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Chasing the Elephant Into the Bush: The Politics of Complacency
Chasing the Elephant Into the Bush: The Politics of Complacency is an insider’s account of how the governing New Patriotic Party lost power in the closest elections in Africa’s history. The writer believes that providing an accurate account will begin the process of correcting the rumours, lies and myths that are out there about the 2008 elections in Ghana.
Throughout, the book is liberally sprinkled with quotes and historical references that makes it very informative and interesting. He begins with the state of the nation and the governing party as Ghana approached 2008.
He then takes the reader through the NPP primary and his own experiences as a losing candidate. There is candid discussion of the rivalries in the campaign that undermined its effectiveness. He takes the reader inside meetings and quotes some of the key players at key moments in the campaign.
There is candid discussion of the roles of the media, the security forces and civil society. The identification of issues and their use in the campaign is discussed thoroughly. While his sympathies are never in doubt, he is very objective and acknowledges the mistakes made by the campaign, the government and the party. He credits the NDC Campaign for doing certain things well. Amongst these are the deployment of President Mills and former President Rawlings as well as Vice-President John Mahama.
He reveals the roles of key people, including the President, the Presidential candidate and powerful groups, like the “Kyebi Mafia”. He offers candid assessments of all the key players. He suggests reasons for the NPP defeat and the way to recapture power.
This will be a very significant first cut and reference point for an account of the 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Ghana.
₵320.00 -
Hilla Limann: Scholar, Diplomat, Statesman – A Biography
Prof Ivan Addae-Mensah’s biography of Dr. Hilla Limann is a masterpiece. It comprehensively fills a gap in a period of our history that not much has been written on. For those scholars, students, politicians, researchers, interested in the governance, political history, economic development and international relations of Ghana, this is a must read. — His Excellency D.K. Osei (Former Ghana Ambassador to Denmark and the Scandinavian Countries, Former Secretary to Ex- President J.A. Kufuor and Diplomat in Residence, Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy)
The greatest value of this biography lies in the fact that this is a contribution by a person who was first and foremost a friend, and also worked closely with him before, during and after his presidency. Addae-Mensah’s Hilla Limann validates the ancestral saying that: “life is lived but understood backwards.” It contributes toward finding leadership and governance in Africa. To be African is to derive pain from this biography. It shocks and traumatizes. Who are we? Was independence worth it? What was the struggle about and for? Reading this biography shows the urgent need for an energizing vision to get rid of the demons of despair and redeem the worth of Africa for Africans. — Nana Kobina Nketsia V (Senior Lecturer in History, University of Cape Coast and Omanhen of Essikado Traditional Area)
We should honour those who have laboured hard for Ghana and not for self. It is no use preaching against corruption when those who are not corrupt have nothing but penury to show when they leave office. The example of Dr Limann would be of no avail unless it strengthens our will to establish an appropriate pension for retired presidents. — Ambassador K.B. Asante (Public Servant, Diplomat, Educationist, Politician)
₵100.00 -
Ahafo & Bono Regions In Historical Perspective
In the centre of Ghana once straddled the Brong-Ahafo Region. It was noted for its beautiful geographical features as well as its rich natural and human resources. The maxim, unity in diversity, a cherished Ghanaian quintessential trait, was exemplified in the region by the peaceful and harmonious coexistence of multiple ethnic groups. On the eve of its Diamond Jubilee, the Region was split into three: Bono, Bono East and Ahafo Regions to promote the speedy development of the area.
This book gives a historical overview of the erstwhile region with respect to culture, its achievements and legacy. It also showcases the endowments of the new regions carved out of it. The contents are rich in information, data and photographs of historic people and events which historians, politicians, scholars, tourists, and people interested in issues concerning indigenous African societies and the general reader, will find to be invaluable.
“This book provides a succinct glimpse into the erstwhile Brong-Ahafo Region in terms of history, achievements and legacy and also showcases the resources of the three new regions created out of Brong-Ahafo. Through the pages of this book, we can always remember our past, our common history and ancestry, and thereby remain united although physically we will be in separate regions.” – From the Foreword
₵70.00 -
Taduno’s Song
The day a stained brown envelope arrives from Taduno’s homeland, he knows that the time has come to return from exile.
Arriving full of trepidation, the musician discovers that his community no longer recognises him, believing that Taduno is dead. His girlfriend Lela has disappeared, taken away by government agents. As he wanders through his house in search of clues, he realises that any traces of his old life have been erased. All that was left of his life and himself are memories. But Taduno finds a new purpose: to unravel the mystery of his lost life and to find his lost love. Through this search, he comes to face a difficult decision: to sing for love or to sing for his people.
Taduno’s Song is a moving tale of sacrifice, love and courage.
₵125.00Taduno’s Song
₵125.00 -
Realities Trapped in Ink
Realities Trapped in Ink is a collection of poems and essays. This book looks away from nothing. It is contemplative, funny and bold. The author obviously has an observant eye and is able to examine societal issues with keen intelligence and a concrete set of images.
Realities Trapped in Ink is unique among its contemporaries, producing an entirely new experience for the reader.
₵35.00Realities Trapped in Ink
₵35.00 -
The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa
In The Sacrifice of Africa, Prof. Emmanuel Katongole honestly confronts Africa’s painful legacy of chaos, violence and corruption. He shows how it continues to scar the imaginative landscape of African politics and society. He then demonstrates the real potential of Christianity to interrupt and transform entrenched political imaginations and create a different story for Africa – a story of self-sacrificing love that values human dignity and “dares to invent” a new better future for all Africans. Compelling accounts of three African Christian leaders and their work – Bishop Paride Taban in Sudan, Angelina Atyam in Uganda and Maggy Barankitse in Burundi – cap off Katongole’s vision of hope for Africa.
₵65.00 -
The Boneshaker Politician
The Boneshaker Politician is an autobiography of A.K. Opoku. He narrates how he gave his life to Christ in a dramatic way while travelling in a boneshaker, a wooden truck. He recounts how the Lord used him by way of evangelism and church building and his involvement in an uncompromising undercover politics in the church. Meanwhile he had nursed a childhood ambition of being an active politician.
With all his “boneshaker” experience, he entered into politics and discovers that it was a different world altogether and bemoans the high moral and the financial entry requirements required of a Christian to engage in active politics. He raises question as to whether exhortations to get Christians involved in active politics is enough. He concludes with his family life and marvels at the art of God where four children of the same parentage and breed have four different characters and ambitions.
₵50.00The Boneshaker Politician
₵50.00 -
The River in the Sea: The Autobiography of Akenten Appiah-Menka
The River in the Sea is a story of courage, determination, a clear sense of mission and vision on the part of a rural Ghanaian who, from humble beginnings, has risen to the highest echelon in society as a lawyer, an industrialist, a politician and statesman.It is a welcome addition to the limited literature available on the Ghanaian elite; a must read for all lawyers, politicians, academics and the populace at large.
₵100.00 -
Truth Without Reconciliation: A Human Rights History of Ghana (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)
Although truth and reconciliation commissions are supposed to generate consensus and unity in the aftermath of political violence, Abena Ampofoa Asare identifies cacophony as the most valuable and overlooked consequence of this process in Ghana. By collecting and preserving the voices of a diverse cross-section of the national population, Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission (2001-2004) created an unprecedented public archive of postindependence political history as told by the self-described victims of human rights abuse.
The collected voices in the archives of this truth commission expand Ghana’s historic record by describing the state violence that seeped into the crevices of everyday life, shaping how individuals and communities survived the decades after national independence. Here, victims of violence marshal the language of international human rights to assert themselves as experts who both mourn the past and articulate the path toward future justice.
There are, however, risks as well as rewards for dredging up this survivors’ history of Ghana. The revealed truth of Ghana’s human rights history is the variety and dissonance of suffering voices. These conflicting and conflicted records make it plain that the pursuit of political reconciliation requires, first, reckoning with a violence that is not past but is preserved in national institutions and individual lives. By exploring the challenge of human rights testimony as both history and politics, Asare charts a new course in evaluating the success and failures of truth and reconciliation commissions in Africa and around the world.₵180.00 -
Interim Republic: Ghana – The 1st Military Junta (1966 – 1969)
When the long years of plotting by foreign powers with Ghanaian collaborators to upset governance in Ghana finally succeeded, many justification books and laudatory pamphlets and newspaper articles were published at home and abroad. Some bore pseudonames, others came forceful. The event which occasioned the potpourri was the 1st military coup d’etat in Ghana staged by a military and police combine.
The Military/Police combination which overtook the government of Ghana, the 1st Republic Convention People’s Party (CPP)-led government in that putsch, installed an administration which came to be known as the National Liberation Council (NLC).
This book sheds much-needed light on their lives and times.
₵55.00 -
My Time My Nation: The Autobiography of Prof. George Benneh
Professor Benneh’s life story reflects the promise of the country he serves so faithfully. It captures the anticipation of the pre-independence years, the disillusionment of the forays into military rule, and the integrity of the return to civilian rule with many painful lessons learnt. Indeed, as he recalls his early years with his father on the campaign trail, he presents the mixture of excitement, superstition, and euphoria as the Gold Coast transitions into an independent country ad later the Republic of Ghana.
The author narrates his years of preparation with an impressive roll of mentors and acquaintances—Mr. Gbeho, Professor Steele, Professor Manshard. K.A. Busia, J.B. Danquah, Krobo Edusei, K.A. Gbedemah, Otumfuor Osei Tutu II, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Through out the autobiography the reader is conscious that the astute politician is also an astute scholar—lecturer, researcher, administrator. As he brings his analytical acumen to his performance of his responsibilities as Head of Department, Pro Vice-Chancellor and, finally, Vice Chancellor, Professor Benneh demonstrates a unique ability to move seamlessly between two worlds often considered incompatible.
The autobiography provides a vivid account of an enviable range of experiences from the author’s childhood in Brong-Ahafo region, through conferences in some of the most exotic locations in the world. Yet, he always remains the family man, devoted to his covenant wife, children, grandchildren, wider family and the abiding reliance and trust in his Maker. The autobiography ends with the octogenarian’s tribute to his late father who was his first and best mentor and inspired him reach beyond the sky.
Professor Benneh presents a career that few can equal and recounts his successes as well as his shortcomings with candour and great courage.
The history of a great nation is presented by an insider — that could be enough incentive to read this book. Always more than a historical account, the reader sees the life of a great man who continues, even in adversity, to write a story that will inspire people of all ages, political ties and religious faiths.
₵65.00 -
Ogyakrom: The Missing Pages of June 4th (Fireman Series) – Hardback
Kwesi Yankah is currently the Minister of State for Tertiary Education in Ghana. Until April 2017, he was Vice Chancellor of Central University, Ghana, and was previously Professor of Linguistics and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Ghana. Yankah, an inimitable satirist, is a proud product of Winneba Secondary School, University of Ghana and Indiana University, USA, where he did his doctorate. Well known in literary and academic circles, Professor Yankah has been a Public Intellectual since the late 1970s when, at 27, he started an anonymous column in The Catholic Standard newspaper, under the pseudonym Abonsam Fireman. The credit for the column, in a suppressive political environment, was often mistakenly given to the two great luminaries PAV Ansah and Adu Boahen.
Later in 1986, when Yankah returned from doctoral work at Indiana University, he introduced another weekly column, Woes of the Kwatriot, this time in The Mirror which he sustained for a period of ten years. In 1996, the Ghana Journalists Association honoured him for ‘the longest running column in the history of Ghanaian journalism.’ His writings, both literary and academic, have won for Yankah various awards including the WEB Du Bois Award (GAW), the Zora Hurston Award (GAW), the Ghana Book Development Award (GBDC) and the Gold Book Award given by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The present volume represents landmarks within 22 months of Yankah’s weekly column in The Catholic Standard, from January 1979 to March 1980. It is inspired by topical issues in two military regimes (General F Akuffo’s SMC 2, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution) and one civilian government (Hilla Limann’s PNP). This compilation altogether allows a veiled peep into the most turbulent period in Ghana’s political history, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution, including preceding events and the aftermath of the Revolution. In the words of Dr Anthony Bonnah Koomson, Editor of The Catholic Standard at the time of Yankah’s celebrated column: “The book captures a momentous era in Ghana’s immediate political history, reminiscences of which the author has sough to recreate and preserve with phenomenal linguistic skill. It presents, through satire, an accurate heartbeat of a people under intense political paralysis.”
This book makes compelling, even if hilarious, reading on Ghana’s enigmatic June 4th Revolution.
₵100.00 -
Ogyakrom: The Missing Pages of June 4th (Fireman Series) – Paperback
Kwesi Yankah is currently the Minister of State for Tertiary Education in Ghana. Until April 2017, he was Vice Chancellor of Central University, Ghana, and was previously Professor of Linguistics and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Ghana. Yankah, an inimitable satirist, is a proud product of Winneba Secondary School, University of Ghana and Indiana University, USA, where he did his doctorate. Well known in literary and academic circles, Professor Yankah has been a Public Intellectual since the late 1970s when, at 27, he started an anonymous column in The Catholic Standard newspaper, under the pseudonym Abonsam Fireman. The credit for the column, in a suppressive political environment, was often mistakenly given to the two great luminaries PAV Ansah and Adu Boahen.
Later in 1986, when Yankah returned from doctoral work at Indiana University, he introduced another weekly column, Woes of the Kwatriot, this time in The Mirror which he sustained for a period of ten years. In 1996, the Ghana Journalists Association honoured him for ‘the longest running column in the history of Ghanaian journalism.’ His writings, both literary and academic, have won for Yankah various awards including the WEB Du Bois Award (GAW), the Zora Hurston Award (GAW), the Ghana Book Development Award (GBDC) and the Gold Book Award given by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The present volume represents landmarks within 22 months of Yankah’s weekly column in The Catholic Standard, from January 1979 to March 1980. It is inspired by topical issues in two military regimes (General F Akuffo’s SMC 2, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution) and one civilian government (Hilla Limann’s PNP). This compilation altogether allows a veiled peep into the most turbulent period in Ghana’s political history, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution, including preceding events and the aftermath of the Revolution. In the words of Dr Anthony Bonnah Koomson, Editor of The Catholic Standard at the time of Yankah’s celebrated column: “The book captures a momentous era in Ghana’s immediate political history, reminiscences of which the author has sough to recreate and preserve with phenomenal linguistic skill. It presents, through satire, an accurate heartbeat of a people under intense political paralysis.”
This book makes compelling, even if hilarious, reading on Ghana’s enigmatic June 4th Revolution.
₵90.00 -
The Trial of J.J. Rawlings: Echoes of the 31st December Revolution (2nd Edition)
The Trial of JJ Rawlings narrates the extraordinary circumstances under which a young military officer Flt Lt JJ Rawlings, later to become the longest serving Head of State of Ghana, shot into the limelight to change the course of Ghana’s history and political development.The first edition of the book, originally published in 1986, completely sold out within a year, making this second edition very welcome in response to public request.
This volume is a valuable contribution to our understanding of those ineluctable forces that have changed the contours of our society. Surely, the story of JJ, well told in this volume, cannot fail to grip and hold the reader’s most concentrated attention. – Prof F.A. Botchwey, PhD
₵135.00 -
It Takes A Woman: A Life Shaped by Heritage, Leadership and the Women Who Defined Hope
It Takes a Woman retraces the early life of Agyeman‐Rawlings who rose to prominence as the First Lady of the Republic of Ghana (1982-2000). She redefined the privilege of serving a nation, and sought every platform to champion the causes of underserved citizenry and women. While her husband, former President Jerry John Rawlings, embarked on a relentless pursuit of transforming Ghana into a model of African democracy, Mrs. Agyeman-Rawlings founded the 31st December Women’s Movement (the 31st DWM), an organisation which played a pivotal role in the empowerment of women, and in addressing issues of systemic gender inequality, not only in Ghana but across the African region.
Born in an era when women were overtly marginalised, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings’ strong relationship with her father, mother and family elders formed the core of much of her formative years. Fortified by her unique family history, she was raised to never accept the notion that “there were some things she could not do, simply because she was a woman.”
The narrative captures the family history of a spirited little girl, and as she walks us through the refreshingly detailed scenes from her childhood, we are transported to a hopeful and quintessential Ghana, where a sense of national pride resounded powerfully at the time of independence. But as she recalls Ghana’s struggles post-independence, we are also confronted face to face with her juxtaposed emotions of elation and frustration, hurt and joy, certainty and dread. She was not to know that her personal life being upended early one morning in 1979 would also become a turning point in the nation’s history and would thrust her into the glare of international publicity.
It Takes a Woman, written with unflinching candour, is an absorbing portrait of a life devoted to public service and shaped by heritage. Above all, it is an account of resilience. The voices of the women who stood tall will forever inspire Agyeman-Rawlings to stand for many more whose voices may not be loud enough to stand on their own.
₵170.00