the day by officially requesting an expanded temporal mandate. “The credibility of the Commission to a large extent depends on public perception of its independence,” they explained.16 If the NRC was to transcend accusations of partisan bias, it could not, from the outset, proclaim that only particular regimes were guilty of violence. The final version of the National Reconciliation Commission Act (Act 611) included a broad temporal mandate that reviewed the majority of the national history from independence in 1957 through the reestablishment of political democracy in 1993.17
Ghanaian civil-society organizations also challenged President Kufuor’s proposal to appoint all the commissioners himself. The parliamentary committee proposed that both the Council of the State and the Parliament should have a hand in appointing commissioners. This advice was ignored; President Kufuor himself appointed all nine commissioners. The people chosen as National Reconciliation commissioners represented the legal community, academia, traditional leaders, religious leaders, trade unions, and the military.18 Three of the nine were women. While the commissioners held diverse regional and ethnic affiliations, their unilateral appointment suggested that the much-ballyhooed transparency and accountability of the NRC went only so far.19
One of the central arguments of this study is that Ghana’s NRC generated a breathtaking collection of citizen testimonies about the national past, present, and future. What should be clear from the above section is that before the NRC was a haven for citizen voice, it was a catalyst for partisan political wrangling. This context, in which reviewing historical violence was also a matter of partisan competition, influenced all that followed—from how citizen stories were composed and shared to the commissioners’ reactions and recommendations.
Similarly, the nuts and bolts of the NRC’s institutional practice, what I call the NRC bureaucracy, also influenced the expression and transmission of citizen voices. The choice of who was hired as a statement taker, how the room was arranged for the public hearings, which stories were valorized and called for hearings and which were dismissed as irrelevant—all of these shape the contents of this archive. Layers of translation, transmission, and transcription mediate the space between petitioners and their audiences. The NRC bureaucracy was a web that constrained and colored the stories that Ghanaians shared. And yet, the voices of the Ghanaian people shone through. With deliberation and intention, the so-called victims of Ghanaian history came forward with stories about the distressing past and the expected future. The NRC bureaucracy publicized the existence and purpose of the NRC, but ultimately individual citizens had to come forward and join in the “healing process.”20 This was no easy task.
Bringing one’s voice and body to the NRC inevitably involves a calculation of risk and benefit. What good (personal, familial, moral, national, political) can this initiative create, and how does this compare to the possible negative consequences? Following this assessment, Ghanaians then had to travel to one of five zonal offices spread throughout the country to lodge a petition. Mobility, however, was not equally accessible among the self-described victims of human rights abuse. When Benjamin Amin submitted his petition to the zonal office, he specifically asked not to be called to Accra for the public hearings. “Old age and ill-health” made full participation a barrier for this former soldier. “I am now 69 years, very weak and sick that it would not be easy to travel from Boadua near Akwatia to Accra…. I would have to urinate about 8 times before I reach Accra [which] I believe no … commercial driver would tolerate.”21 This pitiful description is a sharp reminder of the economic and physical barriers that many Ghanaians had to overcome to answer the NRC’s call. Other NRC records illuminate how fear itself was a critical obstacle. After lodging his petition about the military government’s repression of religious organizations during the 1980s, a pastor associated with the Nyamesompa Healing Church wrote “to inform the NRC that, due to numerous threatening telephone calls that I have received about my life … I have voluntarily decided not to give any evidence at the Commission.”22 The callers warned him that “after the 2004 election NDC will come back to power and [he] will be arrested and killed.” His letter, included in the NRC file, was dated April 9, 2003: “This is my personal decision and obligation, which I expect the commission to accept.”23
Official NRC statistics report that women lodged only 19 percent of the total petitions.24 Commissioner Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu described the pains that the NRC took to make itself more accessible to Ghanaian women, who, because of higher rates of illiteracy and “intimidation,” were less likely to “come before official processes.”25 However, women’s limited participation in the petition making, public hearings, and follow-up surveys is best understood in the context of a broader societal restriction on women’s lives. The expectation that scores of Ghanaian women would participate in a public, government-backed forum with uncertain material outcomes may have been overly optimistic.26 Some women lodged petitions but then refused to appear at public hearings, citing the disgrace that would come to their families.27 Others, like a number of women in Tamale, deliberately missed their hearing dates because they feared their public testimony could be held against them in the event of another regime change. It took a reassuring radio announcement from the NRC chairman before the women of Tamale came forward.28 The risk-benefit calculation was different for women, who occupy a generally more precarious social, economic, and political position within Ghana.29 Individual participation in the NRC was fundamentally an act of optimism; good might yet come from engaging with the government’s initiative. The good that citizen participants hoped for, however, varied. One witness entirely eschewed the idea of monetary compensation, claiming that he came before the commission to “set the record straight” and to relieve his psychological burden. Another would bring a detailed chart requesting thousands of US dollars as reparations for harms done and damage sustained. The various hopes that led Ghanaians to risk health, comfort, and public esteem in order to tell their stories, are recorded in the petitions they submitted.
In September 2002, the five zonal NRC offices began accepting petitions and statements. The Bolgatanga office served the Upper East and Upper West Regions, Ho served the Volta and Greater Accra Regions, Kumasi served the Eastern and Ashanti Regions, Sekondi-Takoradi served the Western and Central Regions, and Tamale served the Brong-Ahafo and Northern Regions.30 Beginning in January 2003, for a period of twenty-two months NRC public hearings were held in Accra, Tamale, Kumasi, Takoradi, and Koforidua. By June 2004, a total of 4,240 statements had been submitted to the NRC. About 50 percent of the collected petitions were listed for public hearings.31 It was in the petition-taking offices and the public hearings that Ghanaians transformed the NRC from a partisan contest into a space for citizen voices.
Petitions and Public Hearings
On the morning of September 3, 2002, a queue had already formed in front of the NRC’s temporary headquarters in Accra’s Independence Square. This was the first day that Ghanaians could lodge statements with the NRC, and by 5 a.m., more than sixty petitioners were waiting; the first had arrived as early as 3 a.m.32 Upon arrival at a zonal office, an individual was met by a trained statement taker, who first gathered a battery of demographic data including age, ethnicity, language spoken, religion, and profession. The demographic data form also included a yes/no question about whether the petition maker believed that the harm they suffered was political in nature. The statement taker would also transcribe the citizen’s story, in English, onto a text form. Translation was frequently a part of this process, as statement takers would listen to a story told in Twi, Gaa, Hausa, Fante, Wala, Ewe, Dagaari, Sisali, FraFra, or any of the other Ghanaian languages and write it down in English, asking clarifying questions when necessary.33 Statement takers were directed to read the petition back to the petitioner to ensure the individual’s satisfaction with the contents. If satisfied, Ghanaians signed their name or left their mark on the petition. Sometimes, alongside or instead of a statement taken at the NRC office, Ghanaians brought prepared petitions with them. Handwritten or typed out in advance, sometimes with the help of a lawyer or family friend, these petitions were often lengthier and more formal than the statements taken on the spot.
The
