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THEY CAME FOR THE GOLDEN STOOL. SHE CHOSE WAR.

They did not simply ask the Asante to surrender a piece of gold.

The British governor wanted to sit on the Golden Stool.

And for the Asante, that was not a chair.

The Golden Stool was the sacred symbol of the nation — tied to its political and spiritual identity. It did not belong to one king. It belonged to the Asante people.

In March 1900, Governor Frederick Hodgson demanded to sit on it as a symbol of British authority.

The meaning was clear.

Britain claimed sovereignty.

The Asante saw an attack on theirs.

And then something unexpected happened.

The men who had gathered to decide what to do hesitated.

Yaa Asantewaa did not.

The Queen Mother of Ejisu stepped forward and challenged them to resist.

If the men would not fight, she declared, the women would.

She helped rally an Asante army and took command of the resistance.

The result became known as the War of the Golden Stool.

For nearly three months, Asante forces trapped the British governor and his troops inside the fort at Kumasi.

But while Yaa Asantewaa was fighting the British, another battle was taking place in secret.

The Golden Stool had disappeared.

It had been hidden away in the forest.

The British never captured it.

Eventually, superior British military power defeated the rebellion. Yaa Asantewaa was captured and sent into exile in the Seychelles.

The independent Asante kingdom was eventually brought under British colonial rule.

But Britain still did not have the prize it had wanted.

The Golden Stool survived.

Then, years later, came another wound.

In 1920, railway workers discovered the hidden Stool.

Its gold ornaments were stripped away.

The sacred object had survived — but the discovery itself became another wound.

Yaa Asantewaa died in exile in the Seychelles in 1921.

She lost the war.

She lost her freedom.

But she never surrendered the object for which she had fought.

History remembers the empire that won.

We remember the woman who refused to surrender its soul.

THE STOOL SHE GAVE THEM

When an empire demands the object that represents your sovereignty, what do you do?

In 1900, Britain demanded the Golden Stool — the symbol of Asante sovereignty.

Yaa Asantewaa chose resistance.

Britain won the war.

But it never got the Stool.

She knew Asante could not defeat Britain outright. Her plan was to keep the Stool beyond British reach.

An army answered her. The Asante trapped the British inside the fort at Kumasi.

But informants revealed her movements and hiding places. The circle tightened.

On 3 March 1901, Yaa Asantewaa was taken prisoner.

A later historical account says she gave her British captor a wooden stool.

Britain wanted the Golden Stool.

They never got it.

To the Asante, the Golden Stool was not simply a throne. It embodied political authority, national unity and spiritual legitimacy.

Prempeh I was already in exile. The chiefs were divided. Then Governor Frederick Hodgson made the demand explicit:

Bring me the Golden Stool.

Yaa Asantewaa was a Queen Mother with established authority. When the political order failed to answer, she stepped into the resistance.

The Asante built stockades across roads and paths. For months, the empire struggled to break through.

When the British began destroying the stockades, Yaa Asantewaa used deception to misdirect them, then relocated to Offinso.

For a moment, the resistance held.

Then British reinforcements arrived, with firepower the Asante could not match.

Asante informants began revealing her movements and hiding places to the British for rewards.

According to a scholarly tradition traced to British officer Samuel Hingley and cited by historian Adu Boahen, her daughter and grandchildren were reportedly held as leverage.

She was exiled to the Seychelles.

She died there.

But the Golden Stool had been hidden in the forest.

Guarded.

Moved.

Protected.

Two decades later, African railway workers discovered it.

Not in a British vault.

Not in a colonial palace.

Still beyond the empire’s grasp.

Yaa Asantewaa lost the war.

She lost her freedom.

She died in exile.

But the thing she had chosen to protect survived.

History remembers empires.

We remember the stool they could never take.

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HE WAS WORSHIPPED AS GOD. THEN THEY HID HIM UNDER A TOILET.

Last week, we told you about the ruler who was offered his country back — and said no.

This week, meet the emperor who stayed when his country turned against him.

When an emperor loses his throne, why would he refuse to flee?

A U.S. diplomatic report recorded something revealing: Selassie said he had never expected to go into exile.

In September 1974, the Derg — Ethiopia’s new military junta — deposed him.

And the man once called King of Kings was driven from his palace in a Volkswagen Beetle.

But why stay?

Selassie had said he did not want to leave Ethiopia to its disintegration.

He stayed.

The Derg took that choice away from him.

While he was under arrest, famine devastated Ethiopia.

Television showed starving Ethiopians beside images of lavish imperial banquets.

The message was brutal:

The people were starving.
The palace was feasting.

Then came Black Saturday.

Sixty men from the old regime were executed.

The next morning, their names were read over Ethiopian Radio.

One was Rear Admiral Iskinder Desta.

Selassie’s grandson.

The emperor was still imprisoned.

And staying had bought him no protection.

On August 27, 1975, Selassie died at 83.

The government said medical complications.

His physician, Asrat Woldeyes, rejected that account.

Years later, two palace servants testified during the Derg trials about suspicious events surrounding Selassie’s final night.

The exact circumstances remain unresolved.

But there was no imperial funeral.

His body was buried in secret.

Seventeen years later, workers digging beneath the palace found human remains beneath a concrete slab.

They were identified as Selassie’s.

Under the private lavatory of the man who had overthrown him.

The emperor had gone from a throne…

to a Beetle…

to a hidden grave beneath the palace.

But the symbol survived.

To Rastafari, Selassie was not simply Ethiopia’s emperor.

He was Jah.

So when Bob Marley heard that Selassie was dead, his answer was:

“Jah Live.”

In 2000, Selassie’s remains were finally carried to Holy Trinity Cathedral — the place where his imperial legacy still stood.

History remembers empires.
We remember the emperor they had to bury twice.

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What do you think: did they bury an emperor, or did they try to bury a symbol?

THE PRESIDENT WHO WAS OFFERED HIS COUNTRY BACK — AND SAID NO

He lost his country.

Then another president offered him an air force to take it back.

He said no.

Days before the July 1975 coup, Gowon had already been warned that something was coming.

One officer under suspicion was Colonel Joseph Garba, commander of the Federal Guards Unit — and one of the men Gowon trusted most.

Garba denied knowing anything.

Before leaving for the OAU summit in Kampala, Gowon reportedly told him:

“Let the coup plot be on your conscience. But make sure it’s without bloodshed.”

The account comes from Gowon’s aide-de-camp, William Walbe, who qualified it as “or words to that effect.”

Then, on July 29, the coup came.

Gowon was at the summit when Idi Amin approached him with a single sheet of paper.

A Reuters dispatch.

It announced that Gowon’s government had been overthrown.

For nine years, he had ruled Nigeria.

Now he was reading the news of his own removal.

The world knew before he did.

The dispatch even carried a strange name:

“Colonel Darwa.”

Gowon later said it sounded like a misspelling of Garba — the man he had trusted.

Then came the offer.

In his 2026 memoir, My Life of Duty and Allegiance, Gowon says Amin offered to put the firepower of the Ugandan Air Force at his disposal so he could fight the coup makers and regain power.

This is Gowon’s account of the offer, not an independently corroborated contemporary record.

Gowon considered the choice.

He knew he could fight back, as Selassie had done in 1960.

But he asked whether reclaiming his seat served his personal interest — or Nigeria’s.

Gowon wrote: “I chose to do right.”

Seven months later, the story turned darker.

In February 1976, Lieutenant Colonel Buka S**a Dimka launched a coup, assassinated Murtala Muhammed, and claimed he was acting to restore Gowon.

Gowon denied involvement.

His name was nevertheless attached to the conspiracy.

He became wanted, lost his rank and remained in exile.

He was never convicted.

Later, his rank was restored.

But exile also gave him a life far removed from the one he had lost.

He earned a PhD in political science at the University of Warwick.

He served as a churchwarden at St Mary the Virgin, Monken Hadley.

The former ruler of Nigeria had gone from commanding a nation to serving his local parish.

The army Amin offered never marched.

The Reuters dispatch remained the paper that told Gowon his country was gone.

So when power is offered back at the price of another fight, what is it worth?

He had the planes.

He chose the parish.

STUDIO APOPO

History remembers the coup that took Gowon’s country.

We remember the man who was offered a way back —

and refused to take it.

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THE MAN CABRAL LET BACK IN

The man who built the revolution was killed by the man he chose to save.

Amílcar Cabral had already punished him.

He could have cast him out of the revolution forever.

Instead, he gave him another chance.

Years later, that second chance would come back with a gun.

His name was Inocêncio Kani.

Cabral was not a general. He was an agronomist — a man who studied soil. Yet he built a disciplined liberation movement Portugal struggled to destroy.

But Cabral understood something more dangerous than an enemy army:

**A revolution could be attacked from outside.

But it could be broken from within.**

Kani had already given Cabral reason to distrust him.

He was caught up in a disciplinary case involving PAIGC equipment.

Cabral punished him.

Kani was demoted and imprisoned.

Cabral could have left him there.

Instead, he chose rehabilitation.

Kani came back.

He eventually became a naval commander.

The man Cabral had punished was back inside the revolution.

On January 20, 1973, Cabral returned home from a reception at the Polish embassy in Conakry.

Armed men were waiting outside.

They were men from his own movement.

And among them was Kani.

The man Cabral had punished.

The man Cabral had restored.

The man now standing before him with a gun.

They ordered Cabral to come with them.

He refused.

Then Kani fired.

Amílcar Cabral was dead.

But the assassination was only the first move.

Other PAIGC leaders were seized.

Aristides Pereira was taken toward the harbor.

Boats were prepared.

The plan was bigger than killing Cabral: seize the leadership and escape by sea.

Then everything collapsed.

Guinean forces intervened.

The fleeing boats were stopped with Soviet naval assistance.

Kani was arrested.

And then came the darker question:

Who was really behind the assassination?

The gunmen were PAIGC insiders.

But accusations of Portuguese intelligence involvement emerged.

A contemporary U.S. assessment found no direct evidence linking the Portuguese government to the assassination, while saying Portuguese complicity could not be ruled out.

The first fact is clear:

Cabral was killed from inside his own movement.

The second remains contested:

Who helped turn that internal fracture into a killing?

Kani was eventually executed.

Eight months later, on September 24, 1973, Guinea-Bissau declared independence.

Cabral never saw it.

The revolution survived its founder.

Cabral believed a liberation movement could not survive if every mistake became a permanent betrayal.

So he punished.

He rehabilitated.

He brought people back.

He believed holding a fractured movement together was essential.

But the man he let back in eventually became part of the conspiracy that killed him.

Cabral fought the enemy outside his revolution.

Yet the fatal violence reached him through the movement he had built.

And perhaps that is the cruelest irony:

The quality that helped Cabral hold his revolution together may have left the door open to the man who killed him.

History remembers the independence.

We remember the man who held the door open for his own killer.

So ask yourself:

**Was Cabral’s mercy his greatest strength— or did the man he chose to let back in become the price of it?**

👇 Where do you stand?

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