• Ahwene Pa Nkasa: Standing with JDM

    Standing with JDM is quite clear in this title that it does not intend to undermine the former president’s image but to burnish it. What is not clear is whether it was written to coincide with the 2020 Election Year.
    It is in two parts, “The Homeland Briefs” and the “Diplomatic Briefs”. Independent of each other, they are held together by what the author calls the “Mahamarabilia” thread – a word he invented to describe his privileged proximity to the 4th president of the 4th Republic of Ghana.
    Part One has 42 chapters that highlight events like Dumsor, Gitmo 2, Montie 3, Cheating at Elections, Lying and Blaming it on Mahama, Destroying friends and Family and much, much more…It also has intellectual discourses on Traditional Governance and the Ballot Box, Kigali (dangers that could be awaiting Ghana in this Election Year), Ebola and Covid-19 and the history of Ghana’s “coodetas” in new lights that would surprise and reveal…
    Part Two, with 25 chapters, is devoted entirely to the author’s diplomatic service and reads sometimes like a coursebook on practical diplomacy and other times like a travelogue with intriguing insights. We come across his encounter with a sex change person (man to woman) and how his life was nearly cut short when his official car and ostrich crashed into each other on the highway from Windhoek to Gaborone. Part Two is so suffused with humour that it is difficult to tell whether he is pulling the reader’s leg or stating facts.
    Most of the chapters are illustrated with unique pictures that could stand on their own as stories. It is a beautifully designed book, well laid out reader-friendly. For the first time, a modern version of adinkra, called adinshia, has had a public airing in the book…
    Whatever your political persuasion is, your intellect will make you love this beautiful book on Mahama.

  • The Fourth John: Reign, Rejection & Rebound

    01

    An influential northern caucus is secretly meeting and grooming him to contest the man who will select him as a vice presidential candidate. A meeting between the first lady and the Brong-Ahafo caucus results in, perhaps, the fastest ministerial reshuffle in the history of the country. At 2a.m., before the breaking of a major scandal, there is a meeting between the president’s friend and the investigative journalist about how to involve the main opposition leader, in the story to minimise its damage to the president in the upcoming election. The wife of the president reports the wife of the vice president to the vice president’s mother. The night before a crucial election, the president and his main contender are locked up in a meeting with Ghana’s most revered traditional ruler.

    These and other revealing accounts on governance, policies and programmes of the fourth presidency of Ghana’s Fourth Republic are the intriguing contents of this book. Here, the journalist whose investigations are believed to have contributed to the downfall of the administration gets brutally intimate with the regime.

    Rare interviews with key figures of the governing party and historical contexts to contemporary events provide readers and students of African politics the inside story of what is considered the model democracy on the continent. The fluidity of the writing style and humour make this book about politics and governance in Ghana’s Fourth Republic both informative, educative and entertaining.

  • My First Coup d’Etat: Memories from the Lost Decades of Africa

    My First Coup D’Etat chronicles the coming-of-age of John Dramani Mahama (former President of Ghana) in Ghana during the dismal post-independence ‘lost decades’ of Africa. He was seven years old when rumours of a coup reached his boarding school in Accra. His father, a minister of state, was suddenly missing, then imprisoned for more than a year.

    My First Coup D’Etat offers a look at the country that has long been considered Africa’s success story. This is a one-of-a-kind book: Mahama’s is a rare literary voice from a political leader, and his stories work on many levels – as fables, as history, as cultural and political analysis, and, of course, as the memoir of a young man who, unbeknownst to him or anyone else, would grow up to be vice president of his nation. Though non-fiction, these are stories that rise above their specific settings and transport the reader – much like the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Nadine Gordimer – into a world all their own, one which straddles a time lost and explores the universal human emotions of love, fear, faith, despair, loss, longing, and hope despite all else.

    An important literary debut from the then Vice President of Ghana, a fable-like memoir that offers a shimmering microcosm of post-colonial Africa.

    ‘A much welcome work of immense relevance.’ ~ Chinua Achebe

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