Gabon joins the coup trend

Last week, in reporting on the Zimbabwe election result, I offered (via a link in the last paragraph) Gabon as an example of somewhere where things were a good deal worse. And sure enough, Gabon, a former French colony in equatorial Africa, erupted into the headlines the very next day when president Ali Bongo Ondimba was overthrown by a military coup.

Bongo has been placed under house arrest and a military junta has taken control of the country, with General Brice Oligui Nguema proclaimed as interim president. To the extent that these things can be assessed, the takeover seems to have met with popular approval – which is of course no guarantee that the public will not become dissatisfied with the new regime sooner or later.

The generals have promised a return to democracy and civilian rule, but then they always do. Gabon’s civilian opposition welcomed the coup, but is already concerned that military rule could become entrenched. A spokesperson for opposition leader Albert Ondo Ossa, as reported by the BBC, called on the international community to maintain pressure on the military to restore civilian control.

African coups were already newsworthy, with the military regime that seized power in Niger a month earlier still in control, despite an ultimatum threatening armed intervention by its neighbors (meaning, for practical purposes, Nigeria). And even before then, there was alarm at a growing trend in the region, with coups in Burkina Faso last year and in Guinea and Mali in 2021, as well as a number of unsuccessful attempts.

Gabon is in a different position geopolitically from the others, although the issue of French influence is still critical. But the important factor it shares with them, and which again almost invariably escapes notice until it is too late, is the prior degeneration of democracy. Established democracies do not fall victim to military coups.

The immediate touchstone for the deposition of Bongo was his “re-election” in a poll held four days earlier, in which he was credited with 64.3% of the vote against 13 opponents – the main one being Ondo Ossa with 30.8%. That followed a series of rule changes designed to disadvantage the opposition, plus the exclusion of foreign observers and a shutdown of internet coverage.

Nor was this anything new; Bongo and his father before him had ruled the country since 1967. The 2016 election was similarly controversial. And the same will be found in the other countries now under military rule: a record of authoritarianism, non-competitive politics and dodgy elections. In no case was there anything that could be fairly called an overthrow of democracy.

That is in no way to make heroes of the military: the men with guns usually act in their own interests, which are unlikely to coincide with those of the disenfranchised population. Even where military intervention is justified, there is a serious risk of it being prolonged unnecessarily. But the lack of genuine democracy is an essential part of the background.

Unfortunately, as far as western attention is concerned, it tends to stay very firmly in the background until it produces just this sort of crisis. At best, our media notice some of the symptoms (terrorist activity, waves of refugees, economic troubles) but ignore the underlying cause: governments that have cut themselves off from genuine accountability. At worst, they simply assume that political dysfunctionality is all that Africa deserves.

On the contrary: while many (perhaps most) of Africa’s problems stem from western interference going back centuries, we do its people no favors if we turn a blind eye to authoritarian rule. Although I can plead to a share of guilt in the case of Gabon, having not previously covered it in this blog (although Bongo père merited a story in Crikey many years ago), I have been trying to get the basic point across for a long time. I fear that things are not getting any better.

As I remarked two years ago in relation to Guinea, “Until the world decides to treat democratic backsliding with the seriousness it deserves, countries will continue to get into situations where military intervention comes to seem like the lesser evil.”

.

PS: While I’m not convinced that it’s as central to the coup story as he thinks it is, the BBC’s Hugh Schofield has an excellent analysis of the whole question of France’s post-colonial influence.

UPDATE (8 September): The military has now appointed a civilian opposition politician, Raymond Ndong Sima, as prime minister in Gabon’s transitional government. The Al-Jazeera report gives a good account of how proceedings in Gabon have differed so far from those in west Africa.