THERE are many people in this country, including the well-educated, who do not know that long before the apartheid system in South Africa was used to oppress and exploit Black people, there was here, in the then Gold Coast, specifically in the northern part referred to as the Northern Territories, a system akin to the apartheid system.
The colonial rulers, as a matter of deliberate policy, carved out the Northern Territories and kept the area as a reservoir of cheap labour to service the cocoa and mineral economy of the southern part of the country.
Not only were the people of that area deliberately kept uneducated to serve this patently discriminatory policy but they were also quarantined and prevented from moving to the other half of the country. Any citizen of the area who wanted to go to the south had to secure a special permit from the District Commissioner allowing him or her a limited period of stay for a specific purpose.
It is, therefore, no wonder that there is a half century or more gap in education between the northern and southern parts of the country. This is a fact.
This brief exposition helps to explain not only the disparities in education, socio-economic and cultural development between the north and the south but also why the area has certain peculiar problems to which reactions by the people are often not understood and appreciated by others outside the region.
While the Bawku chieftaincy crisis does draw from this development of the general lack of development of the north, other factors such as the intrusion of politics into traditional and cultural matters have contributed to aggravating the matter.
The result has been that Kusasis, Mamprusis, Mossis and others who are all collectively victims of an unjust system that has left them poverty stricken, under-developed and lagging behind in education and the acquisition of skills and technology are, instead of joining hands to confront these problems, dissipating their precious energies and resources in killing, maiming and destroying one another, as well as the little property they have.
We are not oblivious of the depth of people’s sentimental attachment to chieftaincy and its accompanying values, but if we must kill, maim and destroy ourselves in the name of chieftaincy, will that make our own cause and that of our society any better?
Should it not be that chieftaincy should exist to serve and advance the interests and aspirations of the people and society, rather than the institution serving as an instrument of division, destruction and death?
It is in this respect that we doff our hats for President John Evans Atta Mills for meeting the leaders of both factions in the Bawku conflict in their own backyard and dialoguing with them on the way forward to an amicable resolution of the problem for durable peace in the area (see story on page 17).
We are particularly heartened by the counsel of the President that stresses not only the need to always resort to dialogue and the law to resolve problems but also the recognition that they are all brothers and sisters who can peacefully co-exist and work together to advance their communities for their mutual good.
We hope that this sincere and forthright interaction with the President will help create a platform where, through dialogue, the people of Bawku will talk to one another, reach some understanding and open a new chapter that emphasises their fraternity and commonality of destiny.
Bawku has shed enough blood of its sons and daughters and, like other parts of the disadvantaged north, needs to galvanise every energy and talent for development to bridge the developmental gap and make life better for all.
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