Just when it seemed Africa was beginning to consolidate its democracy, military coups are cutting across the continent with rapacious rapidity, dealing severe blows to the brittle spine of democracy in the process.
From Sudan to Mali to Guinea to Burkina Faso and even to the recent botched coup attempt in Guinea Bissau, military men lacking any iota of professionalism now emerge from their decrepit barracks to sacrilegiously point the gun at the forehead of democracy.
The reasons for these are as diverse as they are disappointing. But at the root of every military takeover of government is the painfully uncomfortable truth that government has failed completely or that its structures have become so abysmally weak as to allow those in government to take all manner of liberties which open the doors to wolves in uniform.
Having seen the light of civilization waft through it, Africa may no longer be the dark continent’ it used to be, but it remains a deeply troubled one. Democracy on the continent continues to struggle largely because the structures which guarantee the virility and vitality of democracy simply do not exist or have been dismantled or severely weakened by Africas many strong men.
Africa`s colonial heritage painfully complicates its current reality. Many of the colonialists who colonized Africa did not envisage that someday Africans would be lead themselves. Because they were not just painfully shortsighted but also motivated by racial prejudice, they never prepared Africans to take up the reins of power. So, when power came, many Africans were unprepared to handle it.
Even after independence, many of the colonialists even worked actively to undermine the operations of government in their former colonies. Belgium`s odious role in the upheaval that continues to convulse the DR Congo is a painful confirmation of this.
Today, many of them continue to contribute to the unrest tearing their former colonies apart. There would always be those who would argue that it is always too easy to blame the colonialists for the failure of Africans to govern themselves. But those who always wield this argument like a cudgel will do well to examine the structures dominant in many African countries today, how must those structures contribute to the failure of governance in those countries, and just how many imprints of colonialism those structures bear.
Today, there is in place in many African countries the conditions that conduce to military interventions in government by military men who lack discipline themselves and are just as greedy for power and twice as corrupt as their civilian counterparts. As the charade goes on, it is Africans that are increasingly imperiled with feeble state institutions reinforcing the impunity of those who ride to power by whatever means they deem fit.
Because they come into power wielding a gun instead of the validly conferred mandates of their people, they bin accountability and instead elect to rule with iron fists dripping with force and fury. So, in many African countries, governance remains an elaborate jamboree. Because governance is a desperate struggle on its own, good governance remains a bottomless illusion, one which cruelly tortures those it enthralls from time to time before hanging them out to dry.
So, in Burkina Faso as in Guinea as in Mali, the wounds of democracy remain fresh and continue to bleed. Any time the military moves to seize power in an African country, it is always with the same cliched excuse that the civilian government has failed or has become endemically corrupt. However, there has been no evidence to show that military men are themselves insulated against the vices which makes such villians of civilians.
In fact, in many African countries, the military can be blamed as much as the colonalists for the problems that continue to haunt the state. In Nigeria for example, the military coup of 1966 precipitated the cataclysmic civil war of 1967-70 which today dictates the haunting tune that continues to inhibit the unity of the country.
There remains today an inexorable link between military coups and the upsetting of the democratic order. It is noteworthy that democracy does not just happen; democracy results from a conscious effort to build institutions that subscribe to democratic tenets, institutions that survive men. Military coups put all of these in jeopardy and there is no doubt that any country or continent that wants to meet up with the best there is cannot afford the heinously disruptive events that military coups are.
Africa will do well to heed this wise counsel. However, the antecedents of a continent content to remain behind forecasts that the road to redemption is indeed long and treacherous.
If they were not irredeemably cowardly themselves, those military men who engage in military coups anywhere in Africa would know that they are better off protecting democracy`s spine which is the most authentic guarantee of their own legitimacy.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
