Truth Without Reconciliation. Abena Ampofoa Asare

      

      Truth Without Reconciliation

      PENNSYLVANIA STUDIES IN HUMAN RIGHTS

      Bert B. Lockwood, Jr., Series Editor

      A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

      Truth Without Reconciliation

      A Human Rights History of Ghana

      Abena Ampofoa Asare

      UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

      PHILADELPHIA

      Copyright © 2018 University of Pennsylvania Press

      All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

      Published by

      University of Pennsylvania Press

      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

      www.upenn.edu/pennpress

      Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Asare, Abena Ampofoa, author.

      Title: Truth without reconciliation: a human rights history of Ghana / Abena Ampofoa Asare.

      Other titles: Pennsylvania studies in human rights.

      Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018] | Series: Pennsylvania studies in human rights | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017058290 | ISBN 9780812250398 (hardcover: alk. paper)

      Subjects: LCSH: Human rights—Ghana—History. | Truth commissions—Ghana—History. | Reconciliation—Political aspects—Ghana. | Ghana—Politics and government—1979–2001.

      Classification: LCC DT512.32 .A68 2018 | DDC 323.09667—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058290

       For my family, especially my parents

      CONTENTS

       Preface

       Introduction

       Chapter 1. Making the NRC Archive

       Chapter 2. Human Rights and Ghanaian History

       Chapter 3. Kalabule Women

       Chapter 4. Family Histories of Political Violence

       Chapter 5. The Suffering of Being Developed

       Chapter 6. Soldier, Victim, Hero, Survivor

       Chapter 7. Time for Suffering / Time for Justice

       Conclusion. The Brief Afterlife of Ghana’s Truth Commission

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgments

      PREFACE

      In 2007, when I located the records of Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) at the University of Ghana’s Balme Library, my access was limited and closely monitored. Although I could read these records and take notes, the library staff did not allow photocopies or digital reproductions; they kept a close eye on my progress. I wended my way somewhat haphazardly through the overstuffed boxes of files, stopping at times to close the folders and catch my breath. In those days, I would leave the Balme Library feeling disoriented. As I passed by the James Fort Prison, I would no longer look at the sea. Instead, I would stare at the building’s small windows and imagine what it would be like to be detained there indefinitely. While shopping for cloth at Makola Market, a vision of the market aflame would flash before my eyes. When I rode the government transport bus, a sheen of sweat would cling to my back: What would I do if army men boarded the bus? What would I say? Reading the NRC stories day in, day out changed the geography and landscape of my Accra; the past seemed separated from the present by only the thinnest of cotton.

      As part of the Ghanaian diaspora, I am no stranger to the country’s political history. My own family’s story of transatlantic migration in the 1980s is tied to the turbulent history of Ghana’s birth and growing pains. However, the library documents described violence of a different magnitude and scope. Although I had heard stories of politicians detained behind prison walls, disappeared high court judges and public executions of former heads of state, I did not know about the taxi drivers, market traders, and security guards who entered and exited Nsawam Prison or Ussher Fort Prison without the fanfare or public regret bestowed on their better-known counterparts. The documents at Balme Library suggested that the trouble in Ghanaian history was both more devastating and more mundane than fixed flashpoints of egregious physical loss. Here, the road to destruction was broad. Violence did not begin with a single soldier named Jerry John Rawlings, but instead with years of grinding economic scarcity and obdurate government. The inability to pay school fees, joblessness, watching a child suffer because of lack of health care—Ghanaians also counted these as grievous wrongs that produced exile, family dissolution, and even death. Moreover, Jerry John Rawlings was only one of many national leaders who presided over the suffering of citizens. No political regime or leader emerged unscathed—not the visionary anti-colonialist Kwame Nkrumah, or the liberal jurist Kofi Abrefa Busia, or even then president John Agyekum Kufuor.

      I assumed that the impact of these stories—the way they changed the ground on which I walked—was a factor of my distance, youth, and ignorance. As I began to talk with Ghanaian colleagues and family members about the contents of the NRC files, however, my own beginning assumptions were echoed back to me. “No one who was minding his own business was affected.” “Only during the Rawlings years did people suffer like that.” “As a peace-loving people, Ghanaians just allowed the soldiers to run roughshod over them.” There was a disjuncture between the contents of the NRC folders and the public discussions about national political violence. This difference, the space between these representations of Ghana’s past, emboldened me to write this book.

      When I began, the library staff’s concern about who might access the NRC files seemed out of place. After