Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings

Ghana's second return to civilian rule in 1979 was delayed for a few months by the revolution carried out by air force Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings and his mainly lower-rank followers in the air force and army, and supported apparently by the overwhelming majority of the Ghanaian people.

On 15 May Rawlings and a small group of air-force men attempted a coup in protest against continuing corruption by the Akuffo regime and indecision over price controls. The coup failed, Rawlings was arrested and court-martial proceedingswere begun against him.

At his court-martial Rawlings mentioned his concern at 'the tarnished image of the armed forces' and his intention of dealing with the situation "by going the Ethiopian way'.

On 4 June Rawlings's followers succeeded in rescuing him from jail and taking over the government. This coup was a spontaneous rising by the lower ranks and Rawlings neither planned it, nor led it nor even took part in it. After he was sprung from Jail he hid at the university at Legon in case he, too, was to bekilled along with other officers.

The army commander, Major-General Odartey Wellington, was shot, along with a number of resisters. Some senior officers, like Lt-General Hadimu, rallied to the coup, but when the lower ranks set up the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) Rawlings, even in his absence, was made Chairman of it.

At this time the new political parties were engaged in an election campaign to prepare for the return to civilian government in July. It was feared at first that the new government might seriously delay or even cancel the return to civilian rule. However, the AFRC had come to power not to keep the military in government but to root out corruption in the military-officer elite before the hand-over to the civilians.

The 4 June coup turned out to be a new phenomenon in the history of military coups in Africa as Rawlings and his followers carried out a 'house-cleaning' exercise, as he called it. The AFRC consisted overwhelmingly of lower ranks. Among its fourteen members the highest rank was that of Captain and ninemembers were from the lower ranks, from private up to Staff-Sergeant.

In three short months the ARFC struck ruthlessly at certain allegedly corrupt elements and individuals. Senior officers were imprisoned by their men and shaved bald. Eight persons, including three former Heads of State (Afrifa. Acheampong and Akuffo) were executed by firing squad allegedly for amassing wealth illegally.

Rawlings personally opposed these executions; he preferred to sentence those found guilty to long periods of hard labour; but he was not in complete control and had to defer to the wishes of the lower ranks. Throughout the country people'scourts were set up to mete out revolutionary Justice.

Ministers, regional commissioners, top civil servants and managers of state enterprises were told to declare their assets, and if these were found to be acquired illegally, confiscation and long prison sentences followed, sometimes involving hard labour.

The soldiers went into the streets and markets to see to it that goods were sold at 'control prices'. Shopkeepers hurried to municipal offices to find out the control prices of their goods, which had been out of use for so long that they had been forgotten. Excited queues of people formed to obtain at last some tins of milk and mackerel, toilet soap and washing powder, and cloth, as they watched the traders who had hoarded and over-priced their goods being beaten up by the soldiers and sent into the street with a sign around their neck saying 'I am a Chief of Kalabule'. Kalabule - probably from the Hausa Kere Kabure ('Keep it quiet') - had become the common term for corruption in Ghana.

On 18 August the national symbol of Kalabule, Makola No. 1 Market in Accra, was completely demolished by dynamite. An ultimatum to tax defaulters to pay ac once 'or face revolutionary action' resulted in a tax collection of over 40 million cedis in just two weeks. Contractors and firms that owed money or services to the state reacted with appropriate rapidity to pay up or complete outstanding work.

The AFRC avoided playing on ethnic sentiments. Rawlings, born of an Ewe mother and a Scottish father, tended to avoid the Ewe region. His extensive tours throughout the country by helicopter revealed his immense popularity.

Wherever he was due to speak people walked for miles, in their thousands, to hear him preach his message of a moral revolution. As he said in a radio broadcast on 23September,

'Our immediate and limited task was to cleanse the armed forces, which had lost its bearings in the wilderness of indiscipline and unprofessional behaviour. But our fundamental and long-term aim was to launch a revolution which would cleanse the whole nation.'

The AFRC and Rawlings had no clear programme for regenerating Ghana; Rawlings set a fine personal example of frugal living and the revolutionary regime caused some corrupt individuals to suffer harsh justice. Businessmen tended to regard those three months as a disaster for the country's economy but not cocoa producers who benefited from a 50 per cent price rise.

Rawlings handed over to the newly elected President Hilla Limann and his People's National Party (PNP) government on 24 September 1979 but overthrew it on 31 December 1981.