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4. Auxiliary Rules for Allocating Family Land
What_ahouuherelationship_betweeathosewhoJ'armoaotheLfamilies~
land and the lineages that own it? There have always been two positions in
which a person might find him or herself in the lineage-structured society
of the Akan which necessitates auxiliary rules of land allocation. Firstly,
there is the position of the husband or wife, marrying away from their
family's land; secondly, there is the position ofthe children growing up away
from their mother's, and thus from their own family land.
The first of these auxiliary rules is to the effect that a man of immigrant
stock who marries into a landholding Dunkwa lineage may be
granted farming rights on his wife's family land; alternatively, a woman may
be granted farming rights on her husband's family land. This rule can only
have effect during a person's lifetime and can never extend to his or her
successors. What they acquire is merely a farming right; the right to inherit
a farm or farmland remains reserved to the family to which, by definition,
they do not belong.
The other auxiliary rule is to the effect that children may be given
a plot to cultivate on the land of their father's lineage if, by residing with
the father, they are too far away from their own family land to claim a
portion of it. On the father's death the family will not normally demand
the land back; the farming rights of a son or daughter on paternal land will
usually last during their lifetime and will not end until their death. Here,
as in the first case, no right to succession can arise as this would entail
alienating the land to another lineage.
When, as we have seen in Chapter Five, Asukwa land was still sufficiently
large, or alternatively when large reserves of virgin forest were still
available around the Asukwa land, lineages inter-marrying with the
Asukwa Twidan could easily settle in the vicinity and acquire their own
family lands. Even at later times the Nnamfodo lineages could afford to
donate considerable areas of land to faithful wives and serviceable sons and
their families (we refer to the coming into existence of such lands as
Osopaah, Obapa, Owarabam, parts of Dawurampon and Ahwiawom). Be
that as it may, the creation of new ebusua asase for members of in-marrying
immigrant families could only take place in special cases. With land
resources under pressure by a growing population and an increasing
number of lineages, the only adequate response is to apply the auxiliary
rules outlined above, which have long been applied in such cases.
From our findings it seems that the accommodation of spouses on
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