A noisy clash over a ritual of silence

Ghana is a noisy country, especially its urban areas, but most of all the capital city of Accra. The city is a cauldron of every kind of sound imaginable: blare challenges blast; hoot struggles to rise above the Makola-level din; if our currency was traded in decibels we would be a world economic power.

On any given day in Accra, we have thousands of voices raised to attract attention to whatever people are selling or promoting; it is as if we can rise above our circumstances by the power of our vocal chords. 

It is a customary marketing strategy to play music at extremely loud volumes to attract customers. Some of this is mind boggling. 

There are rows of shops and stalls in the middle of Accra’s central business area that play loud music as if in competition to find who can cause the most nuisance, because no-one could possibly distinguish one source of music from the other, let alone enjoy it. 

Commerce is not the only reason for noisemaking. Funerals are a noisy affair in almost all Ghanaian traditions. The dead are given a send-off that could raise the dead, if the deceased were minded to respond. But the gold medal for noise must go to Pentecostal and Charismatic churches which appear to have over literalised the biblical injunction to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” 

With this all-encompassing deluge of noise one would suppose that a compulsory respite from it would be welcomed by us, the victims of noise pollution. 

In that sense we may have to consider the annual ban on noisemaking as a prelude to the Ga Homowo Festival to be a godsend ritual of quietude and sanity. All Ghanaians would welcome it? Well, not quite. Many are dead set against. 

Let us start from the beginning. In the beginning, many years ago, life among our people in these lands revolved around farming, fishing and hunting and once every so often the people would gather to celebrate their harvests and give thanks to the ancestors and the deities. 

Part of the ritual was to declare a period of silence and reflection. Thus, the ban on noisemaking is a ritual in most traditional festival cultures in Ghana. The period is meant to be a time of quiet reflection and self-denial similar to the observation of Lent before the Christian festival of Easter. 

As with the pre-Homowo ban, the restriction on noise in all such festivals starts after the sowing of the seeds of maize, yam or whatever the ritual food may be. 

In that sense, the ban on noisemaking, especially on loud entertainment is meant to focus attention on the cultivation of the crop whose yield and harvest determines the quality of the festival itself.

The period of the ban differs from place to place extending from one day to one month. For the most part these rituals pass unnoticed by Ghanaians other than those in the locality where the festival is taking place. 

Indeed, in most places, apart from the palace and other places where traditional rituals are going on, life goes on as normal, except that funerals and outdoor entertainments are banned during the period. 

In Accra, however, the situation is different. The month-long ban usually attracts attention and controversy. This is because Accra is indeed different. It is both the political and commercial capital of our country. It is the magnet for the “huddled masses”, in the words of the Statue of Liberty, who flock everyday in the hope of a better life. 

Nobody truly knows how many people live in Accra, or indeed what is known as Accra, but officially the population of the capital has grown from around 650,000 in 1960 to an estimated four million today. Many of the people in Accra depend on noise of one kind or another to make their dreams come true.

Normally, the “normal” noise makers such as market traders just carry on their business while pubs, bars and restaurants lower their tone and carry on. 

However, the Accra ban always appears to throw down some kind of territorial, not to speak of spiritual gauntlet to the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches which see the ban as an affront to their religious freedom. There have been fights, not of the spirit but in the flesh in recent years. 

The clashes appear to have gone down remarkably due to dialogue on many different fronts and levels but the ban still poses many social, cultural and even constitutional challenges.

On the side, one has to observe the irony that these churches that appear outraged by the ban do not think even once before disturbing the sleep of citizens across Ghana. Many of them turn up the volume in residential neighbourhoods in contravention of local laws on noise levels. That is a subject for another day.

This year’s ban which came into effect last Tuesday has drawn out more controversy and comment than ever before. Firstly, people have questioned whether a ban imposed by a traditional authority is legal, especially on people who do not subscribe to the beliefs associated with the ritual. 

The traditional authorities point to the affirmation of our traditional cultures in the 1992 Constitution. An interesting sidebar to the main issue is the geographical demarcation of the various traditional councils within the larger Ga community.

Of course, the main reason for this year’s heightened interest is the implication of the ban on the attempt by a group of artistes, known collectively as “celebrities” to stage some kind of protest against the Dumsor power crisis in the country. 

The celebrities contend that their jobs and incomes have been affected by the uncertain power supply because the usual customers, now unsure of electric power in their homes, are unlikely to buy music and video CDs, and live performances which depend on generators are too expensive to stage.

According to media reports, the Ga Traditional Council is against the holding of the protest during the ban period although the celebrities have explained that their protest will take the form of a vigil during which no noise would be made. 

As at this writing, four days before the event, one has no way of knowing how it will pan out, and it is possible that an amicable solution may have been found through the mediation of the police, but important points remain.

Accra is different, and for the reasons why it is different, a one-month long ban on noisemaking adversely affects people’s livelihood at a time when the Dumsor and other economic factors have already created an unfavourable crunch. 

Accra is the nation’s capital and the dynamics of its growth and responsibilities must come with necessary changes in traditional and political governance. It is possible to find a symbolic way to observe the ban in a shorter and less intrusive fashion.

There are examples of such traditional compromises. The Akuapem town of Mamfe celebrates its festival in January and the ban on noise falls within the Christmas period. The compromise has been for the traditional council to postpone the ban until after Christmas. 

Changes in our traditional arrangements will come because they are inevitable but we can be proactive in structuring some of those changes for the purpose of peace, development, justice and social progress.

Another important factor is the need to educate people about our traditional boundaries. In the heated debates about silence, which of course was loaded with innuendo, there was a noisy but subtle power play between competing traditional areas within the Ga state about territorial authority. 

Accra because in the larger context, there is so much controversy over land sales emanating from the same confusion.

Finally, and most importantly, we have to come to a common understanding about protest as a frontline and legitimate right of citizens that should only be curtailed in the most critically ominous circumstances. 

The right to the freedoms of speech, assembly and association are FUNDAMENTAL human rights. They precede  even the Constitution and come with our rights as human beings and the police, traditional and all authorities must understand this to be the case. 

In the meantime, let us be grateful for small mercies; generators have been excluded from the ban. A silent Accra in total darkness for one month would be intolerable indeed.