Coups d’état are bad for the continent, or are they?

Alpha Condé, the 83-year-old former president of Guinea, believed that he was the only Guinean fit to lead the West African nation. He, therefore, engineered constitutional changes that enabled him to stay in power despite significant opposition from the people of Guinea. At least 82 people died in the chaos that ensued.

Today, a year later, Condé is in the dungeons – ousted from power in a coup d’etat led by his erstwhile sidekick, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya.

Addressing the nation after the coup, Col Doumbouya announced his ascendancy to power, saying: “We will no longer entrust politics to one man, we will entrust it to the people.”

The announcement prompted an international uproar, with the UN, AU, and Ecowas condemning the coup in unison. They all called for Condé’s immediate release.

The protestations create an impression that the coup was a damnably unpopular event, but scenes of jubilation from Conakry tell a different story. Indeed, there appears to be a serious mismatch in outlook between the people who cheer the removal of the Condés, Mugabes, and al-Bashirs of Africa and the organisations that purport to stand with them, mourning and condemning their ouster.

Coups are defined as sudden illegal and often violent attempts to unseat leaders. The definition assumes, first, that incumbency implies legality, and second, that legality implies legitimacy. A review of what has been causing coups in Africa shows that that is not necessarily true.

Since the 1950s, there have been at least 220 attempted and successful coups in Africa, more than any other continent in the world. The past 20 years suggested that coups were going out of fashion in Africa, but the removal from office of strongmen such as Condé, Idriss Deby in Chad, Amadou Toure in Mali, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Omar al-Bashir in Sudan (through a popular uprising) show that coups are making a comeback in Africa.

In the early post-colonial days, African nations faced many coups because of the fragility of governance systems in those nations. The putschists were mainly opportunists who used mostly tribalism to seize power. As nations stabilised, three reasons became more prominent as justification for coups – poverty, corruption, and misrule. However, a measure of economic growth and some democratic gains that Africa has sustained in the past two decades worked to reduce the appetite for coups. So, what is spurring the re-emergence of coups in Africa?

Simply put, many leaders are overstaying their welcome in power.

Alpha Condé came into power in 2010 after decades of struggling for political change in Guinea. However, after two terms in office, the people had had enough. Had he left power in October 2020 as was expected, he would not have faced a coup d’etat.

Similarly, had Mugabe, Toure, Deby, Ben Ali, al-Bashir, or Mubarak left office voluntarily, the coups or uprisings that ousted them could have been avoided. These are men who remained in power through dubious legal means. They “won” sham elections by huge margins, and ended up changing constitutions to cling to power as has happened in Guinea, Ivory Coast, Uganda, and Rwanda.

Much of what such leaders do is barely legal, but in general, many don’t have any legitimacy to remain in power. Hence, once they have blocked all legal and political means for change, coups have become the only instruments to remove such long-serving dictators from power. With men such as Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has been in power for 42 years, Cameroun’s Paul Biya (39 years), Congo Brazzaville’s Denis Sassou Nguesso (37 years), and Yoweri Museveni in next-door Uganda (35 years), who have turned the presidencies in those countries into personal property, one may argue that Africans could probably use a few more coups to deliver the change that people desire.

That said, coups, as actions of last resort, are generally unwelcome events due to their potential to destabilise nations. Very few coup leaders have delivered on their promises, notably Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings and Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara. In fact, it is Rawlings who said that, “If the people are crushed by their elites, it is up to the army to give the people their freedom.” Isn’t that what armies are there for, to protect the people’s interests? Professional military leaders have been instrumental in this regard in many nations, including Egypt, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and even Malawi.

Given a choice, it is likely that many in Africa will take a chance on the uncertainty that coups bring over the impoverishment and marginalisation that usually accompanies decades of misrule. Coups then become acceptable vehicles for change where rulers have snatched from the people the right to self-determination. After all, many African nations got their independence through coups by using violence to replace their legal but illegitimate colonial governments.

In an African setting, coups serve another good purpose – they keep ruling elites on their toes by mixing things up every now and then. Without them, leaders forget themselves and their responsibility to deliver development for the people, and cling to power for power’s sake. Ultimately, you end up with men such as Condé, who believe that leadership is theirs and theirs alone.

They need to be reminded once in a while that they are wrong.