The World

On 22 July 1979, Saddam Hussein, newly minted president of Iraq, puffing on a cigar, strolled on stage at a meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council to launch a purge, videotaped and later shown throughout the country. After Sadat’s peace with Israel, President al-Bakr had proposed a union with Assad, his fellow Baathist in Syria: al-Bakr would be president, Assad his deputy, and Saddam would lose his position. Saddam therefore undermined the deal. This led to a schism with Assad of Syria, who instead made an alliance with Iran, an alliance that would ensure the survival of his dynasty into the 2020s.

After finessing al-Bakr’s retirement, Saddam emerged from the shadows, a half-educated radical whose easy rise, ingenious cruelty and sycophantic court convinced him of a providential destiny to be a new Saladin and Nasser, Nebuchadnezzar and Stalin rolled into one. On taking the presidency, he arrested his enemies and tortured them to incriminate others in ‘the Syrian plot’.

Now on stage, he presided over the naming of ‘brothers who betrayed us’ in the audience with the insouciance of a diabolical game-show compere. As they were named, Saddam shouted ‘Get out!’ and the cameras showed suited Mukhabarat agents escorting them out of the room as the survivors displayed their loyalty by cheering, shouting and hailing Saddam. When it was over, Saddam and his henchmen wept, dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs, and later led the survivors down into the cellars where they were given pistols and forced to shoot some of the prisoners; others were reprieved and forced to kill more.

Khomeini and Saddam were not the only leaders who sought to use murder to cleanse their nations. On 26 June 1979, a thirty-two-year-old Ghanaian flight sergeant, Jerry Rawlings, set up a line of stakes on the beach in Accra, Ghana, and invited the press to a macabre spectacle. ‘There were six stakes, each with a rope dangling from it,’ recalled a journalist. ‘Sandbags were piled behind each stake.’ Then an ambulance drew up. ‘The door was flung open’ and out stepped two ex-presidents, Generals Akuffo and Afrifa, and four top officers. ‘A sudden hush fell on the teeming spectators’ as the men were tied to the stakes. ‘Hardly anyone saw the firing squad enter the tents, all attention was on the condemned officers …’

Son of an Ewe mother and a Scottish pharmacist from Galloway, ‘JJ’ Rawlings was a flashy, tall pilot disgusted by the venality and incompetence of the military and civilian rulers who had followed Nkrumah. But, recently married to Nana and with three children, he kept failing his officer examinations and was about to be dismissed from the military. Capricious and impetuous, Rawlings joined a secret organization, the Free Africa officers, planning coups across the continent.

His own coup was devised by him and his best friend from Accra’s famous British-style Prince of Wales boarding school, Major ‘JC’ Kojo Boakye Djan; as boys they had rebelled against the English headmaster. In May 1979, Rawlings burst in on his friend: ‘JC, let’s go for a drink.’

Over cocktails at the Continental Hotel, Rawlings suddenly declared, ‘JC, we’re ready to take over.’

‘You and who?’ asked JC.

‘I’ve got a lot of boys,’ said JJ. JC warned him against it. ‘You temporize too much,’ warned JJ, ‘you risk being seen as a coward.’

The coup was a disaster. Rawling and his ‘boys’ were captured, and were facing execution. ‘The options were clear,’ said JC. ‘We had to release Rawlings before he was executed.’

On 4 June 1979, JC stormed the prison and liberated Rawlings; they then seized the Castle and overthrew General Akuffo. Setting up an Armed Forces Revolutionary Committee, Flight Sergeant Rawlings declared ‘a house-cleaning exercise’, arresting three ex-presidents and five generals. The first shootings were in private, but on the beach in Accra crowds were gathered.

‘There was no audible order to fire,’ recalled the journalist. ‘Just a sudden: ko.ko.ko. I could see the blood soaking through …’ Years later, Rawlings reflected that it was ‘very painful and regrettable, but there was no other way out’. A hit list of 300 was compiled and all were killed, before Rawlings amazed everyone by letting a free election take place, won by a respectable diplomat and Nkrumahite, Dr Hilla Limann. Rawlings returned to the barracks, but after two years of weak, corrupt rule, on 31 December 1981 he retook the Castle. ‘Fellow Ghanaians,’ he announced, ‘this isn’t a coup. I ask for nothing less than a revolution … Nothing will be done from the Castle without the consent of the people.’