Words spoken lightly on television can carry consequences that are anything but light.
A recent remark on a national entertainment platform suggested that Fantse is a language best suited for comedy, and that seriousness belongs elsewhere. The comment was received with general laughter on air. However, beneath the momentary amusement lies a deeper concern: what does it mean for a national media platform to reduce one of Ghana’s most historically consequential languages to a form of comic relief?
This is not a matter of wounded pride. It is a matter of historical truth, media ethics, and national cohesion.
Fantse and the Foundations of the Gold Coast
Any serious student of Gold Coast history understands that the Fantse were not peripheral actors in the making of modern Ghana. They were pivotal.
Long before the formal colonial state consolidated its authority inland, Fantse polities were engaged in complex diplomatic negotiations with European traders along the coast. Fantse states developed systems of confederation, commerce, and legal arbitration that shaped the early Atlantic economy. The Fante Confederation of 1868–1873, with its written constitution and organised executive structure, stands as one of the earliest attempts at constitutional governance in West Africa.
Cape Coast, Elmina, Anomabo, Saltpond, Winneba and Mankessim were not merely coastal towns. They were crucibles of political thought, Christian missions, Western education, journalism, and legal reform. It is no accident, therefore, that some of the earliest newspapers in the Gold Coast emerged from this intellectual corridor.
The very first newspaper in the colony, the Royal Gold Coast Gazette and Commercial Intelligencer, began publication in Cape Coast in 1822. Indigenous ownership followed in 1857 when Charles Bannerman established the West African Herald. From 1874, when James Hutton Brew founded the Gold Coast Times, there was a surge in African-owned newspapers, many of which were based in Cape Coast and the surrounding Fantse towns.
Ownership and editorship of these newspapers between the 1870s and the 1930s were largely in the hands of notable Fantse nationalist figures such as James Hutton Brew, J. E. Casely Hayford, John Mensah Sarbah, Rev. Attoh Ahuma, and Joseph P. Brown. These publications were not entertainment sheets. They were serious, leading platforms for constitutional argument, anti-imperial protest, civic education, and political reform. They shaped public opinion and trained a generation in the language of rights and governance.
Early nationalist figures and coastal elites used Fantse and English interchangeably in political debate, petitions, and reform movements. The Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society, whose early leadership was overwhelmingly Fantse, mobilised resistance to colonial land legislation and organised deputations to London. Fantse towns became centres of organised opposition, from resistance to the Poll Tax of 1852 to later constitutional agitation.
The local language that carried those debates, sermons, petitions, and editorials was Fantse.
To suggest, therefore, that Fantse is somehow unserious is to disregard its historical role in shaping political consciousness, anti-colonial critique, and public discourse.
Education and Intellectual Life
Fantse-speaking communities were early adopters and reformers of formal education in the Gold Coast. Missionary translation work in the nineteenth century developed written Fantse for theology, philosophy, and civic instruction. Literacy expanded through the language. Schools in the coastal belt produced generations of lawyers, civil servants, economists, academics, medical professionals, journalists, and diplomats.
Language is not merely a tool of expression. It is a medium of thought. Fantse served as a bridge language in missionary education, in court proceedings, in chieftaincy arbitration, and in public advocacy. To dismiss it as suitable for comedy is to misunderstand the relationship between language and knowledge production.
Governance and National Leadership
In the Fourth Republic alone, Fantse-speaking Ghanaians have occupied some of the highest offices of the land, including both the presidency and the vice presidency. President John Evans Atta Mills, Vice President from 1997 to 2001 and President of the Republic from 2009 until his passing in 2012, was a proud son of Ekumfi in the Central Region.
Vice Presidents of Fantse-speaking background have included Joseph William Swain de Graft-Johnson, who served under President Hilla Limann from 1979 to 1981; Kow Nkensen Arkaah (a Fantse-speaking Guan from Senya Bereku), who served under President Jerry John Rawlings from 1993 to 1996; William Edmund Davidson Paa Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, who served under President John Dramani Mahama from 2013 to 2017; and Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, who currently serves as Vice President. Beyond these constitutional offices, Fantse professionals have served as Chief Justices, ambassadors, central bankers, university leaders, senior military officers, and captains of industry.
This tradition did not begin in 1992. Fantse personalities featured prominently in nationalist organisations such as the National Congress of British West Africa, the Gold Coast Youth Movement, the United Gold Coast Convention, and later the Convention People’s Party. Figures such as J. E. Casely Hayford, Kobina Sekyi, J. W. De Graft Johnson, George Alfred Grant, Kojo Botsio and others were deeply woven into the political evolution of the colony and the independent state.
It is true that language does not confer competence, but it reflects the social worlds that produce leadership. The repeated emergence of national leaders from Fantse-speaking backgrounds underscores the language’s embeddedness in Ghana’s political and civic culture.
One cannot reasonably argue, then, that a language that has produced presidents, vice presidents, jurists, scholars, business executives, diplomats, and policy architects is fit only for humour.
Culture, Law, and Public Service
Fantse has shaped Ghanaian cultural expression through music, literature, films, theatre, choral traditions, and oratory. Its proverbial heritage carries legal and ethical reasoning that continues to guide community arbitration and traditional governance. Fantse idioms have framed discussions on land, stool authority, accountability, and communal obligation.
In journalism, law, medicine, engineering, business, and public service, Fantse professionals have been integral to nation-building across decades.
A language that sustains this range of contribution cannot be relegated to comic performance without distorting historical reality.
The Danger of Linguistic Hierarchy
The greater danger in remarks of this kind lies in the subtle creation of linguistic hierarchy, a process in which media platforms play a significant role. By broadcasting such comments without critical engagement or contextualisation, media outlets inadvertently contribute to the reinforcement of harmful social distinctions between languages.
Media institutions have an ethical responsibility not only to represent linguistic diversity accurately but also to avoid perpetuating narratives that assign unequal value to different Ghanaian languages. Failure to uphold this responsibility risks normalizing linguistic hierarchies within the wider sociocultural landscape.
When one Ghanaian language is framed as serious and another as comic, the implication is not only cultural but social. It risks signalling that some identities carry gravitas while others carry amusement. In a multilingual republic, that is a dangerous message.
Linguistic stereotyping can harden into prejudice. Prejudice can feed into exclusion. And exclusion, even when subtle, undermines national unity.
Ghana’s strength lies in its pluralism. Akan languages, Ewe, Ga, Dagbani, Nzema, Gonja, Kasem and others contribute to the mosaic of national identity. None should be trivialised on a national broadcast platform.
The Responsibility of Media Platforms
This matter is also in many ways a media management issue. Television is not a private conversation. It is a curated public space. When language stereotyping occurs on air, producers, hosts, and editorial supervisors bear responsibility for how it is framed, challenged, or corrected.
Media managers must recognise three key principles:
1. Editorial guardrails: Broadcasters must establish clear internal guidelines regarding ethnic and linguistic commentary. Humour that diminishes cultural identity should not pass unexamined.
2. Immediate contextualisation: When problematic statements occur, hosts should provide balance in real time. A simple clarifying remark can prevent misinterpretation and demonstrate institutional awareness.
3. Post-broadcast accountability: If a comment generates legitimate public concern, the platform should address it. Silence may be interpreted as endorsement.
Professional media practice requires sensitivity to Ghana’s diverse sociolinguistic landscape. Entertainment platforms are not exempt from ethical standards simply because the format is light-hearted.
Internalised Stereotypes
Some may argue that because both individuals involved are of Fantse background, the comment is harmless. That reasoning is flawed.
Internalised stereotypes are still stereotypes. Communities, like individuals, can absorb external narratives about themselves and repeat them in ways that appear light-hearted but carry deeper implications. When members of a group publicly reduce their own language to caricature, the gesture may be framed as humour. Yet once transmitted on a national platform, it ceases to be private irony and becomes public messaging.
Cultural self-deprecation does not neutralise impact. On the contrary, it can legitimise perceptions that outsiders might hesitate to express. It must be noted that laughter can function as social endorsement, while repetition can transform a careless remark into accepted shorthand. Over time, what begins as a joke may solidify into an assumption.
In a country where language often intersects with questions of identity, power, and belonging, such assumptions are not trivial. They shape how young people perceive their mother tongue. They also influence how audiences subconsciously rank languages in terms of authority and seriousness. They further contribute to subtle hierarchies that linger beneath public discourse.
Identity does not immunise speech from consequence. When words travel through national media, they acquire weight beyond intention. The responsibility attached to that amplification cannot be dismissed simply because the speaker shares the heritage being diminished.
A Call for Historical Consciousness
The issue before us is not about outrage. It is about historical consciousness. Fantse is a language of diplomacy, scholarship, governance, and industry. It is also a language of humour, as all living languages are. The ability to generate comedy is not a weakness; it is a sign of expressive richness. But to confine it to that role is to misread its place in the national story.
Ghana’s media houses operate within a fragile civic environment where ethnicity, language, and politics remain sensitive fault lines. Leaders in broadcasting must therefore cultivate historical awareness alongside entertainment value.
We must not lose sight of the fact that public discourse shapes perception. Perception shapes reality. If we permit careless hierarchies of language to settle into our airwaves, we chip away at the dignity of communities that have given this nation intellectual leadership, administrative competence, and civic vision.
Fantse helped build the Gold Coast. It helped shape modern Ghana. It continues to produce leaders in public life.
It deserves respect and seriousness.
(The writer is an award-winning media executive, historian, educator, and leadership consultant with graduate training in business, communication, education, and African Studies)
