Friday Giant 1: Jerry Rawlings

As this blog is in large part an exercise in reflexivity, I’m going to be riffing off a friendly Giants’ fan and making a regular feature of Friday posts talking about people I find significant, or who others find significant. My goal is to identify the giants I have chosen to perch on, the causes for and implications of those choices, and thus to examine the more general issue of how our choice of heroes can change the world. I grew up in Ghana, in West Africa, during the 1980s and early 1990s. During that 16-year period the nation underwent enormous challenges, and responded to them with remarkable changes. The Big Man in Ghana from 1981 to 2000 was, indisputably, Jerry John Rawlings. He stands alongside Kwame Nkrumah as the Founding Fathers of Ghanaian nationhood, and he came to power in a military coup. He repaired Ghana’s economy, but he also conducted purges, executed rivals and caused disappearances. He launched Ghana’s modern democracy and he retired when the constitution told him to. He materially affected how my understanding of politics and world affairs developed, and he helped found a remarkable young nation.