Democracy or military rule…a debate worth having?

We’re now six coups in since the start of the third decade of this century and still none the wiser, as I argued after the first one, back in August 2020. But after Bamako 2020 and 2021, Conakry 2021, Ouagadougou 2022 (twice), Niamey 2023 and Libreville 2023 we could perhaps put one issue to bed: the seemingly endless debate about what’s best for a country: democracy or military rule. The answer to that question in this mostly West African context is clear: it’s neither one nor the other. 

The framework in which many citizens on the African continent live, from Cape Town to Port Sudan, across to Dakar and back down to Windhoek via Kinshasa, is an alien framework. In the late 19^th and early 20th Century the rich tapestry of traditional forms of pre-colonial administration was forced into a small collection of administrative straightjackets made in Europe. (We’ll leave to one side the much older but similarly problematic issue of two imported monotheistic religions, another can of worms.)

The colonial state, a deeply anti-democratic beast, did not die when independence started arriving between 1956 and 1994. It remained in place and was put to use by the new power holders. In the main these were Africans schooled at universities in countries that had produced those straightjackets: Portugal, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, France. 

The straightjackets consisted of administrative structures (bureaucracies) and laws that were alien to the people that were supposed to be governed like this. They were only ever going to be respected under duress. The academic Mahmood Mamdani and many others have argued forcefully that the quintessential characteristic of the colonial state was the widespread use of violence. Violence was the means to compel people to – superficially – pay respect to those laws and structures; violence was also – and crucially – the means to extract labour from the colonised, as plantation workers, railway builders or indeed ‘tirailleurs’*. Colonial violence assumed a highly recognisable form: people (mostly men) in uniform – police, gendarmerie, army. 

^{*Tirailleur’ (rifleman) is the term used by the French to describe men from the colonies who fought for the coloniser on frontlines in Europe. The film of the same name tells the story of a young man from northern Senegal who is pressganged into the French army during the First World War. His father (played by the formidable Omar Sy) volunteers to go to the European front in order to save his son. Tragedy ensues while the brutality of life in the trenches is vividly brought home.} 

_{A life of violence. Chadian president Idriss Déby Itno, received military training in France, fought of Ghadaffi’s invasions in the 1980s while serving in the army of the murderous US-installed tyrant Hissène Habré, staged a coup and removed Habré in 1990, had his regime saved by France on several occasions and died while fighting yet another armed rebellion in 2021.} 

On attaining Independence, the violent colonial state became the violent post-but-not-post colonial state. Or, as one friend from Zambia told me long ago: “Our governments threw out the good laws from colonial times and kept the bad ones…” During a relatively short period known as the ‘Cold’ War*, these (nominally) newly independent territories became subject to a global contest for turf between a United States suffering from an imperialistic messiah syndrome and an equally imperialistic but deeply cynical Soviet Union, which the latter lost. But whether the USA line was chosen or the USSR line, the violent not-post-colonial states remained firmly in place. Its clearest symbols continue to be the men in uniform, with an often sinister intelligence service in the background, spying on dissent in order to suppress it. Ordinary citizens tend to stay well clear: one of the many things non-post-colonial states have inherited from their colonial predecessors is their predatory nature. 

^{*that ‘Cold’ War was of course only cold in Europe, where the USA-USSR standoff remained frozen for 44 years while the hot battles for turf were fought directly or by proxies in places like Angola, Congo, SE Asia, Nicaragua, Indonesia where literally millions of innocent ordinary people ended up paying the ultimate price.}

^{The president of France, 1981 – 1995.}

In 1989-91, the ‘Cold’ War ended with the departure of the Soviet Union. High on its self-declared ‘victory’, the ‘winning’ (Western) party discovered a new mission: those violently repressive not-post-colonial states that Europe had created in its own image had to become real democracies. More precisely: they had to become Multi Party Democracies, also in Europe’s image. And in this fashion, dear reader, was created a ‘debate’ over whether Europe-style armies or Europe-style politics should run the countries that became former colonies 30 – 65 years ago. I hope you recognise its futility. Even when you may be inclined to think that it is probably better to be ruled by politicians than by soldiers, the net result for the vast majority of the people actually living in those countries under either of these types of governments (or their hybrids) has been various shades of nothing. While the top un-mysteriously gets richer and richer, it does not really matter whether it wears a uniform, a traditional garb, or a three-piece suit…

_{“…thanks to your massive and colourful participation…” A fictitious but entirely credible characterisation of an Angolan politician. He is seen addressing a crowd that consists of empty trousers, dresses and shirts. After this literally hollow ritual the politician and his entourage absolutely stuff themselves with food. The film (Nossa senhora da loja do chinês) perfectly illustrates the cynicism in and of Angola’s de facto one party state. (Pic taken by me during the 2023 screening at the Fespaco in Ouagadougou.} 

The new post ‘Cold’ War message of this new fully truly wholly and deeply democratic dispensation was delivered by, who else, a French president, in June 1990. Most of the African leaders listening in disinterested fashion to François Mitterand delivering his “I am announcing democracy” speech in the luxury seaside resort of La Baule were of the opinion that this latest instance of French presidential pomposity and bombast would have the carefully calculated impact of precisely…nil. In addition, nobody was thinking that ‘democracy’ meant giving up nice and very expensive junkets. They were correct on both counts. 

This man, for instance, heard Mitterand speak just four years after he had grabbed power in a bloody traitorous coup in Burkina Faso, during which his (supposed) friend and comrade Thomas Sankara was murdered. Blaise Compaoré went on to re-invent himself as a politician and ruled without interruption until a popular insurrection – and another coup – removed him a full 24 years later – or 21 years after Mitterand’s death. Others, like Cameroon’s Paul Biya and Congo’s Denis Sasso-Nguessou remain in place even today. One of the things these men and many like them have in common is that they effortlessly straddle the so-called divide between democratic rule and military rule, our subject. They embody both: either as putschists-turned-politicians or as politicians so well-versed in their countries’ security systems that they might as well be considered wholly part of them – in fact: they lead those security systems. It’s the law. Made in Europe. 

Indeed, military men – especially the higher-ranked ones – and politicians belong to the same national elites and they work solidly inside those Europe-imposed straightjackets, frequently moving in and out of military camps and presidential palaces through endlessly revolving doors. While there have been instances in the past where leaders have tried and sometimes succeeded to bend the mould (Sankara and Lumumba spring to mind), none of the current crop of putschists represent such a break, in spite of their highly convenient anti-imperialist, panafrican, ‘France Get Lost’ rhetoric. It’s gloss, a fig leaf, a populist rhetorical trick designed to appeal to an exasperated population. It serves neatly to obfuscate the escalating grimness in the countries these officers are leading off a cliff. It also hides their galloping greed. 

_{The ‘Tombouctou’ burns after having had rockets fired at it by Islamic terrorists on September 7th this year. More than 60 passengers died; hundreds jumped into the river and were saved by villagers of Gourma-Rharous, near Timbuktu. Weeks later, distress signs were still heard from those who survived this horrific attack: nobody was taking care of them. In a echo of what happened in Zimbabwe after the worst bus disaster in the country’s history 32 years ago, money that was spontaneously raised in a peoples’ effort to help their fellow countrymen and women, disappeared.}

Because let us be clear: the first coup in Mali was triggered by the sacking of the head of the presidential guard. Hang on, that sounds familiar…*goes through files* oh yes, that’s the coups in Gabon and Niger 2023 explained as well, only this time the chaps about to be fired went one better and took over their bosses’ jobs; in Mali a friend from the barracks got the top seat. That friend, Colonel Assimi Goïta, went on to do a full-blown power grab in May 2022. He’s not going away any time soon. Burkina Faso’s strongman Captain Ibrahim Traoré ejected a man who had put himself in the presidential seat through a coup. He knows damn well that the same can easily be done to him and so Traoré is busy turning the country into a war psychosis-addled vigilante state and its capital into a fortress. Talk of transitions and time-tables are insults to the intelligence of the people living there – most of whom are not concerned with what’s going on in and around those presidential palaces and military barracks anyway; to them it’s the same old distant capital city politics that will only impact their lives negatively. The same can be said of the launching of the Alliance of Sahel States (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger), which will do what the earlier and equally doomed G5 Force Sahel did: set up yet another costly and ineffective parallel structure. It’s there to preserve the juntas in power, nothing else. And finally Guinea, where the trigger of the coup was a personal dispute between the current strongman-in-charge Col Mamadi Doumbouya and his then minister of Defence. Again, no lofty anti-imperialist ideals in sight. What you hear is politicians in uniform playing to the gallery.

_{In other words: move over so I can take your place}

There will be more of these. Togo, like Gabon (or indeed Syria for that matter) is a violent autocracy run by a corrupt family dynasty that shows no sign of departing. Perhaps the fates of Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville, both run by ageing tyrants that go through the motions of holding sham elections will be decided in the barracks. Whatever happens, one thing is clear: this fresh crop of putschists lacks the vision and the foresight to re-instate an African authenticity with which they can rule their countries and address the myriad problems that need sorting out. That requires bold steps, like diminishing the dead weight of the capital city and its politico-military circus. Nope, can’t have that…

_{A politician’s folly: Guinea’s Alpha Condé succeeded in obtaining a third term in office by getting a supposedly new Constitution passed by popular referendum, the oldest trick in the anti-democratic book and a bloody one in the case of Guinea. Condé was subsequently deposed for his troubles. Supposedly a lifelong disciple of democracy, Condé had quite a lot of international credit (also from this writer), which he went on to squander in spectacular fashion.} 

Senegal may have been spared the spectre of a coup after president Macky Sall abandoned his criminally insane project to trample on his country’s constitution and attempt a third term presidency. The Senegalese like their institutions and do not have any kind words to say about those that have tried tampering with them. Ironically, it is from this country (where there is that rarest of commodities: heartfelt respect for these European straightjackets) that one of the continent’s iconic artists, Youssou Ndour, vaguely hinted at an Africa re-discovering home-grown ways of administration when I interviewed him over a decade ago as he made a short-lived presidential bid. Interesting. We need much more and much more elaborate thinking along those lines but it will not come from the lot currently in charge, be that in Bamako, Banjul, Conakry, Niamey, Abuja or for that matter Abidjan or Luanda. Because for now it’s…meet the new boss, same as the old boss. 

In conclusion, then: if none of the imported forms of governance work, would it not be a wise idea to (re)try something that’s home-grown? And what would that look like? Now THAT’s a debate worth having…