MAJOR KOJO Boakye Djan, spokesman for the erstwhile Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), has said that the reason for staging the June Four 1979 uprising was because of his school-day friendship with Jerry John Rawlings, the former President, and also the fact that he did not want Rawlings to die.
Boakye Djan indicated that a group made up of soldiers in the Ghana Armed Forces known as the Free Africa Movement (FAM) which he headed, had planned to seize the reins of political power in 1984, when they had wanted to resort to an uprising in an emergency. The FAM was founded in 1970, the very year that Boakye Djan was enlisted in the Ghana Army after he had worked as a journalist.
Speaking to the New African Magazine, a UK publication recently, Major Boakye Djan who is now living in exile in the United Kingdom claimed that he warned Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings not to attempt the May 15 Uprising, as he would fail, but he did not listen.
15 May Fiasco
“On May 10, 1979”, Djan said “I was sleeping when Rawlings came in and said: ‘JC, let’s go for a drink’. So we went to the Continental Hotel (now Golden Tulip) in Accra. After a few drinks, according to Boakye Djan, Rawlings suddenly said; ‘JC, we are ready to take over’. I queried ‘you and who?’ Then Rawlings replied and said ‘I have got a lot of the boys?” ‘Which boys?’, I nearly shouted the words out.
According to Boakye Djan, he told Rawlings that if he tried the May 15 Uprising, he would be setting himself for use as canon fodder.
He said he told him that his plan won’t work – and that the Military Generals won’t forgive him.
Rawlings, according to Boakye Djan, replied: “Oh, JC, you temporise too much; you risk being seen as a coward”.
“I said you never associate me with cowardice. I have come a long way because I don’t believe in uneducated bravado. We shall see”. So, I left him at the hotel.
Justification For June 4
Rawlings went on to stage his coup with about 15 men and was arrested. “Now, with Rawlings in the noose, we had plenty of factors to justify action, though this was not 1984 but 1979. So, we decided to move. We knew that the ground FAM project, conceived in 1970, had been derailed; in fact, hijacked by one man and his rash actions”.
The tribunal that was trying Rawlings and his 15 men was meant to convict him and his “boys” for committing treason which is punishable by death in Ghana.
The New African reports that with their friend staring death in the face, Boakye Djan and the Free Africa Movement had to do something to save J.J. Rawlings from the gallows.
Boakye Djan continued that when the trial of Rawlings began, the FAM met in a crisis session and decided that instead of waiting to strike in 1984, they should bring their planned resort to an uprising in an emergency, right then. This mean that Boakye Djan and his group were going to plan a deliberate attack to overthrow a regime and then punish the senior military officers.
According to Boakye Djan who joined the Ghana Armed Forces after graduating from the University of Ghana, Legon, and practising as a Journalist, he told his group that their deliberate attack planned for 1984, had been reduced to a hasty attack, thanks to Rawlings’ foolish action.
He explained that even though they had not planned to move at that stage, the exigency of the situation forced them to launch the June Four Uprising, led by him.
“The options were clear” according to Boakye Djan. We had to release Rawlings before he was executed, and also to ensure the self-preservation of the movement (FAM) because its activities were becoming known.
“If we had allowed Rawlings to be tried and found guilty, we would be the next target”
Boakye Djan claimed that there was no way he in particular, was going to survive.
Need To Punish Officers
One objective of the FAM which gave birth to June 4, was the desire to deal with senior officers who had committed treasonable subversion and whom the FAM suspected to be corrupt and were trying to manipulate the 1979 general elections to protect themselves.
One other reason for staging June Four, according to Boakye Djan, was the fact that he and Rawlings had become inseparable friends.
Boakye Djan traced his relationship with Rawlings to their student days in Achimota School in Accra.
According to him, it was his belief in ancestral-worship or African Traditional Religion (ATR) that endeared him to Rawlings even though the latter was a Catholic.
Ancestral-worship involves the process of libation to invoke elements in the sky that symbolise the Supreme Being (God).
Because Boakye Djan believed in ancestral-worship, he failed to attend the school’s morning devotion which attracted the attention of the British headmaster, Mr Alan Rudwick. This nearly resulted in his dismissal.
Whilst Djan was in Sixth Form, Rawlings was in Form Four. They had first met in 1962 through a most bizarre event. Djan had been hauled in before the school authorities (then predominantly British) to answer why he was not attending morning prayers.
“At the time”, Djan remembers, “Achimota was obsessed with rituals. Students had to fill an elaborate admission form, which covered almost every area of their lives. On my form, I had written ‘ancestral worshipper’ in the box for religion. But it didn’t apparently register with the school authorities until I began to absent myself from morning prayers”.
One day, the British headmaster, Rudwick, saw Djan in the reading room at prayer time. “What do you think you are doing, young man? Why aren’t you at morning prayers”, he asked.
“Sir”, Djan replied. “But I have already informed the school that I am an ancestral worshipper. It’s on my admission form”.
“Ancestral what?” Rudwick nearly spat out the words. “You come from a Catholic School, Opoku Ware (in Kumasi), and you tell me you are an ancestral worshipper?”
“Yes, sir”, Djan said. “I was supposed to be a Catholic, but I change my mind on the way”.
Later at a meeting with the school authorities in the house of the headmaster, Boakye Djan was able to acquit himself so well that instead of being sacked, the school authorities, allowed him to stay out of the morning devotion by pinning a note on the notice board: It read: “Citizen Boakye Djan is an ancestral worshipper; therefore, during early morning prayers, he is allowed to go to the library or the reading room to do his own thing”.
Soon, the news spread. One evening, after dinner, as Djan was coming out of the dinning hall, Rawlings accosted him. “Citizen, he told Djan” we all dig (like) what you are doing. You’ve stood up to those bastards?”
At this juncture, according to Boakye Djan, he asked Rawlings whether he believed in Catholicism “No” said Rawlings flatly, “but I cannot help it”.
“I told him: “Then go and fight for your corner, your beliefs and stop fooling about:” said Boakye Djan.
“To be fair” Djan says “Rawlings was one of the few people who came to me, in the night, to congratulate me. Until then, I had seen him walk around like everybody else.
Streetwise
He was one of the crowd.
At the time, I was regarded as a kind of pariah. So, nobody wanted to openly identify with me.
Even, Rawlings did not like to discuss the issue with one in daylight hours.
He came to me after dinner. From that day, any time Rawlings saw me, he would greet me with the black power salute, the clenched fist.
Boakye Djan was the best man at Rawlings’ wedding.
According to the New Africa Magazine, Boakye Djam was the one who led the delegation that went to ask the hand of Nana Konadu Agyeman from her parents when the time came for Rawlings to marry.
Major Boakye Djan recalls that at Rawlings’ wedding to Konadu, he (Djan) and Rawlings wore a tunic. They did not wear anything fanciful. They wore radical things and looking back, it was good”.
“Our friendship grew by leaps and bounds” he said.
The only snag was that there was a time-bomb ticking under Rawlings’ feet all the time, said Boakye Djan.
“Current Affairs was Rawlings’ weakest subject”, Djan reveals.
“He never passed it on his own merit.
Sadly, promotion in the army was tied to passing all the papers. Technically, he had passed all the other subjects like Flying, Map Reading, etc, but because Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings had not passed Current Affairs, his promotion was held up for years. Things were getting pretty desperate for him, so we had to beef up his marks in Current Affairs in order for him to pass his promotion examination. This is what saved his career.
“But by 1979, Rawlings was back in dire straits. This is because of his inability to pass his promotion exams. He was, therefore, put on notice to be demobilised; in civilian language, this means to be sacked from the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) in July 1979”.
“In military terms, he was on short service. So, he was desperate”, said Boakye Djan.
“In addition, funds that he had failed to return to official coffers after his course in Pakistan, had been cancelled; was also being deducted from his pay at source.
So, Jerry Rawlings was in serious financial problems as well.
Next issue:
How did Rawlings meet Konadu? Would Rawlings ever have married Konadu?
Stay tuned!
