I watched this on Africa is a Country before Christmas, and it brought back memories. I was in Ghana during the 2004 election when Former President John Kufuor was re-elected. Coincidentally four year later I was in Ghana during the 2008 double election mayhem. I arrived in Ghana in early December when they were prepping for the second election. On the day of the second election, the voting results were to be released around 3pm. I don’t remember the exact details, but something happened and the results were not released. Supporters of both political parties were not happy and riots began to take place in the streets of Accra. Workers were told to go home at 4pm and people were told not to leave their homes. I just happened to be in Accra and I remember receiving phonecall upon phonecall from my family in Kumasi telling me not to go out. And guess what I did….. I went out! A friend came to pick up my cousin and I to go out for dinner at Accra Mall. We heard that the streets were in lockdown, but that was around 4pm, we thought the streets wouldn’t survive. When we left my house around 7pm, we assumed everyone would be out and about up to their usually business! However, driving to the mall was a different story. I had never seen the streets of Accra so quiet. The city truly was in lockdown.
The streets which were always hustling and bustling with buses, cars, trucks and people only hours earlier were now ghostlike with only armed forces roaming about. The Oxford Street of Ghana in Osu was also dead too. I thought, this is not Ghana!
We finally arrived at Accra Mall and were told by the police to go home. We didn’t go home, we drove for about 20 minutes to Achimota and it was like nothing had happened there. The place was buzzing!!! So of course we found somewhere to dine around there.
What amazed me was how quickly people and armed forces reacted to controlling the situation. It could have become something worse, but the next day everyone went about their business as normal and we found out that we had a new president. But I wonder, what made this situation different to others that have happened in the past? It is this type of political confusion which ignites military coups and civil wars.
An African Election is about the 2008 presidential elections in Ghana, West Africa, serve as a backdrop for this feature documentary that looks behind-the-scenes at the complex, political machinery of a third world democracy struggling to legitimize itself to its first world contemporaries. At stake in this race are the fates of two political parties that will do almost anything to win. Director Jarreth Merz follows the key players for almost three months to provide an unprecedented insider’s view of the political, economic and social forces at work in Ghana. Throughout the film, Merz depicts the pride and humanity of the larger-than-life politicians, party operatives and citizens who battle for the soul of their country.
More at An African Election website.
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