A peaceful African weekend was rudely shattered yesterday with the announcement that the Guinean military had overthrown and detained President Alpha Conde. Smart looking young Colonel Mamady Doumbouya stood on a balcony and, without reading from a script, announced that the president had been deposed and the parliament dissolved. He also said Guinea’s constitution was suspended. Just imagine; not a kobo was spent to suspend the entire constitution when here in Nigeria, we have spent billions trying to “amend” the constitution.
Videos of a disheveled looking Conde, in a rumpled Kampala suit, caused a stir all over Africa. Discarding African reverence for old age, the 83-year-old president was shoved into a bus, sandwiched between armed soldiers. What a difference two years make. In August 2019 we saw pictures of Conde sitting pretty in Daura, reviewing a special Sallah durbar in his honour. Later, he sat in President Buhari’s living room, resplendent in flowing white gown. Our only pity for him that day was that he was served with a plate containing only four small pieces of fried Sallah meat.
Young folks all over Africa expressed surprise yesterday that a president could be removed without an election and a constitution can be suspended without so much as a public hearing. I do not blame them. They were born after the heydays of African military coups.
In December 1986, former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere spoke in Lagos at the 25th anniversary of the Nigeria Institute for International Affairs, NIIA. He said there had been 69 successful military coups in Africa up until that time, beginning with the 1963 coup in Togo that toppled President Sylvanus Olympio. I tried to update the count from that period but I gave up after I lost count of coups in Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Niger Republic, Mali, Sudan, Liberia, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, CAR, Mauritania, Burundi, Tunisia and Egypt.
Some of the coups were bloodless, such as the July 1975 coup in Nigeria that toppled General Yakubu Gowon. President Dauda Jawara of Gambia was first toppled while he was sitting inside Westminster Abbey in London, attending the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. 94-year-old President Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi was so senile that did not even know when he was overthrown in 1994. 90-year-old President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, who as president slept for 15 hours a day, also didn’t know that he had been toppled in 1988.
Among the bloodiest African coups however were the January 1966 coup in Nigeria that decimated a whole generation of political and military leaders. The July 1966 coup in Nigeria was only slightly less bloody. Unforgettable was the 1979 coup in Ghana, following which Flight Lt Jerry Rawlings lined up three former Heads of State, Generals Akwasi Afrifa, Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and Fred Akuffo at the Accra beach and executed them. Even bloodier was the 1974 coup in Ethiopia, following which Crown Prince Asfa Wosen, the prime minister and 60 other top officials of Emperor Haile Selassie’s regime were lined up and executed. Nor will Africans forget the 1980 coup in Liberia, after which President William Tolbert and all his senior ministers were lined up at the beach and shot on the orders of Master Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe. Compared to them, yesterday’s coup in Guinea was a gentle affair.
Africa did not have a monopoly of coups in the 1960s to 1990s. Asian countries such as Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Burma, Pakistan and Afghanistan experienced many coups in that period. Thailand had one only a few years ago. The 1979 assassination of South Korea’s highly authoritarian ruler, General Pak Chung-hee, was followed by the rule of other stern soldiers, notably General Chun Do-Hwan. Chun’s extremely violent suppression of a 1980 student revolt at Kwanju shocked the world. Military rulers of Thailand, notably General Kriangsak Chamanan and Admiral Prem Tinsulanond, were no less violent in suppressing student revolts, especially when Thai university students insulted King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Also unforgettable was the 1977 coup in Pakistan when General Zia ul-Haque toppled Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, father of Benazir Bhutto, then had him tried and hanged in 1979.
In Europe too, we may choose not to count the decades-long rule in Spain of the Fascist dictator General Francisco Franco or the stern Communist rulers of Eastern Europe and USSR. Coups proper took place in Turkey, such as when General Kenan Evren overthrew civilian rulers in 1980 and ruled for nine years. There were an estimated 15 military coups in Greece during the 20th century, most notably the 1967 Colonels’ coup.
Still, it was Latin America, not Africa, Asia or Europe, that was described in the 1970 and 1980s as “The Home of Dictatorship.” In that era, almost every Latin American country south of Mexico was ruled by a stern military dictator. The most [in] famous ones included General Juan Domingo Peron of Argentina, General Omar Torrijos of Panama, General Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, General Ernesto Geisel of Brazil and General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay. Stroessner ruled Paraguay for 35 years from 1954 to 1989; he was elected to seven consecutive 5-year terms as president! There was a story in the 1970s that Brazil was about to adopt a constitution which stated that “any citizen can contest for the presidency, provided he is a General, or equivalent, in the armed forces.”
Anyway, there are a few remaining African rulers that must watch their backs now that coups are back in fashion. They include our neighbour President Paul Biya of Cameroun, in power since 1982; President Ali Bongo of Gabon, who has ruled for 12 years now after his father ruled for 42 years; President Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast, who did a Conde-style constitutional amendment last year to prolong his rule, learning nothing from Laurent Gbagbo; President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, in power since 1986, and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, in power since 1994.
The African Union charter may soon have to be amended to accommodate a new wave of military rulers.
