S’THEMBISO MSOMI | Military rule no answer to failed democracies

The political ritual of holding regular elections is becoming so discredited on our continent that it is no longer unusual to hear people either celebrating military coups or expressing their yearning for dictatorships.

This past week, for instance, following reports of a coup d’etat in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau, one heard a lot of talk about Africa’s citizens being fed up with elections and democracy, some even expressing a wish for similar military action in their own homelands.

A far cry, come to think of it, from the excitement that greeted the spread of multi-party democracy throughout much of the continent following the end of the so-called Cold War in the early 1990s.

Yet the history of post-colonial Africa, in fact the history of the world, has ample evidence for us to know that military rule almost always leads to socio-economic and political ruin.

It was one of SA’s most popular soldiers, the late chief-of- staff of the now-defunct uMkhonto weSizwe, Chris Hani, in one of his less famous interviews as general-secretary of the SA Communist Party, who said: “We are opposed to coups or palace revolutions because coups are an action of individuals. They don’t involve the masses, they don’t involve the working class.

“It is few individuals, elitist if you like, sitting and plotting in a corner and deciding what is right for the people on the ground.”

Hani was speaking from the experience garnered throughout his stay in several countries outside of SA during his exile years.

So why has democracy suddenly become so unpopular that, despite horrific experiences with successive military governments in Nigeria, Mobutu Sese Seko’s dictatorship in Zaire as well as in other parts of the continent that are still trying to reckon with that terrible past, growing numbers are being seduced by the idea of armed men in uniform running our states?

Part of the answer lies in the sham elections that some of the governments conduct with the sole purpose of frustrating the will of the people.

Take the shameful October 29 Tanzanian elections, for example, which were “won” by incumbent president Samia Suluhu Hassan with an unbelievable 97.66% of the votes.

There was almost universal agreement among observers ahead of the elections that the campaign period wasn’t free and fair, as government opponents were being harassed, opposition parties being restricted from canvassing for votes and candidates being given extremely limited access to influential state-owned media outlets.

When thousands of citizens took to the streets in protest against the results, the state responded with force – leading to hundreds of deaths. This in the home of one of the continent’s greatest statesmen and pan-Africanist, Julius Nyerere – a country that played such an active role in supporting the liberation struggles that gave us the freedom and democracies we are supposed to enjoy today.

Nyerere and his successors had spent decades forging national unity and economic development in an ethnically diverse society, and post-1990, many of those who came after him saw genuine democracy as a guarantor of national unity in that it would make everyone believe that their voice was being heard no matter which region of the country they came from.

The conduct of the current administration, however, is now putting all of that at risk. It is when people believe that their will as voters is ignored and suppressed through manipulation and violence that they start losing hope in democracy and looking to military strongmen for solutions.

Hence, the misguided celebration of the Guinea-Bissau coup last week. That coup is a perfect example of why Hani warned us against such actions. To outsiders it may seem like an expression of a people’s disillusionment with a failed system. But on closer inspection it was actually executed to defend the same elite that had failed the population of Guinea-Bissau.

The coup took place just as citizens were awaiting the results of the elections, where the incumbent president, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, was expected to lose.

Embalo had previously delayed elections but eventually gave in after local protests and international pressure. But as election results started trickling in from various parts of the country, mostly indicating that Embalo was headed for a defeat, the military men suddenly seized power.

Embalo, who claimed to have been arrested by the coup leaders, somehow found his way to neighbouring Senegal while his political opponents are held in custody. A staged coup, if ever there was one. The will of the people had been circumvented.

In our own country, we are fortunately still far from the life of military coups. Our armed forces seem to fully appreciate the imperative to keep out of politics and to leave matters of governance to civilian rule.

However, it is worrying that a minority, albeit still tiny, is repeatedly talking up military rulers in countries far away from our border even though our flawed democratic system remains demonstrably better and more resilient than their regimes, whose fate is dependent on the whims of their dictators.