Black Board Struggles: Teacher Unionism Under the ‘Democratic’ Rawlings Regime 1992-2000

hana’s return to liberal democratic rule formed part of what has been generally accepted as the third wave of democratisation in Africa, when internal frustrations with growing corruption, repression and unemployment in most African countries, conjoined with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, triggered waves of democratic protests, which eventually led to the birth or rebirth of new democracies across Africa (see Bratton & Van de Walle 1997). In Ghana, by December 1991, when the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), the quasi-military regime that was formed after the 1981 coup, observed its tenth anniversary, the move towards constitutional rule had taken firm roots. Two significant developments in 1992 sealed the rebirth of a democratic Ghana. The first was a