Ritual servitude is a practice in Ghana, Togo, and Benin where traditional religious shrines (popularly called fetish shrines in Ghana) take human beings, usually young virgin girls, in payment for services or in religious atonement for alleged misdeeds of a family member. In Ghana and in Togo, it is practiced by the Ewe people in the Volta region; in Benin, it is practiced by the Fon.FAQ About the Form of Slavery Called Trokosi, ECM Publications, 2002, p.1
These shrine slaves serve the priests, elders, and owners of a traditional religious shrine without remuneration and without their consent, although the consent of the family or clan may be involved. Those who practice ritual servitude usually feel that the girl is serving the god or gods of the shrine and is married to the gods of the shrine.Field Findings on the System of Slavery Commonly Known as Trokosi, L W Rouster, M.R.E., ECMAfrica Publications, 2005, p. 1.
If a girl runs away or dies, she must be replaced by another girl from the family. Some girls in ritual servitude are the third or fourth girl in their family suffering for the same crime, sometimes for something as minor as the loss of trivial property.
This form of slavery is still practiced in the Volta Region in Ghana, despite being outlawed in 1998, and despite carrying a minimum three-year prison sentence for conviction. Among the Ewes who practice the ritual in Ghana, variations of the practice are also called trokosi, fiashidi, and woryokwe, with trokosi being the most common of those terms."The Revealed Myths about Trokosi Slavery/Human Rights Violations" by Stephen Awudi Gadri, Authorhouse, UK, 2010 In Togo and Benin it is called voodoosi or vudusi."Field Findings on the System of Slavery Commonly Known as Trokosi", L W Rouster, M.R.E., ECMAfrica Publications, 2005, p.1. Victims are commonly known in Ghana as fetish slaves because the gods of traditional African religions are popularly referred to as fetishes and the priests who serve them as fetish priests.
Use of the terms "servitude", "slave" and "slavery" Human rights organizations and other NGO's commonly use the words "servitude", "slaves", and "slavery" as non-technical, popularly understood terms that describe the reality of this practice. They point out that the practice meets all the commonly accepted definitions of slavery.Rouster, Wives of the gods, p. 2. Shrine slaves perform services which are not voluntary and are not paid. Their lives are totally controlled by the shrines, who in a sense become their owners.
Proponents of the system of ritual servitude by any of its names object to this term, but except for the technical terms "trokosi", "vudusi", "fiashidi", "woryokoe", the problem is coming up with a suitable alternative. Sometimes they have compared the trokosi to traditional queen mothers, implying a sense of respect for them, but one representative of an NGO who claims to have interviewed hundreds of participants reports that the participants themselves are offended at being called queens and insist they are/were simply slaves.Rouster, Wives of the gods p. 2.
Juliana Dogbadzi, who served 17 years as a trokosi, says she was "slave to a fetish priest".Juliana Dogbadzi, PARADE magazine, "One Voice," September 24, 2000, p. 7. Cudjoe Adzumah made a study of the practice in the Tongu Districts of Ghana and defined "trokosi" as "slaves of the gods".Cudjoe Adzumah, "The Trokosi Practice in N Tongu: Its Impact on the Rights of Women and Children, BA Thesis, Sociology Department, University of Ghana, 1996.
Emmanuel Kwaku Akeampong, a native Ghanaian of Harvard University, says that "tro" means a "god" and "kosi" is used at different times to mean either "slave", "virgin", or "wife".Emmanuel Kwaku Akeampong, Between the Sea and the Lagoon, an Eco-Social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana c. 1850 to Recent Times, Ohio University Press, Athens, OH, James Currey, Oxford, 2001, p. 221. Anita Ababio, a Ghanaian lawyer who has extensively researched the issue, explains that the Adangbe and Ga word, "woryokwe" comes from "won" meaning cult, and "yokwe", meaning "slave". Thus, she claims, a "woryokwe" is a "slave of a cult".Anita Mamusina Heymann Ababio, "Trokosi, Woryokwe, Cultural and Individual Rights: A Case Study of Women's Empowerment and Community Rights in Ghana, St. Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, August 22, 2000, p. 4. Robert Kwame Amen in Ghana Studies also refers to trokosi as an institution of slavery.Robert Kwame Amen, Trokosi (Child Slavery) in Ghana, a Policy Approach, Ghana Studies I, 1998, p. 35-62. Likewise, Stephen Awudi Gadri, President of the Trokosi Abolition Fellowship of Ghana, and also himself from a shrine family, claims that trokosi are "slaves of the deities of the shrines".Stephen Awudi Gadri, History of the Trokosi System in Ghana, Vol. 1, Paper presented to the First National Congress on the Trokosi System, June 29, 2000, p. 4. "Though euphemistically, they are called the 'deity's wives', yet they serve the priests and elders of the shrine and do all the hard chores, as well as becoming sexual partners of the priest", Gadri says.Gadri, p. 7. He also says, "the trokosi works for the priest without any form of remuneration whatsoever", and "it is a form of slavery".Gadri, p. 8-9. Ababio claims, "The servile status of the trokosi is seen in the duties they perform in the shrines, for which no payment is made...unfortunately for most trokosi, when they are freed they are still bound by rituals which keep them connected or attached to a shrine for life. Practically it means that these victims of ritual servitude always have the rights of ownership exercised over them."Ababio, p. 71. She then goes on to quote Article 7 of The Convention on Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, which defines a slave as "a person over whom any or all powers attaching to the rights of ownership are exercised". Angela Dwamena-Aboagye, a Ghanaian lawyer, says ritual servitude is "slavery, pure and simple. It violates every human right."Ababio, quoting The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, 1956, ECOSOC, Res. 608, XXI, 1956. This convention has been ratified and acceded to by Ghana.
Some of the traditional priests also admit the trokosi are slaves. For example, Togbe Adzimashi Adukpo, a shrine priest, admitted in an interview with BBC in February 2001, "Yes, the girls are my slaves. They are the property of my shrine."Humphrey Hawksley, "Ghana's Trapped Slaves", BBC News, February 8, 2001.
On the question of whether trokosi is a form of slavery and whether sexual abuse is involved the answers are polarized into two camps. Some traditionalists defend the system saying that it is simply a cultural practice of certain shrines and as such should be protected. These defenders claim that while instances of sexual abuse may occur, there is no evidence that sexual or physical abuse is an ingrained or systematic part of the practice. According to them, the practice explicitly forbids a trokosi to engage in sexual activity or contact. The other camp is represented by NGOs working with the trokosi and by former trokosi who have been liberated. These opponents of the practice have recorded testimony of hundreds of former (now liberated) trokosi who say that sexual abuse was a regular part of their time at the shrine, claiming the number of children born to them by the priest and shrine elders as evidence and witnesses.Rouster, Field Findings, p. 6.
Although virtually everyone recognizes that the victims themselves have no choice or say in their lot, Stephen Awudi Gadri says that "both the parents (of the victims) and the girls (that is, the victims) have no choice".The Revealed Myths about Trokosi Slavery", p. 24.
Religious connections Simon Abaxe has researched the practice in Ghana. He says that ritual servitude is part of African traditional religion in some places, but not a universal practice of that religion.Simon Abaxer, "Trokosi Situation on the Ground in Volta Region", ECMAfrica Publications, 2007, p. 1 A form of ritual servitude is also practiced in India and Nepal as part of Hindu religion called Devadasi, and various forms of it were part of ancient religious traditions of devotion to various gods and goddesses.
Reasons There are two major reasons for the practice of ritual servitude. Most common is the concept of atonement. A girl is given to the shrine or to the gods as a kind of "living sacrifice" to atone for the real or alleged crimes of a family member or ancestor, as discerned by the priest of the shrine. During a process of divination he calls on the gods of the shrine to reveal this information. Girls given to atone for such crimes in a sense are considered a kind of savior, for as long as she remains in the shrine or under its control, the anger of the god is believed to be averted from the rest of the family.Rouster, Field Findings p. 5.
The second most frequent reason for the practice of ritual servitude is that the girl is given for the continuous repayment of the gods for services believed to have been obtained or favors believed to have been rendered from the shrine. Thus a girl may be given into ritual servitude when someone believes a child has been conceived or a person has been healed, for example, through the intervention of the shrine.
Proponents of the practice claim that some participants choose a life of ritual servitude of their own volition, but human rights organizations claim that while this may be theoretically possible, they haven't found one yet.Rouster, Field Findings p. 6.
In the past, the traditions of the shrines were veiled in secrecy, and people dared not discuss them, fearing the wrath of the gods if they dared to do so. For this reason, the practice was neither widely known nor well understood. In more recent times, since the 1990s at least, abolitionists and human rights advocates have penetrated the veil of secrecy. The issue has been widely discussed, for instance, in the newspapers and on the radio in Ghana.Every Child Ministries, The Three Pillars of Trokosi, p. 1.
Origin and history
In the Dahomey Empire