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 interaction between statement taker and petitioner undoubtedly influenced how the story was recorded and read. From spelling and punctuation to emphasis and inflection, these statement takers shaped the contents of the NRC archive. As parts of the NRC bureaucracy, these statement takers also added notations and postscripts about their own perceptions of the veracity, emotional distress, and clarity of the participating citizens and influenced how the citizen statements would be henceforth understood. These marginalia are also intimate glimpses of the NRC bureaucracy at work, interpreting, judging, and shaping citizen presentations of the past. Clifford Marko’s statement at the Accra office was a harrowing account of his hospitalization in a Ghanaian psychiatric facility. Marko submitted a crowded handwritten document that complained of “spiritual surveillance hired to climb up spiritually to fight and follow to bar my way in everything I do.”34 Marko described involuntary hospitalization and imprisonment as one and the same. His petition focused on the judge’s ruling, the handcuffs clapped on this body, and most of all, the use of force: “The only question I ask was … am I a criminal?” Marko’s petition also described the stigma associated with mental illness in Ghana. “I have been treated unfairly and also my image had been tarnish [sic]…. I am now known as a lunatic and a criminal in the country … just for the simple reason that I have been sent to the Psychiatric Hospital.”35 Marko’s depiction of mental illness as a criminalized status, marked by unjust social dislocation, was judged by the statement taker as irrelevant to the NRC’s work of reconciling the past. Marko, according to the statement taker, was “incoherent and evidenc[ing] signs of psychiatric distress.” Thus, Marko’s story, an illuminating look at psychological disability and its aftermath in Ghanaian history, was not recommended for the public hearings.
Similarly, the NRC public hearings were also sites for both the expression of citizen voices and the display of NRC bureaucracy. These hearings were the means by which most Ghanaians encountered the NRC and were covered regularly by the news media. They were open to the public and were well attended, particularly at the beginning of the process.36 The nine commissioners, the listening audience, the witness, a translator when necessary, and sometimes the accused perpetrator and his/her legal team were all part of these hearings. Together, they created the versions of the national past that ultimately emerged. The hearings were multilingual, with alleged victims, accused perpetrators, and the commissioners using the most common Ghanaian languages, including English, throughout. In this setting, some of the petitioners were brought forward to tell their stories in the hearing of the nation. One of the defining moments in the public hearings was the death of Joseph Kwadwo Ampah, a barrister-at-law living in London who traveled to Ghana expressly to participate in the NRC.37 On June 5, 2003, while beginning his public testimony in Accra, Ampah collapsed and died. This event shocked the nation and changed the commission’s practice. Instead of a simple wooden chair, witnesses now used a “restful