By: Joshua Patrick
A Quick Reflection of a Coup: A coup d’état is an abrupt violent insurgence (lasting from a few hours to at least one week), often marked by violent overthrow of a government by a small group of military, police, or militia forces. It results in the illegal replacement of the existing government personnel or constitutional relationships, and may radically alter the state’s fundamental social and economic policies. If the small group’s struggle to depose the established government fails, (which generally takes no longer than a week), it is considered an attempted intrusion or “coup attempt.” Another form of extra-legal military or paramilitary intrusion in political affairs is called a “plot.” In such a case, the population only finds out about it later on, from statements coming from the legitimate government, that a plot has been uncovered and prevented.
In Africa, more than 200 military coups have been staged since the post-independence era of 1960s, with 45% of them successful and resulting in a change in leadership at the top; i.e. the displacement of the head-of-state and government officials, and/or the dissolution of previously existing constitutional structures.
This article gives keen attention to the recent reemergence of military coups in Africa and their fundamental causes.
While researchers have varied opinion as to the exact factors leading to coups and the level of their likelihood, this article shifts the emphasis to political, social, and economic determinants, which must have earlier escaped in-depth analysis – such as limited economic growth, low-income levels, lack of strong independent democratic institutions, and improper governance of African leaders. …..and to shed light on the likelihood of military coups; with a glimpse look at recent successful and attempted coups within the West African region involving Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, etc.
IT’S CAUSES!
Every coup d’état has different origins, causes and effects: in the case of Mali, it primarily mirrored soldiers’ grievances over the government’s weak handling of the Tuareg-led rebellion in the northern part of the country.
Guinea’s military overthrow of President Alpha Condé was an outcome of autocratic flirtation, economic mismanagement, and corroding democratic norms, which points to the failure of regional bodies and international partners to anticipate and respond to an evolving coup playbook that ousted the country’s civilian leader Alpha Condé.
Guinea-Bissau, an impoverished coastal state of approximately two million people lying south of Senegal, has suffered four military coups since independence from Portugal in 1974, followed by series of others, to another hastened and failed coup as recent as in February 2022.
Burkina Faso’s president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré comes amid a deepening security crisis in the country. Civilians defence and security forces have long voiced their discontent, including with Kaboré’s political stewardship.
Many other African countries have also acceded to military forces over the past five years, including Mauritania (August 2008), Guinea (December 2008), Guinea-Bissau (December 2008 and April 2012), and Niger (February 2010).
In many national constitutional documents around the world, the military is given the leverage or charged by its national statutes to defend the country’s citizens against arbitrary rule or governance. But when elected civil leaders start to bastardize the well-meaning constitution of its people it apparently set to govern, and the military or a set group of the national military steps in to rescue or defend its people from bad governance, the hypocrisy of the international community manifests itself via denunciating such exertions by the military.
This poses a number of questions: What makes Africa such an instable region and what socio-political and economic conditions nurture the crux of dissension? Is there an obvious pattern of events that could help predict when military coups are most likely to occur? And, most importantly, are there any measures that governments could take to mitigate such risks?
Since the years of independence, Africa has experienced more than 200 military coups, counting both successful and failed coup attempts.
The political and economic conditions predominant in different African countries and the foreign influences at work during different periods (post-independence, Cold War, and post-Cold War eras), have all played a part in igniting conflicts and coups on the continent. The threatening factors have been many and wide-ranging, depending on the national context: warring factions seeking to gain power in the aftermath of independence; established and stable states burdened by poor quality of governance from corrupt officials; autocratic regimes repressing any form of opposition, but with socio-political discontent and instability seething below the surface.
My analysis will focus on other fundamental factors, though. For example, predominant and insistently low levels of economic growth, associated with high levels of poverty are indicative of the social grievances that may trigger military coups in African countries. Furthermore, foreign powers’ pursuit for geostrategic influence and security has in the past translated into gumshoe contribution in African inter and intrastate conflicts and in support of African dictators, thereby blowing the flames of violent dissension.
Building upon earlier logical work on military coups.
Theoretical postulations have indicated that political conflict and their causes are outcomes of military coups d’état.
Early work by Jackman (1978) attributed the coups d’état that took place in the new states of Africa from 1960 to 1975 to three broad reasons, namely social mobilization or “modernization;” cultural pluralism; and political factors (i.e. political party systems and mass participation). According to Jackman, both social mobilization and the presence of a dominant ethnic group had destabilizing consequences for newly established states in sub-Saharan Africa. He further argued that a multiplicity of political parties can be destabilizing, whereas single-party dominance has had a stabilizing effect on post-independence governments.
However, when interrogating electoral turnout (political mobilization), Jackman found both multi-partyism and the dominant ethnic group to have destabilizing effects. Drawing on Jackman’s earlier analysis, Johnson, Slater, and McGowan (1984) found that “states with relatively dynamic economies whose societies were not very socially mobilized before independence and which have maintained or restored some degree of political participation and political pluralism have experienced fewer military coups, attempted coups, and coup plots with the opposite set of characteristics.” In other words, they concluded that some measures of positive economic routine are highly stabilizing, such as a high level of productive employment, robust economic growth, sound export performance (ratio of export-imports to GNP), and diversified commodity exports.
In analyzing the internal factors leading to a coup, McBride (2004) and Collier and Hoeffler (2007) focused their analyses on the military itself.
According to McBride, the military intervenes in political affairs mainly for reasons of personal greed, being motivated by the “rents” they hope to extract once they gain power or control over the state. Collier and Hoeffler have highlighted the interdependence between the risks of a coup (plotted, attempted, or successful) and the level of military spending at the time. They found that in countries with a low coup risk, governments respond by reducing military spending, whereas in countries with a high coup risk, governments tend to increase military spending.
Based on an analysis of recent coups in established democratic regimes, it will reveal the weakness of democratic institutions in some African countries and the part that this can play in triggering military coups.
Of the 52 African states on the African continent, only 9 countries have never experienced a coup d’état (successful, attempted, or plotted), namely: Botswana, Cape Verde, Eritrea, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, South Africa, and Tunisia.
FACTORS THAT MILITATE AGAINST RESURGENCE OF COUPS IN AFRICA
In retrospect, military coups during the post-independence, Cold War and post-Cold War eras were relatively peaceful and did not involve heavy violence or casualties (unlike civil wars or intra, and interstate wars). As renowned writer Ruth First said: “Get the keys to the armory; turn out the barracks; take the radio station, the post office and the airport; [and] arrest the person of the president and you arrest the state…”
But in order to unlock the fundamental factors behind military coups and the reasons for Africa’s political fragility, we need to look more closely at some under-researched areas. This brings in mind to highlight the ideological and foreign dimensions of these coups, especially during the post-colonial and Cold War periods.
The desire to radically change the social base of their countries away from status-ridden oligarchs to embrace democracy and the rule of law encouraged some military leaders to intervene in political affairs. A notable example is Captain Thomas Sankara, who led a coup d’état in Burkina Faso in 1983, with the clear motive to establish a just, reformed, and prosperous society.
Indeed, the battle among “European-powers” (Britain, France, and Portugal, etc.) for increased diplomatic, military, and economic spheres of influence, further undermined the friable and intricate sociopolitical structures of many African states. These “European-powers” were able to influence governments toward “military Keynesianism” and its attribute of increased military spending.
As many African leaders engaged in military adventures simply to divert attention away from failed domestic policies, the level of political conflicts worsened sharply. The soaring military spending in Africa in the 1970s (estimated at 6.6% a year) was convoyed by widespread corruption within the army and the military regimes and by increasing social inequality. These elements combined to fuel most of the military coups (about 100 between 1970-1990 and even more another 100 of the 21st century) that African countries still continue to experience.
A government’s inability to design, implement, and administer sound public policy – in conjunction with other economic and political weaknesses, such as low economic growth, corruption, and lack of institutionalized democratic structures – motivated soldiers and rebels to take full advantage of the situation and overthrow political leaders with the goal of pursuing the common man’s interests.
However, in few countries, the abrupt regime transition prompted more political violence and civil armed conflicts, as experienced in Sierra Leone, the Central Africa Republic, Comoros, Congo, Guinea Bissau, and Niger during the 1990s.
What needs to be taken into account in any analysis of the causative factors behind military coups is the complexity of the underlying determinants, which are problems of poor governance and institutional inefficiencies, political factionalism, and widespread corruption, which many African economies continue to suffer as manifest deep-rooted fragility. This exposes African states to greater pressures from the army and civil society.
Meanwhile, other causative factors for coups in Africa are: failure of the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) implemented by International Financial Institutions (IMF and World Bank), and the recollecting of their loans further indebted African governments. As a result, many African economies ran up chronic balance of payment deficits and were unable to finance their patron–client networks. All this contributed to rampant unemployment, collapsing infrastructure, deteriorating economic situations, and an erosion of political stability
A broader view observation demonstrates that, sub-Saharan African countries with low, or negative, per capita GDP growth since independence have experienced more military coups than countries with higher per capita GDP growth rates; outstanding examples include Burundi, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, and, Burkina Faso etc., among others.
WHAT HAS BEEN THE ROLE OF THE AFRICAN UNION IN ADDRESSING THE SPATE OF RECENT COUPS?
Though the African Union (AU) has a zero-tolerance to the military usurping power, the organization is seen less responsive to the unconstitutional maintenance of power; wherein, the continent witnesses an increased willingness of civil leaders flouting the very constitutional instrument that charged them with the mantle of power, the accompanying loss of popular legitimacy has directly motivated legitimacy for coups against dictatorial incumbents. Also, recent years have seen compliance to military coups that at times is more in line with exercises of the AU’s former nomenclature “Organization of African Unity, becoming a toothless dog that cannot bite; an organization that condones egoistic, greedy, selfish and evil leaders who dance to the tunes of white colonialists; but are dogged to see their black people perish as paupers in their own very land.
ECOWAS APPROACH TO RISING COUPS IN ITS REGION
Much has not been seen or heard from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) whose region on the continent is so much hit by the resurgence of coups d’états. All that could be identified is the hypocrisy of this body against the geopolitical and economic development for its citizens. Civil leaders come to power through a set nationalistic constitution and afterwards show erroneously valiant disposition as to unbridled impetus to go against it; and subject their people and the country to decrepit state. These very civilians who attain the seat of power are mere servants, employed by the people, and therefore must be subjected to the will of the people. But the African Union and ECOWAS seeks to protect a single selfish individual over millions of citizens. What a shame to these bodies!!
In conclusion, if indeed, these bodies are seeking the interest of African peoples, there should be laid down laws or agreements set by these bodies to hold any civil leader accountable if he/she fails to go by the codified statues of their respective country and citizenry. The good majority of the citizens should be protected over a single individual that is chosen by the people.
