Features
A dilemma called Ghana (Part 3)
The Independence Arch
In response to the first two parts of the above heading, a young banker sent me an email expressing amazement at the narratives because he did not live through the periods and heard very scanty accounts. He was sure he did not glean much from history textbooks.
I am encouraged by such responses because, having read many books on our country’s history, I came to the sad realization that many of the authors were influenced by their political, economic, or emotional biases. Historical narratives must be devoid of these.
I recall that when I stated factually that it was not Tetteh Quarshie who introduced cocoa to this country, I was almost taken to the cleaners by some people who claimed to be descendants of Tetteh Quarshie until I referred them to the evidence. But I have always given credit to Tetteh Quarshie for the variety he brought from Fernando Po, which was bigger and contained more beans than the smaller, elongated variety in the Gold Coast at the time.
Now, General Acheampong’s UNIGOV idea was shelved with a palace coup led by General F. W. K. Akuffo, a member of the governing SMC, that kicked him out and banished him to a forlorn enclave at Asuogyaman.
General Akuffo laid out plans for a return to constitutional democracy. A new constitution was drafted, and Ghanaians looked eagerly forward to electing their own rulers.
But there was a blot on the image of our soldiers. Having tasted power, many of them became more corrupt than the civilians, issuing out cheats for essential commodities to their favourites and lackeys.
But the citizens were just fed up with the men in uniform and were biding their time for them to head back to their barracks. It was a moment in our history when respect for soldiers hit a low point. Even military uniforms were being sold in the markets. Women could openly insult the men in uniform.
Then, just a few months before the general elections, on May 15, 1979, there was an attempt to overthrow the SMC junta. Political parties were campaigning in earnest. My sympathy was for the Action Congress Party (ACP), led by Colonel Frank George Bernasco. I simply loved and respected Bernasco.
The next edition of the Daily Graphic had a picture of a certain Flt. Lt. J. J. Rawlings, who was responsible for the coup attempt. When I saw the picture, I quickly remembered that I had seen him at the Officers Mess in Accra when I went to visit a senior who was himself a military officer. I saw the lanky, almost Caucasian figure sitting at a table with dark glasses that I thought were too large for his face.
He had crossed his legs on the table and used the cutlery as drumsticks, tapping on the edge of the table. He was in mufti, so I asked my host if children of diplomats had access to their Mess. His response in a low tone was, “That guy is a Flying Officer. Won the Speedbird trophy in airmanship. He’s called Rawlings.”
The public’s reaction was mixed. What in the devil’s name was this airman up to? The nation had had more than enough of these soldiers. The soldiers wanted to perpetuate themselves in power. What was going to happen with the elections around the corner? There were too many unanswered questions. Foreign media were in a frenzy in their condemnation of the attempt to derail the march to constitutional democracy.
Rawlings and a handful of soldiers were arrested and put on trial. He admitted being solely responsible and asked the military tribunal to set his men free. I think it was by divine providence that the trial was open to the public because Rawlings spoke about what was eating the other ranks up inside.
It was on the day Rawlings and his men were going to be sentenced to death that some junior officers went to free him from the cells of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), and so was the launch of what came to be known as the June 4 Uprising. An Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) was to replace the SMC.
A housecleaning exercise was launched to cleanse the rot within the Armed Forces. According to Rawlings, there was a need to go back to the barracks on a clean slate. Some former military heads of state and a few other senior members of the SMC were put to the stakes and executed by firing squad. This marked a rather harrowing epoch in our nation’s history.
Students from all walks of life took to the streets in support of the Revolution and chanted, “Let the blood flow.” Women traders who were caught selling above reasonable prices were, in some cases, stripped and whipped by overzealous revolutionaries. Makola Number One market, suspected to be a citadel of profiteering by market women, was razed to the ground. It became known as Rawlings Park, albeit unofficially.
I have devoted this write-up to the June 4 era because last Sunday was exactly 44 years since that event. Ghanaians braced themselves to endure the excesses of the moment in the hope that the elections, which the AFRC guaranteed would take place so that they could get on with their civil lives.
The AFRC set up tribunals that handed down outrageously long prison terms to some operatives of the SMC, mainly senior military officers. These trials were not held in public, though. Businessmen who were suspected of profiteering were picked up by soldiers and taken to Gondar Barracks and “drilled” military-style.
But one thing that caught my interest was what Rawlings said at his trial. He said something to the effect that the ordinary Ghanaian could hardly afford a decent meal while the senior officers were living well, and also that the military was going back to the barracks with a dent on their image. This was what resonated with the other ranks, students, and anyone with a conscience for justice.
When I asked Rawlings later where he got the courage to make such a statement, he told me, “Chief, I was terrified of the consequences of my action on May 15 after my arrest. I knew I was going to get shot after the trial. Gbɔ kuku mevɔna hɛo, so I had nothing to lose. If that happened, Ghanaians would remember me for seeking justice for the downtrodden.”
Translated, the Ewe he spoke means that a dead goat fears no knife. Since he was sure to face the firing squad, he did not need to hold anything back.
As events unfolded, Rawlings carried a nation that needed redemption along with the Revolution. Ghanaians called him “Junior Jesus” and latched onto everything he said. If there were dissenters, they did not openly express themselves, perhaps for fear of being picked up.
True to its words, the AFRC allowed the general elections to go ahead. For the second time, I voted in a general election; of course, for Bernasco and his Action Congress Party (ACP). I was, however, amazed that the ACP won all ten constituencies in the Central Region and none in any other regions.
The People’s National Party (PNP), led by Dr. Hilla Limman, won the elections, and he was eventually sworn in as President.
Rawlings and his men retired to join their units in the Armed Forces. At the handover, Rawlings told the new president that Ghana was looking up to him to deliver and that they were going back to the barracks with the humility with which they came to power.
The first major action of President Limman was to retire Rawlings and members of the AFRC, and their known operatives. The death knell of the PNP administration was thus sounded. The excuse of the government was that, as a former head of state, Rawlings could not be in a subservient position. Rawlings rejected a hundred thousand-dollar offer to go and study abroad as his retirement package, which to him would have been a sellout.
Perhaps due to the revolution, Rawlings was seen as a threat to the Limman administration, so the Military Intelligence (MI) was tasked with keeping Rawlings and Captain Kojo Tsikata in their sights.
Kojo Tsikata was blatantly trailed, and when he eventually swerved them, the MI boss, Col. Annor Odjija, was reported to have told Limman that once they lost Tsikata, his government was in trouble.
When Odjija fled to Togo, Kojo Tsikata was leaving Lome for Accra when 31st December happened.
Writer’s email address:
akofa45@yahoo.com
By Dr. Akofa K. Segbefia
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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