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the ideological purpose of the protest leaders to suggest that all the people<br />
of the Gold Coast were opposed to the Lands Bill as one man because the<br />
Governor,~with-astroke-()f~his-pen, was depriving them 0 f-'everythingof<br />
theirs that is worth having and whiCh descended to them from their remote<br />
ancestors' (Ibidem: 336). But neither the 1894 nor the 1897 draft Bill ever<br />
threatened to take away or even to affect the rights of user which were held<br />
by all those who, as peasant farmers, were cultivating communal lands.<br />
What was threatened was the right of chiefs to make grants of land to<br />
'strangers' (especially Europeans) since under the proposed law all<br />
concessions of waste land, minerals and forests were to be made by, or at<br />
least with the necessary permission of, the Government. It is this threat<br />
which explains the frequent and emphatic use of the argument that in the<br />
Gold Coast, 'long before the advent of the European, every inch of land<br />
had been owned', no matter whether or not it was described as 'unoccupied'<br />
or 'waste', and also why Brew's assertion that the Gold Coast had 'not been<br />
acquired either by conquest, cession, or treaty' was to appear like a refrain<br />
in the protests for many years afterwards (Ibidem: 338).<br />
It seems certain that the resistance was led by the urban merchants,<br />
brokers and speculators who earned part of their incomes from acting as<br />
intermediaries in the granting of concessions to foreign capitalist<br />
companies, and were moreover strongly supported by English commercial<br />
and mining interests. There is thus nothing strange in finding the chiefs to<br />
be theDritte im Bunde and there is every reason to accept that the concerted<br />
action of these three interested groups, supported by the verbal power and<br />
eloquence of ideologists like Mensah-Sarbah, would be quite invincible.<br />
This did not make the resistance popular resistance, however, but rather<br />
stamped it as a struggle of capitalist interests against undue government<br />
interference.<br />
[In this chapter we have tried to show the historical basis of contemporary<br />
Akan land tenure, both pre-colonial and colonial. It is now time to turn to<br />
modern times and analyse land tenure conditions as they directly affect<br />
production. In doing this, we shall narrOw the focus to one area, Abura<br />
Dunkwa, and derive judgements from a different methodology, direct<br />
fieldwork rather than the use of documentary materials.]<br />
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