Civil rule on trial in Africa

WITH the coup in Gabon coming barely a month after the one in Niger Republic, there is no doubt that a wave of coup contagion is spreading across Africa. The Gabonese coup is the second this year. Last year, Burkina Faso’s army led by Ibrahim Traore removed President Roch Kabore, blaming him for failing to contain violence by Islamist militants. In September of that year, there was a second coup by army Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who forcibly deposed Paul Henri-Damiba.Henri-Dimba was also accused of not doing enough to contain the activities of Islamic insurgents and rebels who grew to control about 40 percent of the country.

In 2021, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, commander of the special forces, removed President Alpha Conde of Guinea. The coup followed widespread rioting in response to Conde’s change of the constitution to circumvent term limits that would have prevented him from standing for a third term. Doumbouya became interim president and  in January this year, promised a transition to democratic elections within two years. In April 2021, Chad’s army took power after President Idriss Deby was killed on the battlefield while visiting troops fighting rebels in the country’s north. Instead of making the speaker of parliament the president according to Chadian law, Deby’s son, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, was named interim president and tasked with overseeing an 18-month transition to civil rule.

In August 2020, colonels led by Assimi Goita ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali. The coup came on the heels of anti-government protests over deteriorating security, contested legislative elections and allegations of corruption. Under pressure from ECOWAS, the junta agreed to cede power to a civilian-led interim government tasked with overseeing an 18-month transition to democratic elections to be held in February 2022, with retired colonel Assimi Goita as interim president.  But the following year, the coup leaders engineered another coup that removed Goita. Thus, within the last three years there have been eight successful coups:  two each in Mali and Burkina Faso and one each in Gabon, Niger, Guinea and Chad. Between 2017 and 2019, there were successful coups in Zimbabwe in 2017 and in the Sudan in 2019. Through these periods, there were several unsuccessful coups in Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Guinea Bissau, Mali, The Gambia and Sierra Leone. Indeed, democracy is in crisis in Africa and the proliferation of coups is only a manifestation.

The series of coups have been greeted with condemnation across the world as if condemnation of coups is sufficient to upturn them or deter would-be coup plotters from embarking on the adventure.  There is a tendency for concerned global and regional actors and institutions as well as countries to shed crocodile tears, lamenting the negative and sliding fortunes of democracy in Africa. Scholars of democracy have for a long time maintained that democracy will be endangered if it does not bring about economic prosperity for ordinary citizens, if elections do not express the will of the people, and if governments fail to protect the rights and sovereignty of the people.

For many years, Africans have suffered under so-called democratic regimes marked by rising inequality, abrogation of the rights of citizens, abject poverty, and lamentable conditions of living of the majority.  In the circumstance, under the rapacious domination of African rulers running a farce presented and called democracy, vast majority of citizens have been pauperised in the last two decades. Constitutions have been changed to remove term limits in places like Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Congo Republic, Comoros Island, Djibouti, Rwanda, Togo and Uganda, while the electorate have been abrogated from determining electoral outcomes through widespread rigging and manipulation of the electoral process.

Democracy has been recklessly changed from being “a government of the people, by the people and for the people” and from being a system where the people reserve the right to keep changing their rulers at elections as they judge their programmes and performance in office. Instead, Africa now boasts of sit-tight rulers, some of whom have been in power for over 40 years. Why is ECOWAS and the African Union (AU) quick to challenge coup plotters while failing to condemn African leaders when they undermine the rule of law, abuse rights and appropriate public resources while depriving ordinary citizens of basic needs, causing them to live in indignity? What kind of democracy produces poverty for the majority of the people while the rulers and their families live luxurious lives with the resources of the collective in spite of the ritual of so-called elections? Regional organisations and countries that support rulers who blatantly and openly manipulate rules, rig elections, impose and perpetuate themselves in office should not bemoan the collapse of the so-called democratic order when they are toppled by soldiers. Rather, they should ask African rulers in power to respect the agreed principles of democracy and good governance which they have sworn to, and find ways and means to punish rulers who default.

While we do not, and will not, accept military rule in place of such farcical rule in Africa, given that military rule is unaccountable rule and not primed to serve the interests of the people, we call on Africans and those who mean well for them in the world to face the reality of the shortcomings of the farce put up as democracy on the continent and insist on the actual practice of democracy. A democracy characterised by the principles of good governance such as accountability, participation, legitimacy, rule of law, and respect for human rights is the antidote to coups and military intervention in governance in Africa.

A situation in which dictators, as we have in Cameroon, Uganda, Guinea and other countries perpetuate themselves in office and lord it over the people for decades devalues democracy and undermines its consolidation in Africa. Incidentally, Africa is the youngest continent in the world now, and its large number of young people who are increasingly well read and informed will not accept and allow the perpetuation of illegitimate and predatory rulers in the name of democracy. African rulers can fortify democracy by being responsive to the yearnings of the people and ensuring that the promise of a better life that came with democracy is realised in the life of ordinary citizens who are the bulwark against unconstitutional takeover of government. Their failure to achieve this means that coup plotters will be greeted with jubilations on the streets when they kick out the rascals.

 

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