Grassroots Governance? Chiefs in Africa and the Afro-Caribbean

Front matter

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EDITED DONATDIFRA ANDTS REDDY

Contents

Summary vi

Preface by P.S. Reddy

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Preface

The Working Group on Local Government Management and Development of the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA) was officially established in 1997 following the interest generated in the subject area in the breakaway sessions during three conferences. The objective of the group is to focus on key trends and developments in the local government sphere in both developed and developing countries. It is generally accepted that certain distinct thematic issues have to be addressed during the lifespan of any working group of IASIA. The themes, which directed the activities of the group for the past four years, were Democratization, Decentralization and Development, Intergovernmental Relations, Metropolitization/Unicity Development and Rural Local Government and Traditional Leadership. The thematic issues, which are generally addressed through country reports, comparative studies, and theoretical appraisal, are presented at the annual conferences of IASIA. This publication has developed out of the activities and deliberations focusing on the theme, “Rural Local Government and Traditional Leadership.”

Local government is the second or third sphere of government, which has been established to develop closer linkages between the government and the local citizenry. It also seeks to ensure that the local citizenry have a sense of involvement in the political process that regulate their daily lives and ultimately improve their quality of life.

The weak economic and political position of the rural populace and their institutions highlight the difficulties of sustaining a viable local government system, particularly in the developing countries. The central, state (provincial) government, and the non-governmental sector have a pivotal role to play in providing the required assistance and support to capacitate rural local government institutions. Intergovernmental relations are one of the issues that have to be taken cognizance of in any consideration of how strong structures of representation and, furthermore, accountability could be established and sustained within the rural areas. Another aspect that has to be addressed is financial considerations and, more importantly, the capacity to generate revenue. The importance of assistance from the central, state (provincial) government, and the non-governmental sector is also critical in this process. The key questions that have to be addressed include, inter alia, how to establish and sustain local structures of representation and accountability; the impact on development service, intergovernmental relationships (with central/provincial and civic and communitybased organizations); and what strategies are in place to facilitate rural development and poverty alleviation. The majority of the developing countries have acknowledged

Vil viii that the rural areas have been neglected, and consequently have embarked on the required political, administrative and fiscal measures to address these issues. Some of the measures that have been taken to date include, the ushering in of policies and concomitant legislation to strengthen rural structures, increased sources of funding, human resources capacity development, and the incorporation of traditional leadership in rural governance.

On a global level, traditional leadership is generally hereditary and not subject to the universal adult suffrage electoral process. Traditional leaders broadly exercise governmental functions ranging from the provision of services to the preservation of law and order, and to the allocation of tribal land generally held in trust. Subject to their relationship with the national government, they do tend to have some form of local government in place to address the needs of rural communities. In this context, the policy issues that have to be addressed include, inter alia, the extent to which the institution of traditional leadership retains popular legitimacy and how it should be accommodated in a formal local government system; what their role is in municipal service delivery and development initiatives; and how their capacity can be developed to facilitate efficient and effective local governance in the rural areas. The issue of formal recognition and protection of the institution of traditional leadership has to be given serious consideration. Despite the fact that traditional authorities are responsible for a large number of functions, there has not been much capacity-development or even allocation of the required human, financial, and technical resources to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Consequently, much has to be done to ensure that traditional leaders and structures are empowered to actually function as local government and, furthermore, as facilitators of development at the local level. A complementary relationship has to exist between traditional leadership and local democracy, thereby ensuring maximum development of the rural areas.

This publication addresses some of the policy issues highlighted above in seventeen Sub-Saharan and Afro-Caribbean countries, with particular reference to recent trends and developments. It is hoped that this publication would prove to be relevant, insightful and a valuable source of information to practitioners, academics, researchers, and students alike. The Working Group would like to record its sincere appreciation to Prof. D. Ray, attached to the University of Calgary in Canada for his leadership, positive enthusiasm and commitment in the completion of this study and the publication of this book. The Working Group would also like to gratefully acknowledge the leadership and vision of Dr. Mohan Kaul, the President of IASIA, Prof. Ian Thynne of the Publications Committee and Dr. E. H. Valsan, Chairperson of the Group who facilitated the publication of this book.

Prof. P. S. Reddy

Project Director

Working Group: Local Government

Management And Development

IASIA

RURAL LOCAL GOVERNANCE AND TRADITIONAL LEADERSHIP IN AFRICA AND THE AFRO-CARIBBEAN: POLICY AND RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS FROM AFRICA TO THE AMERICAS AND AUSTRALASIA

Chapter 1 Purpose Of This Book

Traditional leadership is a factor that has been significantly overlooked in the evaluations of rural local government and governance in much of contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa and in parts of the Afro-Caribbean. This oversight continues to result in lost opportunities for rural local government and governance, in terms of both development and understanding. This interdisciplinary and intercontinental volume responds to this perception by using a series of innovative studies to establish a baseline for best practice and research in rural local government and governance to which traditional leaders (also called “chiefs”) can contribute in co-operation with other policy practitioners, political leaders, researchers, citizens, and other members of civil society in Africa, as well as in other areas of the world where indigenous peoples and/or political structures exist, whether this be Fiji or Canada.' Of course such efforts are not without their problems and these are frankly addressed in a number of the case studies.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF THE MAJOR CONCEPTS AND THEMES

Traditional leaders are also known in English as chiefs, traditional authorities, traditional rulers, monarchs, kings, nobles, aristocrats, and natural rulers in a variety of African and other countries. While the literature has little problem with the use of this variety of names, in some countries the use of one name or another may invoke political problems. Thus, in South Africa, the term “traditional leader” is the desired official usage by government bodies such as the National House of Traditional Leaders and the six provincial Houses of Traditional Leaders, or a non-governmental body such as the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa), because some see the term “chief” as being associated with the racist apartheid regime that was ended only in 1994. By contrast, in countries such as Ghana and Botswana, no such stigma or sensitivity is usually attached to the term “chief”: Botswana has a House of Chiefs, and Ghana has a National House of Chiefs and ten Regional Houses of Chiefs. In this volume, the various terms for traditional authority are used interchangeably in a neutral sense. Traditional leadership is meant to include those political, socio-political and politico-religious structures that are rooted in the pre-colonial period rather than in the creations of the colonial and post-colonial states. By this key consideration, traditional leaders can include kings, other aristocrats holding offices, heads of extended families, and office holders in decentralized polities, as long as their offices are rooted in pre-colonial states and other political entities. If the office is purely a creation of the colonial or post-colonial states but still involves indigenous peoples, then perhaps the office should be called “‘neo-traditional.” Furthermore authors in this volume may or may not be using the terms traditional authority and tradition in the Weberian sense.

The division of the chronology of African political organization into three periods (pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial) is well-accepted, but should not be seen as being applicable only to Africa. As well, the special significance of this terminological genealogy needs to be noted briefly here.? The trilogy of pre-colonial state, colonial state, and post-colonial state applies to any contemporary state in Africa, Asia, the Americas or elsewhere that was the product of the imposition of European imperialism and colonialism since the expansion of capitalism out of Europe from the 1400s onwards. However, one might characterize the pre-colonial states and other political entities as being rooted in political legitimacies that were particular to their special histories which existed before these pre-colonial states and other polities were absorbed one way or another by European empires.

Such absorption involved the creation of colonial states by which the European ruled their newly subjugated and/or subordinated colonies into which the various pre-colonial states and polities were drawn. These pre-colonial states and other polities were then processed into various components of the colonial states. In many cases, the indigenous peoples had their political leadership turned into instruments of colonial rule for the benefit of the empires, but the empires were not strong enough to eliminate completely all elements or traces of this pre-colonial heritage: “kings” became “chiefs” in the lexicon of imperialism and colonialism. While the colonial state intended to indicate the subordinated status of the former pre-colonial leader by this linguistic trick, ironically the real pre-colonial terms of the “chiefs” survived in their own languages. Even more ironically for colonialism, often these “chiefs” or “traditional leaders” became rallying points of resistance to colonialism and sources of cultural pride to those indigenous peoples who had been colonised. Where traditional leaders/chiefs thus survived into the periods of the colonial state and the post-colonial state, they retained sources of political legitimacy rooted in the pre-colonial period, and which were unavailable to the colonial state because it had been forced on the indigenous people.

Kgosi* Mosadi Sebotto, Paramount Chief, Bamalete Tribal Administration, Ramotswa, Botswana, is the first woman to be paramount chief in Botswana (June 14, 2002).

Paramount Chief Chamba of Malawi.

She is paramount chief over more than two hundred villages. Photo taken at the Commonwealth Local Government Forum's Symposium on Traditional Leadership, Gaberone, Botswana (September 1997).

Kgosi* Seepapitso Il, Paramount Chief, Kanye, Botswana and then President of the House of Chiefs.

Taken at the Commonwealth Local Government Forum's Symposium on Traditional Leadership, Gabarone, Botswana (September 1997).

(*traditional leadership title) (above photos by D. Ray).

Traditional leaders/chiefs can claim special legitimacy in the eyes of their people because these institutions can be seen to embody their people’s history, culture, laws and values, religion, and even remnants of pre-colonial sovereignty. The colonial states and the post-colonial states draw upon different roots of legitimacy and sovereignty than those of the pre-colonial states. Looked at in the brilliant light of democracy, the colonial state would have to admit that its claims to sovereignty were based in the main on violence, racism, and diplomatic trickery, and that its claims to legitimacy as to why the indigenous people should obey its dictates were usually based on (1) rights of the conqueror rather than the consent of the people, (2) assertions of culture or racial superiority of the colonizers over the indigenous people, and (3) the use of a constitutional and legal order based on or rooted in the imperial power. For these and other reasons, the colonial state was unable to take over the legitimacy base of the pre-colonial period: to do so would be to call into question its own legitimacy.

The post-colonial state is in a more ambiguous position with regard to the pre-colonial period and to traditional leaders than is the colonial state. Although the post-colonial state has often had its constitutional and legal legitimacy rooted in the colonial state, especially when there was a peaceful handover of power from the colonial state to the post-colonial state, the post-colonial state can claim its legitimacy from the additional roots of (1) the nationalist struggle for independence by the people, and (2) the expression of the democratic will of the people through elections and other political processes and, eventually, a legal-constitutional system that has been processed, re-validated and created by the institutions created by the postcolonial state which express the democratic will of the people.

However, the legitimacy of traditional leadership/chieftaincy institutions remains, in nearly all cases beyond the grasp of the post-colonial state precisely because chieftaincy legitimacy is rooted in the pre-colonial period and there has been a fundamental rupture in the political fabric that the imposition of colonialism brings. Thus a people may choose to express themselves politically for many policy areas through the legislative, executive, and judicial institutions of the post-colonial state, but also decide that certain policy matters, e.g., custom, land, other local matters, are best expressed by their traditional leaders. Thus, because the people of a postcolonial state recognize that the roots of political legitimacy are divided between the post-colonial state and the traditional (i.e., pre-colonially rooted) leadership, these peoples may well decide that their democratic practice includes aspects of both the post-colonial state and traditional leadership.

The elephant tusk trumpet band announces the arrival of the Asante king, Osei Tutu Il at the Manhyia Palace reception court in Kumasi Ghana. The umbrellas are symbols of legitimacy and authority of the Asante paramount chiefs who serve the king. Some of the elephant tusk trumpets have been bound with “elephant tape" (also known as “duct tape") (photo by D. Ray).

How the traditional leadership is practiced within the post-colonial state should determine our evaluation of whether or not traditional leadership is compatible with democratic practice at the local government and state levels. These points seem to have been lost or overlooked by much of the literature on democratization and democratic transitions.’

Some might raise the related question: is chieftaincy compatible with democratic local governance or even transitions to democracy? This is a very complex question that may produce surprises for those who raise this question if we think outside the hegemonic ideas box. While this question deserves a much fuller examination that must be given elsewhere because of the constraints of space, several points do need to be advanced. First, those who suggest that traditional leadership is not compatible with democracy may do so, inter alia, because they are steeped in the republicanism‘ of the United States which was itself a breakaway from the monarchical British state. U.S. republicanism could thus be viewed as being rather self-justifying in the legitimation of the separatist post-colonial state called the United States. By so doing, the U.S. could reject the institutions of the monarchy and then promptly substitute a rotating indirectly-elected kingship called a president for the office of a hereditary monarchy.” Republicans (not necessarily of the U.S. political party) might argue further that presidents are democratically elected by all the citizens and are thus accountable to every citizen, but that hereditary monarchs or traditional leaders are not. While there appears to be much validity to the argument, it is not unchallengeable. American presidents are not directly elected by every citizen, rather the president is chosen by a small elite. They are elected but by a very imperfect system that may well not have followed the wishes of the majority of U.S. voters in at least one case: George W. Bush’s legitimacy as president may well be challenged by the confusion of the Florida vote in 2000. When the democratic legitimacy of the president of a republic can be questioned, how democratic is the republic?

Britain is known as the mother of democracy which evolved into a democratic parliamentary system with a constitutional monarchy. Canada shares its monarch with Britain. Can it be seriously argued that Canada and Britain are not democracies, but the United States is democratic because it rather has a president — one whose office is increasingly called the “imperial presidency”?

The mere presence of traditional leaders otherwise called monarchs, does not automatically render them anti-democratic. What republicans often seem to forget is that traditional leaders/monarchs can have their own legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens based on history and political culture preferences. Countries such as Canada i

Nana* Fredua Agyeman is the Chief-of-Staff for the Office of the Okyenhene or the king of Akyem Abuakwa. He spends part of the year in New Jersey and the other part serving the king in Ghana. He assists the kingdom in local government development projects on the environment, education, health (especially HIV/AIDS) and income generation such as the snail farms (*traditional leadership title) (photo by D. Ray).

and Britain have so far chosen to retain their monarchies.° In short, the principle of monarchy has been intertwined with the Canadian and British political cultures for quite some time. Even the attempts by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to abolish the House of Lords has run into unexpected opposition from the citizens of Britain: such attempts to reform further this British House of Chiefs have been bogged down for some time.

Traditional leadership, it seems, continues to exist in Britain, Canada, and many African countries because the citizens want this, but they want this only under conditions that ensure that the traditional leaders are not seen to abuse their offices or the citizens. In a sense, to be a traditional leader is to be subject to informal referendums that are held on a daily basis forever: When the people decide not to honour the traditional leader, when the citizens decide to withdraw their legitimation of the chiefs, then these offices will no longer function. What republicans and their ilk seem to forget is that in many African countries traditional leaders continue to enjoy popular support because of their particular bases of legitimacy (see the chapters by Ray and Crothers). Chiefs, in these circumstances, remain important political actors, especially at the level of local government and local governance.

A few words on the use of the terms government and governance are important to clarify a key argument of this volume. While government deals with the formal activities and political culture (including legitimacy) as designated by such formal state mechanisms as constitutions and legislation, governance refers to government plus unofficial political activities and culture (including legitimacy) not originally endorsed or rooted in the post-colonial state. Thus the term rural local governance includes not only the rural local government structures, processes, and political activities and culture (including legitimacy) that are rooted in the colonial state and the post-colonial state, but also those rooted in the pre-colonial states and other pre-colonial political organizations. By so conceptualizing rural local governance, it is possible to include chieftaincy in our discussions even when chiefs are not formally included in such local government state structures. We need to consider what role in rural local government that traditional leaders might play, as well as the ways in which traditional leadership might enhance development at the level of rural local government on which so many demands are placed by those who are citizens of the post-colonial state and subjects of the traditional leaders.

Four main themes serve as the main focuses of this volume. The first focus is to analyze how to integrate, or indeed reconcile traditional leadership with democratic systems of local government in the post-colonial state. The second focus is to scrutinize what traditional leadership brings to the culture of local governance in terms of political values, prevalence, importance, and contributions. The third focus is to examine the importance and performance of traditional leadership in the key local government function of the administration of land. The fourth focus is evaluating the development and management implications of having traditional leaders participate in rural local government and governance. Drawing comparisons between the case studies, the book discovers lessons and trends for such involvement. Some initial implications of this for Canadian chiefs, both traditional and neo-traditional, are considered in light of the African cases. The case studies are drawn from Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, other Commonwealth countries in West, East and Southern Africa, as well as the South American Commonwealth country of Jamaica which has heritage links to West Africa. Case studies are examined within the country and regional contexts.

POLICY AND RESEARCH ROOTS OF THIS BOOK

After millennia of existence, the pre-colonial states and other political entities of Africa were nearly all subordinated by treaty or conquest to the European empires by the beginning of the twentieth century. These processes of colonial incorporation brought in their wake the subordination or elimination of the pre-colonial states, other political entities, and numbers of their political offices. Sovereign kings and other office-holders were converted by the European empires and their colonial and colonial-settler states into chiefs, also known as traditional leaders, and other similar terms. The European colonial states in Africa often attempted to use chiefs, both traditional and neo-traditional, as auxiliaries to colonial rule. A considerable literature on chiefs grew during this period for a variety of reasons, not least the desire of those who controlled and administered the colonial state to better understand their traditional authority subordinates.

Independence and the creation of the post-colonial states resulted in a shifting of interest and research to the post-colonial states in their search for democracy and development. From independence in the late 1950s and 1960s, until the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a decline in interest in traditional leadership as a potential complement to the efforts of the post-colonial state to promote development and democracy at a variety of levels, including that of rural local government. This trend represents a certain change in the way that traditional leaders have been viewed in some quarters by some leaders of the newly independent states of Africa.” Within four years of Uganda’s independence in 1963, Prime Minister Milton Obote used the Ugandan army in 1966 to capture the palace of the king of Buganda (who at that point was also president of Uganda), forced the Buganda king into exile, and abolished all the kingdoms by means of Uganda’s 1967 Constitution.’ Chiefs lost their formal constitutional recognition in less dramatic manners in Tanzania and Guinea. Ghana’s future prime minister and president, Kwame Nkrumah, stated in 1950 that if Ghanaian chiefs did not support his nationalist movement — the Convention People’s Party (CPP) — in the drive for independence from Britain, then the chiefs might eventually find themselves overthrown (Nkrumah 1957, 120; Arhin 1991, 31). In South Africa, there were doubts by some political leaders as to whether or not traditional leaders were to survive from the colonial, colonial-settler apartheid era into the new democracy (Bank and Southall 1996).

In part, these doubts and concerns reflected the perceptions of (at least) some nationalist leaders and other democrats that at least some traditional leaders were perceived by these people as having co-operated with the colonial or apartheid regimes, and that therefore those traditional leaders who had so co-operated were in effect the opponents of those who led the drive to independence. In other cases, democrats had raised the question of how could traditional leaders be incorporated into a democratic system when the principles of traditional leadership were interpreted to be not democratic; in as much as not every adult could be selected as a chief — only those who belonged to aristocratic families; and not every adult could vote for their candidate — only the electoral college king-makers (if they existed) could.’ Given that the leaders of the post-colonial African state have had reasons and the ability to abolish traditional leadership as an institution, why have they not done so right across the continent? Indeed, why has there been a growing interest in a significant number of African states in involving traditional leaders in local government, governance, and development?

By the early 1990s, there was a revival of interest in traditional leaders amongst a growing number of African and Western governments,'° researchers, foreign aid agencies, and civil society organizations and members. There has been a growing recognition, within and without Africa, of the need to incorporate somehow the traditional leaders of Africa into local governance, as one of a number of measures, if local government management and development are to be fully effective. At the

Obaapanyin™ Yaa Kronama, Queenmother of Anyinam, birthplace of the founder of the Asante kingdom, which now has some three hundred residents (2002, photo by D. Ray) (*traditional leadership title).

initiative of the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA), this volume brings together three networks of research into traditional leadership in Africa.

The Traditional Authority Applied Research Network (TAARN) is one such network that was founded in 1994. Following three years of planning in Ghana, Canada, and the Netherlands, researchers from seventeen countries in Africa, North America, Europe, and South America presented papers to their fellow researchers, chiefs, and other policy-makers on traditional authority in sixteen African countries and two South American countries (in which there are remnants of African-rooted traditional authority) to the September 1994 “Conference on the Contribution of Traditional Authority to Development, Democracy, Human Rights and Environmental Protection: Strategies for Africa.”"' This was held in Ghana at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana in Accra and at the National House of Chiefs in Kumasi. The conference resulted in two books (Arhin, Ray, and van Rouveroy 1995; van Rouveroy and Ray 1996), the mandate to create the Traditional Authority Applied Research Network (TAARN),” and a panel in Vienna which further generated another book (Zips and van Rouveroy 1998). The list of funding sources for the 1994 Ghana conference clearly indicates the widespread interest in reappraising African traditional leadership from a policy-based focus: the International Development Research Centre (IDRC),'? the Netherlands government, the Ghana government, the government of Canada, the British Council, the University of Ghana, the University of Calgary, the African Studies Centre (Leiden, Netherlands), the University of Vienna (Austria), the University of Durban—Westville (South Africa), and Rhodes University (South Africa). Subsequent to this, TAARN received significant funding from the Research Development Initiative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) for the electronic network component of TAARN. TAARN also received a major grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), based in Ottawa, for the project “Traditional Leadership and Local Governance in Social Policy in West and Southern Africa.” This project has country research teams in Ghana, Botswana, and South Africa as well as the co-ordination centre at the University of Calgary, Canada (Ray and Dalrymple 2000).

Another network exploring the possible contributions of traditional leadership to local government in African member states of the Commonwealth has been organized by the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF). Shortly after the founding of CLGF in 1994, it co-operated with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and officials and researchers from Botswana, Kenya, Sierra ig)

Leone, Zimbabwe, and South Africa to run two small workshops in 1994 and 1995 on traditional systems of administration which resulted in a report (Venson/CLGF 1995). The question of the potential and actual contributions of traditional leadership to democratization and decentralization in local government was raised at the June 1995 Commonwealth Roundtable on Democratization and Decentralization that was held in Harare, Zimbabwe, and which also resulted in a report (CLGF 1995).'4 The roundtable endorsed a program of action that included the following statement on the need for the legitimacy of traditional leaders to be mobilized somehow in order to benefit local government and development: Traditional leadership is afforded considerable credibility and functions in many local communities and that with the creation of appropriate mechanisms for their involvement, such leadership can assist in the realization of development goals. (CLGF 1995, 31) These leaders called for a follow-up meeting.

The “Symposium on Traditional Leadership and Local Government” was held 23-26 September 1997 in Gaborone, Botswana. It was organized by the CLGF in association with the International Union of Local Authorities — Africa Section (IULA— AS), the Botswana Association of Local Authorities, and the Botswana Ministry of Local Government, Lands and Housing. Over fifty traditional leaders, elected mayors and councillors, senior local and central government officials, and researchers attended from the Commonwealth member countries of Botswana, Canada, The Gambia, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, the United Kingdom, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, as well as Austria. C. Wright, the CLGF Director, noted that this widespread participation demonstrated “the growing interest throughout Africa in the role that traditional leaders could play in the modern, pluralistic state.” The symposium participants made four pages of recommendations in the report (Ray, Sharma, and May-Parker/CLGF 1997, 4-7) that needed to be recognized or have further follow-up work carried out. This symposium also brought together participants from the CLGF, TAARN (IDRC-funded), and the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA).

The third research network, which is more fully analyzed in this volume’s preface, has focused entirely on traditional leadership and rural local governance. The Local Government Management and Development Group of IASIA, chaired by Prof. E. H. Valsan (Egypt) and with Prof. P. S. Reddy (South Africa) as Project Director, has developed four major themes, including “Rural Local Governance and

Traditional Leadership.” This last IASIA project has been developed at a series of conferences, especially those in Paris (1998) and in Athens (2001). IASIA has led the way in promoting policy analysis of traditional leadership’s contributions to rural local governance. This volume is the result of IASIA’s vision and dedication to the importance of this theme. Most of Africa’s people live in rural areas yet these are precisely the areas that are often underserved in terms of resources, development, and techniques of governance. IASIA conceived of this book as one way of addressing these concerns.

POLICY AND CONCEPTUAL TRENDS AND LESSONS OF THE CHAPTERS

Christiane Owusu-Sarpong introduces us to those traditional political values about traditional governance that may well set the context in the minds of many Ghanaians for part of their expectations towards the rural local governments of the post-colonial state. She identifies these values by cultural analyses of oral and written texts to establish what exists on the ground as the articulated political culture expectations for traditional leaders. Such values provide the context for “the institutionalized local government structure and the perennial traditional authority structure.” Owusu-Sarpong thus weaves cultural and governmental factors, using such concepts as divided legitimacy and sovereignty, political and legal pluralism, and her concept of “resurgent heritage,” into a fresh approach to rural local governance. She argues that if the rural local government structures of the Ghanaian post-colonial state want to reflect the true range of values of their citizens, then such structures need to recognize the reality that some of the attitudes that their citizens bring to the practice of democracy is rooted in the pre-colonial period, and that the offices of traditional leaders are the survivors from that period, even if they are much changed. Owusu-Sarpong argues that “a profound awareness of the importance of the revival of ‘indigenous’ African values is now widespread amongst the peoples of Africa.” Africans need to embrace their “resurgent heritage” in order to free themselves from the colonial and neo-colonial structures that have been imposed on them. To ignore African values may be to fall prey to a type of false independence and economic strategies that do not really enhance human development and welfare. For such true development to occur, African countries such as is)