‘Wife of the Gods’ Stirs Up Ghana

Her childhood was taken from her because her grandfather was accused of theft. At age 7, Juliana Dogbadzi’s parents abandoned her at a remote animist shrine to become a “wife of the gods,” in the belief that this would stop a string of misfortunes.

Dogbadzi was dedicated to a priest and became a fetish slave in a traditional system of both religion and justice practiced by some West African ethnic groups. Young girls are given to a priest to atone for crimes, typically committed by a male family member, or in thanks for a blessing.

For more than 14 years, she said, she was overworked, partially starved, barred from attending school, beaten and--from around age 12--raped by the 90-year-old priest who fathered her first child.

Unlike many others, however, she escaped. Today, although still illiterate at age 25, she is at the forefront of a campaign to eradicate the system known as Trokosi, which has become the target of a national debate in Ghana. Many local activists regard it as one of the country’s most serious human rights problems, and this spring, Dogbadzi was among four winners of the 11th annual Reebok Human Rights Award.

Political stability, positive economic policy and an active role in African peacekeeping initiatives all have helped Ghana win friends--among them the United States. But sociologists, civic groups and women’s rights advocates argue that the Trokosi system, which dates at least to the 17th century, is impeding Ghana’s social and economic development.

Human rights groups estimate that about 4,000 girls and women are in bondage at 51 major shrines in the southeastern area of Ghana where the system is practiced. Including neighboring Benin and Togo, as many as 20,000 females are so enslaved, the organizations say.

“Even though there are other human rights abuses here, this is one that has enslaved innocent people in large numbers,” said Vincent Azumah, a Ghanaian journalist whose articles in the early 1990s sparked a national debate about Trokosi. “It has been going on for ages, and many women have died in the system, knowing nothing but the shrine life. They have not been able to help Ghana grow.”

Azumah is now an official with International Needs Ghana, a nongovernmental organization, or NGO, that is fighting to phase out Trokosi, which in the local Ewe language means “wife of the gods.”

The movement is strongly opposed by traditionalists, including some government officials, who argue that the intricacies of Trokosi have been misrepresented by NGOs seeking to attract foreign donations. International Needs receives funding from Danish International Development Assistance and from the Washington-based African Development Foundation.

Trokosi supporters insist that shrine women are not being enslaved, tortured or raped, and that attacks on the system are just one more way in which African traditions are under siege from Western ways.

Although the Ghanaian government last year outlawed Trokosi, threatening offenders with at least three years in jail, the legislation is not being enforced. So far, no one is known to have been prosecuted.

“Traditional people still believe that as long as someone does something wrong, the gods will punish them unless a girl is sent to a shrine,” said Ali Mensah Quaye, a social worker for International Needs.

Quaye said that the girl, typically between the ages of 8 and 15, is presented by her family in the hopes of warding off bad luck. The most dreaded calamity is a rapid succession of mysterious deaths. The priest is considered the reincarnation of powerful, ancient gods who have the ability to administer justice and determine life and death.

As she leaves for the shrine, a girl is given gifts such as toiletries, bedding, cooking utensils and cloth that would normally mark the departure of a bride from home.

Reports of Sexual Abuse and Beatings

But rights activists argue that the girls actually are subjected to a life of servitude and typically become concubines of the priests and the mothers of their children. Those who resist are beaten; school is prohibited; and they rarely get to keep all their earnings from farming, petty trading and charcoal production.

“The priest has total control over their life,” Quaye said. “But he is not obliged to take care of the girls.” Relatives are supposed to care for them, but they rarely do.

A girl’s term at the shrine is traditionally five years, but most are forced to stay more than 10, and many spend their entire lives, Quaye said. When a Trokosi girl dies, the family is obliged to replace her.

“It’s slavery, pure and simple,” said Angela Dwamena-Aboagye, a Ghanaian lawyer and prominent women’s rights advocate. “It violates every fundamental right. It’s a step backwards for women.”

Dogbadzi, a shy woman, was the second female in her extended family to be sent to the shrine. The first one died. Dogbadzi was sent to the Volta region’s Tsaduma Shrine because her grandfather allegedly stole a relative’s money and mysterious deaths started occurring in the family. Her days were spent foraging for food in the bush and chopping wood to make charcoal for sale. At least half her profits would be taken by the priest.

The youngest of about 10 women at the shrine, Dogbadzi said she was beaten for resisting the old man’s sexual advances.

At age 21, after being caught in a liaison with a young man from a nearby village, and being beaten for her part in a fight between one of the priest’s daughters and another Trokosi, Dogbadzi ran away.

“I realized that if I continued to stay there, I would be beaten to death. So I fled,” she said. “I have experienced the dehumanizing pain that women suffer in the shrines. No one should be allowed to suffer such pain.”

Trying to Get Women to Flee

Dogbadzi, who is pregnant with her third child from her new husband, now visits shrines, trying to persuade women to leave, and lectures rural communities about the ills of the Trokosi system.

Patience Akpoe, a timid woman with forlorn eyes, said she would not have had the courage to flee the shrine where she spent 12 years from age 10 if it were not for Dogbadzi.

Akpoe, now 28, wept as she recalled how, as a child, she would watch as other village children dressed in uniforms headed off to school. She could not join them.

“I think about this every day,” said Akpoe, the mother of a 13-year-old girl fathered by the shrine priest. “The people calling for this practice to be kept are wicked people. They are liars, they are evil, and they should be ignored.”

However, supporters of the custom maintain that real Trokosis are not slaves, but priestesses who are treated as queens.

There is even disagreement among supporters and opponents over what to call the practice. Traditionalists call it Troxovi and say it is a system of justice that deters people from crime.

“The lady brought to the shrine becomes a lady of prayer, a role model in that family,” said Osofo Kofi Ameve, a spiritual leader in the Afrikan Renaissance Mission. “The [women] become a link between the divinities and the family. The family atones for the sin. The Troxovi system is a deterrent. Having a fetish in the family is a reminder to live upright.”

Ameve said girls are never forced to enter shrine life; neither are they subjected to harsh treatment, unpaid labor or sexual abuse. “Our divinities kill if you commit sin,” he said.

Manavi Deku, 39, was given by her father as a gift when she was 12 in gratitude to a priest he believed cured his sterility. She insisted that she was happy at the shrine and was taught housekeeping, sewing and drumming. She swore that she was never mistreated.

Abloshi Dzogbetaku, 60, a Trokosi for about 35 years, said she enjoyed shrine life and never wanted to return home. Both women spoke in the presence of Ameve and other Trokosi supporters.

Pro-Trokosi activists also accuse those who oppose it of infringing on their religious freedoms and of trying to impose Christianity on them.

“It’s sheer envy of our religion,” said Togbe Akpanya Akorli, acting priest at a shrine that is home to 24 Trokosi women.

“Any law that is passed in this country and designed to destroy our customs and traditions will not be obeyed,” Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor, a Ghanaian minister of state and presidential aide, recently told fellow Trokosi supporters at a public forum. No government official was available to comment on the failure to enforce the law, but some activists believe that it is because many politicians privately worship at the shrines.

Those who want to do away with Trokosi insist that their mission is not to condemn religious beliefs, which are protected by the Ghanaian Constitution.

“We’ve always maintained that we’re not against the shrines themselves, not against traditional worship like the invocation of the gods,” said Emile Short, who heads Ghana’s Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, which investigated the shrines and deemed them discriminatory. “We are concerned about women and children who are kept there against their will and whose rights are being violated.”

International Needs says it has gotten more than 1,000 females out of the shrines in the past five years. It has established a school where they are taught skills such as cooking and weaving. A micro-credit program helps the women set up small businesses.

Shrine priests also have been given money to end the practice and take up activities such as animal husbandry. Azumah, of International Needs, said that four major shrines and 89 minor ones had agreed to give up the practice for a price. But few are happy about it.

Kortinor Akorli Ziggah, a priest for 12 years, stopped taking Trokosis almost two years ago in exchange for six cows and the equivalent of about $1,000 provided by International Needs. But he said the compensation was not enough, and he misses the 100-plus women who used to serve at his shrine. He said he treated them fairly and considered them to be his wives.

“The fact that one girl is in the shrine to avert calamities, [she] is regarded as a queen to that family because she alone is saving that whole family from being punished for the sin that has been committed,” said Ziggah, 52.

Money and material goods are paramount in the world of shrine priests, who typically will not receive visitors who come without the gift of two bottles of schnapps as a libation to the spirits and a payment in the range of $50.

Short, the human rights commissioner, said more education, dialogue and patience are needed to phase out the system but that legislation would ultimately have to be enforced.

“A few prosecutions is also part of the plan,” Short said. “We can’t allow the law to be flouted in such a flagrant way. We have given them enough notice about the illegality and immorality of the practice.”