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were divisional chiefs, have owed special allegiance to the Paramount Stool,
what they sold was their own family land, and as far as they were concerned
the selling ofit was none oJthe Omanhene's business. 21
Although the main forces that led to the breaking-up of the original
lands (the efforts of migrant families to find farming land at Dunkwa; the
need to finance extraordinary expenses such as the costs oflltigation) are
still at work and may well have increased in strength, they no longer operate
in the same direction. Insiders agree that since about 1950 the sale of
farming land, a frequent occurrence since the first successes of cocoa earlier
in the century, has subsided (cf. Okali & Kotey 1971: 11-12). According to
Gordon Woodman: 'There is evidence thattoday communities (families?)
are often more reluctant to make outright grants than they used to be, and
these lesser grants are much commoner' (1976: 167). The absence ofland
sales in past decades, as well as the growing incidence of tenancies which
we recorded for Abura-Dunkwa, fully support these views.
One might, of course, be tempted to assume that those who had
sold some of their lands had now come to see that they had somehow
squandered their inheritance and that, in due course, the remaining land
would be insufficient for their kin. We agree with Woodman that this does
not seem to be an adequate explanation. For one thing, the greatest demand
for agricultural land is in areas (in the Western Region for cocoa; in the
savannah belt of Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo for maize; in the Upper Region
for rice) where in the past land sales did not occur; therefore, the people
concerned have little or no experience in selling their land. For another, if
it was really the scarcity of land for family members that mattered, one
would expect family lands to be cultivated mostly by members 0 f the family.
On the whole, however, this is not at present the case in view of the fact that
the letting ofland to tenants has become fairly common (cf. Ibidem: 167
n.32).22
There are other pressures inducing the division and splitting-up of
family lands which, although certainly not of recent origin, must have
become heavier with the increase of family membership and the shrinking
of family land. What we have in mind is not only that, with a growing
population, the number of those wanting land for subsistence cultivation
has increased (notwithstanding the diminishing proportion of those in the
labour force who are farming, their absolute number is still rising), but also
that as a result each original ebusua is dividing into a growing number of
separate ebusua, some of which are separate dwelling units while others
consist oftwo or more dwelling units.
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