Trokosi: slave to the gods
The trokosi system is a traditional religious practice found in parts of Ghana, Benin and Togo. The trokosi practice plays an important part in the rural justice system. When a crime is commited, the fetish priest consults the gods to ascertain which family has committed the crime. In order to atone for the crime, that family will have to provide a virgin girl to serve at the shrine. Otherwise, the Ewe people believe, deaths and misfortunes will be visited on the family. The trokosi girl now belongs to the gods and therefore the priest. She is effectively a slave, expected to do the hard labour for the priest without receiving any payment or even food. As a 'wife' to the gods, she will also sleep with the god. It is believed the god visits the girl in the form of the priest. Girls may be expected to serve a set number of years or there may be a generational contract whereby everytime a trokosi woman dies in the shrine, someone else from the family must replace her and serve for life.
The practice was made illegal in Ghana in the 1998 yet advocacy groups such as International Needs remain concerned the practice has gone underground and trokosi women are still being brought in to the shrines. In July 2011, the Commission of Human Rights and Justice issued a press release that they were monitoring 17 shrines and 6 new cases of trokosi initiation. Powerful and political lobbying groups campaign against criminalisation of the practice, arguing that it is part of their traditional heritage and the practice is misunderstood. Ghana News Agency quote Osofo Kwakuvi Azasu, High Priest of the Afrikania Mission, saying that the “trokosi” shrine was nothing but a convent where women who were privileged in society were sent to be trained to become useful to the community through skills training. Walter Pimpong of International Needs responds that amongst this debate, we must listen to the first hand stories of women who were in the trokosi system rather than listen to third parties.
