Ewe Homeland Study Group Foundation (HSFG)
The Ewe people are spread between Togo and Ghana. The Hausa people inhabit the inland areas of West Africa and are completely different from the Ewe. The Hausa are largely Muslim and over time intermarried with Arabs.
Togoland is a former German protectorate that existed between 1884 and 1914. After the defeat of Germany during the Great War, Togoland was divided between France and Great Britain under the mandate of the League of Nations. By the 1950s a political movement led by the Ewe ethnic group called for the unification of British and French Togoland into an independent multiethnic state. Despite the efforts of the Ewe, the United Nations trust territory of British Togoland was ultimately merged with the Gold Coast to become Ghana, the first independent nation in sub-Saharan Africa; French Togoland later declared independence as the nation of Togo.
An enlarged Standing Consultative Commission was duly set up in Togoland in order to ascertain the real wishes of the whole population of the two Trust Territories with regard to their political future. Elections to seats on the Commission were held in British Togo-land in September and in French Togoland in October 1951.
The 1951 elections had shown that the Ewe unity party (Comite de l’Unite Togolaise, led by Sylvanus Olympio) was only a small minority in the whole of the two Togos although it was a majority in the Ewe area. After the first stage of the elections, the Ewe unity party had seen that it would win only six seats, and had decided to boycott the second stage of the elections. The French had postponed the second stage of the voting. The French then held the elections anyway and the pro-French party, the Parti du Progres, had elected candidates to all six of the seats which otherwise would have gone to the unity party.
In 1956, French Togoland became independent. As for the British part, it was attached to the Gold Coast (current Ghana) after a referendum. In 1956 British Togoland voted by a narrow majority of 57.9% to remain with the gold coast and against the connection to French Togo. The Ewe in the south, however, voted for the majority. It is in this part of Ghana that nostalgic groups demanding a return from Togoland have emerged. They reject the referendum of 1956 and believe that the union of Togoland in Ghana is still not effective.
Togoland's secessionist movements in Ghana have existed for at least ten years. They were born and increased by the feeling of abandonment of the populations of eastern Ghana vis-à-vis the other parts of the country. Then the independentists were structured and formed the Homeland Study Group Foundation. It is the entity that unites all the supporters of Togoland. They had not made waves until last year, when they openly claimed the autonomy of Togoland. Since then, the movement has been campaigning for the Volta region in the southeast and parts of the northern and eastern part of Ghana to join the new state.
On 7th march 2017, police in the Volta Region arrested leaders of a group called Homeland Study Group Foundation (HSFG) based in Ho in the Volta Region of Ghana ” agitating for the restoration of so called Western Togoland as a state to declare independence for western Togoland on 9th May 2017.
The Togolese separatists, comprising leaders of the Homeland Study Group Foundation (HSFG), will go on trial in Ghana on 11 April 2017. The three leaders, Charles Kormi Kudjordji and two others, Martin Asiama Agbenu and Divine Odonkor, were arrested On March 7th in Ho by the police for distributing T-shirts in favor of the independence of Togoland. They were brought before a court on March 9 in Ho, but the judge said he was not in a position to rule on a secession case.
Members of the movement and supporters of Togoland's independence plan to wear their T-shirt until the court decides otherwise. The date indicated implies the day of independence. It was on that date, on 9 May 1956, that the referendum, the outcome of which linked the territory to Ghana, took place. Indeed, the High Court adjourned the trial for treason in order to give the State to have more evidence on the charge.
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