By Elizabeth Ohene
This is not a story I tell often, but after hearing of a group of armed soldiers forcibly entering the home of a former Finance Minister, Kenneth Ofori-Atta and searching it thoroughly, I think I should tell this story, for what it is worth.
It is May 15, 1979 and Ghana has woken up to an announcement on the radio that a military coup d’état is in progress to overthrow the Supreme Military Council, verse 2. Those who are conversant with the political history of Ghana would know that I am referring to what became popularly known as the May 15 Uprising and the precursor to the June 4 coup d’état.
In narrating my story today, I am not going into the whys of the coup attempt, nor am I trying to justify or condemn the events of that day. I am only telling part of what happened that day and my role with reference to the May 15 events.
At the time, I was working at the Daily Graphic and I believe the title I had was Literary Editor, even though in practice, I did whatever needed doing.
A few days earlier, I had “used my position” to convince my colleagues at the editorial meeting to send a duty cameraman to take a photo of the Guard of Honour seeing off General F.W.K. Akuffo as he went to Senegal and the Gambia to brief them about the political events taking place in Ghana and the transition to civil rule programme.
As a result of that intervention on my part to get the Graphic to cover that event, when it emerged that the person responsible for the military uprising on May 15 was a certain, at the time, mostly unknown Flight-Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, the Daily Graphic had a photo of him we could use with the story.
Flt-Lt Rawlings it was, who had commanded the Guard of Honour at the airport that saw off General Akuffo and a cameraman had been assigned to cover the event at my instigation. On May 15, we at the Graphic felt very smug that we had a photo when no other media outlet had a photo of the man at the centre of the uprising.
I left work that day early, as soon as we finished with the afternoon editorial conference, on the plea that I had a personal problem.
From the office, I went straight to see how Mrs Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings was doing, with her husband, Flt-Lt Rawlings in the news as trying to stage a coup d’état. (She and her husband were friends of mine).
When I got to their home, she was there alone with her almost one-year-old baby. I stayed with her and we tried to make sense of the situation facing her.
Then, a knock came at the door and I went to see to it. I half opened the door and stuck my head out and saw a man wearing a smock standing on the doorstep. He gave me his name, with a military title rank, showed me an ID and added that he was there with his colleagues to search the house.
At that stage, I noticed there were two other men standing some short distance away.
I took a deep breath, took in the situation and came outside wholly and closed the door behind me, instead of standing in the halfway-opened door.
I asked the officer if he had a search warrant and if I could see it before I let him into the house.
The officer looked a bit startled, started to say something, changed his mind, turned his face to look at his two colleagues and then said to me he didn’t have a search warrant.
I told him he couldn’t come in to search the place without a warrant.
He took a deep breath and asked me if I knew what had been happening in the country that day.
I said yes, I knew.
“And you know that the person responsible lives here”, he said.
I nodded and said to him: “please, officer, don’t let us use illegal means to fight illegal activities. You must be on the straight and narrow if you represent the law”.
He stared at me silently, turned around and walked to his colleagues and they went into their car and drove off.
I went back into the room and narrated what had occurred to my friend. I told her I was certain they would be back.
About an hour and some 15 minutes later, there was a knock at the door and, as I had expected, the officer was there with his two colleagues, this time, armed with a search warrant which he gave to me to read.
I let him and his colleagues in and they conducted their search and left.
There was no drama, and I don’t think even the people in the next apartment noticed that there had been any visit from the security services.
The search was meticulous but very civilised, and I am not certain about this, but, I think when they were about to leave, the officer muttered a “thank you”.
Later on that evening, something even more dramatic happened to end my events of May 15 1979, but that is a story for another day.
For the moment, I have just been wondering about what kind of world we lived in during those times.
There was no Constitution. We were under a military regime.
A uniformed man, a Flight-Lieutenant had tried to stage a coup and failed and been arrested.
A military officer, (he called his name and showed me his ID) tried to enter the home of the person who had staged the unsuccessful coup d’état and I asked him to show me a search warrant.
He did not laugh out loud with incredulity and pushed me aside to enter the house. He answered me and we had a polite conversation.
He leaves the house and goes to get a search warrant and comes back to knock at the door to gain entry. This was in May 1979, under a military regime.
In the year of our Lord, 2025, 33 years into the longest stretch of constitutional rule we have ever had, armed soldiers are led by a man of no publicly determined official status, into the home of a former Finance Minister.
They rudely brush aside the staff, enter the house and proceed to conduct a hostile and illegal search.
They go through kitchen and cutlery drawers, fridges, freezers, cupboards, closets, underneath beds, books, documents, plates, pots and pans, clothes, and linen. They take the car keys and thoroughly ransack the cars and leave the people in the house thoroughly shaken and traumatised.
Back in 1979, I said on a GTV programme to Mike Eghan that where we were as a country at that time, there was nowhere else to go but up, we couldn’t sink any lower.
I wonder where we are today.
