DID YOU KNOW?

The royal palace in the Ghanaian city of Kumasi last week celebrated the return 100 years ago of an exiled king. Prempeh was the Asante king  of the late 19th century who resisted British demands that his territory be swallowed up into the expanding Gold Coast protectorate. A British army from the coast marched about 200km to Kumasi in 1896, and abducted Prempeh and several aides and then looted his palace. The prisoners were shipped to Sierra Leone, and, in 1900, on to the distant Indian Ocean islands of Seychelles. It was not until 1924 that the British allowed Prempeh to return home.