African Women Declare War On Nudity In Ghana

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28887, 6 May 1959, Page 7

African Women Declare War On Nudity In Ghana

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, May 5.

Armed with second-hand clothing from the United States, a group of militant African club women has opened war on nudity in Ghana, says the Accra correspondent of the New York “Herald Tribune.”

The campaign, he says, is aimed at putting an end to the happily undressed condition of some thousands of tribeswomen in Ghana’s northern region, where for centuries it has been the custom in! certain tribes for women to wear nothing except a small clump of leaves. These women are now learning for the first time that nakedness is a sin.

The correspondent adds that the newly - formed all - African Women’s League headed by Mrs Hannah Cudjoe is noisily indignant over the nudity situation. Mrs Cudjoe, a large and very determined person, has been storming the stronghold of nudity in person in an effort to convince women that nakedness is sinful. It seemed at first as if the nudes did not grasp the full importance of Mrs Cudjoe’s message.

Not until she began handing out cast-off clothing from friends in the United States and Ghana did she begin making converts in significant numbers.

Whatever the reasons for nudity

in northern Ghana, just about everybody agrees that it will take some time to convince the women there that they will be better off wearing clothes. They apparently feel more comfortable and certainly look more comfortable in their present state, but Mrs Cudjoe and her lieutenants are not to be balked. They have set up outposts of the league in strategic centres of the north. Mrs Cudjoe is trying to develop ways for women to earn clothing money on the side. One of her schemes is to obtain contributions of land and tobacco seed so as to set up some of the nudists as tobacco farmers.