Why are coups returning to Africa?

The vehicle carrying Burkina Faso's new junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore leaves the General Sangoule Lamizana military camp in Ouagadougou on October 8, 2022, following the funerals of 27 soldiers killed as they escorted 207-vehicles in a convoy in Gaskinde. PHOTO/AFP

By Nkwazi Mhango

What you need to know:

• Coups are returning because politicians and juntas have failed their countries.

• All monkeys like bananas just like soldiers like power in the banana republics of today.

 I must say right off the bat. Underscoring the coup d’états Africa evidenced recently in Sudan, Chad, Mali, Guinea, and most recently Burkinabe, the second coup in just eight months, chances are that this is the return of the coups in Africa. What country comes next?
        Normally, we see schools without books and stationeries, an unkempt situation whereby teachers aren’t well remunerated, in some countries, farmers are borrowed their produce and not to mention many countries forming bigger governments than their economies can accommodate. Politicians receive fatter payments than professionals, etc.
        What do you expect when a politician receives a bigger salary than a medical doctor or a professor?  It is typical to hear of the bloating of the budgets of the presidents and other bureaucrats; MPs seeking to increase their salaries for just chatting in the parliaments without delivering anything to their electorates not to mention the abuses and misuses of public finances, offices, and powers, another endemic epidemic in Africa. 
        Coups are returning because politicians and juntas have failed their countries. Self-serving is the name of the game wherein everybody is now seeking a political office to easily make a killing. Politicians and elites seek political office to amass mammon easily and illegally.
        Soldiers replicate the same. Soldiers know politicians’ underbellies and how they largely rely on them to bully and fleece the citizens. Thus, when politicians fail to feed the armies, the solution is to simply grab their yum-yum power. Swahili has a saying that a cockerel taught the chicks to poo in bed.
        Another reason why armies will keep on giving it a shot is thanks to the corrupt and thuggish system in most African countries. Goof not. It is only in Africa where a criminal naps a pauper and wakes up a mogul without worrying or showing the cause of such a ‘miracle.’
        People rob their countries. Nobody questions or forces them to show cause. With such a thuggish system, what will those with guns in their hands do? Political thievery. It is no different from thugs who use guns to attack and rob innocent people. They all rob innocent paupers of the land. Government officials enter spurious investment deals with thievish multinationals to mug their countries and get the illicit ten percent they enjoy openly without being taxed.
Apart from power lust, many African soldiers and police live in appalling conditions while protecting banks. They see those they help to rob others live like gulf sheikhs. 
        Soldiers are humans. That is why they grab power without killing their bosses. Instead, they keep them as trophies for their existence as are the cases in Sudan, Guinea, and Burkinabe.
The tactic of keeping former presidents as trophies has helped coup makers shift the attention from the international community, which, instead of seeking the reinstitution of deposed leaders, just agitate for their release and forget their powers.
        By keeping their hostages–––who, in all cases above, are curmudgeons­­­­–––the new crop of coup makers, at least, for a good or whatever reason[s] has proved to be less brutal. Formerly, such boots were just put to the firing squad to send a signal not to mess with the new kids on the block.
        The reasons for the return of coups are sundry. However, the cardinal one is systemic thievery that postcolonial African countries inherited from their colonisers and maintained. Again, will they do things differently? I bet you. 
        What used to destabilise and terrorise Africa in the 70s and 80s is slowly revisiting it. Ironically, it is at this time the world is making hullabaloo about democracy. Again, what would Africa expect, particularly at this right and ripe time for coups? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t espouse coups but despise them. However, this time’s ripe for coups in Africa because, currently, the world (the west) is busy hollering and hooting over the seething conflict in Russia-Ukraine where assumptions are that Russia has punished Europe by denying it energy supply.
        The questions we need to ask here are: Is Africa well prepared for such an upshot where power avarice and thirst among its militaries are growing? Does Africa know why armies are grabbing power left right, and centre? What measures has Africa put in place to stop this Armageddon? Who is to blame? To answer these questions, I will go over the real situation in many African countries as a typical replica of each of them. It is normal to find empty dispensaries and hospitals in African countries but the same have brand new police vehicles, teargas canisters, riot gear, rungus, and other tools of war that protect those in power. 
All monkeys like bananas just like soldiers like power in the banana republics of today.
Source: Daily Monitor today.