Why are the coups returning to Africa?

by

These captures of power threaten a reversal of the democratization process that Africa has undergone over the past two decades and a return to the era of coups as a rule.

According to one study, sub-Saharan Africa experienced 80 successful coups and 108 failed coup attempts between 1956 and 2001, an average of four a year. This figure was halved in the period from then until 2019, as most African nations resorted to democracy, only to be on the rise again. Because?

In the early postcolonial decades, when the coups were frantic, African coup leaders almost always offered the same reasons for overthrowing governments: corruption, mismanagement, and poverty.

The leader of the recent coup in Guinea, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, echoed these justifications and cited “poverty and endemic corruption” as reasons to overthrow 83-year-old President Alpha Conde. Soldiers who led a coup in neighboring Mali last year claimed they were “robbers” and that “bad government” drove their actions. Similarly, Sudanese and Zimbabwean generals who overthrew Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and Robert Mugabe in 2017 respectively, deployed similar arguments.
A Guinean military official says President Alpha Conde was arrested when an apparent coup took place

Although well spent, these justifications still resonate in many Africans for the simple reason that they continue to accurately represent the reality of their countries. Also, in many countries, people feel that these problems are getting worse.

The Afrobarometer research network conducted surveys in 19 African countries which showed that 6 out of 10 respondents said corruption was on the rise in their country (the figure was 63% in Guinea), while 2 out of 3 said their governments are doing a bad job fighting it.

In addition, 72% believe that ordinary citizens “risk retaliation or other negative consequences” if they report corruption to the authorities, a sign that Africans believe that their public institutions not only participate in corrupt systems, but also actively defend them. systems.

As for poverty, an already tragic situation has worsened thanks to the fragile economies of Africa, which have been attacked by the coronavirus pandemic.

One in three people is now unemployed in Nigeria, West Africa’s largest economy. The same goes for South Africa, the most industrialized African nation. It is now estimated that the number of extremely poor people in sub-Saharan Africa has exceeded 500 million, half the population.
This on the youngest continent in the world with an average age of 20 years and a population with faster growth than anywhere else, further intensifying an already fierce competition for resources.

These conditions create fertile conditions for coups and for increasingly desperate young Africans who have lost patience with their corrupt leaders to welcome copyists who promise radical change, as evidenced in the streets of Guinea after taking possession, even with some exalted foxes kissing even the soldiers.

But, as with the blows of the 1970s, these scenes of joy are unlikely to last, says Joseph Sany, vice president of the Center for Africa at the U.S. Peace Institute. “The initial reaction to what you see on the streets will be one of joy, but very soon people will demand action … and I’m not sure the military can meet expectations, the provision of basic services, more freedoms,” he says.

It threatens democratic gains

What is clear is that these coups pose a serious threat to the democratic gains that African countries have made in recent decades. Worryingly, research shows that many Africans are increasingly stopping believing that elections can get the leaders they want.

Surveys conducted in 19 African countries in 2019/20 showed that only 4 out of 10 respondents (42%) believe that elections work well to ensure that “MPs reflect the opinion of voters” and “allow voters to eliminate insufficient leaders “.

In other words, less than half believe that elections guarantee representativeness and accountability, key ingredients of functional democracies.

According to the poll, in 11 countries surveyed regularly since 2008, elections are believed to allow voters to eliminate insufficient leaders. It’s not that Africans no longer want to choose their leaders through elections, but simply now many believe their political systems are at stake.

Leaders like the deposed Conde are part of the problem. The only reason he was still in power until the coup was because he designed constitutional changes in 2020 to allow himself to run for a third term as president, a common practice of several leaders on the continent, since Yoweri Museveni from Uganda to Alassane Ouattara on the Ivory Coast.
The president of Mali resigns after being arrested in a military coup

The African Union rightly condemns Guinea’s coup, but its response to these constitutional abuses has been silenced.

These double standards and perceived elite conspiracies create the perfect environment for bragging young officers like Doumbouya, 41, to come in and promise to save the day.

“If the people are crushed by their elites, it is up to the army to give freedom to the people,” Guinea’s new leader said, citing former Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, who led two coups

Perhaps it is no coincidence that Doumbouya cited the heavy Rawlings, who was very effective in expressing the anger Ghanaians felt towards their political elites when he led military juntas in the 1980s. Desperate citizens living in political systems that often rightly believe they can be solved can easily be seduced by anti-elitist and anti-corruption rhetoric, along with the promise of the new.

Unfortunately, we should prepare for the eventuality of more coups in Africa in the coming years. We should not expect them in richer countries with strong institutions such as South Africa, Ghana or Botswana, but in the poorest and most fragile states. Like Mali, Niger, Chad and now Guinea, where there have recently been coups and coup attempts.

Fifteen of the twenty countries that exceed the 2021 fragile states index are in Africa, including countries such as Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan, as well as larger nations such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. , Ethiopia (which has experienced violent internal conflicts for close to a year) and Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa.
The men leave the prison camps. Then the corpses float down the river

This growing likelihood of coups will make Africa in general less predictable and stable, a negative thing for investors that could end up worsening the economic situation.

Can this undesirable trend be reversed? Yes, but while international condemnations of coups in Guinea and elsewhere are crucial as a deterrent to other aspirants to power, the only actors who really have the power to reverse this worrying trend are the African leaders themselves. .

They are the ones in charge on the ground and the decision will be their response to these recent events. They need to rekindle the belief that democracy can give Africans. But if the problems still cited to justify the coups continue to worsen today’s African democracies, the temptation to try something else will continue to be dangerously seductive, both for copyists and citizens.

.Source