But popularity, political capital, have a habit of running out without giving notice. Sooner or later, there will come a time when theatrics and oratory will begin to look like pantomimes. And numbing will not last for ever. Humane and compassionate governance, transparency, accountability, empathy - only these last. Only these achievements and qualities can earn leaders a secure and respectable place in a nation's history – Parakala Prabhakar, an Indian journalist and data scientist, 2023.

One who is patriotic of mind in contemporary society should not be anxious to the extent of disturbing his body and soul. His important aims should be as follows: to let each person conduct himself correctly on the basis of human nature, then diligently pursue learning and broaden his knowledge, and thirdly possess knowledge and virtue appropriate to his station in life. Both government and people should have the common purpose that each function in its proper capacity, so that the of the country can be maintained, the government smoothly administering the affairs of the state, and the people not suffering under its rule. The learning which I am now exhorting has this sole end in view. – Yukichi Fukuzawa, a major philosopher and educator of the Meiji Restoration in Japan, founder of Keio University, in Japan.

In a real sense, a post-colonial generation has only existed in the African space, for less than seven decades. It is understandable, therefore, that the first post-colonial generation would have made some major errors in nation-building projects and in state formation. That generation delivered a seminal legacy for the African people; it won us all independence. What we then did with it, or do with it, is a matter that implicates all of us. That generation was confronted with, when some of the nationalists derailed badly, a debate about whether or not military interventions could provide a credible path of progress to genuine liberty. Errors were made. Sometimes, the wrong conclusions were drawn, the consequences of such mistakes could be severe in many cases. But they were learning, with no precedents in Africa to borrow from.

The generation that followed, mine and my children’s, had the example and experience of our parents. The excuses the parents had do not apply to us. Hopefully, we realise that we must resolve this conundrum before our children’s children take office as political leaders. It is one of the historical tasks for those born into the coup era, like me.

Sometimes vigorous and intense, sometimes friendly and calm, the debate about the suitability (or not) of coups has raged on for a while on the continent, gaining decibels in the past eighteen months or so. Precipitated mainly by the relatively recent eruptions and irruptions in parts of Francophone West Africa. Those who have more than an abstract experience of living the coup experience, those who have actually smelled gun-powder and witnessed extra-judicial carnage that can arise from coups, must participate in the debate. Coups are not a mere circus where lollipops are given out amidst fragrant flowers on verdant green pastures of land. Some of those baying for them are mere romantics. Never having seen a coup, such people seem to think it is like something that happens in Disneyland. They must be engaged with reality. Much of East and Southern Africa has no experience of coups; the most populous countries in West Africa tend not to have had coups since the early nineties. That means the millions below the age of thirty in places like Ghana and Nigeria have never witnessed or lived under the arbitrariness of a coup regime. It is not too surprising then when many restive youth cultivate romantic sentimentalism for coups.

To many of us, but sadly not enough of us in Africa, there is nothing Western about true democracy. Nor is true democracy an exercise in mimicry of any other society’s institutions, or institutional arrangements. Democracy is not static, nor does it ever arrive at a stationary point. The mere presence of a parliament, a judiciary and an executive, does not in any way suggest that democracy is present. It is up for debate whether in much of Africa today, and in many parts of the Western world, what is seen as the pervasive governance model should be called democracy at all. That is, perhaps, the real problem. The argument that true democracy is non-African, is, to some of us, a veritable non-starter; an insult to the historical struggles waged by millions of Africans through the centuries for freedom, dignity, development and a better life. It is a too-clever-by-half, mischievous but bogus intellectual contrivance. It should be rejected.

The present situation in much of Africa, is a tale of unending woe. Few deny that. Using Ghana as a case study, a summary of headlines illustrates this. The state, in what masquerades as some kind of democracy, has lost, or never attained, sufficient penetrative capacity to deliver services and dignity to the majority of its citizens. There is a sense in which majority of ordinary citizens are not beneficiaries of any meaningful incorporation into the modern nation, only a tiny parasitic elite are. What Africa has in abundance is not true democracy, it is the Santa Claus democracy. The people are not in charge, an aspect of the bourgeoisie is, and the bourgeoisie mutates into political parties to look after its class interests alone. Elections are therefore meaningless to many, in a real sense, when it comes to improving livelihoods.

Scandal after scandal rocks the airwaves and nothing more happens; impunity is the order of the day, where major political actors are concerned. Before their very eyes, the masses see political actors climb the ladder of prosperity overnight, in not so transparent, and inexplicable ways, once they get to power. Yet, the toil, the backbreaking exertion of many ordinary people, yields nothing for them. Ghanaians are living witnesses to the veritable destruction of their ecology. This is being done through the activities of illegal miners, yet the state remains paralysed. Land administration is in absolute chaos, yielding conflicts that are violent and feudal in nature, there too, the state and its putative leaders are aloof and distant in terms of providing real, actionable solutions. Even basic security and basic sanitation for ordinary citizens cannot be delivered to many. The neoliberal state in Africa is incompetent, vacant and hollow.

Coups are not the same as revolutions

When true democracy exists, it provides spirit-lifting dignity to the masses, livelihoods improve. Not everyone becomes rich, but the majority who are willing to work can look forward to escaping a life of misery. True democracy delivers an economic dividend, not just an opportunity to cast a ballot, once in a long while, in a regime of politics that is so significantly over-monetised, it is now simply an exercise in vote buying. The Santa Claus democracy is indeed with us. In the long-term it spells doom, for the people themselves, the masses have no real stake in it. And yet contrary to neoliberal catechisms recited by rote by many of our policy makers, it is the long term that matters the most. The Santa Claus democracy treats the people as vote carrying clients to be bought once in a defined cycle, with bribes and handouts. The people treat the Santa Claus democracy, as a remote and detached mystery. In reality, they look to traditional leaders, priests of any stripe and hue, and all manner of pretenders as their replacement of what the state should give to them of right. In that reality, all manner of exploitation sprouts. For many in Africa, the reggae rhythms of Bob Marley ring true – it is a misty morning and we don’t see no sun.

It is not because the Santa Claus democracy delivers that we condemn coups. We condemn coups because not just any replacement for the present fermented pretender to democracy is right. If the historical task facing Africa is to achieve liberation and freedom in their fullest senses, that requires creativity, much deep thinking and hard work. Revolution is not like buying fast-food from a drive-in. A generation used to the instancy of social media and tweets, seems to want everything immediately. Development is not so simple. There are no short cuts.

There is a difference between true people-based revolutions and coups. The former is based on a genuine people-based mass movement. It has the defining features of deep engagement, examination, and distillation of the problems of society. Developed with, by, and from the people themselves. The best known revolutions were fought over years. Those who constituted them were people of action, they were also people of deep learning and thought, no erratic actors. History has recorded many of them as voracious readers and prolific writers, patient learners who identified with the people in the deepest recesses of their societies.

Revolutions do not necessarily begin with armed struggle in mind. They are focused on the politics of true liberation, until the oppressor class makes it impossible for them to survive without picking up arms or capitulating. Since capitulation is not an option, they wage armed struggle. Amilcar Cabral and Joe Slovo, to use two African examples, never stopped reminding people of this. Revolutions define their programmes and many times publish the driving ideas.

Coups on the other hand are staged like a tweet, by processes that remind us of a secret society of witches. Midnight usurpers, represented by a small undisciplined clique of soldiers, sometimes backed by shady unknown civilians, overthrow governments, with arms, because they can. There is no prior engagement of the people, no agreement on a programme beforehand. The people have no idea how the leader of a coup regime emerged. They just present themselves. In that process, there is no room for negotiation up-front, on the criteria of assessment of the coup makers delivery against stated objectives. The people are not permitted to discuss what the processes of exit for the coup leaders will be. It is all dense, opaque and clotted – a ride on the back of a deranged tiger. In the biggest giveaway of the lack of credibility of coup makers, anyone who attempts to use their own methods, in a counter-coup, is guilty of treason. A kangaroo-court tries the prosecutors of that counter coup, many times they are shot.

To invite a coup therefore, is to succumb to an arbitrary roll of the dice to determine a whole people’s fate. It is an exercise in Russian roulette, with no known range of possible outcomes. Many times, it has yielded man-eating monsters in Africa; the fifth of the horsemen of the dreaded apocalypse. Were coups to succeed in a great many parts of Africa again, the political cruise vessels on which they sail to dock at the helm of the ports of African governments will not be berthing for the first time on our shores. These vessels have been here before. Those were processes that birthed political monstrosities like Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin Dada, Sanni Abacha, Gnassingbe Eyadema, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, and some others – sadly too many. The probability, if fairly calculated with factual data, signals that their kind if more likely in a coup, than any other.

Such men have been variously described by some prominent Africans as multiple-murderers and cannibals, looters, political highwaymen, brigands and thugs. Many of them arrived down a chute that processes Pan-Africanist slogans, anti-colonialist rhetoric, and intoning poorly digested revolutionary sentiment. In no time, they are revealed by their deeds, as patently reactionary. This was true even for Mobutu, the worst of them all. As president of one of the poorest economies in the world, Mobutu looted the wealth of his devastated country to such an extent that at a point, he was rated second in the world in terms of wealth, only to Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, then the Shah of Iran. Mobutu Sese Seko’s parting gift to his country was a debt of $14 billion, such was the end of the man, a veritable lackey of imperialism, who nonetheless arrived mouthing L’authenticite, and posing as Africanist. Many that claimed to be revolutionaries, once in power, became the star-pupils of neoliberal capitalism. The inescapable conclusion of history, that is coups have no guaranteed outcome of progress and development. Indeed often, they have unleashed massive retrogression, viewed over the long term.

If the delivery track record of neoliberal democracy in Africa in this phase of our existence is unsatisfactory, the historical record of coup makers can be demonstrated to have been worse. Frustrating as the present may be, it is wrong and romantic to suggest that the Abachas and so on were better and should therefore be the alternative.

What do we do when civilian regimes derail

Waiting for anyone around the corner, when they put forward such arguments  as have been made against coups, are questions about what to do when civilian governments turn rogue and perpetuate themselves by fair or foul means, or by any means necessary. In particular, the one-party state comes up a lot. What should people do when faced with such a situation? The Ghanaian experience was to stage a coup to overthrow Kwame Nkrumah, a coup this writer condemns with no redeeming features. Saner processes than coups have been used to end many one-party states, where the people themselves, not the lumpen-bourgeoisie, have determined that they were not working. There are several examples on the African continent.

If it must be armed struggle, to secure true freedom, so be it, but that process must have democratic accountability to the people themselves, in a systematic and organised way. What is going on in Kenya under the Gen-Z mobilisation also comes up frequently these days. It is too soon to draw definite conclusions. But this far at least, it has been an example of civic mobilisation, not a coup d’etat. Much work lies ahead of it, for the movement to be able to achieve real revolutionary change against a dominant bourgeois class, with deep vested interests in the corrupt and decaying status quo. The opportunistic vacillation and dishonest gyrations of the official political opposition, point to the many challenges ahead. But with careful, strategic thinking and the construction of solid operational capabilities, and the cultivation of stamina, there is a major chance of success that the movement will secure significant reforms. It represents a commendable model, one that has come at not insignificant social costs. Yet, for as long as African leaders continue to remain in the neoliberal claw, where they enrich themselves at the expense of the masses, it is bound to spread and become a movement with Pan African resonance. This process is wholly supported. It accounts to the people, not midnight usurpers, it should not morph into that.

Believe it or not, some support coups, at least intellectually

People ask whether there are indeed some, in 2024, calling for coups. The answer is YES, and we have engaged in sometimes intense exchanges with them. To depersonalise the debate, we stay away from mentioning names for now. The worry is not the screaming Banshees on social media who argue coups should be retained as an option. When asked, they are often quick to distance themselves, their loved ones, their cats and dogs and chickens from coup organisation. Who then do they expect to stage the coups they want, their enemies? It is almost laughable. If we must have coups, because Santa Claus democracies have not delivered, why does that not apply to independence itself? Should we also go back to colonialism?

Democracy in Africa must be defined by the African people themselves. No one else can. Definitely not the lead clerics in the temples of neoliberalism, those whose history is dotted and disfigured by beggar-thy-neighbour policies and practices. Hegemonic domination, be that political, cultural or intellectual, does not yield human progress. Whatever process of governance that enables the needed public reasoning and culture of true learning and action, that guarantees good governance to the masses of Africa, that is democracy. No one can prescribe or determine the specifics of what that should be for any other society. Democracy is characterised by true accountability of governors to the governed, and active participation and consciousness of the people, people who are well-informed. It cannot be imposed from the outside, it requires organic action, that respects and involves the majority of our population, the peasants and the workers. Improving their livelihoods, radically so, that is the historical task of the present generation of Africans. That task is superordinate to everything else, even the rising sun.

An intellectually exhausted, indolent, uncreative, detached and unimaginative section of urban elites, sitting in cities and trying to outsource the task of political change to cliques of soldiers are opportunistic careerists. A bunch of fortune seeking Messianic elements that betray dictatorial tendencies right from the beginning. They should not be taken seriously.

If they should not be taken seriously, then those who understand that improving livelihoods of the masses, the most urgent historical task of the African present, must be done with the people themselves, and by them, must now come together to install true democracy. These bourgeois political parties cannot be relied on to do so, they are mere political fortune seekers, casinos of power fixated on the short-term economic returns for their faction of a select few.

The dungeons must shake and the chains around the people’s necks fall off

If really positive change through mobilised people with genuinely revolutionary commitments succeed, the future is in the hands of Africa. If Santa Claus democracy continues to hold sway though, the message of the people, in their misery and frustration is now audible, and deeply worrying. The majority poor in Africa have tolerated the very polluted waters of neoliberalism, along with its political adjunct – Santa Claus bourgeois democracy, long enough. This will not continue forever. That is what we now see in Kenya and Nigeria. There is more to come in Africa.

 If the God of others gave them the sign of the rainbow, then our ancestor, James Baldwin, may be speaking again to this generation of Africans. There is not much more time to drain the swamp, our political culture must be radically reformed to give voices back to the people themselves, not just a thieving elite. If the meaningless factionalism of today, the aimless Santa Claus democracies and their characteristic non-delivery to the people, as well as rampant pillaging of our commonwealth does not end, the end of the relative peace, for us all may soon be with us. It could just be that there will be no more water, it will be the fire next time.