How can the AU and ECOWAS respond to the spate of coups in Africa?

Military coup d’états are back in Africa. Last week, Burkina Faso joined the growing list of African countries – Mali, Chad, Guinea, Sudan succumbing to military coups. Predictably, the African Union and ECOWAS announced the country’s suspension from the two regional blocs. This has become a standard response by now and it seems the soldiers are inured to it.

Last year, the coupists in Guinea made a mockery of an ECOWAS team comprising the Ghanaian and Ivorian leaders, Nana Akufo-Addo and Alassane Ouattara, who went to negotiate a swift return to democratic rule. Clearly, ECOWAS misread the signs of the time by sending Ouattara, another democratic usurper, on that mission.

Apha Conde was overthrown for doing the same thing Ouattara did in Cote D’Ivoire – transmutation from an ardent democrat and fighter for justice to a sit-tight leader. Ouattara’s case is even more depressing. Here’s a man who ECOWAS and the international community went all out to support to wrestle power from another sit-tight leader even by force of arms turning round to become a sit-tight leader himself. After serving his maximum two terms in office, he engineered a dubious constitutional change to allow him run for another term in office. Worse, even after that, Ouattara solemnly promised not to run again only to change his mind a month or so to the election.

The African Union and ECOWAS seems to have been caught flat footed by the resurgence of military takeovers in Africa and are struggling on how to respond to the new reality

Clearly Ouattara had nothing to tell the Guinean coupists about democracy and constitutionality. Had he not mortgaged his country to the French and were French gendarmes and troops not guarding his fortified palace, he too would have been booted out by dissatisfied Ivorian troops. It is even more unfortunate that ECOWAS didn’t see the irony of sending an illegitimate president to negotiate with the coupists.

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It was no wonder then that the Guinean military treated the team with bare disdain. While acknowledging ECOWAS’ six-month deadline for the conduct of elections, they simply said the people of Guinea, not the sub-regional body, will decide their own destiny. They were already holding consultations with various public figures, groups and business leaders to map out a framework and timetable for elections. They, not ECOWAS, would decide the fate of their country. Afterall, where was ECOWAS when Conde was tearing the democratic framework and the constitution apart to enable him run for an unconstitutional third term? On the travel ban and asset-freeze imposed on the coupist, they laughed it away. According to the spokesman of the junta, the sanctions didn’t matter because the coupists had enough work to do in Guinea and won’t be needing to junket around yet and that there was even nothing in their accounts to freeze.

Then, on the main reason for their visit – which was to secure the release of the toppled dictator Alpha Conde, the coupists simply refused saying he is fine where he is. They’ve shown him on live TV and have allowed access to him. He’s not been harmed but he won’t be released to go lead an opposition movement in exile.

The African Union and ECOWAS seems to have been caught flat footed by the resurgence of military takeovers in Africa and are struggling on how to respond to the new reality. As usual, they stick to the old, conservative approach, which no longer seems to be working.

Since around 2000 when the AU went tough on coup plotters, there was a noticeable decline in military coup d’état’s. Even those who successfully overthrew governments were forced to quit or quickly democratize. However, soldiers across the continent took notice when the AU failed to act when General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, in 2013, overthrew the government of Mohammed Morsi, just one year after his election. The exemption given to el-Sisi and his subsequent ascension to the Chairmanship of the African Union in 2019 was all the encouragement ambitions soldiers needed to attempt government overthrows knowing that if they played their cards well, they could get to keep power.

Crucially, coup plotters have been careful to ensure that their coups are popular and go with the mood of the country. In Sudan and Algeria in 2019, the army only intervened after long-entrenched rulers’ hold on power had been considerably weakened by constant street protests and demonstrations. In Zimbabwe in 2017, the army intervened to stop the deeply unpopular long-term dictator from handing over power to his wife. And even at that, they go to great lengths trying to prove that the takeovers are not coup d’états in the real sense of the word. In Zimbabwe, the military played a hide-and-seek with Mugabe for several days while holding him hostage to present the façade that he resigned from office. In Sudan and Algeria, the militaries have been in all kinds of arrangements with civilians carefully trying to portray the takeovers as a product of demonstrations and or revolutions by the people. In Mali last year, the coup that toppled President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was foreshadowed by demonstrations and protests over the mismanagement of the war against insurgency, government corruption, the floundering economy and poverty.

ECOWAS and the AU, for now, seemed more concerned about the fate of toppled leaders than about democracy in Africa. They have so thoroughly mismanaged the democratic momentum built at the turn of the 21st century to discourage or even outlaw unconstitutional takeover of governments. Whereas from the 1960s to 1990s, the greatest threat to the democratic order was military usurpers, the current threat to Africa’s democratic order is from elected leaders who desperately want to cling on to power even beyond their constitutionally allotted time. Sadly, the roles are now reversed and soldiers, these days, find themselves intervening to restore, not rupture, the democratic order.

Although the situation in Burkina Faso is different, and the main grievance of the coupists is security and not unconstitutionality, the guinea is out of the box already and until ECOWAS and the AU fashion a robust guideline to deal with unconstitutionality – both by incumbent leaders and soldiers – the spate of coups will only increase due to the highly contagion effect it seems to be having on militaries all over the continent.