Between the Umbrella and the Elephant: Elections, Ethnic Negotiations and the Politics of Spirit Possession in Teshi, Accra

Abstract

This article focuses on a number of Ga spirit mediums located in Teshi, a neighbourhood of the Ghanaian capital, Accra. These individuals host foreign spirits from areas north of Ga territory, such as the modern Ashanti, Gonja and Dagomba regions. Such encounters of cross-cultural spirit possession have often been analysed in the scholarly literature as an embedded history of contact between peoples. These histories of ethnic or cultural contact – which inform cross-cultural spirit possession – are constantly re-imagined by spirit mediums and the broader community they service. How this re-imagination occurs, in conjunction with developments in the contemporary political and public spheres, is a theme that remains understudied. The perceived shifts in the contours of ethnic alliances and rivalries on a national scale, against the backdrop of modern Ghanaian party politics and the ever-changing relationships between the Ga and their northern neighbours, led to a thematic reconfiguration of possession practices in 2004. This ethnographic vignette details how spirit mediums were able to apply the ethnic and conceptual cultural divisions intrinsic to this corpus of ritual practice to a critique of national political events, producing a commentary, through possession, on the changing discourses on ethnicity and ethnic relations in the Ghanaian state.

‘The Spirit of Jesus’ in Acts 16.7: An Ethnographic Reading

“…As a spirit moves into a new environment, the spirit will usually adjust to the conditions of the new context. It is not uncommon to have cases of cross-regional possession (Boddy 1994; McIntosh 2004: 93; Venkatachalam 2011: 248). Venkatachalam, for example, studies the cross-regional spirit possession of the Ga people in a southern coastal town in Ghana.…”

“…This sentiment inevitably raises the possibility of ethnic tension and political unrest. Venkatachalam observes however that some of the Ga people are possessed by foreign spirits from the northern region (Venkatachalam 2011: 253). Among other possible explanations, this interchange of spirits defuses some of the tension between the two regions.…”

On Representation and Power: Portrait of a Vodun Leader in Present-Day Benin

“… 31 Meera Venkatachalam (2011) described a feud breaking out in Teshi, a suburb of Accra, where anti-witchcraft mediums deliberately possessed by the spirits of the north started reviling their ethnic allies in public, in favour of their protective deities. This resulted in the violence that had been exacerbated by ethnic tensions between two political parties in the 2004 elections being defused.…”