A nation’s culture can be measured through its food, clothes, beliefs, institutions, how the people mourn their dead and celebrate birth and generally how they carry themselves in our day-to-day activities.
One of the issues that have tended to retard our progress as a nation and continent is our inability to adapt some of our negative traditional practices to changing trends even in the face of the world’s changing status as a “globalised village”.
Attitude is part of culture and is one of the most important drivers of progress and impact strongly on our ethics at home, work and school. Our worldview and progress are greatly influenced by the customs and traditional values we have.
While it is a fact that our customs and other practices come together to give us our identity, it is also true that a number of them have contributed in no small measure to the current state of development in our part of the world.
Cultural practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), widowhood rites and the unnecessary preference for the birth and education of boys over girls are but a few of the practices which, thanks to advocacy and activism, have now been reduced to lower proportions, albeit due to the great concern in many parts of the country.
One practice that has for some time negatively affected our forward march had been the near exclusion of females from many activities due to their sex. In the past, many people did not understand the need to send the girl child to school, resulting in most girls not receiving formal education or dropping out of school at very early ages.
Thanks to affirmative action and the work of gender-based organisations, and national support, girls today have an equal opportunity as boys to go to school and rise to the highest echelons of society. The Daily Graphic commends all individuals and organisations whose efforts have brought about this progress.
Another area of our customs and traditional practices that have been a subject of debate has to do with the position of queenmothers in the houses of chiefs.
We are happy to note that male chiefs have finally accepted the fact that queenmothers should be allowed to sit in counsel with them in the houses of chiefs and that efforts are being made to include queenmothers in the deliberations of the houses. We are aware that many paramountcies, including traditional councils, now have queenmothers as members. We congratulate them.
We commend the efforts of the Ministry of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs for taking steps to build the capacities of queenmothers in the various regions to enable them to take up positions in the Regional and National Houses of Chiefs.
The queenmothers have a great role to play in our quest for national development and as stated clearly by a former Director of the Institute of African Studies at Legon, Prof. J. H. Nketsia, “What belongs to ethnicity also belongs to the nation.” We, therefore, need to draw the linkages and ensure that queen mothers play their roles towards the progress of our communities.
We welcome the decision to bring queenmothers on board the houses of chiefs and await the day when they will formally take part in deliberations of the houses.
