At midnight on March 6, 1957 Prime MInister Kwame Nkrumah declared, "At long last, the battle has ended. And Ghana, your beloved country is free forever!"
Ghana's First President
Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) became the first prime and later president of Ghana. He was born on September 21, 1909, at Nkroful in what was then the British-ruled Gold Coast, the son of a goldsmith. Trained as a teacher, he went to the United States in 1935 for advanced studies and continued his schooling in England, where he helped organize the Pan-African Congress in 1945. He returned to Ghana in 1947 and became general secretary of the newly founded United Gold Coast Convention but split from it in 1949 to form the Convention People's party (CPP).
After his 'positive action' campaign created disturbances in 1950, Nkrumah was jailed, but when the CPP swept the 1951 elections, he was freed to form a government, and he led the colony to independence as Ghana in 1957. A firm believer in African liberation, Nkrumah pursued a radical pan-African policy, playing a key role in the formation of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. As head of government, he was less successful however, and as time passed he was accused of forming a dictatorship. In 1964 he formed a one-party state, with himself as president for life, and was accused of actively promoting a cult of his own personality. Overthrown by the military in 1966, with the help of western backing, he spent his last years in exile, dying in Bucharest, Romania, on April 27, 1972. His legacy and dream of a "United States of Africa" still remains a goal among many.
Nkrumah was the motivating force behind the movement for independence of Ghana, then British West Africa, and its first president when it became independent in 1957. His numerous writings address Africa's political destiny.
Doyen of Politics in Ghana
Joseph Kwame Kyeretwi Boakye Danquah (December 1895 – 4 February 1965), Ghanaian statesman, was one of the primary opposition leaders to Ghanaian president and independence leader Kwame Nkrumah. He was known as Nana Kwame Kyeretwie to close friends and associates.
Danquah was born in the Ghanaian town of Bempong from the Akan people. He was descended from the royal family of Ofori Panyin Fie, once the rulers of one of Ghana's most powerful states, and still then one of the most influential families in Ghanaian politics. Danquah entered the University of London directly from junior high school and was educated in law and philosophy. He was the first continental African to receive a doctorate in law from the University of London.
He set up a private law practice when he returned to Ghana (then the Gold Coast) in 1927. He had strong nationalist feelings on his return to Ghana and
developed an acquaintance with a prominent figure in the politics of the Gold Coast and African independence, J. E. Casely Hayford, who founded the pro-independence National Congress of British West Africa. At his death in 1930, Casely Hayford is said to have called Danquah to him at his deathbed and urged him to carry the mantle of Africa's emancipation. [1] Danquah, however, was not as impressed with Casely Hayford's vision of a single state formed out of Britain's African colonies in West Africa, which were divided geographically by a number of French colonies; nor was Danquah interested in a political union with French West Africa, whose elites, Danquah believed, were more Eurocentric than the Afrocentric elites in Ghana. Danquah then elected to support a nationalist path in support of an independent Ghana. He founded a newspaper, the Times of West Africa, which ran from 1930 to 1935. Danquah's newspaper was the first daily newspaper in Ghana.
He was involved in various capacities in Gold Coast politics in the 1930s, serving on a delegation to the British Colonial Office in 1934, and as secretary-general of the Gold Coast Youth Conference from 1934-1937.
Danquah became a member of the Legislative Council in 1946 and actively pursued independence legislation for his country. He helped to found the pro-independence United Gold Coast Convention. When Kwame Nkrumah returned from abroad, he took command of the UGCC and transformed it from a grassroots movement into a political party. In 1946, an internal power struggle caused the UGCC to collapse with the result that Nkrumah resigned his position in the party and left to form his own Convention People's Party (CPP).
Danquah was arrested in riots together with Kwame Nkrumah in 1948; the two became national heroes. Elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1951, Danquah promoted the formation of a bicameral parliament for the Gold Coast that included a "House of Representatives" and a "House of Elders." Failing this, Danquah's political prestige declined; he failed in his subsequent election bids for that assembly in 1954 and 1956.
Ghana gained independence in 1957. He ran for the Presidency against Nkrumah in 1960, but garnered only 10% of the vote and was imprisoned the following year under the Preventive Detention Act, but only held for a year. On his release, he was elected President of the Ghana Bar Association. He was imprisoned again in 1964. J.B. Danquah died in prison, and any public celebration of Danquah's life was suppressed by the state.
Danquah wrote two commentaries on the life and politics of his native people, the Akan: Gold Coast: Akan Laws and Customs and the Akim Abuakwa Constitution (1928) and Akan Doctrine of God (1944).
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Danquah"
1957 - independence, Kwame Nkrumah of Convention People’s Party is PM, 2 key parties
1960 - declared republic, one party system, presidential system
1966 - military overthrow of 1st republic
1969 - 2nd republic, Dr. Busia of Progress Party is Prime Minister, 2 key parties
1972 - military overthrow of 2nd republic
1978 - palace coup to restructure military government
1979 - junior officer uprising and military housecleaning (Flt. Lt. JJ Rawlings)
1979 - ushered third republic, Dr. Limann of People’s National Party is President, 3 parties
1981 - overthrow of the constitutional PNP gov't by military junta
1983 - Attempted overthrow of the PNDC junta by other junior army men
1992 - Rawlings of NDC is “democratically” elected as President, 2 parties **
1996 - Rawlings of National Democratic Congress is re-elected, 2 parties
2001 – J.A. Kuffour (National People’s Party) is President 2005 - Kufuor begins second-term in office
2005 - Kufuor begins second-term in office Summary:
multiparty system: 16 years
military system: 21 years
one party system: 6 years
John Agyekum Kufuor
Current, 11th President of Ghana
(2nd President of Ghana's Fourth Republic)
Kufuor became president with a considerable history of public service, spanning over thirty years. In 1967, he was appointed Chief Legal Officer and Town Clerk (City Manager) of Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana. He was a member of the 1968-69 and the 1979 Constituent Assemblies that drafted the Constitutions of the Second and Third Republics respectively. In addition he was a Founding Member of the Progress Party (PP) in 1969, the Popular Front Party (PFP) in 1979 and is a Founding Member of the New Patriotic Party(NPP). He has twice been elected as a Member of Parliament, during the Second and Third Republics. He has also been in political detention on two occasions as a result of military coups that overthrew the Second and Third Republics. 
As Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs he represented Ghana on a number of occasions. From 1969 to December, 1971, he led Ghana's delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Ministerial Meetings in Addis Ababa, and the Summit Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Lusaka. In 1970, he led the Ghanaian delegation to Moscow in the former Soviet Union, Prague (Former Czechoslovakia), and Belgrade (Yugoslavia) to discuss Ghana's indebtedness to these countries.
As the Spokesman on Foreign Affairs and Deputy Opposition Leader of the Popular Front Party (PFP) Parliamentary Group during the Third Republic, he was invited to accompany President Limann to the OAU Summit Conference in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He was also a member of the parliamentary delegation that visited the United States of America(USA) in 1981 to talk to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank on Ghana's economic problems.
In January, 1982, the leadership of the All People's Party (APP), which was an alliance of all the opposition parties, advised some leading members, including the Deputy Leader of the Alliance, Alhaji Iddrisu Mahama, the General Secretary, Dr. Obed Asamoah and Mr. J. A. Kufuor to accept an invitation from the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC)to serve in what was purported to be a National Government. Mr. Kufuor was appointed the Secretary for Local Government in this new government.
As a Secretary for Local Government, he wrote the Local Government Policy Guidelines that were to be the foundation of the current decentralized District Assemblies. He resigned within seven months of acceptance of the position after having satisfied himself that the PNDC Government was not the national Government that it promised to be. He was particularly uncomfortable with the brutality, intolerance and abuse of human rights that characterized the PNDC government.
On April 20th 1996, Kufuor was nominated by 1034 out of 2000 delegates of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) drawn from all the 200 Constituencies of the Country to run for the President of Ghana on December 10, 1996. After campaigning for less than nine months, Kufuor polled 39.62% of the popular votes to Rawling's 57% in the 1996 election. On October 23, 1998, he was re-nominated by the New Patriotic Party not only to run again for President but also to officially assume the position of Leader of the Party.
Kufuor won the presidential election of December 2000; in the first round, held on December 7, Kufuor came in first place with 48.4%, while John Atta-Mills, Jerry Rawling's Vice President, came in second with 44.8%, forcing the two into a run-off vote. In the second round, held on December 28, Kufour was victorious, taking 56.9% of the vote.
Kufuor was re-elected in presidential and parliamentary elections held on December 7, 2004, earning 52.45% of the popular vote in the first round and thus avoiding a run-off, while at the same time Kufuor's party, the New Patriotic Party, was able to secure more seats in the Parliament of Ghana.