Nkrumah Lies in the Dust, Children’s Foot in His Face: Watch how this foreign media reported the 1966 overthrow
From leading the Ghana to independence in 1957, making it the first country south of the Sahara to attain such a feat from any colonial master, the other sub-topical subject is the 1966 coup d’état that saw the end of the rule of Nkrumah.
Of course, it remains a subject of history with many narrations and explanations as to what happened, how and even the effects or not it had on the trajectory Ghana has gone on since that time.
GhanaWeb has chanced on a video first shot in 1966, capturing the mood in the country right after the overthrow.
The 14 minutes-long video, captioned, ‘Ghana After the Anti-Nkrumah Coup,’ of March 1966, by ITN News, opened with the introduction of the reporter saying these words:
“Kwame Nkrumah, the Osagyefo, the redeemer, dictator of Ghana, lies in the dust, and children’s foot on his face. That is the lesson of this week’s coup d’état in Ghana.
“It’s been a remarkable revolution; one of the most remarkable in Africa for a number of reasons. For one thing, the realisation that he was utterly detested by just about everyone in Ghana, and the feeling of complete liberation that greeted one on arrival in Accra after the coup.”
Contentious words and descriptions in there, but that was exactly a mental picture of the euphoria that pervaded the atmosphere in that moment, with even innocent children, joining in defacing the few physical evidences of the tower of a personality Kwame Nkrumah was.
The video also captures the moment at the Ussher Fort Prison in Accra when some members of Nkrumah’s Convention Peoples Party (CPP) was marched into the prison, just as others who had been jailed for opposing the regime of Nkrumah was released.
Again, here is how the report captured the moment:
“A popular revolution; the end of a regime whose opponents have been shut away in prison by the hunted. Now, in the turbulent hours after Thursday’s takeover, crowds wait for Nkrumah’s victims to be freed, and for the men who supported him to take their turn in Fort Ussher jail.”
Watch the video below:
