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African soldiers can sometimes be very cunning people. In the West African country of Mali, junior soldiers last week toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Toure – whom they accused of failure to supply the army with enough weapons to quell a separatist rebellion in the north of the country.
Two things happened that makes these men in uniform sound rather flimsy and ridiculous in their excuse for abandoning the frontline and turn their guns to a democratically elected government they are mandated to protect.
First, the coup leaders chose to topple the government less a month to presidential elections in April that would have seen Toure step down after completing his second term in office.
Secondly, and most interestingly, were the images of soldiers looting television sets, radios and drinks from the presidential palace they captured on Wednesday. Reports indicate that the soldiers even looted bread from grocery shops and fuel from filling stations.
So, the question is: Why did these men throw their country into anarchy by overthrowing a government that was scheduled to step down in a short while? Why didn’t they quickly mobilize weapons and head straight to battle to quell the uprising and instead chose go on a looting spree?
This simply indicates that these soldiers had a different reason for grabbing power.
And as they went about looting and searching for the deposed Toure, the rebels took advantage of the confusion to advance and captured a string of towns in the vast country.
It is this point that one may draw similarities between the Malian coup and the 1985 military takeover in Uganda that saw the late former president Milton Obote lose power, for the second time, to his soldiers.
Like Mali, Uganda too faced a rebellion in the central region by the National Resistance Movement of Yoweri Museveni, who eventually captured power in 1986.
Similarly, Obote’s fall caused huge cracks in the rank-and-file of his Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) which energized the NRA who starting seeing themselves as being very close to victory. Confusion in the UNLF hastened the NRA’s capture of power.
Just like the Malian junta, the General Tito Okello Lutwa-led military junta in Uganda also fronted the lack of political will to end the NRA war as their major reason for taking over power. And, yes, the Okello’s too grabbed power a few months to election. The only dissimilarity here is that, unlike Toure, Obote was not to step down that year. Nevertheless, the coup marked yet another one giant step backwards in Uganda’s search for democratic governance.
This is when the events in Mali represent a vey sad moment for Africa – a continent that many thought had finally managed to put an end to militarism and was on a clear path to democracy.
African soldiers must know that military rule is no longer tenable and thus the era of coups is something of the past – a cold war phenomenon that has no place in modern society. Therefore, such undemocratic means of ascending to power can at most, simply cause disruption in the smooth running of the country, but will eventually come to nothing.
It is very unlikely that the Malian junior officers, turned looters, will martial both civilian and military support needed to consolidate power amidst a barrage of regional and international condemnation.
Perhaps the Malian junior officers are also too juvenile in memory to have leaned from the experience of neighboring Guinea where another captain, Moussa Didas Camara, failed to consolidate power after his December 2009 coup and ended up being shot by a fellow soldier. Camara never returned to his country again after medical treatment in Morocco – virtually being forced by regional leaders to into exile in Burkina Faso and keep away from the political affairs of Guinea.
The soldiers in Mali must not be allowed to prevail. Fast, because they show no sign of ability to secure the country from further infiltration of terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.
There is also fear that a lawless Mali, presently awash with weapons that fell in civilian and terrorist hands from Libya after the collapse of Gadaffi’s regime, could indeed become a source of insecurity in the region
