Petitioning and Ghana's National Reconciliation Commission: Good Citizens, Bad Citizens, and Performing the Moral Economy

Abstract

The 2002–4 National Reconciliation Commission in Ghana sought to reflect upon the country's tumultuous post-independence history. The truth commission received thousands of statements and documents about the lived experiences of Ghanaians during periods of authoritarian rule. This rich and largely unutilized archive is particularly valuable because the holdings of the national archives for these periods are fragmentary. This article will demonstrate that the petitions contained within the National Reconciliation Commission archive represented an active attempt by Ghanaians themselves to reconstitute and reassert a specific moral economy. When read as a genre, these petitions constructed and reconstructed two types of Ghanaians – good citizens and bad citizens – each associated with specific actions, behaviours, and attitudes. When viewed in their totality these petitions represent an articulation of a moral economy which criticized authoritarian rule and attempted to build the foundations of a fair and democratic society.