On the morning of Wednesday, August 30 2023, a tragi-comic video of Gabon’s President Ali Bongo went viral on social media. In the video, a casually dressed Ali Bongo sitting on a simple chair introduced himself as the president of Gabon, explained that he and his family had been arrested by “the people here”, complained that he had no idea where his wife and children were, and asked “friends everywhere” to “make noise, make noise, make noise.” The viral video circulated a few hours after a group of soldiers announced on Gabon TV that they had overthrown Mr. Bongo’s government and had taken over power, and that the constitution and several other republican institutions of state had been suspended.
News of the coup in Gabon came less than a week after elections in which Ali Bongo was declared the winner and was set to start his third term in office. Mr. Bongo had been in power since 2009, when he succeeded his father to the presidency, much like a prince succeeded a late king in olden days. The older Bongo, Omar, was in power from 1967 to his death in 2009, a whopping 41 years of uninterrupted time as president of Gabon. In effect, Omar and Ali Bongo, or the Bongo family, monopolized political power in Gabon for a combined total of 55 years. In the meantime, Gabon, a county vastly rich in oil wealth and other natural resources, remains one of the poorest in the world.
The coup in Gabon also came barely a month after the military overthrew another civilian regime in nearby Niger on July 26. The Niger coup in turn, followed coups in neighboring Mali (August 2020), Chad (April 2021), Guinea (September 2021), Sudan (October 2021), and Burkina Faso (January 2022). Five out of these six coups happened in former French colonies, and all had long histories of dictatorship, authoritarian rule, rampant corruption, and sit-tight leaders who ruled for decades on end and ran their countries’ economies to the ground in spite of their abundant natural resources. They also had a long history of French exploitation of both natural resources and control of fiscal and monetary policy.
It is almost certain that we will see more coups in Africa in the coming years, if not months. Candidates for imminent coups include Cameroon, where Paul Biya, 90, has been in power for 48 years. He was prime minister from 1975 to 1982, and president since 1982; Equatorial Guinea, where Teodoro Obiang Nguema, 81, has been in power for 44 years, since 1979; and Uganda, where Yoweri Museveni, 78, has been in power since 1986. In Togo, like Gabon, a single family has ruled the country since 1967. Togolese president Faure Gnassingbe inherited the presidency from his late father in 2005. The older Gnassingbe, Eyadema was implicated in the murder of Sylvanus Olympio, the country’s first president in 1963. He became president in 1967 and stayed in power for 42 years, until his death in 2005. His son and successor Faure, has now been in power for 18 years. Then there is the Central African Republic where President Faustin Touadera, who was the country’s prime minister from 2008 – 2016 and has been president since 2016, recently rammed a constitutional referendum down the country’s throat so he could remove term limits in order to run for a third term. The referendum also removed the authority to award mining contracts from the National Assembly and placed it in the hands of the president, among other changes.
It is astounding that the seven longest serving African leaders have spent a cumulative total of 241 years in power: They are Paul BIya of Cameroun 49 years (7 as prime minster 42 as president), Teodore Obiang of Equatorial Guinea 43 years, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda 37 years, King Mswati III of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) 36 years, Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea 31 years, Ismail Omar Gulleh of Djibouti 23 years, and Paul Kagame of Rwanda 22 years.
Clearly, military coups are not likely to solve the myriad problems Africa faces today. The history of soldiers in power on the continent does not inspire confidence. Soldiers who seize power in the name of liberating the people, righting the wrongs of the ousted regime, or fighting corruption generally become either as bad as the regime they ousted or even worse, brutal dictators who seize whatever little freedoms the people enjoyed under the ousted regime. The trend is for them to soon “retire” from the military, conduct and win elections, and stay on in power for as long as they can without doing much to better the lives of their people, and until the next coup happens. African nations are thus held hostage in a seemingly endless cycle of inept, corrupt, and power-hungry civilian regimes on one hand, and by gun-toting military juntas on the other. And changing international political patrons from West to East, or from the US and France to Russia or China is unlikely to help either, because the expected benefits might just not reach the ordinary people. There is no such thing as pure altruism in international politics. Nations act in pursuit of their strategic domestic and global interests. This is true of both Western and Eastern powers. In the final analysis, replacing France or the US with Russia or China will ultimately prove less beneficial than expected.
Yet, whenever a coup happens in Africa, large crowds come out to jubilate and celebrate the illegal takeover. This spontaneous show of popular support for coups help validate the soldiers’ justifications for taking over, be they claims of corruption and efficiency, or chronic neo-colonial exploitation of national resources, or seeming civilian inability to handle festering security and other concerns. The historical evidence, so far, shows that such popular support for coups is often short-lived, and in general, nothing much changes as far as the living conditions of the ordinary people are concerned. In essence, military coups in Africa have historically worsened, rather than improved countries’ economies or the general living conditions of the people. In most cases, coups have led to a worsening of general living conditions and a further decline in respect for the fundamental rights and dignities of citizens.
When the Niger coup happened, the 15-member regional body ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) threatened to use military action against the new junta, with obvious backing from France and other Western state actors who stand to lose from the ouster of the civilian regime in Niamey. Even as that potentially catastrophic and ill-advised plan was being debated Gabon, another ECOWAS member state, had a coup. When ECOWAS threatened military action against Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso pledged to send troops to support the new military regime. An ECOWAS invasion of Niger would have thrown the entire West African sub region into a conflagration it could ill afford. In January 2024, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso withdrew their membership of Ecowas. They subsequently created a politico-military confederation called the Alliance of Sahel States, which originated as a mutual defense pact in September 2023.
If ECOWAS and the African Union are serious about stopping military coups in Africa, they must be serious about stopping what may rightfully be called “constitutional coups.” They must insist on each AU and ECOWAS member state having term limits as entrenched clauses in their constitutions. And when an African leader seeks to have the constitution changed through a referendum, they must be stopped by all means necessary. The African Union and all parties interested in the wellbeing of Africa must also revisit the idea of electoral democracy as practiced in Africa. For far too long, democracy in Africa has been equated with periodic elections in which the incumbent often wins with a huge landslide, as happened in Rwanda’s recent presidential elections in which Paul Kagame won over 99 percent of the vote. Due to the passive-parochial nature of Africa’s political culture, even the most corrupt, most brutal and most inept president can win election after election after election, with international election observers often certifying the process as free and fair. Perhaps the recent examples of Nigeria and Senegal will inspire a meaningful shift in Africa’s electoral politics. In the meantime, millions of Africans remain hostage to greedy, corrupt, inept and power-hungry governments and the imminent threat of military coups and civil conflicts.
Note: Baba Galleh Jallow is former Executive Secretary of The Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) and Inaugural Roger D. Fisher Fellow in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University Law School.
