RAWLINGS: IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES AND TRAITORS THE ROLL CALL

After the menu of insults and verbal abuse served by ex-President Rawlings and his wife on certain people in the NDC, that they are “greedy bastards”, “ungrateful bastards”, etc; while some of the ladies are described as “money-grabbing whores”, etc, the tagging has recently graduated into people who are and who are not “true blooded NDC”.

At the recent event to launch his wife's bid to be Presidential flag bearer of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), ex- President also referred to "enemies and traitors”, etc who are allegedly trying to derail the “original” values of “June 4”. In a campaign document on the eve of her launch, Mrs. Konadu Agyeman Rawlings also bemoaned what she stated are people who have suddenly joined the NDC with the intention of turning it into the CPP. Her document included an impressive list. However, what she did not do was to start her list from the beginning of her husband's political career.

I will, in the near future, discuss the matter of the “values of June 4”. However, for now, I wish devote this piece to the issues of “enemies, traitors” and late arrivals to the NDC” who are displaying ingratitude by wanting to hijack the party and turn it into a CPP.

An attempt to find out the true enemies and traitors of the “values of June 4” should take us to the period before June 4 1979. The historical context of Ex-President Rawlings' forage into politics should start from 1979. At the height of mounting agitation against the General Kutu Acheampong regime by students, Flt. Lt. Rawlings, flew a jet fighter plane over the Korle-Bu Hospital aimed to frighten medical officers who had gone on strike against the SMC government, as part of the anti-government protests.

Even before this time, he had been invited by Captain Boakye-Gyan (now Major Rtd.) to join the Free Africa Movement (FAM), a clandestine group of radical soldiers with the objective to pursue what Major Boakye-Gyan called, an African approach to African unity; and “to restore democratic control over public officers, public resources and policy direction”. According to available information, one of the objectives of FAM was to “hold to account those who overthrew governments and constitutions since 1966 (in Ghana) and those who profited corruptly from those regimes.

Rawlings, as a member of the FAM, “sponged” on the aims and policies of the group and, on the sidelines, gathered a different group, mainly of “other-rank” air force soldiers who had been peeved by the fact that they were not being sent on peacekeeping missions overseas. They also included a few others who had association with the FAM.

On hindsight, the aim of Flt. Lt. Rawlings becomes clearer. If his new group succeeded in overthrowing the military government, he would come out as the undisputed leader and the originator of the fight for probity and accountability within the military; an issue that was already part of the objectives of the FAM.

It is therefore fair to say that when, during his trial (following the May 15 failed mutiny), he talked about the need for probity and accountability and fight against corruption, Flt. Lt. Rawlings was only parroting what he had learnt about the aims of the Free Africa Movement, founded by the then Captain Boakye-Gyan.

It is note-worthy that the wife of Leading Aircraftman Osei Tutu was pregnant when he (LAC) a member of Rawlings' May 15 1979 mutiny, was shot dead in action. At no time, after the release of Flt. Lt. Rawlings on June 4 1979, did Flt. Lt. Rawlings even visit this woman to commiserate with or support her. So much for gratitude or “ungrateful bastards”!!!.

It is also pertinent to note here that Captain Boakye-Gyan, leader of the FAM, is a Kwame Nkrumah adherent who had great respect for Nkrumah's CPP. At the time, Flt. Lt. Rawlings did not have a problem dealing with such a pro-Nkrumah-CPP group.

On June 4 1979, the soldiers who led in the overthrow of the SMC II government, including Lt. Baah Achamfuor, Lance Corporal Peter Tasiri Adongo, L/Cpl Ansah Atiemo, the late Lt. Agyeman Bio, WOII Harry Obeng, Leading Aircraftman Newton Gatsiko, Peter Tamakloe, late Commander Apaloo, Mensah Gbedemah, Mensah Poku, , Mark Atinga, Lance Corporal Sarkodee Addo, Corporal Sheikh Tetteh, Private Owusu Adu, Staff Sergeant Adjei, etc are not known to be rabid anti-Nkrumaists. This is because, they were either members of the FAM or were related to it. In spite of this, Flt. Lt. Rawlings was prepared to work with them on the AFRC.

One Corporal Acheampong was part of the group that rescued and transported Flt. Lt. Rawlings from MI guardroom on June 4 1979. He was shot and maimed in the pinzgauer in which they were carrying Rawlings. However, he was later never recognised nor acknowledged by Flt. Lt. Rawlings. He still lives as a disabled person because of his injuries.

When the AFRC was about to hand over power to the Limann PNP government, a group of young persons, who had been active in the student movement and the anti-SMC agitations in 1977/78, formed an organisation which they named after the June 4 event. The young men who founded the June Four Movement in August 1979 were all avowed Kwame Nkrumah adherents. They included Nyeya Yen, Nicholas Atampugre, Sakkua Agambila, Taata Ofosu Kwadjo, Kwasi Adu, Napoleon Abdulai, Joe Cudjoe, Gariba Shaibu, and Zaya Yeebo. When he was invited to join the group, Rawlings did not decline it in spite of the pro-Nkrumah orientation of the leadership.

Mr. Zaya Yeebo, one of the founders of the JFM , wrote in his book, Ghana: The Struggle for Popular Power (1991) that following the hand-over to the PNP, “Rawlings felt rejected and betrayed by the PNP and colleagues on the AFRC…. He maintained a vitriolic rhetoric in interviews with the foreign and local press,… The BBC described him as 'a rebel without a power base'”.

In April 1980, in the wake of sustained media attacks on Rawlings and the AFRC, the leadership of the June 4 Movement (JFM) decided, in good faith, to invite Flt. Rawlings to join the Movement. This was meant to offer him a “cushion” in the sense that whenever he was attacked by the press, the JFM would respond in a more measured way than Mr. Rawlings could do with his outbursts. When he joined the JFM, Rawlings was left in doubt that the totality of the members of the organisation were either devotees or admirers of the Kwame Nkrumah political philosophy and agenda.

According to Zaya Yeebo (1991), “When the security agencies threatened Rawlings and (Capt. Rtd) Kojo Tsikata, it was the rank and file members of the JFM who rallied to their defence”. Yeebo continues, “His anti-Nkrumah stance, and later his refusal to abide by the JFM's collective decisions were alarming signals which should have led the founders of the JFM …. into making a (more) critical analysis and appraisal of their relationship with him”. Even at the time, Rawlings himself realised that his anti-Nkrumah stance was jeopardising his relation with the leadership of the JFM. Yeebo continues “To convince members of the then National Steering Committee of the JFM, who questioned Rawlings' anti-CPP and anti-Nkrumah posture, he became receptive to left-wing and revolutionary ideas and took steps to show this. …. Displaying his apparent appetite for revolutionary literature, he even talked of joining Marxist study cells. The books which he seemed to read and talk about most in that period included Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth andPaulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Later in 1982, when he became a powerful Head of State and decided to get rid of his friends in the JFM, he even claimed that he was the one who founded the June 4 Movement. (Now it is obvious that the status of being “founder” is of crucial importance in the Rawlings psyche.)

In the course of 1982, and as part of his plan to cast off his friends in the leadership of the June 4 Movement, he called them to a crunch meeting in Gondar Barracks where he threatened them. At some point during the threatening session, he was so angry about the fact that JFM leaders were criticising his government that he snarled “you have the pen, but I have the gun”. When a soldier gives you that sort of message, it is like a snake shows you its bare fangs. That alone is enough to send anyone into permanent silence. In the end, those among the JFM leadership who were not fast enough to run into exile were arrested and some were later shot dead.

The ingenuity of Rawlings in finding catchy adjectives for his victims came to its fore immediately after this event. Suddenly the JFM leaders were described as “super-revolutionaries”, “dreamers”, “extremists”, “bows and arrows carriers” etc. The “bows and arrows carriers” bit was meant for the 31st December soldiers, most of whom were of Northern extraction. This was their “thank you” for helping him to overthrow a “Northern” President. Soon after, he proclaimed an “all hands on deck” policy by which the “oppressed”, “the masses” and the “ordinary man” for whom he claimed to have staged the coup, were to welcome their oppressors on the ship of state. At a time when the hands of the “masses” had not been strengthened enough in the art of governance, the hands of the oppressors would be more formidable on the “Deck” of this ship of state. And that is what eventually happened.

It explains why the current NDC has become a motley multitude, with people maboth de up of Nkrumaist adherents of the old CPP and UP traditions. In this cauldron of people with different political orientations, the only thing that unites them is to be in power. Once the power is attained, and without a uniform political goal, they cannot move with a common political purpose. What then happens is that some of them believe that the only purpose of belonging to the NDC is to fight for political offices for themselves, leaving the national interest to fend for itself. On the contrary, those among them who want to do something for the national interest are cut down by the individualists, with the ferocity of a butcher chopping into tough bones.

While some of the Ministers concentrate on building their own little empires, the masses within the party, without jobs, are left to fight for the control of toilets. The irony is that the situation of joblessness was created Flt. Lt. Rawlings, who, who during his nineteen year reign, sold off most of the state enterprises, most of which subsequently collapsed. Now, the same person comes to complain about the lack of jobs for “foot-soldiers”. What a turn-around.

The soldiers and civilians, on whom Rawlings relied to prepare and execute the 31 December 1981coup, were mostly devoted Nkrumaists. Among the civilians included Joachim Amartey Kwei and Chris Atim. They provided the political orientation to the soldiers who also included Sergeant Alolga Akata Pore, Corporal Matthew Adabuga, Sergeant Awal, Corporals C.C. Addai, Halidu Gyiwa, Issaka Braimah, Albert Gbafa, etc.

Among the people who came to work with Flt. Lt Rawlings at the beginning of the PNDC rule in 1982, included Kofi Totobi Quakyi and the three Ahwoi brothers, who after nineteen years of working with Rawlings in several top positions, are now considered “greedy bastards” by him. It is intriguing, how President Rawlings did not notice this trait in them for nineteen years while he worked with them.

If Rawlings wants to be taken seriously about his suspicion of pro-Nkrumah people in his government or the NDC, then what the hell was he thinking w hen he had people such as Ebow Tawiah, Mrs. Aanaa Enin, P.V.Obeng, Chris Atim, Amartey Kwei, Captain (rtd) Kojo Tsikata, Mrs. Susanna Al-Hassan (a Minister in the Nkrumah government), Brigadier Joseph Nunoo Mensah, Sergeant Daniel Alolga Akata Pore, etc at various stages as members of the PNDC?

Why did he have Dr. Don Arthur, Dr. Kwesi Botchwey, Mr. Johnny Hansen, Dr. Emmanuel Hansen, Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo, E.T. Mensah, Mohammed Ben Abdallah, Ato Ahwoi, Kwamina Ahwoi, Ato Austin, D.S. Boateng, J. H. Owusu-Acheampong, and J. R. E. Amenlema etc. as PNDC Secretaries (Ministers)?

Even before the NDC came to power in 1993, he could not have been ignorant that Kow Nkensen Arkaah, (his Vice-President 1993-1997) was an Nkrumah adherent.

When Rawlings and his wife talk about CPP people trying to hijack the NDC, they do not make clear which “CPP” they are talking about. One does not know whether they are referring to the current group that calls itself CPP or the original Kwame Nkrumah's CPP. This is because in actuality, the only similarity between Nkrumah's CPP and the current Dr. Nduom's CPP is in name only. In substance, there is a wide difference.

It is also interesting to note that, at no time, in these periods, did Flt Lt. Rawlings raise the issue of some “CPP” negative influence on his P/NDC government. If he had that idea in mind, he kept it closely to his chest. However, with dyed-in-the-wool pro-Nkrumah people such as Captain (rtd) Kojo Tsikata with him, Flt. Lt. Rawlings could not have been unaware at the time that those with whom he worked were Nkrumah admirers.

As for the origins of the 31st December Women's Movement, it is laughable that Nana Konadu Agyeman should claim to have been its founder. The founders of the Movement included Mrs. Obinnim, Yaa Asiedu, Gertrude Zakaria, Cynthia Nuama, Leefua Asiedu and Ama Kuta Dankwa. When they formed the organisation, they approached Nana Konadu to ask her to be the Patron. Many of those close to the events are still alive today to testify to this. Later they were almost all to be chased out, (with Cynthia having died in mysterious circumstances) leaving Nana Konadu as the only woman standing. She then became President, and for 29 years, we have not heard of this NGO having an AGM to properly elect new officers. When people are made to leave the organisation, they appear to be replaced by appointments, not elections. What a democratic NGO!!!

All said and done, it may be fair to say that the original “values of June 4” were mostly those that were developed by the founders of the Free Africa Movement, (led by then Captain Boakye Gyan) These values were borrowed on May 15 1979 by Flt. Lt. Rawlings. When he failed in his attempt to topple the government, others came to his rescue.

It is very strange that Rawlings does not celebrate May 15, which was his baby. The irony is that he has rather latched unto June although almost all the soldiers who rescued him from death on June 4 1979 are now considered as “cowards” or having “betrayed the values of June 4”.

It is a strange world indeed, when all the people with whom Flt. Lt. Rawlings associated politically over the last 32 years have all turned out to be either “traitors”, “bastards” (ungrateful and greedy), “usurpers”, “upstarts”, “climbers”, “super-revolutionaries”, “extremists”, “bows-and-arrows-carriers”, “dreamers”, “cowards”, “corrupt”, “greedy”, “snail-pacers”, “whores”, “little minds” or “lesser beings” . The only “good” ones are those who were picked up along the way in very recent times.

Some of these latter-day Rawlingstas, who, in 1979, had not even born, stand in front of the now “bad guys” to ask them “where were you during June 4?” Gripping stuff!!

The roll call is long. However, it will surely grow even longer in the future, as some of the current “good guys” will surely be cast aside as the years go by. Ask Victor Smith.

The political story of Rawlings looks very much like a Kakaiku song. The lion got caught in a trap pit and was wailing for help. On seeing the rat, which was passing by and had been attracted to the wailing, the lion begged the rat who took action to rescue him. The rat did this by cutting a twine (rope). He tied one end to a tree, and threw the other end into the pit to enable the lion to climb up. When the lion came up, he told the rat that in order to hush up the information about his rescue by a mere rat, he would have to kill the rat. “Okusi n'ani nsuo waa! Aboa Okusi n'ani nsuo waa”.

Kwasi Adu
[email protected]
Krunzi Consulting
P.O.Box 10470
Accra North
Accra, Ghana