The fall of Kwame Nkrumah

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

An eyewitness account of the overthrow of Ghana's famous independence leader. And we examine Nkrumah's legacy with Prof. Gareth Austin from Cambridge University. Plus the story of a heroic African WW2 airman, the scientists who alerted the world to the threat of acid rain, a Nobel Peace Prize winner on the 1990s campaign to ban landmines and an inside account of Ireland's financial crisis.

Photo: Kwame Nkrumah c 1955 (Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,
0:05.0	the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:08.2	This week from the 1960s, how the world gradually woke up to the threat from acid rain.
0:13.6	The most serious impact that we first experienced here in Scandinavia
0:18.7	is the extinction of fish in many lakes.
0:22.1	Also, we've got the Nobel Prize winner who championed the International Treaty to Ban Landmines.
0:28.0	When peace comes, other weapons leave with the soldiers.
0:32.0	Landmines stay wherever they have been placed.
0:35.0	A combatant could place a landmine that could kill his grandson or great-grandson.
0:41.0	Plus, a West African R. A.F. Airmen shot down over Nazi Germany.
0:46.4	And they said to him, what are you doing here? How come you got an R-A-F uniform on? You're from Africa. And he said said I'm from Serlio, I'm here fighting for my king.
0:56.0	And how in 2008 the Irish banking system came perilously close to collapse.
1:01.0	It was evident that we were talking about one of the biggest, deepest banking crises that
1:05.5	any country had experienced.
1:07.4	That's all coming up later in the podcast.
1:09.8	But it's in West Africa that we begin this week with a story about the rise and fall of one of Africa's most
1:15.3	famous independence leaders.
1:17.5	55 years ago this week in February 1966, the first president of Ghana, Kwame and Kruma, was ousted from power in a coup.
1:26.1	We'll look more closely at his legacy in a moment, but first, Alex Last has spoken to the
1:30.9	Ghanaian filmmaker, Chris Hesseesse who was with and Kruma at the moment when he was ousted.
1:38.8	On Thursday the 24th of February 1966 the Ghana Armed Forces in cooperation with the Ghana Police Service
1:48.6	took over the reins of government of this country.
	...

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