Return of the khaki men

The protests by Sudanese civilians against the military take over in Sudan could not stop the generals from holding on to power. But they throw up an important development about the shaky fate of democracy in a continent increasingly impoverished by the contest for political power between and among two broad categories of politicians: the khaki-clad and the agbada-clad. 

The coup led by the new military strong man, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is a serious set-back for Sudan. It halted the country’s ungainly progress towards democracy through the transitional council set up two years ago when a popular uprising ended the long reign of the military leader, General Omar al-Bashir. Al-Burhan offered this lame excuse for his action: “What the country is going through now is a real threat and danger to the dreams of the youth and the hopes of the nation.” 

Sudan has never really tasted democracy. It has been ruled by a succession of military men who used the gun to impose themselves on the people. But the Sudanese are clearly weary of military rule. Their popular uprising uprooted al-Bashir and replaced him with a transitional council, a half-way house that was not entirely democratic but still managed to help make the point that military rule had become blasé in the country, hence the current protests. 

It may be naïve to read more meaning into this but we must see the protests as evidence that the place and relevance of military rule in Africa has passed the tipping point. The courage to protest the coup points to the possibility that African civilians are no longer seduced by the lavish promises of better governance and incorruptibility dangled before them by the self-canonized men in khaki. 

The unwillingness by the Sudanese to roll out the red carpet to welcome al-Burhan and his men is a strong refutation that anyone in khaki who offers himself as the saviour and the solution to the problems of his country is necessarily a man in whose hands the people can entrust their future and the future of their country. It is a small step by the Sudanese; it may be the giant step for the rest of Africa. Experience with military rule has taught us that saviours do not necessarily wear khaki uniform.

The soldiers need to be weaned from their infantile delusion that their uniform is much more than a piece of cloth. That they still nurse the delusion they are more capable of providing better leadership than the non-uniformed politicians in the face of clear evidence to the contrary all these years is no mean delusion. Generally speaking, successive military men on the continent who took on the mantle of leadership have proved with telling evidence that poor, weak and indifferent leadership as well as rapacity and corruption, are not domiciled in the DNA of civilian politicians. 

They are incurable human weaknesses. The khaki uniform does not immunise the wearer against them. They soil the khaki as much as they soil the agbada. The khaki has not led the continent and its people to the promised land; it has kept them under the jackboots and retarded its meaningful development. There is power in the gun but the gun does not foster good and incorruptible leadership.

We must be alarmed that the khaki men appear to be staging a come-back. The soldiers shot their way into the presidential palaces in Mali, Guinea and now the Sudan in about one year in search of power and fortunes with the gun. They offer the people the same hackneyed excuses for not minding their professional business. They appointed themselves the ultimate supervisors of good governance and assumed the right to topple a civilian regime they adjudged to have strayed from the path. Col Mamady Doumbouya of Guinea told his people he seized power because of “poverty and endemic corruption.”

The soldiers have been at the business of rooting out corruption in many African countries since coups became more or less the norm in changing governments in many an African country. But the soldiers sooner than later were found with palm oil on their fingers; a fair conclusion that there is something more at work than the colour of the cloth in which a country’s leader decks himself. 

The khaki men inching their way into power are a big challenge to Africa and its leaders. No one can deny that African countries generally are beset with huge problems, arising from weak and indifferent leadership and the poor management of the economy. It is also true that many of these countries are grappling with the simple democratic norms, the rule of law as well as the right and the freedom of the electorate to elect leaders of their choice and institute governments they can trust. But the solution to these does not lie in replacing democracy with autocracy. 

Anyone with the gun can find a zillion excuses for ending democracy in a particular country. But we are living witnesses to the disappointments with military regimes too for their failure to curb corruption and establish an enduring culture of human rights and political freedoms.

Corruption is a derivative of an endemic problem in Africa, to wit, the absence of good, competent and focused leadership that sees power not as end in itself but a means to an end, that end being the weal and the welfare of the people. It is not possible to chain the rogue of corruption with poor, incompetent, weak and indifferent leadership. Nor is it possible to check corruption with a leader who is blessed with moral weakness. 

Almost every African country has a flawed leadership recruitment process. The result is the emergence of men who are ill-prepared for leadership on the political thrones on the continent. Dazzled by the effulgence of power, they cling to and enjoy its protocol; good governance be damned. Replacing agbada with khaki does not produce a good, competent and morally up right leader. The khaki does not a good leader make. The Sudanese have said no to the self-imposed saviours of their country. The rest of Africa should encourage them to resist and force al-Burhan back to the barracks. Africa does not need saviours. It needs good and competent leaders in governments instituted by the people through the ballot box.