Evolving beyond June 4

Perhaps, it is a sign of our times and the evolution of our politics that Sunday, June 4, 2023, passed without much of a whimper about the date and what it signifies in this country.   

In times past, we would have been treated to a flame-lighting ceremony and a recounting ad nauseum in the media of that ‘sacred’ date and the ‘probity and accountability’ mantra. How times have moved on!

But then, 1979 is 44 years ago, which means everyone in this country below the age of 50 was either not born or was too young to experience and appreciate the aftermath of the coup that year.

It is, therefore, quite understandable that they would be emotionally detached from it.

Even for those who were old enough to remember, time and the vicissitudes of life have conspired to blunt the sharpness and acidity, pain and raw emotion of certain memories. 

House-cleaning, democracy

I was just a few months short of my eleventh birthday when Rawlings burst on the scene, first through his unsuccessful coup attempt on May 15, 1979, and then eventually via the real deal two weeks later.

I did not understand much of what was going on or its implications.

But in Prestea, where we lived, I remember the soldiers racing through the streets in their pinzgauers, the whipping of traders for selling items above ‘controlled price’ and the general terror and frenzied, sadistic violence that was unleashed by the soldiers.

I saw on the television the aftermath of the razing down of the Makola No. 1 Market in Accra, deemed the citadel of what was known as ‘kalabule’, a universal term that meant fraud, meant trying to make excessive profits or using political clout to gain an unfair advantage.

The empty space resulted in what is now known as Rawlings Park.

I do recall the execution of eight former generals, which was brought home more strongly to me in a personal way when I entered Opoku Ware School the following year, with Anthony Boakye (AF59), a son of the executed former Air Force Commander, Air Vice-Marshal G. Y Boakye (S59), himself an old boy of the school.

We shared the same house, St. John House, and I recall his mother visiting him regularly, still wearing black cloth more than one year after her husband’s execution.

The soldiers told us it was a house-cleaning exercise. It appeared the blood of citizens was the detergent.  

The Gen. Akuffo-led military government had lifted the ban on multi-party democracy in January of that year, and things were in full swing, with political parties campaigning for office when Rawlings and his Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) struck, thereby putting everything on tenterhooks.  

Eventually, the process was allowed to return to normalcy and the AFRC kept to the timetable.

Following the elections, the Third Republic was ushered into being on September 24, 1979, with Dr Hilla Limann as its first President.

Twenty-seven months later, Rawlings was back on the airwaves via the barrel of the gun, huskily announcing the suspension of the constitution, the dismissal of the President and his appointees from office and the dissolution of Parliament, all in one fell swoop.

After eleven years of what he called a revolution, we were back to civilian rule under the 4th Republic. 

Political soul-searching

Since independence, our country has been on a soul-searching journey to find what governance structure fits her best.

Some of the systems have emanated from the people and others have been imposed.

We have tried the Westminster parliamentary system, the executive presidential system both under one-party and multi-party frameworks and military takeovers through an assortment of self-acclaimed liberators, redeemers and revolutionaries.

We also flirted with the idea of a Union Government, a rather strange hybrid of military and civilian systems.

The Fourth Republic, under a multi-party executive presidential system, has endured the longest.

But that, by no means, suggests that there are no issues with it.

Indeed, for several reasons, many contend that the multi-party democracy that we practice under the 1992 constitution is inadequate and unsuitable.

In its stead, it is argued we need a governance system that reflects our reality as Africans because democracy as understood within the Western construct is simply not working for us.

To deal constructively with this, it is said that many things about our constitution, including some enshrined human rights, need radical tweaking.

Indeed, quite a number of people dreamily harken back to the ‘good old days’ of military rule, when human rights, with all its ‘peskiness’, were simply a luxury and there was ‘discipline’, whatever that means. 

Making progress

It is true that on many fronts of our national life, we have witnessed a decline in quality rather than progress, over the decades since our return to constitutional rule.

But I think it is also a bit of a stretch to lay it all at the doorstep of our current political governance structure.

Of course, this is not to deny that our democracy, and by extension, our constitution, needs a lot of reforms to make it more viable and relevant

Amusingly, those who insist democracy as we have it is a sham and that we need a system that reflects us as Africans have not been particularly detailed as to what exactly they would like to see in place that is distinctively African.

Perhaps, if we are to stretch the argument, what system could be politically close to our African identity than chieftaincy? And yet, many of those calling for a return to our roots by way of governance baulk at that prospect.

However ideal we may think another country’s system may be, its journey has been far from perfect.

It continues to pursue tweaks and tinkering, because society by its very nature evolves all the time and, therefore, its systems must evolve to meet its needs and challenges.

I can understand the temptation to view the events of June 4 and December 31, among others, through a rose-tinted telescope, especially in the context of public indiscipline and corruption.

But by many miles, I believe the democratic journey we are on, for all its potholes – some of which are the size of craters – offers us a better route to our aspirations as a nation.

We must just never stop believing in ourselves, that we can make this nation great.

Perhaps, the late Sir Winston Churchill, a former British Prime Minister, captured it best in these words back in November 1947; “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe.

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…”

If we must remember June 4 and its military cousins each year, it must only be to say of the ignominious events they spawned, ‘Never again!’

Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng
Head, Communications & Public Affairs Unit,
Ministry of Energy,
Accra.
E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com