To mark the third anniversary of Asaase 99.5 Accra, Asaase Radio will air tonight (23 July 2023) the first part of the Sunday Night interview between Kwaku Sakyi-Addo and Jerry John Rawlings.
The two-and-a-half-hour-long conversation was filmed in late June 2020, the month Asaase 99.5 Accra launched, and took place at the former president’s retreat in the Volta Region.
It was the last major engagement between Rawlings and any section of the press before his sudden death on 12 November 2020.
Sunday Night met Rawlings for the “boom interview” at his country house at Vume-Tefle. The headline-making conversation was broadcast by Asaase in two parts.
The “first coming”
In part one of the conversation, the fiery retired flight lieutenant, military capo and civilian president cast back to his first forays into national prominence with the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council.
The AFRC coup of 4 June 1979 was Rawlings’s “first coming”. It followed the failed coup attempt against the military government of General F W K Akuffo that he led on 15 May 1979.
Rawlings was in detention and facing a possible death sentence when a group of friends and followers staged Akuffo’s overthrow. They appointed him the leader of the 15-man AFRC military junta that ruled Ghana until civilian rule was restored with the election of Hilla Limann in September of the same year.
Popularly known as JJ or Chairman Rawlings, the ex-president spoke about revolutionary coup-making and coming to power, offering his memory of tense events in Ghana’s history in which he played a pivotal role.
The first part of the interview, which triggered a wave of controversy, was broadcast on 5 July 2020.
Death warrants and executions
Asaase 99.5 Accra will continue its third anniversary celebrations and flashback to 2020 with the second part of KSA’s Sunday Night interview with Rawlings in the coming fortnight.
In the second part of the conversation, which first aired on Asaase on 12 July 2020, Rawlings explained why, as a military ruler after his “second coming” on 31 December 1981, he signed a series of death warrants, some of which were seen as politically targeted.
Six senior military officers, including three former leaders of military governments – Akuffo, General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and Akwasi Amankwa Afrifa – were executed on the orders of the AFRC on 16 and 26 June 1979.
As he told Sakyi-Addo, “I did what I had to do.” As he saw it, “I had no choice but to step in, because the last time they [the Limann-era intelligence services] arrested me, they nearly succeeded in eliminating me. That’s when I decided, ‘No more – they have to go.’ ”
He went on to lead Ghana as an elected president between 1993 and 2001.
Keep an eye on www.asaaseradio.com and Asaase’s social media pages for news of the broadcast date for part two.
Asaase Radio 99.5 broadcasts on radio via 99.5 in Accra, 98.5 in Kumasi, 99.7 in Tamale, 100.3 in Cape Coast and on our affiliates Bawku FM 101.5 in Bawku, Beats FM 99.9 in Bimbilla, Somua FM 89.9 in Gushegu, Stone City 90.7 in Ho, Mining City 89.5 in Tarkwa and Wale FM 106.9 in Walewale
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