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The Black Pimpernel: Nelson Mandela on the Run
In March 1961, after giving a brief speech at a conference, Nelson Mandela vanished.
For the next eighteen months he was an outlaw, living under assumed identities and in various disguises (sometimes as a chauffeur, sometimes a gardener) as the South African police and secret services, helped by MI5 and the CIA, sought him in vain. His mission? To undergo military training and set up armed resistance to apartheid.
₵140.00 -
Revolution and Democracy in Ghana: The Politics of Jerry Rawlings
Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, who passed away on 12 November 2020, aged 73 years, dramatically appeared on Ghana’s political scene 40 years earlier. In May 1979, Rawlings was briefly jailed following an unsuccessful coup attempt. Rawlings and his comrades were revolted by Ghana’s corruption and economic decline at the hands of its ruling generals. A few weeks later, on 4 June 1979, Rawlings was released from prison by a group of disgruntled soldiers and took power following a successful coup d’état. Following a brief, but turbulent, few months in power, Rawlings’ Armed Forces Revolutionary Council handed over to an elected government in September 1979. Twenty-seven months later, on 31 December 1981, he was back in power, again by coup d’état. This time it was not a brief stay in the hot seat: Rawlings, leader of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), comprising three civilians and three armed forces personnel, remained in power for more than a decade. Seeking to justify the coup, Rawlings claimed that the PNDC was a necessary response to Ghana’s political and economic crisis. In January 1993, democracy returned to Ghana. Jerry Rawlings was popularly elected president twice, eventually standing down in January 2001, as the 1992 constitution demanded. Beginning his political career as a military figure with revolutionary aspirations, Rawlings ended it as a twice democratically-elected civilian president.
These are the brief facts about the political career of Flight-Lieutenant, later President, Jerry Rawlings. More than three years after his passing, Rawlings remains a pivotal, absolutely central, figure in Ghana. His enduring influence in Ghana may be second only to that of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. On the other hand, there is no more controversial figure in Ghana’s political and economic history than Rawlings. More than two decades after he left political office, nothing divides Ghanaians more than their opinions regarding him. This book seeks to explain how and why Rawlings and the PNDC progressed from an undemocratic military-based regime to laying the foundations for Ghana’s three decades of multi-party democracy. Was Rawlings a patriot who believed passionately in Ghana and did all he could to make the country succeed? Or was he a wrecker who wanted to bring the post-colonial edifice tumbling down in a misguided attempt at revolution? The aim of this book is to enable the reader to draw their own conclusions on these questions.
₵200.00 -
A Life of Vicissitudes (Hardcover)
These are highlights of heady days and heydays of experiences in a life and its living. It is a riveting and captivating account of extraordinary happenings to an individual of complex character and disposition with luck and lots of luck. The story is a journey of unmasking the masked. It’s a person’s recollections of life’s vicissitudes as lived by him from earliest experiences, along with insights into student leadership, workings of a military government, chieftaincy, tinges of Akan feminism and writing a newspaper column.
₵200.00 -
Patrice Lumumba (Panaf Great Lives)
This book considers the first years of the Congo Republic following independence in 1960. Particular analysis is made of Lumumba’s policies and of western pressures in this crucial experience of the African Revolution.
The story of Lumumba underlines the correctness of Nkrumah’s Pan-African thesis.
₵270.00 -
Axioms of Dr. K. A. Busia: A Compilation of Philosophies, Ideas and Policies of a Statesman
This book reflects the thoughts of K. A. Busia, Ghana’s first university professor and prime minister of the 2nd Republic. It consists of extracts from his writings as a scholar, politician and statesman.
The book deals with issues regarding democracy, the rule of law, good governance, our common humanity, knowledge and
education, among others.It is a requisite companion for academics, politicians, the clergy, traditional rulers, historians, researchers, students and all those who subscribe to the tenets of democracy.
₵50.00 -
Destiny and Politics: A Biography of Hon. Samuel Sallas-Mensah
From a humble beginning as the son of a farmer in a relatively small town, Hon. Samuel Sallas-Mensah, four terms MP for Upper West Akim would perhaps have ended up as a farmer too. In those days, children took after their parents’ trades. Sallas got the chance to go to America and the entire course of his life changed. After a distinguished career in accountancy in the US and later in Nigeria, destiny led his way once more but this time to the country of his birth, Ghana, where eventually, a new career window opened in his life – politics.
As a Member of the Consultative Assembly his accounting and financial acumen were in evidence as he actively contributed to the District Assembly Common Fund. And as a Member of Parliament he was instrumental in instituting the live television coverage of the sitting of the Public Accounts Committee – legacies to the nation that survive today.
In this compelling biography the reader come face-to-face with this influential man of few words who is famed to have friends and access to both sides of the Ghanaian political divide. But what would Sallas be remembered for most, a politician, a chartered accountant or family man? More importantly, where else will destiny lead him to?
“Crispy-delicious narratives, refreshingly-garnished insights. This fascinating biography of a patriot never finishes astonishing you with the twists and turns. But it is the authoritative revelations about a nation and its people that makes this book destined to be relevant to the politics of Ghana.” ~ Business & Financial Times
₵45.00 -
Convention People’s Party Handbook: African Revolution Party (1949-1999)
The first fifty years of the CPP – a historical account.
₵170.00 -
Kwame Nkrumah: Contributions to the African Revolution
Drawing on the published works, correspondence and speeches of Kwame Nkrumah, as well as on contemporary press reportage during Nkrumah’s final months in Ghana, Doreatha Mbalia offers a view of the theory and practice of the visionary proponent of a united African continent.
This work traces the development Mbalia sees in Nkrumah’s theory and practice, from the early formation of his unique ideology that emphasises the crucial role of socialism in the progress towards a united African continent, to the coup that ended his Presidency of Ghana and his subsequent belief that the people of Africa must, when diplomatic and political means had failed, raise arms against neo-colonialism. Mbalia urges that Nkrumah’s vision still points the way to Pan-African unity.
₵570.00 -
…Power to the People: Reflections on Retrogressive Politics
Published in 1984…Power to the People is a doctor’s medicine for Ghana’s ills. The pill is occasionally bitter, but is coated with a generous layer of therapeutic laughter, to help its message slide gently into the appropriate organs of the national digestive system.
Presented in the form of prose, poetry and cartoons, the first part of the book, subtitled The Past, covers the Nkrumah, Kotoka, Afrifa & Ankrah, Busia, Acheampong & Akuffo, Rawlings 1979 and Limann eras. The second part, subtitled The Present, covers the first three years of the second coming of Rawlings.
In a satirical treatment of our history over almost 30 years, this book sheds a great light onto the paths that Ghana traversed in those heady years, in a form that is easy to read, reflect on and learn.
In the author’s own words, “in recording these…my hope is that others would be induced to ponder over and question loudly some of those short-comings, lapses and omissions in our national character and situation which are stifling our growth and retarding the country’s progress. If our questions get loud and irritating enough to cause discomfiture in our policy makers, then the reader wouldn’t have been bored for nothing.”
₵65.00 -
The Legislative System of Ghana
This book focuses on the legislative system of Ghana. It contains sixteen chapters, each focusing on a unique aspect of the legislative system of Ghana. It outlines the rules, the practice, and procedure that govern the conduct of business and Members in the Parliament of Ghana and its committees, and the various actors involved in the organisation of the legislative business. It breaks into minute forms, the procedural norms, and attitudes that influence members’ behaviour and the various parliamentary outcomes.
“This study is well researched and presented in a very lucid form…. Indeed, it is a very useful source for students, parliamentarians, and academics on the parliamentary history, procedure, and practice of Ghana’s Parliament.” – Hon Dr. Benjamin Kunbour, Former Majority Leader, Former Minister of Defence and Senior Lecturer, University of Ghana School of Law
₵300.00The Legislative System of Ghana
₵300.00 -
Frantz Fanon (Panaf Great Lives)
Required reading for all interested in the Algerian Revolution, and in Fanon’s brief but highly productive contribution. A close study is made of the relationship between Fanon’s ideological development and the content and impact of his political philosophy.
₵270.00Frantz Fanon (Panaf Great Lives)
₵270.00 -
The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia’s Power Cult (Pre-Order)
Getting to grips with Russia’s 21st century Tsar.
Vladimir V. Putin has confounded world leaders and defied their assumptions as they tried to figure him out, only to misjudge him time and again. The Putin Mystique takes the reader on a journey through the Russia of Vladimir Putin, named by Forbes magazine in 2013 as the most powerful man in the world. It is a neo-feudal world where iPads, WTO membership, and Brioni business suits conceal a power structure straight out of the Middle Ages, where the Sovereign is perceived as both divine and demonic, where a man’s riches are determined by his proximity to the Kremlin, and where large swathes of the populace live in precarious complacency interrupted by bouts of revolt.
Where does that kind of power come from? The answer lies not in the leader, but in the people: from the impoverished worker who appeals directly to Putin for aid, to the businessmen, security officers and officials in Putin’s often dysfunctional government who look to their leader for instruction and protection.
In her writing career, Anna Arutunyan has travelled throughout Russia to report on modern Russian politics. She has interviewed oligarchs and policemen, bishops and politicians, and many ordinary Russians. Her book is a vivid and revealing exploration of the way in which myth, power, and even religion interact to produce the love-hate relationship between the Russian people and Vladimir Putin.
₵536.00 -
The Speech by The Prime Minister: Dr Kwame Nkrumah (Motion for Approval of Government’s Revised Constitutional Proposals, November 1956)
The Speech by the Prime Minister, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Introducing the Motion for the Approval of the Government’s Revised Constitutional Proposals. At the Legislative Assembly, 12 November 1956.
₵40.63 -
Red Oak Heroes Series: Dr. J. B. Danquah
*Available from 15 August 2023
Age Range: 10 – 14 years
Yirivie and his friends meet a historian on a bus while they are going to school and when the historian starts educating the passengers on Dr. J. B. Danquah, they become interested and ask for his contact. Back in school, they give the contact to their History teacher and ask her to invite the historian to come to the school to tell them more. The teacher agrees and books an appointment with Mr. Ofori, the historian.
On the day of the appointment, it doesn’t look like Mr. Ofori will show up. Yirivie and his two friends who promised their class a great time with the historian are caught in a fix but things turn around in the most unexpected way.₵25.00 -
Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now (Hardcover)
A concise, brilliant, and trenchant examination of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s successful lifelong quest for the presidency by National Book Award winner Evan Osnos.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been called both the luckiest man and the unluckiest—fortunate to have sustained a fifty-year political career that reached the White House, but also marked by deep personal losses and disappointments that he has suffered.
Yet even as Biden’s life has been shaped by drama, it has also been powered by a willingness, rare at the top ranks of politics, to confront his shortcomings, errors, and reversals of fortune. As he says, “Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.” His trials have forged in him a deep empathy for others in hardship—an essential quality as he leads America toward recovery and renewal.
Blending up-close journalism and broader context, Evan Osnos, who won the National Book Award in 2014, draws on nearly a decade of reporting for The New Yorker to capture the characters and meaning of 2020’s extraordinary presidential election. It is based on lengthy interviews with Biden and on revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and a range of activists, advisers, opponents, and Biden family members.
This portrayal illuminates Biden’s long and eventful career in the Senate, his eight years as Obama’s vice president, his sojourn in the political wilderness after being passed over for Hillary Clinton in 2016, his decision to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency, and his choice of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.
Osnos ponders the difficulties Biden faces as his presidency begins and weighs how a changing country, a deep well of experiences, and a rigorous approach to the issues, have altered his positions. In this nuanced portrait, Biden emerges as flawed, yet resolute, and tempered by the flame of tragedy—a man who just may be uncannily suited for his moment in history.
₵250.00