Ebo Whyte, June 4th Transformed Ghana for the Worse

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

Dec. 23, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

Somebody has already said that the so-called June 4th Revolution only upwardly transformed Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, their cronies and relatives; and so I shall not bother myself with a tired rehashing of the same. Suffice it to say, however, that for the rest of us June 4th was an inferno of apocalyptic proportions that most Ghanaians old enough to remember or who are still alive, after the fact, have yet to recover from. It would be compounded by Chairman Rawlings’ ousting of the democratically elected Limann-led government of the People’s National Party (PNP).

I don’t doubt for a split second that renowned playwright James Ebo Whyte saw things differently, based on his position and relationship to the center of the seismically shifted national power structure; actually there was something inescapably narcissistic and incestuous about the fact that the Rawlings Revolution was a mere revival of the sort of military rule that had become virtually integral to Ghana’s political culture since 1966 (See “June 4 Revolution Transformed Ghana – Ebo Whyte” Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 12/23/15).

To fully appreciate the long-term impact of the so-called Rawlings Revolution, one needs to objectively look at the bigger picture, as Americans are wont to say. And that picture, of course, involves the deleterious impact that the injudicious hijacking of the already fragile national economy entailed, such as the populist but patently unsound policies of “controlled prices” by which edict, for only one striking example, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) forced traders to sell their so-called Essential Commodities at prices well below prevailing market prices in both the country and, one presumes, the West African sub-region.

What further complicated matters was that nearly every one of the commodities that traders were being forced to sell at well under the going market prices were imported merchandise like soap, rice, sugar, sardines and mackerels and other items of provision that were not produced in the country. In elementary economics, there is something called Supply and Demand or, as many a Ghanaian is wont to say, Demand and Supply. In globally well-established Command Economies like the erstwhile Soviet Union and Maoist China, such policy could be fairly more successfully pursued or implemented because unlike Ghana, these mega-nations had a relatively strong industrial and manufacturing base. No such system existed in the badly battered economy of the Ghana of the late 1970s and early 1990a.

The result was that by the end of September 1979, when Dr. Hilla Limann took over the reins of governance as a popularly elected leader, the country’s economy had effectively collapsed. And it is indisputable that the populist but hardly economically savvy policy of market-price freeze instituted by the Chairman Rawlings-led Armed Forces Revolutionary Council had a considerable part to play in this Stygian mess. In short, it was this apocalyptic state of affairs that forced President Limann to solicit the assistance of the IMF and the World Bank or the Bretton Wood institutions.

Chairman Rawlings would wax self-righteously and pontifically over the fact of Dr. Limann’s having supposedly unwisely turned to the notorious twin capitalist vampires for economic assistance, the very same institutions to which, irony of ironies, the same Chairman Rawlings would turn less than three years after ousting and describing the Limann-led People’s National Party as the “most disgraceful government in the postcolonial history of Ghana.” He would also self-righteously accuse President Limann of having skyrocketed the country’s inflationary rate over the 100-percent mark.

Well, twenty years later and having harshly put Ghanaians through the IMF -World Bank’s strait-jacket that was the so-called Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) – cynically and propagandistically touted at the time as the best of its kind for the African continent (and the dear reader ought to know precisely what the preceding means) – Chairman Rawlings would be accused of having bequeathed Ghana an inflationary rate of between 700- and 1,000-percent.

I know Uncle Ebo Whyte is at the peak of his trade and financial success presently, and so he can be forgiven for having so soon forgotten the apocalyptic mess in which Chairman “Necklace” Rawlings plunged the country. How else can Mr. Whyte explain the fact that all of Chairman Rawlings’ officially known and recognized children, including Dr. Zanetor Rawlings, currently in the running for NDC-MP for Korle-Klottey, had to be shipped abroad for studies at some of the most expensive and prestigious universities and colleges?

The rich, famous and prosperous have the luxury of being invariably pat and forgetful about the painful past, as well as facilely forgiving of the same. They are also entitled to their personal opinions. But facts, as our sages have said, are divine. At the end of the day, however, it is the following memorable question from the legendary and immortalized Mr. Robert Nesta Marley (Bob Marley) that begs us to ponder and wonder about some of the untold atrocities visited on our kinsfolk: “Is there any hope for the hopeless sinner who has hurt mankind [read “The Akan High Court Judges”] in order to save his own people [read “Justice Francis Y. Kpegah and the rest of the Anlo-Ewe kleptocratic pack”]?

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