Gá-Dángme Chattels

BBy Dr Nii Armarh Aryeh
Chattels or nibii were recognised as belonging to a separate class of property. However, the Gá-Dángme concept of chattels also recognised a distinction between crops, goods, stock-in-trade and general merchandise and other easily perishable or fungible items. Emblements or growing crops produced by the labour of the cultivator and harvested annually are considered as goods and therefore fall under the traditional law relating to chattels.

Generally speaking, only chattels of value are regarded by the Gá-Dángme as really constituting property: vehicles, capital equipment, gold and silver ornaments, furniture, cattle, household utensils, tools of trade, etc. Thus a wealthy individual or niatse may possess in addition to land and houses, mummy-trucks, cars, canoes, corn-mills, silverware, gold-chains, gold-earrings, gold bracelets, gold-rings, gold-pendants, crockery, household furniture, cattle, sheep, poultry, expensive clothing as well as other sundry items of property.

In the present age such an individual may also own a company and have industrial plant, office equipment, a current account, deposit account, bills of lading, shares, bonds, debentures and stocks and may also have taken out a life assurance policy.
Although females may also own all the items of property listed above, there are certain things which are considered to be distinctively female property. Items associated with the kitchen and housewifery such as cooking utensils and sewing machines are presumed to belong to a wife. Also, expensive cloths, including damasks, velvets and Dutch wax prints, are generally associated with women.

Traditionally, most female property was obtained with profits from market-trading. Trading therefore became a typical vocation of Gá-Dángme women; some travelled to the weekly inland markets to purchase bulk products for resale in the great urban markets such as Makola, London and Salaga markets; others made a more profitable business of achieving commercial success in the urban markets dealing in local goods and imported European produce.

Various market traders became fabulously wealthy, and in addition to erecting Italianate buildings around the city, became the mainstay of their extended families. In the bed-chamber of the successful female trader's house would normally be a wardrobe or sideboard stocked with expensive clothes, jewels and other valuables; the sideboard, with its displays of lavender and other perfumes literally became the domestic symbol of a woman's economic status. Less successful women tended to keep their personal property in trunks and boxes tucked away in the corner of the bed-chamber.

As in the case of land, personal movable acquisitions are distinguished from ancestral property. Personal acquisitions were accumulated through the personal effort or enterprise of the individual; they were entirely to be disposed by the acquirer as they choose. They may be sold, part-exchanged, pledged or given away without any interference by the extended family. Ancestral personal property, although they may be kept by an individual family member, remain the extended family's. Movable ancestral property includes shika futru (gold dust), gold ornaments, and paraphenelia of office.

Problems often arise where an individual having custody of inherited family property mixed them with their own property and disposed of them at will. Even worse, ancestral property in the possession or custody of individuals may wrongly be regarded by their children as the personal property of the parents leading to ugly disagreements upon the demise of the possessor. In some families there is a tradition of periodically calling for an account of ancestral properties in the possession of individuals; this avoids unnecessary litigation and reinforces extended family solidarity.

As indicated, an individual may own domesticated animals; birds are also owned on an extensive scale: ducks, guinea-fowl, turkey, chicken, pigeons, etc. Although birds and animals may freely mix, and even stay for a lengthy periods, with other herds and flock ownership remains vested in the owner. Different rules appear to apply to wild animals; such creatures may be freely hunted over the open plains and forests.
The hunter owns the body of animals killed on unoccupied and uncultivated ground. Where a wild is caught in this way and kept in captivity for a considerable period, but escapes the original capturer retains his right to ownership provided the identity of the animal can be established. The right to kill burrowing animals, such as hares and rabbits vests in the owner of the land on which they are found. The owner is entitled to a half share of all animals killed or captured by his permission; he is equally entitled to a half share of crops plucked from self-sown perrenial trees on his plot. The hindlegs of wild animals killed in the uncultivated fields and forests belong to the chief or headman of the area.

Owners of private creeks as well as traditional priests exercise similar rights to catches of fish. Rights to catches from creeks are best developed in the Ada area; there individuals are permitted to fish in private creeks for small quantities of fish on the understanding that the owner is entitled to a fifth of the total catch. The Nai Wulomo exercises a right to a quantity of all commercial fish landed on the beaches of Accra; fish given to the Nai Wulomo in this way is known as bele naa loo and the right to it is known as bele naa loo kómo.

Finally, the Korle Wulomo has the prerogative of casting the first few nets when the fishing season commences in the Korle lagoon. It was suggested that the Sakumo Wulomo exercises a similar right over the Sakumo lagoon. The rights of the high priests extend to salt and other commercial produce. These rights of the high priests are vestiges of their former powers as leaders of the Gá-Dángme and owners of the land. However, individuals may freely trap fiddler crabs and land crabs, pick crustaceans and use cast-nets without the necessity of giving portions to the high priests.
During the herring and sardine season in August (Obué) owners of fishing canoes may occasionally let them to a crew of fishermen who give them a third of the catch. Each crew member brings his own oars (tabló) and stock of food; the crew may collectively own the fishing gear. Where they also borrow the fishing net and gear of the owner of the canoe, the owner becomes entitled to two-thirds of the total catch comprising mainly sardines (kankanma) and herring (mann).

The above arrangement known as nimaa is similar to the English concept of bailment or renting of movable property. It extends to capital equipment and income yielding devices such as hunting rifles, seine nets (tsani), cornmills, sewing machines and mummy-trucks. In each case, the bailee is granted use of the property for a specified period, and is obliged to share his profits with the bailor.

Emblements and fungibles were usually measured by the basket or kenten, being being baskets of various sizes for measuring out fixed quantities; in the case of maize or corn, an olonka or measuring tin was used. The concept of kenten was frequently employed notionally. Thus certain profits-á-prendre inuring to the owner of land was often worked out in terms of an actual or notional basket. Therefore mushrooms, herbs, vegetables forming part of such profits may be measured in terms of notional baskets.