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| Title: | Of documents and litigants: disputes on inheritance in Abetifi - a town of colonial Ghana |
| Author: | Miescher, Stephan F. |
| Year: | 1997 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law |
| Issue: | 39 |
| Pages: | 81-119 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Ghana United Kingdom |
| Subjects: | colonialism customary law family law law of inheritance |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.1997.10756493 |
| Abstract: | The case Okyeame Kwame Ansong v Kwaku Ansong, involving a dispute about rights of succession which was brought to the Abetifi Native Tribunal in June 1943, calls attention to an ambiguous space, part of the larger colonial legal system in Ghana, in which people have manoeuvred between two orders of inheritance throughout the twentieth century - one embedded in the matrilineal descent practised among Akan people of Kwawu, an area of small rural towns in the Ghanaian hinterland, the other established by the Presbyterian Church, the former Basel Mission. All actors in the case were navigating between at least two different systems of inheritance. At the same time they were embedded in and deeply committed to a web of relationships that encompassed notions of status, power, gender, kinship and religious affiliation. In arguing their claims, the litigants sought to create their own spaces in order to operate to their advantage. A close reading of the case reveals the importance of arbitration outside the courtroom, as well as the influence on the legal strategies selected by the litigants of the introduction of written documents to legal disputes conducted at the Abetifi Native Tribunal during the early 1940s. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |
