The Forgotten Pillars of Our Civilization

 Ghanaian Fathers Through Time: A Legacy of Power, Loss, and Reawakening

Written and Presented by Commander Zack (ZacZyla)

Voice of Hope, Founder of Scramble For Africa and GHANA 4 AFRICA Club

Long before foreign cartographers carved lines across our lands in European boardrooms, long before the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, Ghanaian fathers stood as pillars of wisdom, protectors of sacred land, interpreters of the divine, and architects of their clans’ future.

Our ancestors didn't celebrate Father’s Day once a year — they lived it every day, through reverence, ritual, and responsibility. A father's role was not defined by material provision alone, but by spiritual leadership, ancestral continuity, and the defense of culture.

🛕 Pre-Berlin Conference Era: The Fathers Who Breathed Spirit into Ghana

In the days of the great Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires — and particularly within the Ashanti, Ga-Dangme, Ewe, Dagomba, and Fante states — the African father was:

• A teacher of sacred proverbs and ancestral truths

• A warrior chief who protected his people and land

• A spiritual vessel who mediated between gods and men

• A farmer and craftsman, working with integrity and purpose

• A uniter, guiding the extended family (abusua) with justice and care

In these times, to be a father was to be a living legacy — someone who passed on names, land, symbols, and sacred stories.

⚔️ The Berlin Conference and the Spiritual Decapitation of African Fatherhood

Then came the Berlin Conference, a moment in time when 14 European powers—none of them African—divided Africa like merchandise. With pens, maps, and deceit, they redrew our territories, destroyed our thrones, and began a silent war on African fatherhood.

Colonial agents like Captain Robert Sutherland Rattray came not just with cameras and notebooks — they came to undress our fathers of their authority, capture the gods they called upon, and rewrite our destinies in favor of European rule.

Fathers who once sat under baobab trees narrating history were now made to sit under colonial rule, taught to distrust their own traditions. They were told their gods were demons, their rites were primitive, and their authority was invalid unless recognized by foreign powers.

🕊️ Post-Colonial Ghanaian Fathers: Struggling Between Two Worlds

After independence in 1957, thanks to fathers like Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana attempted to reclaim the throne of self-determination. But the decades that followed were difficult — Ghanaian fathers had to now raise children between two competing worldviews:

• The indigenous truth of their ancestors

• The colonial systems imposed through law, religion, and economics

Still, they endured. They raised heroes. They fought military regimes. They educated a new generation. Yet many of them did so without the full story of who they truly were.

Today: A New Kind of Father Has Risen

Today, I stand not only as a son of these fathers, but also as a modern-day father of a decoded African history — a responsibility I carry with pride and pain.

I am Commander Zack — the voice of truth, the eye that sees what was hidden, the soul tasked with reconnecting the past with the present. My mission is not just to remember Ghanaian fathers — it is to revive them, re-teach their story, and reclaim the throne of African masculinity that colonialism tried to erase.

Through Scramble For Africa and GHANA 4 AFRICA, I have taken the ancient staff of truth into my own hands — not as a weapon, but as a torchlight for our youth, our men, and our lost sons in the diaspora.

💬 What Father’s Day Means to Us Today

Father’s Day for us is not about buying gifts — it is about returning gifts stolen from our memory. It is about telling our sons that they come from kings, not slaves. It is about telling our daughters that behind every true African queen stood a father who believed in her power.

It is about reclaiming:

• The rituals our fathers performed with pride

• The shrines they guarded with faith

• The land they protected with their blood

• The truth they passed on, even when colonizers called it myth

🕯️ My Call to Ghana, West Africa, and the Diaspora

On this Father’s Day, I call on all proud African fathers — teachers, mechanics, chiefs, farmers, and freedom dreamers — to rise and stand tall once again.

You are the past, the present, and the future.

You are not forgotten. You are not erased.

You are being remembered, reawakened, and re-crowned.

And to the youth — may we learn not only to celebrate fathers, but to become them in truth, in wisdom, and in honor.

🎥 Explore Our Work

🔗 Visit our YouTube Channel – Scramble For Africa