46 years on, June 4th, 1979 still has resonance. What happened on that rainy day and the 3 months that followed reshaped our nation, but not as profoundly as some had hoped. Following Nkrumah’s overthrow in 1966, we lurched from government to government with the Progress Party government providing a brief moment of hope. Then the soldiers returned and we experienced corruption– kalabule, moral decay and the abortive Unigov. Then boom! there was June 4th. There was a frenetic 3 months in which the Generals were executed, people were tried by secret courts and jailed and there was fear everywhere. The themes were probity and accountability. Unfortunately, the betrayals started almost from the beginning. The AFRC members who executed people for paltry 5,000 cedi loans extorted 100 thousand dollars for each of their members from the incoming PNP before handing over. They didn’t keep records of most of their transactions. Then 2 years later, the Nkumahist Limann administration was overthrown in a betrayal of the AFRC’s own commitment to our democracy. The question of whether the 31st December coup was a continuation or betrayal of the AFRC’s revolutionary ideals has been debated for years and will be debated far into the future but the PNDC itself was betrayed by the surrender to the IMF/World Bank in 1985. The PNDC, that claimed, “We no go sit down” lay prostrate before the imperialists with the IMF/WB deal. Some funny things happened. Some PDC members in a hospital demanded to know why Doctors needed gloves to examine patients when those scrubbing gutters didn’t have gloves! PNDC functionaries switched their “Afro Moses” sandals for designer shoes very quickly and started educating their kids abroad. Corruption, after a brief pause returned, then accelerated with the advent of the 4th Republic. By the end of his 19-year reign, even Chairman Rawling was complaining about the endurance of corruption. And when given the chance to strike a blow against corruption, he had repeatedly come down on the side of corruption. He shielded his Ministers who were involved in corruption scandals–Like Ghacem and Mabry and Johnson– and retired and died later in relative wealth. Today, the ideals of June 4th are more needed than they were in 1979. But Alas, revolutions are hard. Often, they are betrayed by their own initiators. And they should not be left to young, hungry men in Afro Moses with greedy wives and side-chicks. Women, too often, are those who lead the revolutionaries astray, by whispering corrupt thoughts in their ears. Revolution, to succeed, should be led by mature, principled men, whose mettle have been tested by the harsh glare of experience. In our post-independent life, there has been only one genuine, though imperfect revolutionary–Kwame Nkrumah. He gave away Peduase lodge, he didn’t have a foreign account, he was selfless, and he died poor. May probity, accountability and Nkrumah never die. Long live Ghana.
Article By: Arthur Kobina Kennedy (June 5th, 2025)
