Coup threats legitimise past buffoon regimes

Corruption, stolen elections and other forms of abuse of power – these and other maladies which threaten the long-term survival of the state, are not lost on the men and officers of the UPDF.

Dear Tingasiga:
General Yoweri K. Museveni’s reported threat of a military coup d’état against Parliament is a contemptuous threat against the citizens, one that invites, nay, demands a non-partisan, peaceful, reasoned and sober resistance by the citizens.

However, not even the generals who are threatening to overthrow their own regime should feel too smug that it will be an easy walk to martial law. Military coups are rarely clean operations.
More often than not a coup has triggered a countercoup. Enough army chiefs and coup leaders have been murdered during the military takeovers that those contemplating this dangerous measure ought to worry about their own fates.

The examples of Nigeria and Ghana, two countries that had professional armies even in the dark ages of the immediate post-independence period, are rather sobering.

In the aftermath of the January 15, 1966 military coup in Nigeria, one of the bloodiest in Africa’s military putsches, Maj. Gen. Johnson Iguiyi-Ironsi, the army commander, became head of state. He was murdered on July 29, 1966 in a bloody counter-coup that saw the emergence of Col. Yakubu Gowon as head of state.
On July 29, 1975, while Gowon was attending an OAU heads of state Summit in Kampala, he was in turn overthrown by his old rival Maj. Gen. Murtala Mohammed. The latter lasted just over six months, assassinated in another attempted coup on February 13, 1976. Nigeria was well on its way towards the abyss in which it sank for the next 30 years, one from which it is still struggling to fully emerge.

Further west, the Ghana military overthrew the civilian government of President Kwame Nkrumah on February 24, 1966, to refocus the country on the objectives of the struggle for independence. Whereas the coup had been led by Col. Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, the new military regime was led by Gen. Joseph Arthur Ankrah. In gratitude, Ankrah promoted Kotoka to the rank of Lt. Gen. and made him army commander.

Gen. Kotoka was killed in a coup attempt against the Ankrah regime on April 17, 1967, this one led by very junior officers – Lt. Samuel Benjamin Arthur and Lt. Moses Yeboah. The coup failed, but Ghana was well on its journey of multiple coups and counter-coups that would sap its body and soul over the next 35 years.

The story is the same all over the continent. Military coups consume their intended victims, inflict huge collateral damage on the onlookers (citizens) and ultimately swallow their authors- usually men without ears who confuse bullets with power, and have a tendency to turn guns on each other.

The UPDF generals who may be considering making a foolish move had better revisit the dark and bloody history of their predecessors all over the continent, men like Jean Bedel Bokassa, Idi Amin, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Muammar Gaddafi and others, once invincible masters of their guns, now reviled by history.

Of equal interest to me is Gen. Museveni’s legitimisation of the buffoon regimes that he has so eloquently vilified over the last 30 years. One cannot overthrow the current Parliament without endorsing Prime Minister Milton Obote’s overthrow of the Uganda government in 1966.

Among the triggers of the 1966 coup was the attempt by some ministers to remove their own Prime Minister from power using a constitutionally legitimate move of a vote of no confidence in him.

One cannot justify a military coup aimed at “refocusing the country”, without legitimising similar claims by Maj. Gen. Idi Amin in 1971 and Lt. Gen Tito Okello Lutwa in 1985. Check out their “reasons” for overthrowing Obote’s governments.

Judging by the history of military coups in Africa, the current Uganda army has had many reasons to consider overthrowing the government.
Corruption, stolen elections and other forms of abuse of power – these and other maladies which threaten the long-term survival of the state, are not lost on the men and officers of the UPDF.
Yet it would only be the suicidal Ugandan or one suffering from dangerous amnesia who would wish formal military rule on our country. The efforts at civilian government, complete with our bruised and bleeding democratisation attempts, are a far better alternative to the rule of the gun.

Those who prefer the predictable order and control under formal military rule to our rather irritating experiment with democracy ignore the wisdom of Sir Winston Churchill who, speaking before the British Parliament on November 11, 1947, offered thus: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.

Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” A chaotic democracy, albeit still militarised, is a far better alternative to a formal military regime.

Dr Mulera is a Daily Monitor
columnist based in Canada.
muniinikmulera@aol.com