The Decibel - Coup contagion – why Africa’s had nine coups in three years

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

There have been nine coups in seven African countries over the past three years – some analysts have called it a coup contagion, the Secretary-General of the UN called it a coup epidemic. Each country has its own circumstances, but there are common factors linking them.Geoff York, The Globe’s Africa Bureau Chief, joins us to explain why so many countries are facing coups, what it means for the people of those countries, and what role other countries like Russia, China and the US have in what’s going on.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Now, we are seeing a multiplication of coup d'etats. Some military leaders feel that they have total impunity, they can do whatever they want, because nothing will happen to them. That's Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations. He's talking about a string of coups that happened in Africa. He said that back in 2021.

Since then, there have been even more coups in the region. Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan. The list keeps growing. Analysts have called it a coup contagion. Guterres called it an epidemic. And there are concerns that this could further destabilize the region. Today, I'm joined by the Globe's Africa Bureau Chief, Jeffrey York. He'll tell us why there's been so many coups in this part of Africa,

what role other countries have in what's going on, and what might come next. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Jeff, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. We're going to be talking about the broader context in a minute. But first, I'd like to get your help just understanding some of the recent coups that we've seen. Let's start with Niger. There was a coup there at the end of July. What happened?

Well, the military, which had been seen as a major partner of the West, countries like Canada, United States had been training the military in Niger extensively. But at the end of July, the military in Niger took power, seized power, despite, you know, a lot of denunciations from regional African leaders and from West Africa, from the African Union, from the West. Everyone condemned the coup, but the leaders of that coup are still in power today. And it's created quite a humanitarian crisis from what I understand as well. Well, what happened was the West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, imposed sanctions and closed borders in Niger after the coup. And that has led to sharply rising prices for a lot of food and other staple items in Niger. It has certainly caused a lot of economic turmoil. However, it does not seem to put any pressure on the coup leaders so far. They remain in power.

There's been also threats of military intervention by ECOWAS. But again, those threats seem to be empty. The juntas of neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali voiced their support for the coup on Monday and warned that any military intervention in Niger will be considered a declaration of war against their countries, too. So far, there's been no significant sign of any relenting by the coup leaders in Niger. And then, of course, a month later, at the end of August, we also saw then a coup in Gabon. Can you tell me about that one? Yeah, that came right after the latest election in Gabon.

And I should put that in quotation marks. I mean, it's an election, but it really had very little credibility. The elections in Gabon have been reelecting the same family that's been in power for more than half a century. That's usually not a good sign of a functioning democracy, of course. Exactly. It's just been one family in power for 50 years. The oil wealth has not trickled down. People are still poor.

The vast majority are still poor. And in the last two elections this year and the last one in 2016, the elections just had no credibility. For example, the one in 2016, the province where the president is from claimed to have a 99.9% turnout and 95% voting for the president. Yeah, high numbers like that are also usually a sign of not a functioning democracy. Yeah. Exactly. Now, this is what can easily be described as a palace coup. The leader of the coup is someone who is sometimes reported to be a cousin of the president.

It's unclear his exact relationship with the president, but it's very clear that he was a member of the inside elite, a member of the ruling elite. It's not someone who is seen as bringing a lot of change to Gabon. You know, people on the street were celebrating after the coup, but I think it was mainly, as in most of these cases, a case where people celebrate because because they want change. I saw the same thing in the streets of Zimbabwe in 2017 when there was a military takeover. People were desperate for change after 37 years of rule by Robert Mugabe. People saw the economy deteriorating,

getting close to collapse, hyperinflation, collapsing currency, the healthcare system on the verge of collapse, cholera outbreaks. The country was in a disastrous state, and so they were desperate for change. And so when the military took over in Zimbabwe in 2017, there was tens of thousands of people on the streets celebrating, cheering the soldiers. Not because they were pro-military, but because they wanted change. These coups fit into a larger trend in the region. If we look specifically in the past three years, there have been nine coups in seven African countries.

They all have their own circumstances, of course. But Jeff, are there any common factors here? Well, I think there's several common factors. One of them is a growing unhappiness, discontent with the economic situation. Recently, over the last year or two, the economies in many of these countries have really deteriorated for the average person

because of rising food and fuel prices and things like fertilizer prices have skyrocketed because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And there's a growing discontent and a desire for change. And what's happening is they're not seeing elections as a way to bring change. So often these elections are really controlled. They're not a level playing field. They're not free and fair. There's a growing sense that democracy is not working in their countries. It's not producing actual change. The opposition doesn't have much of a chance. The so-called elected leaders end up abusing their power. There's human rights abuses.

There's a concentration of power in a few hands. And so people are losing faith in elections. And so they're willing to tolerate coups. The other connecting thread is that there's a lack of resistance. It's become sort of a permissive environment for coups. Internationally, you know, there's rhetorical criticism. Western leaders decry these coups and condemn them, but there's not much backup. So many examples now where military rulers have grabbed power and managed to hold onto it. Sometimes they promise some kind of vague transition to civilian rule in several years. And this is often enough to ease the pressure.

And the other thing is that in the past, they might have been dependent on Western support for their militaries. Now they have alternatives. They can go to Russia. and Central African Republic doing major agreements with Russia to bring in Russian mercenaries, thousands of Russian mercenaries as the security partner for their militaries. When it comes to the economy, they have China as a major alternative to the West. There's a lot more Chinese trade and investment. And China has sort of a no strings attached level of support for African countries. They don't care if it's a military regime or not. They support whoever's in power.

This is really interesting because it sounds like there's a lot of factors here. But if I can just back up for a second, I wonder about who's being deposed by the coups. Jeff, are there any overlap there? Are they dictators, elected officials? What do we see? Well, in a lot of cases, they are people who – they're leaders who are nominally civilian and nominally seen as democratic. But really the connecting thread is that they were the beneficiaries of elections that your elections as free and fair, as kind of democracy as you maybe imagined it to play out. I guess, is that maybe why you see people turning to support the

military in a coup in this way? Because the alternative of democracy didn't actually play out the way that they were promised it would be. Exactly. And the polling data that we're seeing from companies like Afrobarometer, we're seeing that a rising number of Africans are unhappy with what democracy is producing, unhappy with the elections. I think only one poll, there was only 44% who said that elections allow people to remove unwanted leaders, and 53% were willing to endorse coups if elected leaders abused their powers. So even though there is generally support for democracy, people are so frustrated by the failures of these civilian leaders that they're often willing to accept a coup as a way to change power. And Jeff, we mentioned this a little bit, but I want to come back to the fact that these coups can have a big impact on the civilian population, right?

We're seeing after many of these situations, particularly in Sudan and Niger, there's a humanitarian crisis often for the population that follows. What does this mean for the people living there? Yeah, and I would add another example of Zimbabwe. In all of those countries, there were military regimes that took over, and they really failed to deliver the goods. And very quickly, in the next election in 2018, people tried to vote for the opposition, and the military and the police opened fire on protesters and killed a number of them in the streets. So people very quickly were disillusioned by what happened in Zimbabwe after the military takeover there. Same thing in Sudan. The change of power in 2019 was, you know, the toppling of a long ruling dictator, Omar al-Bashir. He was finally toppled after decades in power as a result of protests in the street. But instead of allowing the protesters to have a share of power,

it was the military that took over again. And what we eventually saw was another coup in 2021 to push the civilians even further out of power. And then what we saw this year, of course, is two different military factions having a falling out and triggering this massive civil war, which has devastated the country. We've seen millions and millions of Sudanese forced to flee from their homes. We're also seeing that these new rulers who come to power promising security are failing to deliver that. So in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, the Islamist militias, the insurgencies in those countries have actually gotten worse since the coups. There's been more violence, more deaths.

So you're actually seeing worse human rights abuses, no improvement in the economy, and worsening security situation by these leaders who came in to power promising security. We'll be back in a moment. Jeff, let's take a step back here and actually look at maybe some of the history of this region, because we've been talking about the last few years. But can you help me understand some of the history of coups in this part of Africa? Well, you know, if you go back to the Cold War, coups were very much, you know, proxy in sanctions. It was seen as more of a taboo for military coups to take place. So this would have been, sorry, this would have been in the 90s, I guess, after the Cold War? Yeah. So over the, you know, for about a period of about 10 or 20 years after the Cold War, the 90s and the 2000s, it seemed that coups were declining. They were becoming less common. And it's really only been probably the last 10 years, and especially the last five years,

where coups have become more common again. If things were changing after the Cold War, why was that? I guess, what was happening to make that shift happen? Well, there was this greater rhetoric about democracy from the West. And there were a few examples where the West did somewhat push back against coups and seemed to trigger a chain of events that led to take action, more willing to impose sanctions or to use various pressure tactics against the coup leaders. We also saw that West African leaders were willing to push back. There was the case of Gambia where the dictator tried to stay in power after very clearly losing an election. And Ekewas sent troops in and made sure that he left and that an elected government was brought back to power. So it seemed that both regionally in Africa and internationally in the West,

there was a greater willingness to make sure that coups were not accepted. And it could also be argued that Russia and China were not as big of a factor in the 90s and the 2000s. They were not big players in Africa, especially in the 1990s. This has been called a contagion of coups, Jeff. Is there any truth to that? Are military leaders maybe being inspired by coups happening in other countries nearby? Yeah, I think they are. I think they are learning lessons from other regimes.

They're looking around. They're seeing that there's not much pushback from the West or from the international community or from the African community when they launch these coups. I mean, look at, again, the example of Zimbabwe. It was clearly a military takeover, a military coup in 2017. I was there in the streets, the tanks, the armored vehicles, the soldiers were in the streets. And yet the African Union refused to call it a coup. The African Union, which has a policy of not accepting coups, it just simply pretended that it was not a coup in Zimbabwe.

And that allowed them to evade taking any action. And even regional groups like ECOWAS seemed to accept it for a while. It was only this year, really, that ECOWAS pushed back against the latest coup in Niger and threatened to launch a military intervention against it. But even that has been really empty rhetoric and there's been just a willingness to resist that pressure. And as a result, the ECOWAS threats seem to be very empty and military officers can look around and see that the only pushback they get are these kind of empty threats. I guess I just want to push on this a little bit, Jeff, because why aren't these groups able to hold these leaders accountable? So we're talking about ECOWAS, the African Union, even the UN, right? Like, why aren't they able to hold the leaders of these coups to account? Well, in the case of the UN, it's pretty clear that the UN Security Council has vetoes by

Russia and China, and they have a longstanding policy now of vetoing any action against coups or military regimes. They're willing to accept those partners, and so they make it impossible for the UN Security Council to really take any action in recent years against military regimes or coup leaders. In the case of the African Union, I mean, look at its membership. They have a number of military regimes as members. They do occasionally kick out a country because of a military takeover. For example, they kicked out Egypt from membership for about a year after the military took over in Egypt. But a year later, they allowed Egypt to return. And I should mention another very, very important example, the Commonwealth, which is a group that

is supposed to be in favor of democracy that claims to have democratic principles and human rights as principles. They have also accepted a lot of these coup leaders and military regimes and undemocratic regimes. Last year, for example, the Commonwealth accepted Gabon as a member, even though it was the same family that had been in power for more than 50 years. The elections had no credibility. Now, this year, we're seeing the Commonwealth seriously considering allowing Zimbabwe to be readmitted as a member. A number of Commonwealth leaders, including Canada, are not ruling out the possibility of Zimbabwe to be readmitted as a member. A number of Commonwealth leaders, including Canada, are not ruling out the possibility of Zimbabwe being readmitted

despite a very clearly rigged election in August, violence against the opposition, opposition leaders being jailed, unfair election practices. So, you know, military leaders look around and they see that they can maintain this kind of international legitimacy, even if they seize power. And so it's just understandable that they would see that they can seize power without any real resistance. So, Jeff, what role, though, do Western governments have here? Like,

why aren't they taking a harsher stance against these leaders? Yeah, that's a very good question. And I think a lot of it is that there's a desire for stability rather than democracy. Stability and security are seen as more important than democracy. And so a government like Rwanda, which is completely undemocratic, basically a totalitarian state. Rwanda is seen as a partner for the West because it provides troops, it provides UN peacekeepers, it's currently sending troops into northern Mozambique to stabilize a situation where there's a massive natural gas development. So Western resource companies are very happy that Rwanda's military

is stabilizing the situation in Mozambique and allowing billions of dollars of investment. And we're seeing in West Africa, for example, there's a number of Canadian mining companies, especially in Mali. And Canada has criticized the coups in Mali, but it has not made it impossible for Canadian mining companies to operate in those countries. So we've been talking about this idea of contagion, right? That, you know, a coup happens in one country and it kind of encourages or emboldens military leaders in other countries to do the same. I wonder though, are there any notable countries that have missed this contagion that maybe are in the same region, but we haven't seen a coup take

place? Well, yeah, there are a number of rather inspiring democratic stories across Africa. So you're absolutely right. We shouldn't generalize. It's a very, very mixed picture. We shouldn't say that every country is in danger of a coup. A number of them are. Clearly, there's been recent speculation about which country might be next. People are speculating about the Republic of Congo or Equatorial Guinea or Cameroon. These are countries with long, long ruling dictators who don't have a lot of popular support and have a lot of natural resources that are sort of propped up by that. But on the other side of the coin, there are a number of countries that have moved in a more democratic direction.

You know, look at countries like Zambia, which have had very impressive rotation of power with opposition politicians winning elections. Look at Nigeria, where, you know, in the past, there was a history of military coups and military regimes. And yet over the last 10 or 15 years, it's become increasingly democratic. We've seen changes of government from elections in Nigeria. So, you know, we are seeing a number of examples of democracy broadening in some countries. And coups are not always the path that are taken in many countries. Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. You're welcome. It's my pleasure.

That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wells. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.