• Working with Rawlings

    Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings burst on the Ghanaian political scene with a failed military mutiny on May 15th, 1979. On June 4th 1979, following a successful uprising staged by junior officers and other ranks of the Ghana Armed Forces, he emerged as the Chairman of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) which ruled Ghana for three months and handed over to a civilian constitutional government on 24th September 1979. On 31st December 1981, he overthrew the constitutional government and formed the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) as the Government of Ghana. He was elected a constitutional President in 1992 and assumed office as such on 7th January 1993. He served two terms as President of the Republic of Ghana, finally leaving office on 6th January 2001.

    Jerry John Rawlings is an enigma. It was a privilege working with him and being close to him. He and I went through many exciting experiences together. I have documented some of those experiences in this book. But there are many other experiences which I have not documented either because they belong to the realm of confidentiality or of privacy. What I have documented, however, is enough to give present and future leaders some ideas about governance at the highest levels; the dos and don’ts of governance; the skills required for governance and the importance of human relations as a leadership trait.

    This is not a book about Jerry John Rawlings. It is not a book about Kwamena Ahwoi. It is not a book about the PNDC. It is not a book about the NDC. It is a book about Kwamena Ahwoi working with Jerry John Rawlings; our working relationship; our ups and downs and our joint commitment to building a better Ghana than the one we found it. Somewhere along the line, we drifted apart. This book is about that as well. It is my hope that Ghana’s leaders of today and our leaders of the future will learn some lessons from my account of Working with Rawlings, leaving out the negatives and accentuating the positives.

  • Death of an Empire: Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Africa

    A participant-witness in the history of the transition from Gold Coast to Ghana, Jantuah who died in 2011 at the age of 89, reflects and interprets with unique understanding some of the major events of the 1950s and 60s as well as foreign policy formulation including his role as a diplomat during the Algerian struggle for Independence and France’s Charles de Gaulle’s retrogressive policies; his dealings with the African National Congress and it’s president, Oliver Tambo, an Apartheid and Southern Rhodesia; becoming at the end an executor to his friend – Nkrumah’s Will.

    The book also has reflections on Ghana’s Fourth Republic and development on the African Continent since. It is edited with a detailed introduction by Jantuah’s nephew, the development specialist and literacy writer, Ivor Agyeman-Duah, who he worked with over the years on this and is currently a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.

  • Kwame Nkrumah and the Dawn of the Cold War: The West African National Secretariat, 1945-48

    The history of a Pan-Africanist movement based in Britain and its role in the Cold War in Africa

    The West African National Secretariat (WANS) has almost been forgotten by history. A pan-Africanist movement founded in 1945 by Kwame Nkrumah and colleagues in London and France, WANS campaigned for independence and unity. Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast in late 1947. The colonial government accused him of being a communist and fomenting the riots of early 1948. He was jailed. This led to the beginning of the Cold War in West Africa.

    Drawing on archival research including the newly released MI5 files, Marika Sherwood reports on the work of WANS, on the plans for a unity conference in October 1948 in Lagos, and on Nkrumah’s return home. Sherwood demonstrates that colonial powers colluded with each other and the US in order to control the burgeoning struggles for independence. By labelling African nationalists as ‘communists’ in their efforts to contain decolonisation, the Western powers introduced the Cold War to the continent.

    Providing a rich exploration of a neglected history, this book sheds light for the first time on a crucial historical moment in the history of West Africa and the developmental trajectory of West African independence.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Voice from Conakry

    The texts of broadcasts to the people of Ghana made in Conakry by Kwame Nkrumah between March and December 1966 on Radio Guinea’s “Voice of the Revolution”. Their purpose was first to expose the true nature of the coup of 24th February 1966; and secondly to encourage resistance.

  • Some Essential Features of Nkrumaism

    This new and expanded edition is a valuable guide to the political thought of Nkrumah.

    Part one, by the editors of The Spark (Accra), deals with Nkrumah’s policies to 1964.

    Part Two, by the editors of Panaf Books, concerns the period after 1964.

    Of particular significance in the new Part Two is a survey of the very important books written by Nkrumah during the Conakry period between March 1966 and August 1971.

    The themes include: forms of the independence struggle; colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism; economic development; the role of the vanguard party; class struggle; and the unification of Africa.

  • The Struggle Continues

    The six pamphlets in this book reflect the indomitable spirit of Kwame Nkrumah, the symbol of fighting Africa.

    The first, What I Mean by Positive Action, was written in 1949 when the campaign for the independence of Ghana was at its height.

    The other five pamphlets were all written between 1966 and 1968 in Conakry, Guinea, where this great Pan-Africanist carried on the socialist revolutionary struggle to which he devoted his whole life.

    1 What I Mean by Positive Action

    2 The Spectre of Black Power

    3 The Struggle Continues

    4 Ghana: The Way Out

    5 The Big Lie

    6 Two Myths

    All except the first, which was written in 1949 at the height of the national liberation struggle, were written in Conakry between 1967 and 1968. Not only is Kwame Nkrumah’s theoretical work highly original and consistent, it is also a practical guide to revolutionary action.

  • Rhodesia File

    Kwame Nkrumah intended to write on the Zimbabwean struggle. This book contains key documents from the file on Rhodesia which he opened after U.D.I. in 1965. The letters and papers, many of which are published for the first time here, show the thinking of Nkrumah on the problem of minority regimes in Africa. How accurate it was, as subsequent events have proved. A connecting narrative and chronology from 1887 have been added by the publishers.

    Rhodesia File

    400.00
  • Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (African Writers Series, AWS49)

    This is the book which, when first published in 1965, caused such an uproar in the US State Department that a sharp note of protest was sent to Kwame Nkrumah, and the $25million of American “aid” to Ghana was promptly cancelled. It exposes the working of international monopoly capitalism in Africa and shows how the stranglehold of foreign monopolies perpetuates the paradox of Africa: poverty in the midst of plenty.

  • I Speak of Freedom

    A selection from the speeches of Kwame Nkrumah up to 1960, linked by narrative.

    The main theme is Ghana’s independence, political freedom preparing the way for a socialist programme of economic and social development, and an intensification of the struggle for the total liberation and unification of the African continent.

  • Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (Hardcover)

    The moving, human story of Kwame Nkrumah’s life from childhood to his dynamic leadership of the liberation struggle and the attainment of Ghana’s independence in 1957.

    A personal account of the African liberation struggle, this book was first published on March 6, 1957, to mark the day of Ghana’s Independence, a day which signalled the launching of the wider Pan-African struggle for the liberation of the entire African continent. As the leader of the movement for independence, Nkrumah provides an illuminating discussion of the problems and conflicts along the way to political freedom, and the new prospects beyond.

    This book is essential for understanding the genesis of the African Revolution and the maturing of one of its outstanding leaders.

  • Kwame Nkrumah: A Biography

    Very few statesmen have attempted or achieved so much as Kwame Nkrumah, a leading activist and theoretician of PanAfricanism. His work lives on and continues to inspire Africans, people of African descent and progressive movements worldwide.

    In this new biography, June Milne traces the life and work of Kwame Nkrumah from his birth in Nkroful in the western province of the Gold Coast (Ghana) to his death in Bucharest, Romania on 27 April, 1972. The book contains much new material, notably relating to years Nkrumah spent in Conakry, Guinea after the military coup in Accra on 24 February, 1966 which ended his government in Ghana. It adds to information in the author’s book Kwame Nkrumah, The Conakry Years, published in 1990.

    For the first time in a biography of Nkrumah, information is provided about all the books written by him. The circumstances in which they were written are explained, their contents examined, appraisal made of their significance and continuing impact on political developments in Africa and the Diaspora.

    This is an authentic moving account of the life and work of “The Greatest African” (the words inscribed on his coffin in Guinea), by an author well qualified to write about him.

     

     

     

     

  • Forward Ever: The Life of Kwame Nkrumah

    A short biography of Kwame Nkrumah providing an introduction to his life and work. Set within the context of PanAfricanism the book covers the whole period of Nkrumah’s life from childhood through to his death in Bucharest on 27th April 1972.

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