Sexuality and prostitution among the Akan of the Gold Coast, c. 1650-1950

Past & Present, August, 1997 by Emmanuel Akyeampong

K. A. Busia's social survey of Sekondi-Takoradi in the late 1940s revealed 127 known prostitutes, only 9 of whom were from the indigenous Ahanta ethnic group.(57) The establishment of a railway head at Sekondi in 1898 and a deep water harbour at Takoradi in 1928 transformed these tiny Ahanta villages into the bustling, multi-ethnic, working-class city of Sekondi-Takoradi. Here, prostitutes found an important niche. They came principally from Cape Coast and Axim, with a significant contribution coming from Nigeria and Liberia. Ione Acquah's survey of prostitutes in the centre of Accra in August 1954 revealed a different ethnic mix. Acquah counted 213 prostitutes, and conducted interviews with 70, all of whom were from migrant tribes. Of these, most were Ewes (56); there were only 3 Adangme, 5 Guans and 6 from French Dahomey.(58) Acquah assigned economic pressure, social isolation and the anonymity afforded by the large towns as causes for the proliferation of prostitution and `lapses in traditional standards of morality'.(59) Like Acquah, Busia saw prostitution as evidence of the collapse of sexual morality and highlighted economic pressures and social isolation as the key factors in this transformation.(60)

IV

PROSTITUTION, AUTONOMY AND ACCUMULATION

Acquah and Busia assumed that prostitution was a novel, urban phenomenon that reflected the collapse of the traditional moral order with the advent of colonial capitalism. From the evidence in this article, this was obviously an erroneous impression. What was new about urban prostitution in the colonial Gold Coast, though, was its explicit connection to independent, material accumulation among women. What men and other women found fascinating and horrifying about this development was that the women who were prostitutes had voluntarily stepped outside the traditional social and spatial constraints imposed on women to facilitate accumulation. It is clear from Anita Mensah's account of prostitution in Sekondi-Takoradi in the 1930s and 1940s that new images -- of autonomy, acquisitiveness and even a touch of glamour -- had influenced old perceptions of prostitution:

By then, Kru people [from Liberia] were the dominant group in Takoradi.

The other growing area was Nkontompo in Sekondi. There many women

resided. The men who worked at Takoradi lived in compounds, for

example the present New Takoradi, and when they wanted women came

down from the compound at New Takoradi to Nkontompo in Sekondi.

So the nickname `Nkontompo Headquarters' emerged. Many single

women lived there. In this period, some of the young men who visited

Nkontompo would fall in love, and ask the women to quit the business

of prostitution and come to join them at New Takoradi as wives. I saw

this happening myself. It came to a time that Kru women took over

Takoradi.(61)

It is unclear how a neighbourhood in Sekondi acquired the name Nkontompo, but nkontompo in Twi refers to `deceit' or `falsehood', and the sexual conduct of freelance, single women may have bequeathed the title of `Nkontompo' to their residential area. Inhabitants of Sekondi-Takoradi were fascinated with them: