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

I’ve been hearing some political leaders in Africa condemning the recent military coup in Niger that ousted President Mamadou Tandja and established a junta to “return the country to democratic rule.”

I know that the African Union has outlawed military takeovers and has taken steps to ostracise governments that have come to power in this fashion.

I also know that there is something untoward about soldier-boys getting notions about leaving their barracks and toppling a “democratic” government.

Soldiers and armies are there to watch over their nations’ defences, to repel external threats and prosecute their nations’ interests beyond their borders.

They may, in times of dire need, also be called upon to lend a helping hand with humanitarian work.

But they are not supposed to run governments or meddle in politics.

Fine. But that tenet would hold water only where the purported “democratic” government is indeed democratic, where the rulers rule by the rule-book and where they retain the confidence and trust of the people, a far cry from the case of Niger and Mamadou Tandja.

In effect, Tandja carried out his own coup against the constitution of his country before the barracks made a move.

There are just too many Tandjas in Africa, though their destinies have varied, some managing to overthrow their constitutions to make themselves “life presidents,” others being thwarted before long by some action that may in itself not be overly unconstitutional.

The lesson should be that if we do not want our commanders to play politician, we must also tell our politicians not to play commander, not to get into the habit of ordering their people about and imposing on them fiats that suit only the ruler’s whims.

In short, our rulers must learn to do that which the commanders cannot do: To lead their people in a participatory manner, listening and responding to the views of all — even the views of the weak and few — and crafting a consensus that, as much as possible, brings everyone along.

This demands the deployment of the soft skills of negotiation and compromise that do not sit well with command structures.

Here the soldiers cannot compete. But try to rule by command and they know amateurs are monkeying with things they know nothing about; that’s when they come in to show how it is done.

If African rulers within the AU wanted to make sense they would castigate all coup-makers, civilian and military, including those who came to power through constitutional dispensations that they then tore to pieces to eternalise themselves in power.

I’m saying, quite unashamedly, that not all military takeovers are evil; some are even salutary.

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