in the community’s relationships with both the physical and spiritual worlds.68
Thus, Tema itself was traditionally defined through its connection to the spiritual beings inhabiting the land in and around the town. Moreover, as with the region’s other Ga communities, the lagoons surrounding the area further provided the town its cultural and spiritual meaning.69 Two lagoons—Sakumo to the west and Chemu to the east—bookended the town. As outlined by Field, it was in Sakumo Lagoon that the town’s most influential god (Sakum⊃) resided. As Tema’s “senior god,” Sakum⊃ presided over the village’s annual feast (Kpledzo) in which the community celebrated that it had “lived through another year.”70 Through Kpledzo, the intimacy of the bond between the spiritual world and the land further comes to the fore. At its most foundational level, Sakum⊃’s ushering in of Kpledzo marked the arrival of the April and May rains and the beginning of the agricultural season. Just as importantly, though, it also initiated the first of a series of festivities, continuing through August, that would pay tribute to the coming “transfig[uration],” as Field has it, of the earth brought by the rains. This included the new fertility bestowed upon the land by the rains as well as the new resources provided by rising water levels in the lagoons.71 As a result, for the community’s Ga residents, to be Tema-born meant to be from this specific place between these two lagoons and to be in observance of this cyclical process connecting the land to the town’s spiritual roots and fortunes going forward. As such, the community’s relationship to this particular place was said to be so powerful, one of the government’s social surveyors noted, that Tema-born Ga faced an interdiction against residing outside of the town’s traditional and spiritual lands between the lagoons.72
At its foundation, therefore, the CPP’s planned development of the area surrounding Tema threatened the Tema Ga’s connection to their historical and spiritual roots. In order to make room for the planned harbor and particularly the new industrial city, the government announced a resettlement scheme that would move the town approximately two miles to the east, just beyond the confines of Chemu Lagoon. In Tema, debates immediately began over whether it was even possible for the community to move, as certain residents argued that many deities—especially those tied to specific sites, like Sakum⊃ to his lagoon—could not be dislocated from their homes.73 Others, as detailed by government welfare officer G. W. Amarteifio and anthropologist David Butcher, argued that, even if it were possible to move the gods (those Field calls “place-god[s]”), no one had the ritual knowledge necessary for doing so.74 The sheer number of gods in the area further complicated the discussions, with Amarteifio and Butcher estimating that as many as 220 gods were recognized in Tema at the time. Furthermore, the social surveyors reported that, in the eyes of many in the community, all of these deities would have to be relocated from the land as part of the town’s proposed resettlement.75
Regardless, the CPP quickly moved to acquire the land. For the government, the project required its full ownership of the Tema land as well as significant parts of the surrounding area. As one February 1952 cabinet memorandum explained, the government sought to obtain “not only the area of the port and the site of the actual township [i.e., the industrial city], but also a surrounding agricultural belt or open space which would be used for market gardening, firewood plantations and the like.” From the perspective of the government, such a move—indicative of the search for order and clearly demarcated spaces pursued in other midcentury planned cities—was central to its vision of an emerging postcolonial society, as the CPP aimed to thwart later, likely inevitable attempts at “uncoordinated development [i.e., slums] immediately adjoining the town.”76 As a result, by the middle of the year the CPP would bring before the Legislative Assembly a bill allowing the government to take possession of approximately sixty-three square miles of land in and around Tema, while proposing compensation of £10,000 or 3 percent of the land’s value for the people of Tema.77 On 1 July, the bill passed the Legislative Assembly.78 Shortly thereafter, the government undertook the first of what would be several social surveys of Tema and the surrounding area, the result of which was a proposed resettlement scheme in which the government would provide twenty new housing units of ninety-five rooms each at the relocation site.79 After this scheme proved unworkable, the government altered its plan, proposing instead a new resettlement community (Tema Manhean, or Tema New Town) comprised of large circular and semicircular compounds, with individual housing units. As detailed by architect David Whitham, each compound was to “contain a total of forty to fifty rooms.”80
Despite the series of concessions that the Gold Coast government attempted to make in the relocation scheme, persistent protests would plague the government’s actions in Tema. Even as early as the government’s initial land acquisition efforts in 1952, key figures in the Legislative Assembly disputed the fairness of requiring the people of Tema to give up their lands to the Gold Coast government in perpetuity. As William Ofori Atta of the Ghana Congress Party (GCP) maintained, the requirement that any stool cede its lands “absolutely and permanently” did not appear to be “in accordance with Gold Coast customary law.”81 Ofori Atta, J. B. Danquah’s nephew and the son of the former king of Akyem Abuakwa, did not stop there. Rather, he further suggested that, when considering all of the constituencies with claims on Tema’s lands, Tema’s chiefs and even the people of Tema did not have the authority to sell the land to the government. Instead, he argued that they were simply holding it “in trust” for not only the village’s present residents and future generations but also “their ancestors who are dead.”82 Nii Kwabena Bonne II, the Accra chief and businessman who had orchestrated the famed 1948 Accra boycott, echoed Ofori Atta in his own remarks in the Legislative Assembly. For Nii Bonne, though, the key concern was what he interpreted as the shortsightedness of contemporary agreements ceding stool lands to a government that “has been in power only 18 months.” As he pointed out, “generations unborn will depend upon the land,” and such a hasty decision to force a sale of the land had the potential of mistaking and/or neglecting their future needs.83 Still others portrayed the entire Tema project as an elaborate waste of money.84
In Tema itself, initial opposition to the CPP government’s plans centered on accusations that the government had defrauded the community. Approximately a week after the Legislative Assembly passed the land acquisition bill, the chiefs of Tema and neighboring Nungua and Kpone complained that the government had not consulted them prior to bringing the bill before the assembly. The Tema mantse (paramount chief) went so far as to accuse the CPP’s minister of housing, A. Ansah Koi, of attempting to “prejudice the Tema Stool and people in their fight to maintain their right to live on their God-given land.” He also rejected claims by certain government ministers that the area’s chiefs had paid off opposition figures like Ofori Atta “in order to champion their cause in the Assembly.”85 By early August, though, the Tema mantse would soften his position as he offered his consent to the sale of the harbor land and the leasing of the land necessary for the industrial city.86 However, in doing so, he unleashed a wave of popular protests in the town against both the government and the chief, as priests, youth, and market women challenged the authority of the chief to transfer ownership of the land—with all that it entailed culturally, economically, and spiritually—to “strangers.” The protests culminated in an attempted populist destoolment of the chief and assertions from many members of the community that under no circumstances would they leave their homes and traditional lands.87 As one longtime Tema resident, Samuel Kofi Kotey, recalled, the Tema mantse had lost his legitimacy among many in the community, as the protesters accused him of “collect[ing] some money from the government” and forsaking his responsibilities to Tema.88
The protests in Tema would go on for much of the next seven years. In order to try and assuage the community, the government regularly sought to amend its compensation packages with promises of a new fishing beach, rent-free farm lands with seventy-five-year leases, and, for some, cash payments.89 As Peter Du Sautoy—who for much of the period headed the Gold Coast’s Department of Social Welfare—argued, the government believed it was doing everything it could to ensure an orderly, respectful, and mutually beneficial resettlement.90
