A Survivors' History of Ghana: Truth, Reconciliation and Human Rights in Post-Independence Africa

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, truth and reconciliation commissions have been utilized in a variety of African nation-states. The related assumption--that public historical review can ameliorate Africa's political and social problems-- has become part of the region's institutional architecture and engendered new historical sources reflecting the experiences of beggars and brigadier-generals alike. In December 2000, Ghana joined the growing community of African nation-states turning to truth and reconciliation as a means of confronting the dilemmas of the national history. In Ghana's National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), citizens shared stories about state-sanctioned human rights violations occurring in the period from national independence (1957) to the democratic transition of 1993.;This dissertation, A Survivors' History of Ghana: Truth, Reconciliation and Human Rights in Post-Independence Africa, analyzes the individual memory-stories of the NRC as a window into an alternative national history that places the experiences of everyday people, rather than the exploits of "big men" at the center of the nationalist narrative. This dissertation explores the expansion of international human rights discourse as it is domesticated in contemporary Africa, contends with the definitions of political violence that emerge from the voices of Ghana's marginalized communities, and reveals the fraught state-citizen relationships that have marked twentieth-century national politics in Ghana. In so doing, this dissertation analyzes the historical significance and the political potential of a unique transitional justice instrument--the African truth and reconciliation commission.