Word: coups
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Clearly, neither in Ghana nor Viet Nam-let alone Russia or China-is a coup or demonstration or a series of advances and retreats any real premise or portent for the future. But the free world could take some comfort last week from the loosely linked chain of evidence around the world that repressive regimes were losing rather than gaining ground in their effort to impress mankind that liberty, Communist-style, is the wave of the future...
...came while Nkrumah was flying toward Peking on a self-appointed, self-inflated peace mission. Like the Nigerian coup six weeks earlier, it was led by Sandhurst-trained officers who knew precisely what they were doing. At 4:30 a.m. in the predawn darkness of Accra, two brigades of Ghanaian troops quietly took over the airport, the cable office, all government ministries and the government radio station. While early-morning market mammies stared, Jeeploads of soldiers moved into the suburban gardens of government Ministers and tanks deployed around Nkrumah's presidential compound itself...
...several hours; but by noon, downtown Accra was jammed with jubilant Ghanaians, dancing in the streets, cheering, singing, many of them wearing white handkerchiefs around their heads and white clay on their faces as a token of victory. "Fellow citizens," announced Colonel E. K. Kotoka, one of the coup leaders, in a broadcast over Radio Ghana, "I have come to inform you that the military, with the cooperation of the police, have taken over the government. The myth surrounding Nkrumah has been broken...
According to Emmanuel A. Osel '66, the junior army officers who engineered the coup will be overpowered by loyalist forces stationed in Northern Ghana. He added that most Ghanians are loyal to Nkrumah and would support his return to power...
Robert I. Rotberg, assistant professor of History prophesized that the coup means the start of a "very salutary change for the people of Ghana." He explained the revolt as "an overdue reaction to Nkrumah's colossal waste of national resources...