Ghana’s Asante kingdom: Celebrating the king banished by the British to Seychelles

The field outside the royal palace in the Ghanaian city of Kumasi was filled with an exuberant crowd, celebrating the return 100 years ago of an exiled king.

Prempeh was the Asante king, or “Asantehene”, of the late 19th Century who resisted British demands that his territory be swallowed up into the expanding Gold Coast protectorate.

A British army from the coast marched about 200km (124 miles) to Kumasi in 1896, and took Prempeh as well as about 50 relatives, chiefs and servants as prisoners, and then looted his palace.

The prisoners were taken to the coastal fort at Elmina, before being shipped to Sierra Leone, and, in 1900, on to the distant Indian Ocean islands of Seychelles.

It was not until 1924 that the British allowed Prempeh to return home, by which time he was an elderly man who arrived in Kumasi wearing a European suit and hat.

It is a tragic story, but also one of pride and resistance.

“The British did all they could but they couldn’t break the spirit of Asante,” shouted the master of ceremonies. The current Asantehene, Osei Tutu II, was paraded on his palanquin through the crowd, weighed down by magnificent gold jewellery, amid a glorious cacophony of musket explosions, drum beats and the blare of horns made from elephant tusks.

Asante culture is alive and well.

But Prempeh’s exile did have a lasting impact on both the Asante kingdom and Seychelles, although perhaps not in ways intended by British officials at the time.

The guest of honour at the centenary celebrations, held in Kumasi at the weekend, was Seychelles’ President Wavel Ramkalawan, who said “it was an honour, though sad, for us to receive your great king”.

“He showed respect to our people, and in return received the full love of the Seychelles,” Ramkalawan added.

The proof of that is in family ties cherished to this day.

Princess Mary Prempeh Marimba is Prempeh’s great-grand-daughter. Her grandfather, James, the son of Prempeh, married a Seychellois woman, and initially stayed on the islands after his father left.

Mary is a nursing supervisor in Seychelles’ capital, Victoria, and travelled to Kumasi with her daughter Suzy, to re-unite with dozens of long-lost relatives and discover more about her Asante heritage.

“There are so many mixed emotions, my great-grandfather had so many difficulties, and this is a sad history, but I also come here and celebrate with my family,” she said.

The Asante exiles in Seychelles lived in “Ashanti Town”, on an old sugar plantation, Le Rocher, on the main island Mahé, overlooking the ocean and surrounded by coconut, mango, breadfruit, orange and jackfruit trees.

Prempeh lived in the estate’s villa, and was given “every respect and dignity”, according to Dr Penda Choppy, a Seychellois academic who also travelled to Kumasi for the centenary events.

In 1901, the Asante community grew, as Yaa Asantewaa, a queen who led the final resistance to the British, and some 20 chiefs and attendants, were also sent to Seychelles following their surrender.

The long years of exile changed Prempeh. He learnt to read and write, and urged the Asante children to attend school.

He embraced Christianity, and, in the words of Asante historian and politician Albert Adu Boahen, “rigidly and uncompromisingly imposed that religion on his fellow political prisoners and their children”.

In the Anglican Church of St Paul’s, the Asante were not the only exiles in the congregation, for they often sat with King Mwanga of Buganda and King Kabalega of Bunyoro, both from modern-day Uganda.

Indeed, at various times, the British also sent political prisoners from Egypt, Palestine, Zanzibar, the Maldives, Malaysia and Cyprus to Seychelles, which was known as a “prison without bars”, as its isolation made the perfect location, from the British point of view, to put troublesome opponents.

The years went by, and Prempeh dreamt of home.

In 1918, he wrote to King George V and pleaded to be allowed to return.

“Consider how wretched I am for I was being taken prisoner… for now 22 years, and now how miserable to see that father, mother, brother and nearly three quarters of the chiefs are dead. The remaining quarter, some are blind, some worn out with old age and the rest being attacked of diverse diseases,” Prempeh wrote.

A few years later, the British, perhaps aware that Prempeh’s potential death in exile could bring political problems in Asante, finally relented.

In November 1924 Prempeh travelled by ship back to West Africa with some 50 Asante companions, most of whom had been born in Seychelles.

“We who do not know him are more than anxious to see his face,” wrote a prominent local newspaper, The Gold Coast Leader.

In Kumasi, many slept by the train station to greet him and, according to a British official, “the scene presented by the huge assembly…. with their white head bands signifying rejoicing or victory, some laughing and cheering, while others wept with emotion, was a most moving and never-to-be-forgotten sight”.

In theory “Mr Edward Prempeh” was now a private citizen, but his people treated him as a king, and presented him with royal regalia, including the Golden Stool, said to contain the soul of the Asante nation.

Prempeh died in 1931, and his successor, Prempeh II, was restored to the position of Asantehene in 1935.

Ivor Agyeman-Duah, an Asante scholar and director of the palace museum, helped organise the centenary celebrations.

They were of added personal significance, as his great grandfather, Kwame Boatin, was one of the chiefs exiled alongside Prempeh.

But as Mr Agyeman-Duah acknowledges, exile, for all its pain, also brought opportunities for those who suffered it.

Kwame Boatin’s children went on to be ambassadors and leading civil servants, able to adapt to the dramatic changes that Asante, the Gold Coast and later an independent Ghana, underwent in the 20th Century.

“The exiles had been exposed to the world, and they had something to contribute,” he said. “What they brought back still inspires us, their dedication to scholarship and public service.”

In a village one hour’s drive from Kumasi, I met Princess Molly Prempeh, an animated lady in her 80s, and also a great-granddaughter of Prempeh.

“I’m the only remaining person here who was born in Seychelles,” she told me.

“I’m Seychellois and Ghanaian – I was five years old when I came back.”

In her old age, Molly has reconnected with the beautiful islands of her birth, and visited twice.

The Seychellois are delighted by the “Old Creole”, which includes more French words, she remembers from childhood.

“When I walk down the streets they shout ‘Heh Princess, how are you?’ ‘Princess, venez, venez, tu bien?’ (come, come here, you good?) they are lovely people. They love the Prempehs in Sesel (Seychelles).”

But Molly’s visits are also tinged with sadness. She goes to the grave of her mother, Hugette, who brought Molly as a young girl to the Gold Coast in 1948.

Hugette later returned to Seychelles, where she eventually died.

Even in her old age, the story goes, she loved to speak the Twi language she had been taught as a little girl by Prempeh herself.

One family’s story of loss, exile and endurance.

Barnaby Phillips is a former BBC correspondent and author of Loot; Britain and the Benin Bronzes