Who did not welcome Museveni and Zenawi? Who says all coups are evil?

Indeed some of the greatest feats in human governance were accomplished by democrats who decided “to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them” rather than continue “to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

Who did not welcome Tom Sankara? Toumani Toure? Yoweri Museveni? Meles Zenawi, Issaias Afeworki? (True, some of them turned renegade, but that is beside the point).

There comes a time when all avenues have closed and all doors are shut to anyone who sought meaningful change and those who persisted developed very bad health.

This is the time — the time of a failed conversation — when true patriots decide to strike, using whatever means available to establish a new balance of terror.

The army comes in handy because, as I said earlier, it is basically a command structure and holds the near monopoly of organised violence and the capacity to impose nonnegotiable coercion.

Later, as happened elsewhere, if the afandes were really fired by patriotic zeal, they will go back to the barracks after handing power back to civilians, or they will stay around, exchange their fatigues for Gucci suits and get themselves elected.

What we should be dealing with is this failure of African governments to lead their people, the tendency to rule by fiat, the intolerance of any idea contrary to theirs (even when they have none) and the extraordinary appetites they seem to catch, like a disease, once they occupy high office.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is a political commentator and civil society activist based in Dar es Salaam. jenerali@gmail.com