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The Court Records of Sefwi Wiawso, Western Region, Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Penelope A. Roberts
Penelope A. Roberts*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

The Divisions of Sefwi Wiawso, Sefwi Bekwai, and Sefwi Anwhiaso in the Western Frontier District of the Gold Caost were brought within the operations of the Native Jurisdiction Ordinance (1883) under the ‘Headchief of Sefwi Wiawso in 1909.’ They were administered from the Ankobra District until 1911 when an increase in the number of Assistant District Commissioners permitted the appointment of a Commissioner to the Western Frontier District. The headquarters of the Western Frontier District were at Amoya, a very small town near the Bia River and the Ivory Coast border. Three years later, however, in 1914, the Sefwi District was created and new headquarters established in the old capital of Sefwi Wiawso, the town of Wiawso perched on the top of a steep hill and not far from the important ferry crossing of the Tano River. The Sefwi Wiawso Native Tribunal was first established at this date. A few years later Native Tribunals were also established at Sefwi Bekwai and Sefwi Anwhiaso. The present court rooms in Wiawso were built in 1927/28 and the court records for Sefwi Wiawso to which I had access date from this time.

The court records had been deposited (in 1970) on the floor and shelves of a storeroom at the back of what is now the District Magistrate's Court in Wiawso. Some of the earlier volumes seemed to be missing and many were in bad repair. I did my best to rebind these before returning them to the store.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 12 , 1985 , pp. 379 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1985

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References

NOTES

1. P.R.O. London: CO/98/17. Departmental Reports, 1909.

2. P.R.O. London: CO/98/20. Departmental Reports, 1911.

3. P.R.O. London: CO/98/24. Departmental Reports, 1914.

4. P.R.O. London: CO/98/59. Departmental Reports, 1927-28.

5. I am grateful to Mr. Poku, the Magistrate of Sefwi Wiawso in 1970, who not only allowed me to remove volumes from the Court to repair them but to take them, three at a time, to the village where I was living and where I could work on them in the evenings. I do not know whether these Records have since then been recovered and deposited in any of the Ghanaian Archives.

6. The volumes were not numbered, so that some of the gaps may have covered periods when the court was not in session rather than missing volumes. Gaps at the latter end of the sequence are simply due to my running out of time.

7. One angle on the events surrounding the destoolment of ʾmanhene Kwame Tano II is discussed in my “The Sefwi Wiawso Riot of 1935: the Destoolment of an Omanhene in the Gold Coast,” Africa, 53 (1983).Google Scholar

8. For further information on seduction charges see my “The Village School Teacher in Ghana” in Goody, J., ed., The Changing Social Structure of Ghana (London, 1975).Google Scholar

9. Smoked snails were a major export from Sefwi Wiawso during the 1920s and 1930s, especially to the mining and railway towns of Obuasi and Dunkwa.