Kingdoms, Rulers & ResistanceAkandocumented history
The Queen Mother
The Akan ɔhemaa — usually translated "queen mother," though she is often not the chief's mother — is not a consort.
Manhyia, Kumasi; any durbar, where the ɔhemaa sits with her own retinue.
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The Queen Mother
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The Queen Mother
The Akan ɔhemaa — usually translated "queen mother," though she is often not the chief's mother — is not a consort. She is a separate office with separate powers, and the most important of them is this: she nominates the chief.
When a stool falls vacant, it is the queen mother who puts forward a candidate from the royal matrilineage, because in Akan society descent runs through women — a man's heirs are his sister's children, not his own. She can be refused, and she can put forward another, and the elders can keep refusing. But nothing starts without her.
She also rules on the affairs of women, hears cases, sits in council, and has the standing to rebuke the chief in public. Yaa Asantewaa's speech in 1900 was not a woman surprising a room. It was an officeholder exercising her office in front of men who knew exactly what she was.
If you visit Ghana. Manhyia, Kumasi; any durbar, where the ɔhemaa sits with her own retinue.
The Akan ɔhemaa — usually translated "queen mother," though she is often not the chief's mother — is not a consort. She is a separate office with separate powers, and the most important of them is this: she nominates the chief.
When a stool falls vacant, it is the queen mother who puts forward a candidate from the royal matrilineage, because in Akan society descent runs through women — a man's heirs are his sister's children, not his own. She can be refused, and she can put forward another, and the elders can keep refusing. But nothing starts without her.
She also rules on the affairs of women, hears cases, sits in council, and has the standing to rebuke the chief in public. Yaa Asantewaa's speech in 1900 was not a woman surprising a room. It was an officeholder exercising her office in front of men who knew exactly what she was.