Boakye Djan Cannot Rewrite History (Part II & III)

Indeed, the execution of Gen. I. K. Acheampong by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) entails far more than the pat explanation offered by Maj. Boakye Djan to Dr. Kenneth Attafuah of Ghana?s National Reconciliation Commission (NRC).

In his landmark tome Challenge of the Congo (New York: International Publishers, 1967), President Nkrumah observed the virtually pathological dimensions of ethnic nationalism, more pejoratively designated tribalism, in the Central African sub-region. The same, albeit on a much smaller scale, could be said of diurnal sociopolitical culture in sub-Saharan Africa?s premier polity. It is an open-secret, for instance, that much of the ideological resistance posed by the Asante, among others, to the Nkrumah government had more to do with the fact that the seminal president of Ghana did not hail from the putative mainstream of the Akan sub-polity ? i.e. Akyem, Asante, Akuapem (Akwapim), Denkyira, Brong (Bono) and Okwawu (Kwahu), among others. It is, however, also paradoxically intriguing to observe that merely belonging to any of the mainstream Akan sub-ethnic polities did not necessarily guarantee any politician ready acceptance or massive support. We witnessed this with the accession of the Busia-led Progress Party (PP) regime. Legend has it that among the salient reasons that then-Col. I. K. Acheampong offered for overthrowing Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia was that the latter, of Brong (or Bono)-Akan extraction, was rather too daft, by sheer virtue or vice of his ethnicity, to preside over the august affairs of the Ghanaian republic.

The foregoing notwithstanding, it is also significant to recall that if any military junta leader deserves to be plausibly credited with genuinely attempting to restore the democratically elected Convention People?s Party (CPP) of Kwame Nkrumah, it definitely would be then-Gen. I. K. Acheampong. Indeed, legend has it, and recent documentary evidence so attests, that shortly after acceding to the Head-of-Stateship in Ghana on January 13, 1972, Gen. Acheampong dispatched a high-powered delegation to Guinea, where the forcibly exiled Ghanaian founding father resided, to explore the possibility of re-inviting President Nkrumah to return to his native country and resume his old leadership post. Unfortunately, legend has it, the deposed premier was experiencing the excruciatingly advanced stages of cancer; he would shortly thereafter be flown to Romania, by the Guinean government of President Ahmed Sekou Toure, for emergency treatment. The terminally ill and world-renowned former Ghanaian leader would die nearly two months later in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. Indeed, it is also widely acknowledged by avid students and scholars of Ghana?s political history that the Acheampong-led government of the so-called National Redemption Council (NRC), later re-christened Supreme Military Council (SMC), was singularly responsible for the return of the mortal remains of the late pan-Africanist firebrand to his hometown of Nkroful, in the Western Region of Ghana, for a state funeral and burial.

In view of the preceding, it is rather bizarre and curious that Maj. Boakye Djan should be telling Ghana?s National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) that a primary agenda of the AFRC junta was ?to popularise in the [Ghanaian] Armed Forces, the idea of persuading civilian governments to put the economy on [an] emergency war footing as a way of developing [steering?] our country out of basic [dire?] poverty and then be[ing] in a position to threaten or initiate ?unity wars? in Africa [in order to] create free maximum zones for development and resistance against external interests. This objective was to seek to reverse the harmful effects of enforced division of Africa by the European colonisers in the 18th century? (see ghanaweb.com 11/18/03). Had it not been for his ardent Nkrumahist leaning, this writer ? as he is certain many other Ghanaians ? would have been easily fooled by Maj. Boakye Djan?s rather heady brand of pseudo-historical revisionism. First of all, the European colonization of the bulk of the African continent, or polities, did not occur in the 18th century but one-hundred years later. And to credulously accept the indisputably fatuous assertion by somebody with hardly any temporally valid sense of African history that he and his zany posse of woefully ill-informed junta of crass megalomaniacs intended to restore constitutional democracy to Ghana in particular, and Africa in general, is the quintessence of foolery. Not that the AFRC did not fool hundreds of millions of Ghanaians into believing that the infamous junta had the collective interests of their nation at heart.

But what is also quite fascinating, if also because of its cognitive puerility, is for Maj. Boakye Djan, a Ghanaian of Brong (or Bono) extraction, the same sub-ethnic polity hailed by Dr. K. A. Busia, to implicitly assert that many a civilian government was so averse to fostering economic and political development that it had to take a half-educated military coup-plotter to educate the former as such. To be certain, and it goes without saying, the last source of sound economic advice for any democratically elected government in Africa is the military, particularly the sort of salad, or politically inexperienced, junta represented by the AFRC. And, then, just exactly how Maj. Boakye Djan and his AFRC comrades could auspiciously position Ghana in order for the latter to ?threaten or initiate ?unity wars?? all across the African continent is anybody?s good guess. Needless to say, all that the self-styled Osahene is brazenly engaged herein is simply filching a massively blotted, or woefully misapprehended, page from the Nkrumahist ideology of pan-Africanism, or African unity, and passing it off as that of the AFRC constabulary and himself. In brief and plain terms, Maj. Boakye Djan is, here, as inexcusably guilty of political plagiarism as a student caught cheating on an end-of-year?s examination.

To-date, the Nkrumahist feat epitomized by the celebrated Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union, of 1961, remains the sole, albeit woefully shortlived, successful revolutionary attempt at continental African unification. Obviously, the soldier in Maj. Boakye Djan tells him eloquently about the daunting task of Africa?s geopolitical unification, which is why he can only claim that the AFRC junta had ?threatened? to initiate ?unity wars? in Africa. The man must have been watching a lot of Al-Jazeera television programming recently; or Osahene Boakye Djan has initiated some radically revolutionary contacts with Osama Bin Laden?s Al-Qaeda organization that his countrymen and women have yet to learn about. Or maybe the AFRC second-banana has been gorging himself silly on President Bush II?s running pontifical pronouncements of inducing a democratic jihad (or is it crusade?) in the Arabo-Islamic world.

Part III

In his open-memorandum to Ghana?s National Reconciliation Commission, dated October 13, 2003, Maj. (rtd.) Boakye Djan dubiously claim that the rampant and riotous execution of citizens capriciously branded as Enemies of the Revolution was largely confined to the ranks of professional men in uniform, otherwise known as soldiers, and then largely confined to senior military personnel who had glaringly engaged in acts blatantly envisaged by the AFRC operatives as heinous crimes against the Ghanaian people. Unfortunately, available documentary evidence, as shall be unveiled and discussed in due course, points to the fact that far more Ghanaian civilians were summarily executed during the AFRC?s three-month reign of terror than the number of soldiers subjected to identical fate. Interestingly, Maj. Boakye Djan ? he stormed the political scene initially as Captain Boakye Djan and exited barely three months later as a Major ? by his outrageous assertion, might be alluding to the top former military rulers who were put before the firing squad and literally used for target-shooting practice by Messrs. J. J. Rawlings and Boakye Djan, chairman and deputy chairman, respectively, of the so-called Armed Forces Revolutionary Council. Indeed, it is widely acknowledged that an estimated tens of hundreds of unsuspecting Ghanaian citizens of all walks of life were diurnally ?invited? to the AFRC?s human abattoir, or butcher?s post, at Burma Camp, Ghana?s equivalent of the Pentagon, purportedly in the ?invitees?? own best interests and summarily executed. Oftentimes this was after vindictive charges had been fabricated against them and they had been tried in absentia by kangaroo tribunals. Those of us who were close to the military ? four of my uncles were army officers, and I personally lived with my maternal uncle, Col. (Rev.) E. B. B. Sintim, until very recently chaplain-general of the Ghana Armed Forces ? vividly remember the daily announcement of the names of prominent entrepreneurs and ordinary individuals, on the airwaves of Ghanaian radio and television, being ?invited? for interrogation. And so it is rather insulting and outright flabbergasting for Maj. Boakye Djan to be pretending and presuming Ghanaians to be endowed, or rather accursed, with short-term memories.

In his desultory memorandum to the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), Maj. Boakye Djan, who now brazenly trucks the title of Osahene (Supreme Warrior), makes a curious and scurrilous demand for monetary compensation on grounds that he and his cohorts went beyond the proverbial call of duty to make great sacrifices for the betterment of Ghana. We wish we could take him seriously. Unfortunately, here again, our long-term memory precludes any such demand. And to be certain, the least honor or good that Maj. Boakye Djan and his posse of pseudo-revolutionaries could do Ghanaians is to head back into exile or, better yet, voluntarily hand themselves over to the country?s law-enforcement authorities and prepare themselves for a treasonous trial. And here, it is significant to recall that shortly after the AFRC junta handed over reins of governance to the late Dr. Hilla Limann and his People?s National Party (PNP) government, Maj. Boakye Djan and several of his cronies ? including Maj. Baah Acheamfuor ? who constituted the top-hierarchy of the AFRC, were reported to have been presented, each and severally, with at least the sum of $100,000 (one-hundred thousand dollars) by the PNP government and been literally begged to leave the country. Indeed, legend has it that the wantonly extra-judicial activities of the AFRC constabulary had so spooked President Limann and the PNP government that Ghana?s newly-elected civilian rulers had determined that the continuous presence of the Rawlings-Boakye Djan cohort in the country was tantamount to a veritable national security risk.

Even if Maj. Boakye Djan chooses or attempts to flatly deny the preceding charge of bribery or extortion, and one is almost rest assured that the retired pseudo-revolutionary will come out swinging, he has yet to fully explain why he and some of his AFRC henchmen abruptly left the country shortly after he and then-Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings handed over reins of governance to Dr. Limann and his PNP. And it is at this juncture that the validity of Maj. Boakye Djan?s title of Osahene comes into question. For it is significant to recall that September 1979, during which period the AFRC handed over power to the PNP, was also the very moment and time that Ghana needed these so-called Revolutionary Saviors the most. And one can reasonably speculate that if the ?anti-anti-Constitution coup-minded? Maj. Boakye Djan had remained in the country, and not left the rest of us high and dry, as it were, perhaps the bloody Rawlings-led ?anti-Constitution? coup of December 31, 1981 would not have occurred, and the three Supreme Court judges ? Koranteng-Addow, Agyepong and Sarkodieh ? would not have been executed, Mafia-style, by sanctioned operatives of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC). In September 1979, his then-staunch comrade-in-arms, Flt.-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, had not as yet re-taken power via unconstitutional means, as our subject himself attests, and so Maj. Boakye Djan cannot plausibly claim that his life and the safety of his nuclear and extended families were at risk or in danger. And here again, his most expedient response has been to blame the civilian players of the 1979 general elections with culpability for the second unconstitutional return of Comrade Rawlings. To this effect, Maj. Boakye Djan writes, at length, in his memorandum to the National Reconciliation Commission: ?Before the June 4th uprising, we had come to the conclusion that the real difficulties that multi-party democracies in Africa had faced were due to three leading factors. One was the practice of an old administration handing over office and power overnight to the new incoming [pioneering?] administration. The other was the winner-takes-all principle of one-party rule of multi-party democracies. And finally there was the domination of multi-party politics in Africa by such irrational factors as ethnicity, religion, money, and personalities. We identified and proposed a transitional national coalition rule of multi-party democracy as the arrangement that stood the best chance of providing the mechanism for solving Ghana?s problems, on two separate occasions. First was immediately after the first round of elections in June 1979. And the second was after the second re-run [sic] of the elections in July 1979. The politicians, particularly the members of the victorious party rejected both initiatives with the arrangements under them. We had no option but to agree to disengage on the terms of the traditional hand-over/take-over arrangements with the usual pomp and ceremonies. The significance of that proposal is that we did believe as we still do today that its acceptance and implementation would have made it impossible for the 31st December 1981 anti-constitution coup to happen. It is now a known fact that factions within the democratic political establishment in Ghana then lent support to its plotting and did in fact rallied [sic] to support and consolidate it when it did finally occur? (ghanaweb.com: General News of Tuesday, 18 November 2003).

Having thus facilely blamed civilian politicians for actually engineering their own overthrow, it is quite interesting to hear Maj. Boakye Djan call on President Jerry John Rawlings to personally appear before the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), and to offer the latter?s unreserved apologies for his twenty-year reign of terror, or ?Failing to do that, we [Boakye Djan and his cohorts] would ask the Commission [NRC] to recommend to the Government to initiate action against Mr. Rawlings and his regime to be prosecuted by the International War Crimes Tribunal? (ghanaweb.com 11/18/03). The problem here, needless to say, is that Maj. Boakye Djan is inextricably linked ideologically with former President Jerry John Rawlings. Thus it is suicidal for the so-called Osahene to call for the judicial strangulation of his political-double or doppel-ganger. It is also interesting to observe that Osahene Boakye Djan offers nothing original or creative regarding the best solution to Ghana?s apparently formidable political handicap. Both President Nkrumah and Head-of-State I. K. Acheampong tried the Union Government approach of the one-party state which, by the way, worked fairly well in countries like Tanzania and Kenya, arguably, only to be brought down by their own people. But more importantly, the politics of coalition-building, as prevails in countries like India and Israel, can only be organically cultivated and nurtured, rather than hurriedly foisted, as Maj. Boakye Djan claims the AFRC attempted to effectuate. And it is interesting to observe that the Fourth-Republican political culture, twenty years later, is one that is squarely predicated upon coalition building, and organically so. In sum, the salient problem of Ghanaian politics has been the institutionally importunate presence of a neocolonialist military that acts more gustatively than cognitively. I have often heard one of my soldier uncles gloat over the dictum: ?A soldier walks on his stomach,? to forcefully drive home the logical need for a military takeover whenever the economy experiences a downward spiral.

Lastly, while Ghana may be seen to be naturally not without its fair share of ethnic tensions, the history of political party formation since 1957, at least, and a decade or so before, has never significantly revolved around ethnicity. None of the major political parties ? i.e. CPP, UGCC, UP, PP, PNP, PFP, UNC ? have ever had ethnicity as its distinctive feature or raison detre; unless, of course, Maj. Boakye Djan and his cohorts of the AFRC had been doped on marijuana or some such contraband narcotic, it is not clear just what he means by Ghana?s need for ?a transitional national coalition rule of multi-party democracy.?