African Democracy is Neither

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY  BY MAHMUD JEGA

Sometime in the 1980s when the Reverend Jerry Falwell’s right-wing, evangelical Moral Majority was making waves in the US, Dr. Haruna Sanusi gave me an American newspaper article apparently penned by a liberal opponent of the movement. It was titled “Moral Majority is neither.” It said the movement was neither moral nor a majority.

In the wake of last week’s coup attempt in Guinea Bissau from which President Umaro Sissco Embalo just managed to survive, many writers in Nigeria and around Africa were saying that “African democracy is in trouble.” Is it? Western-style liberal democracy, such as we practice it in Africa, is neither African nor democratic. In other words, African democracy is neither.

Guinea Bissau has had nine successful coups since 1974. Its foiled coup was preceded in recent times by a successful coup in Guinea, two successful coups each in Mali and Burkina Faso, a coup-like occurrence in Chad, and a still-unfolding coup in Sudan. There was another coup in Niger Republic ten years ago. Together these may look like a lot of coups, but only to those not old enough to know the golden age of African coups from the 1960s to the 1990s.

In December 1986, former Tanzanian President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere spoke in Lagos at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, NIIA. I watched his speech live on NTA from my hospital bed, where I was nursing a broken thigh. Mwalimu said there had been 69 successful military coups in Africa up until that time, beginning with the overthrow of Togo’s President Sylvanus Olympio in January 1963. I jotted the information in my bedside notebook. Over the next several years, I updated it whenever I heard of a coup anywhere in Africa.

Only a few months after Mwalimu spoke, Burkina Faso’s wildly popular President Thomas Sankara was killed in a coup that caused consternation all over Africa. Even French President Francois Mitterrand said when he heard of Sankara’s killing, “What a waste!” Sankara attended an ECOWAS meeting in Abuja shortly before that coup. When West African leaders emerged from the International Conference Centre, the large crowd of Nigerian spectators broke into a wild shout of “Sankara! Sankara!” Not surprisingly, rumours soon followed that jealous ECOWAS leaders had a hand in his murder.

Three months later, 84-year old President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia was overthrown in a coup by his premier, Zin Abdine Ben Ali. One Pan-African magazine said at the time that Bourguiba did not even know that he was overthrown. As president he used to sleep for 15 hours a day! Six years later in 1994, a similar thing happened in Malawi. President Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, probably the most neo-colonial of all African rulers, did not even know when Malawi soldiers toppled him, being 96 years old and totally senile.

The defunct West Africa magazine interviewed Banda in 1985 and asked him why, 25 years after independence, all his country’s Permanent Secretaries were British expatriates. He said, “Our civil servants should be patient! They should wait until they gather the right experience!” Maybe Banda was right, considering what has happened to Nigeria’s civil service. We should consider importing permanent secretaries from Westminster.

The recent coups in Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and Sudan were bloodless for the most part. In four cases the rulers were shoved aside and detained, which was why ECOWAS could demand their release and restoration to power. In the old African coups, how many ousted rulers survived, for you to demand their restoration to power? Bloodless coup was such a novelty in Africa that in his first post-coup speech in July 1975, General Murtala Mohammed said, “This change has been carried out without bloodshed and we intend to keep it so.”

The bloodiest African coups of that era took place in Nigeria [1966], Ethiopia [1974], Ghana [1979] and Liberia [1980]. Let’s skip the Nigerian example, which is still very painful around here. The day after Emperor Haile Selassie’s overthrow, some Nigerian newspapers had the headline “Bloodbath in Ethiopia” because 60 of his top officials, including the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers, were lined up and shot. In Ghana in 1979, Flight Lt Jerry Rawlings lined up at the beach and shot three former Heads of State, Generals Akwasi Afrifa, Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and Fred Akuffo. In Liberia, President William Tolbert, who at the time was Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity [OAU], precursor of AU, was tied up at Monrovia beach and shot alongside many of his ministers.

Then, as now, most African coups took place in West Africa. African countries that never had a military coup include Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Senegal, Cameroon and Morocco. Let’s qualify that a bit. In 1982, Air Force officers attempted a coup in Kenya, and President Daniel arap Moi announced that he would have dealt more severely with them if not because he was the OAU Chairman that year.

In the olden days, the reason most often given by soldiers after each coup was corruption by the toppled regime. Many of the coups took place against fellow military rulers, or against civilian rulers who nevertheless came to power violently, such as Hissene Habre in Chad and Charles Taylor in Liberia. These days, the reasons for coups vary from country to country. The overthrow of Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was because of his sit-tightism since 1989, when he overthrew Sadiq el-Mahdi. Same thing with President Alfa Conde of Guinea, who was doing a “third term”. In Mali and in Burkina Faso however, it mostly had to do with frustration following the inability to defeat Jihadist insurgencies. Or so the coupists said.

What should be the ideal ECOWAS and AU response to coups? Shouting from rooftops about the sanctity of African democracy may be of no use because it is neither. Right now, ECOWAS/AU response is a mixed bag of condemnations, demand for restoration of toppled rulers, suspension from membership, sanctions, or sometimes, a demand for a quick restoration of democratic rule. If the victim country is small enough, such as Gambia, ECOWAS even dispatched a military force to chase out sit-tight Yahya Jammeh. If the country is big with a large military however, they tarry awhile. Who, for instance, can send a military force to Egypt to restore democratic rule?

It means the rules cannot be uniformly applied everywhere. Some situations certainly call for a nuanced response. When ECOWAS demanded the restoration of Sierra Leone’s President Ahmed Tejan Kabba in 1996, one analyst complained on a BBC program that the regional body and international groups had not demanded the restoration to power of Gambia’s toppled President Dauda Jawara in 1994. Kabbah’s Foreign Minister Joe Blell, who was on the program, said, “Jawara was in power for 33 years. How can anyone demand that he be restored?”

The same thing happened when Mauritania’s semi-literate President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was overthrown in 2008. Rather than demand for his restoration to power to complete his mandate, the UN and US called on the military rulers to hasten a return to democratic rule!
One of the biggest ironies of the current situation is that some of the coups are popular among the people. Many people in Guinea welcomed Conde’s overthrow. The soldiers even put him in a bus and drove round Conakry so that he will see how happy people were with his overthrow. In Mali too, many people welcomed Ibrahim Babacar Keita’s overthrow. In Burkina Faso, we also saw pictures of people hailing the soldiers even while the coup was unfolding. In the latter two cases, it was all due to the inability to defeat Jihadist insurgencies. Even more than corruption, nothing discredits democracy quite as much as insecurity.

ECOWAS, AU and UN could do better to intervene in national crises situations before matters reach breaking point. In the olden days, OAU operated on the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states. OAU never condemned any coup, however violent, but AU has since changed the principle to peer review and holding member states to certain standards.

Anyone could see that countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea were sitting on kegs of gun powder even before the explosions came. In some cases, military intervention works just fine. I am thinking of Chad. If the “constitution” had been followed and the Senate President, instead of slain President Idris Deby Itno’s son, had taken over after the president’s death, who knows if Chad could have held together?