Jerry Rawlings, the former President of Ghana, has died.
Rawlings, who came to power in a coup, was widely seen as one of Africa’s most respected leaders after he helped implement economic and political reforms, which led to Ghana becoming a democracy in 1992.
Rawlings, at the time a flight lieutenant in the Ghanaian air force, came to power thanks to a coup in 1979. He handed power over to a civilian government shortly afterwards but seized power again in 1981. He served as the Chairman of the Provisional National Defence Council, but in the early 1990s took steps to move Ghana to democracy. He resigned from the military and stood as a candidate in free and fair elections, being elected President. He won re-election in 1996 and stood down in 2000, being limited to two terms.
Rawlings, whose father was a Scotsman, was born in 1947 in Ghana’s capital, Accra. He joined the military soon after finishing school in 1967 and was quickly identified as one of the air force’s most skilled pilots. During his career in the air force he became increasingly disenchanted with Ghana’s direction, while being influenced by left-wing and pan-African thinkers. He and other military officers launched a failed coup in 1979. In the aftermath of this coup Rawlings was arrested and sentenced to death. However, in what could be from the pages of a Wilbur Smith thriller, Rawlings was sprung from jail, and launched another, this time successful, coup. He and a council of officers ruled for just over 100 days. In this time over 300 Ghanaians were ‘purged’, including eight senior military officers, whom Rawlings sentenced to death by firing squad.
Rawlings handed power back to a civilian government in September 1979 but staged another coup in 1981, after claiming civilian government was weak. He headed a military government until 1992, a period which saw a number of prominent Ghanaians, including members of the Supreme Court, disappear.
In the early 1990s Rawlings implemented political and economic reforms which led to elections in 1992. Although criticized by some in the opposition, these elections were widely acknowledged as free and fair. He also presided over a period of satisfactory economic growth in the 1990s, with GDP growth regularly being over 4% a year.
The party Rawlings founded in 1992, the National Democratic Congress, is still one of Ghana’s major parties and currently holds 106 seats in Ghana’s 275-member parliament.
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