile powers, lest the Ashanti people collectively sickened and die. The Sika Dwa contained the soul and spirit, called the sunsum, of the Ashanti people. But of course this origin of Sika Dwa was a myth, although Osei Tutu and Agyei Frimpon were not myths, but actual historical individuals. So the Sika Dwa became a symbol of the nation, the way the English Crown represents England (Davidson, 1992). The Crown is the linguistic expression of English (British) power beyond the physical display crown worn by Queen Elizabeth on ceremonial occasions, and Sika Dwa is the linguistic representation of the Ashanti nation, its people and their power, their fortunes, and their fate. Both the Crown and the Golden Stool are transcendental in their being.

What I propose is that the Golden Stool stands in for what in the West would be a constitution, as in the United States, or (as mentioned) the Crown in England. And just as in Parliamentary and Congressional discourse distancing rhetorical devices are used, so among the Ashanti, the distancing device of ?kyeame is used. The two practices spring from essentially the same source: a sacred, transcendental distance acknowledged through rhetorical traditions.

In the case of the Ashanti, the Golden Stool as a unifying instrument came equipped (somewhat like in the example of Moses) with a set of laws, a mandatory charter. It consisted of seventy-seven edicts to live by. The Akan clans dropped their individual legitimizing laws and adopted the Golden Stool to rally around. And this practice was successful. The Ashanti, newly and solidly unified in awe and obedience to King Tutu and his Golden Stool, began conquering their former overlords, and, eventually becoming the most powerful clan of the Akan, began to enslave them all. There is a key point: the slavery practiced was not U.S.-style chattel slavery.

Akan Slavery

The Akan practiced slavery (and like in the America South, it was necessitated by agriculture), but it was still among clans. Those bought or captured were taken into a family and accepted as members of that family. It was an “organic” absorption, and such slaves could found their own families and inherit within their new family. In so doing, they fell under the authority of the Golden Stool, and, most importantly, had a real stake in the system. This system was not one of total, systemic, and destructive exploitation that chattel-slavery was, where no one in servitude could count on any kind of culturally enforced tradition of protection and benefit.

By 1750, the Ashanti had become a powerful nation-state that controlled all of what would become Ghana. In taking over such a comparatively large territory, the national unity represented by the Golden Stool allowed separate subject clans to maintain their own identities, as long as they acknowledged their ultimate subject-status.

In such a mixture of peoples and local authorities, some kind of powerful political and cultural traditions would be needed to maintain a sense of removal and distance from a chieftain and his people. Here is where the practice of using ?kyeame would be useful, if not essential. Its ritual of prohibiting direct speech between ruler and local chief, or between a ruler and his people, would serve as a reminder of the reality of the invisible authority binding them all.

?kyeame in the West?

Of course, there is no direct comparison in the West (by which I mean primarily America and Europe) with the practice of using ?kyeame. There are near-examples though, such as the use of press secretaries who stand in place of leading politicians; and of course the use of defense attorneys who, whether for criminal or civil cases, speak for their clients both in court and outside it. Those are not examples of ritual distancing, but putting those aside, there is a lot of ritual distancing going on in political theaters. It is ingrained for example in England’s Parliament and the American Congress, and has a long history in European royalty as well as Christianity (Weatherford, 1981). God is addressed in the archaic thee, and popes, kings, and emperors use the royal we and are addressed indirectly as your holiness, your Excellency, and your highness. In America’s Congress, there are legally enforced taboos on the use of personal names and the pronouns I and you. Legislators do not address themselves directly by name. Instead, constructions like the following are common, and indeed mandatory: Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Kansas would like to ask the gentleman from Oregon. The speaker must address the presiding officer (called the chair) and not directly to another “gentleman”. The chair holder speaks for that chair and not for himself. The same rules hold in the Senate. It also holds even in the printed record, where a House member’s or Senator’s name is printed in capital letters and enclosed in parentheses. The term for this is nomina sacra — a sacred name that cannot be written conventionally. All this is interesting enough, but it turns out there is an earlier model for it as well: the Iroquois. Throughout the 19^th Century, the Council of the League of the Iroquois, composed of five Indian nations (rather like the clans of the Akan), were all divided into fifty sachemships — essentially senators or representatives. And just like an American Senator or Representative, who may be known as the Junior Senator from Ohio or the gentleman from Texas, when an Iroquois was elected or appointed a sachem, his name was “taken away” and the name of the sachemship conferred upon him. Similarly, the Golden Stool of the Akan was not owned by anyone. It represented a spiritual power that commanded all of its citizens. So we have a several examples linked together, the English legal “Crown” representing English power and social cohesion; Congress, each member representing a particular state and being named after it, and the Golden Stool, which is also entirely representational — it does not physically exist. All three are made real by verbal rituals of distancing and separation.

Ritual distancing directly involves the ?kyeame beyond the direct performance of his duties. For example, the death of a chief does not cause the ?kyeame to lose his position. The reason is that the ?kyeame serves the position of chief, not the chief himself. This holds true even in the face of ritual wedlock between an ?kyeame and his chief, and ritual widowhood when his chief dies, a practice that is strikingly similar to the bond between a Roman senator and his patron, which was modeled specifically on a husband-wife relationship. Another example is the legal bond between an American House or Senate member and his or her staff.

One can also see the primary difference: the existence of a living ?kyeame vs. the lack of that tradition in the West. Why? One possible explanation is that England’s Parliament and America’s Congress were specific physical sites where members traveled to and learned the traditions of. Parliament and Congress did not travel to the people. But the Chieftain of the Akan did regularly travel to the people. And so there had to be a traveling protocol that was understandable and adaptable to whatever situation the Chieftain might find himself in. He could find himself among a meeting of smaller chieftains, or among an assembly of the people themselves, each with their own tribal traditions. Use of a ?kyeame made the process of ritual distancing and separation relatively easy and uniform for everyone concerned to understand and use. The ?kyeame listened to the chieftains or the people and then translated it, using metaphor, proverbs, politeness devices, and indirection. The ?kyeame carried the protocol with him.

In conclusion, we may hypothesize that the practice of ritual distancing and separation is a product of a nation or people’s foundation myth or event. Whether it is Romulus and Remus, the Golden Stool, the Magna Carta, or the Constitution, the entity includes citizens of various rank, non-citizens, immigrants, servants, and (historically) slaves. And the founding signifier, from Stool to Crown to Constitution, is transcendental. (Even the U.S. parchment Constitution is a mere literal stand-in for the actual one as enshrined in laws and precedent.) The specific practice of ?kyeame, while interesting and unique as a cultural practice, is (to Western eyes) an extreme example of a practice well-known in history, yet one that has stood the test of time.

References

Davidson, B. (1992). The Black Man’s Burden. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.

Weatherford J. (1981). Tribes on the Hill. Boston, New York, NY: Rawson, Wade.

Yankah, K. (1995). Speaking for the Chief: ?kyeame and the Politics of Akan Royal Oratory. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.