The great figure of light on the African left, Thomas Sankara, was also a putschist. When the young officer and a few companions seized power in Burkina Faso in 1983, which was then still called Upper Volta, he embodied a socialist, pan-African vision that was intended to put the continent out of misery; Sankara was celebrated as a liberator and revolutionary, he was soon considered Africa’s Che Guevara.
However, Sankara was assassinated four years after taking power, and his sudden death has frozen his reputation as a selfless politician with integrity. Sankara became an icon of his own, and he is still revered throughout Africa as the man who served as a role model for an entire continent. The cult of Sankara expresses a broad longing, and this longing for a better life, more dignity, political participation and an end to misery and poverty is widespread to this day.
Africa experiences more military coups than any other continent. On the one hand, this has to do with the cry for life, but on the other hand with the inability of governments to protect their people or to offer prospects. However, no African putschist has ever succeeded in preserving the reputation of the savior for a long time. Sooner or later the military rulers all disenchant themselves – unless they die as young as Sankara and turn into a myth.
Those officers and generals who seize power in times of crisis often do so in a social climate in which high levels of tension have built up. Sometimes it’s like now in Gabon, where people are fed up with the kleptocratic rule of the Bongo dynasty. They cheer the soldiers who present themselves as rescuers. But there are also more diffuse mixed situations, such as in Niger, where the military overthrew a democratically elected president. There, the junta is exploiting anti-French resentments and portraying itself as the protector of a nation that may have to fend off military intervention by its neighbors.
All of Africa’s coup plotters more or less act as liberators, appearing as a kind of camouflage Robin Hood. And in this role they are above all a symptom of the political failure of the elites. The US researchers Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne have counted more than 200 coups and coup attempts in Africa alone since the 1950s, with the army intervening most frequently in Sudan. There were 17 attempted coups there, six were successful.
Since 2020 alone there have been eight successful coups in the west of the continent: twice in Mali, twice in Burkina Faso, also in Chad, in Guinea, Niger and now in Gabon. All countries belong to the former colonial empire of France, which is why Paris has to put up with the question to what extent its post-colonial alliances were suitable for promoting Africa’s development. Many on the continent live and suffer with the feeling that France was and is more of a hindrance to them. Russia and China use the perception for their own interests, they offer themselves as an alternative without colonial burdens in Africa – and are successful in doing so.
Given the lack of prospects for young Africans, it is hardly surprising that a military takeover is often accompanied by cheering crowds. Putschists are often, if not permanently, buoyed by a wave of sympathy, which is, above all, an expression of growing desperation.
Many crises are concentrated in West Africa: climate change, ethnic tensions, rising prices for food, fuel and fertilizer; and the frustration that privileged circles are enriching themselves through corruption – and also the alliance with the former colonial power – while the people hardly get anything from the treasures. Resources are plentiful in some coup states: Gabon has forests, oil and gas; Niger has uranium, Guinea has the largest bauxite deposits in the world.
Added to this is the growing lack of protection from armed groups and violence. France’s anti-terrorist campaign in the Sahel region has eliminated some Islamist leaders, but has not eliminated the feeling of existential insecurity in many places. On the contrary.
Men in uniform who, as is now the case in Gabon, promise the people that they will lead the country down the “road of happiness” are often tempting candidates in times of need. Especially when there are no other prospects for change. The putschists’ promise of salvation is all the more powerful the longer the citizens have been exploited, oppressed or lied to by governments. And the image of a strong hand that creates order is particularly advantageous in those unstable states where the other political actors appear powerless, such as in Mali.
There are exceptions to the waves of initial sympathy that shore up military rulers; in Sudan, for example, a democratic movement that is as brave as it is hopeless is bracing itself against the ruling military. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that the army cannot maintain its monopoly on power. There are other armed actors who are at least as brutal as the regular armed forces. With every coup there is a certain risk that the generals will fall out and split. Sometimes one coup follows the next, sometimes coups lead to civil war-like conditions, as is the case now in Sudan.
Putschists rarely have to reckon with massive punitive actions. Not even the threat of intervention by the West African economic community Ecowas made a special impression on the leaders of the coup in Niger. The African Union can suspend members, but that alone is hardly enough to bring a coup government to its knees.
That Western powers could intervene militarily is not a likely scenario. Industrialized countries will hardly get together for such an intervention after the disastrous experiences in Afghanistan. Not even the thousands of murders in Sudan, which cause immense misery, is likely to increase the willingness to intervene militarily. The world is distracted by the war in Ukraine. That plays into the hands of Africa’s putschists.