The recently attempted coup d’etat in Guinea-Bissau and the successful overthrow of the Roch Kabore government in Burkina Faso on January 24, 2022, coupled with the fact that in a space of eighteen months, five coups have taken place in West Africa have raised concerns among security, human rights and democracy in Africa. However, the picture is bigger than that.

The coups represent only a reaction to unconstitutional means adopted by some African leaderships to entrench themselves in power. Statistics indicate that between 2000 and 2022, 49 coup attempts were orchestrated in Africa of which 18 were successful. The coups are portrayed by African leaders as cause for instability, yes. Yet, when one digs deeper, the coups are actually the effects of bad governance which the military are taking advantage of to return to politics.

The origin of coups d’état in Africa

Before the dawn of independence in Africa, two coups d’état had already taken place in Egypt in the 1950s. Coups would become more common not long after independence took steam in Africa when a number of African states began to reject their independence constitutions. In place of these constitutions, African socialism, a caricatured form of African political systems, which hanged on the one-party rule, life-presidential terms, suppression of dissent and civil society activism, was introduced.

The application of African socialism resulted in the closure of space for political dissent and pluralism on the continent and led to the proliferation of coups d’état as the major means of regime change. Records indicate that nearly three-quarters of the African leaders who left power in the 1960s and 1970s did so through a coup, a violent overthrow or an assassination.

Mercenary activities

In addition to coups, mercenary activities to overthrow regimes also became common, sometimes involving the former colonial authorities to maintain their foothold in the ex-colonies. A good example is depicted by the infamous Bob Denard who worked undercover for France and got involved in mercenary activities in the Congo, Nigeria (the Biafran War), Gabon, Benin, Comoros, among others. In response to these mercenary activities, the OAU adopted the Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa in 1972.

Rebel activity/Refusal to leave office

The third example of unconstitutional change of government is through rebel activity, exemplified, among others, in the situation in Liberia in 1989 (between Samuel Doe and Prince Johnson, a former ally of Charles Taylor and) and Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s rebel movement which orchestrated the overthrow of Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.

An instance of the fourth means of unconstitutional change in government, is the decision made by the then military leader Ibrahim Babangida of Nigeria to annul the 1993 election in Nigeria and refused to hand over power to the winner, Alhaji MKO Abiola.

Lomé Declaration/ACDEG

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) adopted the Lomé Declaration of July 2000 on the Framework for an OAU response to Unconstitutional Changes of Government as a means to deal with the four factors or circumstances mentioned above. These were characterised as constituting unconstitutional changes in government. A few years later, in the African Charter on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (ACDEG), these 4 elements were endorsed (under article 23 thereof) and a fifth, “Any amendment or revision of the constitution or legal instruments, which is an infringement on the principles of democratic change of government.” (“third termism”) added:

The ACDEG clarifies the term “unconstitutional changes in government” by providing that they not only refer to accession to power through unconstitutional means but also about maintaining power through unconstitutional means. Coups, mercenarism and rebel activity fall into the former; and refusal to leave office and “third termism” in the latter category.

The return to democracy

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which brought an end to the Cold War rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union, led to the introduction of a new world order that hinged on the “instant capitalism, instant democracy” agenda of the West. These developments, among others, compelled most dictators and military rulers in Africa to return their countries to constitutional democratic rule or to do so reluctantly.

The Lomé Declaration in turn influenced the contents of the Constitutive Act (CA) of the African Union (AU), which brought about the demise of the OAU. The CA, among others, provide elaborate provisions on human rights, condemns and rejects unconstitutional changes of governments, calls for an end to impunity and evokes the right of intervention by the AU to control instability and prevent grave violations of human rights.

“Third termism”

However, the AU has performed poorly in using the progressive provisions of its CA to promote democracy and human rights on the continent. Just like the independence constitutions, a number of African countries have found cause to amend portions of their constitutions dealing with term limits to introduce “third termism.” Since the early 1990s, 24 presidents in Sub-Saharan Africa initiated discussions in attempts to stay in office for more than two terms. In 15 countries presidents started the process of actually amending the constitution. In 12 of these cases (Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, and Uganda) the presidents succeeded. In three (Malawi, Nigeria, and Zambia) they failed. These unconstitutional means to maintain power has not attracted any interventions from the AU.

Continued refusal to leave office

The same is the case with refusal to leave. A few examples would suffice. In 2010, Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d’Ivoire refused to leave office after losing elections to Ouatarra, which saw la Côte d’Ivoire descending into a civil war in which about 3,000 people were killed. In other places, instead of conflict, power-sharing arrangements were put in place, such as Zimbabwe when Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change apparently beat Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party. However, Mugabe refused to concede defeat.

According to statistics, in the 21 elections held in Africa between March 2020 and March 2021, the opposition rejected the outcome in 9 countries while they boycotted the elections in two countries, with protests sparking post-election violence. In Kenya (twice), Gabon, Zambia, Uganda, Ghana (twice), Nigeria, Malawi, The Gambia (twice) and others, the losers did the honourable thing of contesting the results in court. However, the statistics on election petition successes in African courts are abysmal. There are two exceptions, however, in Malawi where the constitutional court invalidated the controversial re-election of Peter Mutharika; and in 2017 the Kenyan supreme court invalidated the re-election of Uhuru Kenyatta.

The decision of the AU not to issue statements during controversial polls in Tanzania (2020) and Uganda (2021) and its recall of AU observers from Guinea’s controversial legislative elections and referendum in 2020 speaks volumes about the poor quality of elections in Africa. The fact that the AU would not condemn the irregularities and use the guidelines in the Lomé Declaration to deal with this form of unconstitutionality tells a story about the complicity of the Union to support pseudo-democratic practices.

Continued mercenary activities

The continent has also not been spared of mercenary activity. The Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), a political and military organisation created in March 2016 in the north of Chad with the goal of overthrowing the government of Chad, started its life in Libya as a mercenary for various Libyan factions.

One mercenary group which is gaining notoriety in this context is the Wagner group, a Russia-based para-military organization, which is being used by the Russian government to engage in hybrid warfare to escape the accountability and responsibilities that typically would apply to a country’s armed forces. Russia is also using Wagner as a means to unofficially increase its regional influence in Africa. They are training local armies, fighting rebel and terror groups and protecting gold, diamond and uranium mines in hot spots. In exchange, Wagner and its subsidiaries are granted exclusive privileges and licenses to procure weapons, technology, and military service and use minerals and natural resources in these countries. So far, Wagner is said to be active in CAR, Libya, Mali, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Angola, Madagascar, Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique.

Continued civil wars/dissident activity

Here, there is, among others, the Forces pour l'alternance et la concorde au Tchad (Front for Change and Concord in Chad) (FACT) which is fighting to overthrow the Chadian government and was responsible for the death of President Iddriss Deby. One can also mention Séléka, in alliance with rebel militia groups that took over power in CAR on 24 March 2013. Séléka was dissolved in September 2013 and its leader remained in power till January 2014. Governmental authority was limited to the capital Bangui, which compelled President Touadéra to turn to Russia in 2017, securing weapons and military instructors to bolster CAR’s army.

Then there are various terror groups such as Al-Shabab in Somalia (with extensions into Kenya), Boko Haram in Nigeria but spreading its tentacles into Cameroun, Chad, Niger, among others. These are in addition to the Jama’at Nusratul Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), the al-Qaeda affiliate operating in Mali and responsible for terror acts in other countries in West Africa, the Islamic State in Mozambique and in the Greater Sahara, and ISIS-West Africa. While these groups do not necessarily aim at overthrowing governments, their aims are not far from that.

Conclusion

The AU and ECOWAS have adopted the simplistic approach of focusing attention on condemning coups d’état (and to a lesser extent, rebel and mercenary activities) while neglecting to pay attention to their causes. By so doing, they have limited themselves in seeing unconstitutional changes in government in the narrow sense of gaining unconstitutional access to power. The other side of it, which is, unconstitutional, human rights-abusive approaches to remain in power, which manifest themselves in refusal to leave office and “third termism” are thereby overlooked.

The latter, unfortunately, largely underly the causes of the recent spate of coups d’état in Africa. Yet, it is not condemned because most of them, one way or the other, are involved in that practice. According to the 2021 edition of the Democracy Index, Africa recorded more than 50% of the countries as “authoritarian” and only 2 as “full democracies.”

The rest are “hybrid regimes” and “flawed democracies.” As a result of this development, more people are feeling disenfranchised on a regular basis and the military is taking advantage of that to get back into politics in a direct, overt and daring fashion. The future does not bode well for Africa’s democracy unless a holistic approach is adopted by the AU to deal with unconstitutional changes in government.

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Professor Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua is a member of the Ghana Bar and teaches Public International Law and International Human Rights Law at the School of Law, University of Ghana, Legon