Death and Politics: West Africa in the 1940s
Missing person or ritual murder? Richard Rathbone probes a cause célèbre from an age of colonial and tribal transition.
On August 21st, 1943, the king of Akyem Abuakwa state in Ghana, Nana Sir Ofori Atta I, died. With a population of about 250,000, it was a rich state whose wealth was based upon cocoa cultivation and upon gold and diamond-mining concession rents and royalties. Akyem's funerary rites are long drawn out and this drew to a close in February 1944. On the final day, the chief of one of the towns that comprised a politically salient group in the state, the Amantoo mmiensa, disappeared whilst in the state capital, Kyebi. Akyea Mensah's loss was reported to the Akyem Abuakwa State Council which comprised the senior chiefs in the kingdom and the state's senior bureaucrats; the loss was also reported to the local office of the Gold Coast police. An extensive hue and cry yielded nothing. In the following days the Gold Coast police received a number of anonymous letters alleging that he had been ritually murdered; the police, while being suspicious, were disinclined to act on rumour alone. Gossip was spreading. A week passed and the letters piled up.
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