By Richard Dablah
The earth seems restless these days. She groans under the weight of machines that dig where only prayers once entered. Yet beneath the hum of engines, there is another vibration, something ancient stirring in the soil. From the red heart of Ghana, women rise once more, not as echoes of a forgotten age but as embodiments of memory itself.
They call them queen mothers, female chiefs, earth’s daughters. Yet their titles mean less than their presence. There is something in their silence that commands attention, in their courage that recalls Yaa Asantewaa standing before trembling men, declaring that if they would not fight for their land, the women would. It is as if her spirit, long resting in Ejisu, has diffused into the rivers and forests, waiting for those who still remember what it means to belong to the earth rather than to own it.
Each time one of these women confronts a galamsey pit, she is not confronting men but forgetfulness. Civilization, in its hunger for gold, has lost the language of reverence. The rivers that once carried libations now carry mercury. The groves that were once altars now stand stripped and silent. Yet these women return to the scarred landscape with the calm of priestesses. They do not seek victory. They seek restoration.
One such woman, it is said, was offered GH₵2 million to turn away, and she refused. Her “no” carried the weight of centuries. In that moment, she was not bargaining with miners; she was speaking with the ancestors. The bribe was not money; it was a test of soul. She knew, as Yaa Asantewaa knew, that some things cannot be sold without unmaking the world that holds us.
I imagine her standing in the open sun, her cloth heavy with dust and meaning. Her refusal was not born of defiance but of remembrance. To remember is to resist. She carried within her the wisdom of those who poured libation before planting, who asked permission before cutting a tree, who saw in water not utility but spirit. Her silence, her stance, her dignity, all were forms of prayer.
The African woman is the earth’s mirror. Her patience, her grief, her endurance, each reflects the slow intelligence of soil. Like the land, she absorbs pain and still brings forth life. When she rises in anger, it is not rebellion but balance seeking itself. Her resistance does not shout; it breathes. It flows through roots and rivers, through rituals and songs.
These women chiefs are not mere leaders of their people; they are custodians of being. Their acts blur the line between governance and guardianship. When they cleanse polluted rivers, they are not performing environmental work; they are conducting a ceremony. When they pour libation, they are not appealing to deities; they are restoring dialogue between the living and the earth that sustains them.
This is a kind of metaphysical leadership that the modern world cannot quantify. It is leadership born of listening, to water, to wind, to silence. In their defiance, these women restore to politics what philosophy once sought to preserve: the sense that existence itself is sacred.
I often think of Yaa Asantewaa, but not as a statue or symbol. I imagine her spirit walking barefoot beside these women, whispering through the rustle of their clothes. I see her in the Enchi queen mother who seized miners’ excavators, in the women who still guard the sacred groves of Akrokerri. Each act of defiance is not protest; it is remembrance. Each gesture reawakens the ancient covenant between woman and world.
To witness them is to see Africa remembering herself. It is important to realize that leadership, at its origin, was never about power but about protection. The woman-chief does not rule; she restores. She stands where the soil bleeds and calls the people home.
And as I write this, the wind brings an old proverb:
“ *Asase Yaa nni awu, the Earth does not die.* ”
Perhaps that is the secret these women know. As long as the daughters of the earth still stand guard, the world itself will remember how to heal. For the earth does not forget her daughters; it is through them that she speaks.
