Rawlings on the Campus of the University of Ghana, June 4, 1979

Abstract

A recent article in Ghana Studies recounted the activities of Jerry Rawlings and other coup-makers on June 4, 1979. Missing from this account is the appearance and actions of Rawlings on the campus of the University of Ghana, Legon on the day of the coup. As a graduate student then doing research in Ghana, I was on the campus that day and met Rawlings near the Vice Chancellor’s residence in the afternoon of June 4. This brief article reproduces entries from the journal I kept that day and the next, which record the excitement of students on the campus, my surprising encounter with Rawlings, and the brief conversation I had with him. In addition, I quote from an email message sent to me years later by the late Professor Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, describing the activities of Rawlings at UG subsequent to my meeting with him and up to the point of Rawlings’s departure from campus on June 5.