Y is for… Yaa Asantewaa

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Now an anti-colonial heroine and a role model for women and girls throughout Africa, Yaa Asantewaa was prepared to do whatever it took to protect her land and culture. As Queen Mother, she held a great deal of power in the relatively egalitarian Asante nation—power which she used to incite a war against one of the largest colonial forces in the world. It was not a war Asantewaa would necessarily win in body, but her actions and what they symbolised produced a type of victory out of defeat.

Yaa Asantewaa’s birthdate is contested, but it was likely sometime during the 1840s. She was from the Besease clan and part of the Edweso stool line, and her parents were from a village in Kumasi, the ancestral home of the Asante people (modern-day Ghana). She had a keen interest in farming and never gave it up, not even when her brother, Kwasi Afrane (Ejisuhene; ruler of Edweso), appointed her to the role of Queen Mother of Ejisu. Ashanti culture is matrilineal, and so this role holds a great deal of importance and responsibility.

A black and white photo of Yaa Asantewaa dressed in military gear and holding a rifle
Yaa Asantewaa

As well as Queen Mother, Asantewaa was an actual mother; she married a man from Kumasi named Owusu Kwabena and they had a daughter, Ama Sewaa Brakatu. Kwabena had several other children from his other marriages, and he became celebrated as the father of ‘the three Amas’—his three daughters who played a crucial role in the formation of today’s Asante elite.

One of the many duties of the Queen Mother was being the Gatekeeper of the Golden Stool. The Stool is a highly important emblem of the Ashanti kingdom, and it is what the Asante people truly pay allegiance to, rather than any specific person. When the chiefdom becomes vacant, and this no-one sits on the Stool, it is the Queen Mother’s role to nominate candidates for its next occupant. As such, when Asantewaa’s brother died in 1894, she used her position as the second most powerful person in the empire to nominate her grandson as the next Ejisuhene.

But the Asante Confederacy was not a united nation and the British, who had been occupying Ashanti lands, took advantage of this. They were displeased with the Asantehene (the King of the Ashanti), Prempeh I, who had been trying to rejuvenate the influence of Kusami, and eventually exiled him, along with Asantewaa’s grandson, to the Seychelles. The two nations were left in a stalemate—some Asante chiefs sided with the British, but there were enough in opposition that the British couldn’t force the nation under their control.

It was at this point that Governor Sir Frederick Hodgson realised that the Asante would only recognise the authority of someone sitting on the Golden Stool. In March 1900, he demanded, among other things, that the Stool be given to him to sit on, as Her Majesty’s representative.

Deeply insulted, the Asante chiefs gathered at a secret meeting to discuss their response. As women held significant political power and Yaa Asantewaa was then the regent of the Ejisu-Juaben district, she was, of course, present, and it was her who took command when the chiefs struggled to decide their strategy.

She is said to have responded with this:

“Is it true that the bravery of Asante is no more? I cannot believe it. It cannot be! I must say this: if you, the men of Asante, will not go forward, then we will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight the white men. We will fight till the last of us falls on the battlefield. If you chiefs will not fight, you should exchange your loincloths for my undergarments.”

Yaa Asantewaa

Asantewaa was promptly elected to be commander-in-chief of the Asante forces—the first and only time a woman was given that role in Asante history. She donned her war dress (batakari kese) and raised an army of over 5,000 (some estimates go up to 20,000!) to fight back against the British.

A bronze statue of Yaa Asantewaa. She is holding a rifle.
Statue of Yaa Asantewaa in Ejisu

At first, it seemed as though things were going the Asante’s way. Asantewaa’s forces blockaded all routes into Kumasi where the British were holed up and began a siege that lasted seven months. Eventually, however, Governor Hodgson escaped and sent for reinforcements, thus turning the tide.

The conflict ended with the deaths of 1,000 British and their African allies, and 2,000 of the Ashanti. It was the bloodiest British-Ashanti conflict in their history.

The War of the Golden Stool, or the Yaa Asantewaa War as it became known, was a defeat for the Asante people. Asantewaa herself was captured and exiled to the Seychelles, along with other Asante military leaders, and she died there twenty years later, aged in her eighties.

However, Yaa Asantewaa’s story does not have such an undignified ending. Not long after her death, Prempeh I was released and allowed to return to Ghana. The Asante eventually achieved freedom (though, unfortunately, not until 1957). Her remains were brought back from the Seychelles and properly interred, and she now lives on as an Asante hero. 

And, most importantly of all, despite winning the war, Britain never got their hands on the Golden Stool. So, in the words of Asirifi Danquah, the author of a biography on Yaa Asantewaa: “Although militarily, Yaa Asantewaa lost the war, psychologically her resistance against the British attempt to dispossess Asante of the precious Golden Stool symbolizes a resounding victory for Yaa Asantewaa and the Asante Kingdom as the Queen of England could not capture the Golden Stool.”

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