GHANA: Ghana struggles to get rid of Trokosi: a traditional practice where young girls are given to fetish priests as sexual and domestic slaves

Record ID: 455407

  • Title: GHANA: Ghana struggles to get rid of Trokosi: a traditional practice where young girls are given to fetish priests as sexual and domestic slaves
  • Date: 1st December 2006
  • Summary: (AD1) ACCRA, GHANA (RECENT)(REUTERS) POSTER THAT READS: 'STOP TROKOSI NOW! RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF GIRLS AND WOMEN' REVEREND WALTER PIMPONG WORKING ON HIS LAPTOP PIMPONG'S FACE PIMPONG'S FINGERS ON THE KEYBOARD (SOUNDBITE)(English) REVEREND WALTER PIMPONG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL NEEDS (NGO), SAYING: "If you come to think about the fact we are still keeping our own children in shrines like we would keep...other slaves in the past, I think it is very very serious and we have to really look at it. This period or this time of celebration should actually help us to go back and make changes in our way of dealing with this Trokosi issue. PHOTO OF TROKOSI (SOUNDBITE)(English) REVEREND WALTER PIMPONG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL NEEDS (NGO), SAYING: "There are people who strongly believe that the practice is cultural and should be maintained, and they are working very hard to see to it that the institution remains, they have bunched together and they are very influential and they are working at the corridors of power influencing policies here and there." ANOTHER PHOTO OF TROKOSI
  • Embargoed: 16th December 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Ghana
  • Country: Ghana
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVA7REEBS1UFBPB1QDD1P7KGZVW2
  • Story Text: These are the "wives of the gods" or Trokosi as they are known in Ghana. They go by different names in Benin and Togo where the tradition of giving pre-teenage girls to fetish priests as sexual and domestic slaves is practiced.
    The girls are usually handed over by their relatives as payment for loans or in gratitude for answered prayers from the shrines the priests watch over.
    A law that stipulates a 3 year prison sentence for anyone caught practising Trokosi was passed in 1998, but the tradition still continues, and no one has been convicted yet.
    Several human rights groups are working to stop the practice, but Trokosi has not been easy to eliminate because it is so deeply rooted in various religious and social elements of traditional Ghanaian society.
    "Some people are saying that Trokosi is a bad practice, that Trokosi makes you a slave, I do not know where the people who say that heard it from. Trokosi is wealth," says Togbui Naza, a priest in Afife, a town in Ghana's Volta Region.
    "I am just here, people come here to me and bring their relatives and say this is what we have done, we don't convince them to become Trokosis, unlike how Christians do with evangelism," Naza continued.
    There are several categories of Trokosi, but the most common form are virgins who are sent to the priests because of a sin or crime committed by an older family member who is usually male. The Trokosi acts as a kind of sacrifice. Her toil and servitude is believed to cleanse the family and rescue them from the anger of the shrine's gods.
    Most Trokosi were not consulted, do not attend school and are shunned by most people outside the shrine's close-knit fraternity. But the priests say the girls do not suffer.
    "They get a good life, because let's you travel from Accra, without any guards and your goods are stolen, but you can't get any help at the police station, then you will run to me, Togbui Anyingba and ask me to look for the lost item and you pledge say, a sum of 10 million cedis or a human being, when the culprit is caught you must pay the human being who then becomes a burden on me to feed him or her," explains fetish priest Togbui Anyingba.
    But groups like International Needs, an Accra-based NGO run by Reverend Walter Pimpong, see Trokosi very differently from the priests in Afife.
    "If you come to think about the fact we are still keeping our own children in shrines like we would keep...other slaves in the past, I think it is very very serious and we have to really look at it. This period or this time of celebration should actually help us to go back and make changes in our way of dealing with this Trokosi issue," Pimpong says.
    Over the years, groups like International Needs have been able to free several hundred Trokosi by negotiating with individual priests. Pimpong claims that anyone who wants to join the fight against Trokosi better prepare to contend with political power as well as the religious and cultural powers of the priests.
    "There are people who strongly believe that the practice is cultural and should be maintained, and they are working very hard to see to it that the institution remains, they have bunched together and they are very influential and they are working at the corridors of power influencing policies here and there," Pimpong said.
    The other forms of Trokosi are those girls who the community believes were specifically chosen by the shrine's deities or were born after prayers were offered to the gods.
    Whatever the underlying reasons may be, awareness and criticisms over the practice in Ghana seem to be growing among the population.
    "Trokosi is a bad system being practiced in the country, and people who practice it, you know, infringe on the rights of the populace, especially the underprivileged, women and children who are exploited and put under a system that really does not promote their well-being and welfare," Adapoe Emmanuel, a biomedical scientist.
    "The young ladies, virgins, innocent, did nothing wrong, have to sacrifice their virginity for something their forefathers did, that one (inaudible), its very bad, I don't think it is a good practice," adds Grace Agyemang, a student.
    "Apart from the laws, which are to be passed to eliminate the act of Trokosi, I think we have to play on the other side too, where the problem is coming from, the people need to be educated and really understand why they have to stop what they do," said Joshua Asigbey, another student.
    But those sentiments are coming from Accra, an urban centre where its highly unlikely that Trokosi sympathisers can be found. Until Ghana's government is willing to step up the battle against the ancient practice and speak directly to the priests and their surrounding communities, the girls and women of Trokosi will have to go on living a life and serving a man they did not choose.
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