WHEN A MILITARY COUP BECOMES LEGITIMATE
The popular support for the recent coups in West Africa lays in the fact that juntas regularly takeover power at the time people are claiming for good governance in their respective countries.
FROM the very beginning, it is important to state that this author and indeed the publisher are not and will never be advocates or inciters of coup d’états.
However, because of the extremely dangerous path that the UPND government has embarked upon of creating a one party dictatorship type of government, it has become necessary to remind all those involved in the rampant destruction of opposition political parties of the consequences of their well planned, deliberate and illegally executed annihilation of other political parties.
In order to achieve this highly ambitious but destructive project, the UPND government is slowly but steadily destroying the rule of law and our hard won democracy.
A one party dictatorship is a lived experience in Zambia. Shortly after gaining independence from the colonial powers, it became fashionable for the African leaders to shift to the one party dictatorship. Various reasons were advanced by these leaders to justify the shift. Kaunda, like other independence era African leaders on the continent, justified a one-party state as a variant of democracy best suited to the peculiar African circumstances. Instances of inter-party political violence, the hostile regional environment within Southern Africa occasioned by Apartheid in South Africa and the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in Southern Rhodesia now independent Zimbabwe and the need for political self-preservation which was the primary and real motive, all combined to provide a strong argument for replacing plural politics with one party dictatorship.
An additional factor for the justification of the one party dictatorship was the socialist influence from the East European Bloc which was allied to the communist USSR.
Sooner or later, these civilian one party dictatorship governments were replaced with military dictatorships through coup d’états.
Egypt was the first African country to experience a coup d’état in 1952 when Lt. Col. Gamal Abdal Nasser overthrew King Farouk’s Absolute Monarchy; the governance system in an Absolute Monarchy and in a one party dictatorship is the same, in both systems of governance, there is no freedom of assembly, no freedom of speech, no freedom of association, there is police brutality and dissenting views are severely punished, the only difference is that the leader in a one party state is a President while in an Absolute Monarchy is a King; to date there is no Queen who reigns as an Absolute Monarchy, they rule Constitutional Monarchies where there is plural politics. Gen.
Ibrahim Abboud staged the second military coup on the African continent when he took over power in Sudan in 1958. In 1963, Benin and Togo were the next to be ruled under the military coup.
Others that followed were, Gabon (1964), Algeria (1965), Zaire now Congo DRC (1965), Central African Republic (1965), Ghana (1966), Nigeria (1966), Burkina Faso (1966), Sierra Leone (1967),Mali (1968),Congo Brazzaville (1968),Libya (1969),Somalia (1969),Uganda (1971), Malagasy (1972),Rwanda (1973), Ethiopia (1974), Niger (1974), Chad (1975),Comoros (1975), Burundi (1976), Seychelles (1977), Mauritania (1978), Equatorial Guinea (1979), Liberia (1980),Guinea Bissau (1980),Cape Verde (1981) and Guinea (1984), Between 1952 and 1984 there were 31 countries of the fifty four African countries in which the military coup d’états had succeeded at the first attempt, all of these countries had one thing in common, they had resorted to one party dictatorship and the military justified the coups as the only legitimate route available to remove despotic leaders from power.
The most dramatic of all the 31 coups was the one staged in 1980 by a non commissioned officer with a rank of Staff Sergeant; Sgt. Samuel Doe overthrew the long reigning William Tolbet of Liberia and had him shot dead.
The rest of the coups were
carried out by officers from the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and below except in three instances where those with the rank of General took over civilian power.
Those one party state countries that survived the military coups were swept by the wind of change in the late 1980s with the demise of communism in the Warsaw Pact countries and the re-introduction of western style democracies in their place. Zambia too was not spared; she reverted to multi partism in 1991.
Under the Kaunda one party dictatorship, three coup attempts were foiled.
The first one was foiled in 1980; former Zambia Air force (ZAF) commander Lt. Gen. Christopher Kabwe, former Zambia Army Brig. Gen. Godfrey Miyanda, former high court commissioner Edward Jack Shamwana, a Zairean national Deogratius Syimba among others were arrested. Two years later, in 1982 another coup attempt was foiled in Zambia note
that despite the earlier attempt being unsuccessful, the coup plotters led by then former Zambia Army commander and the country’s Ambassador to German Lt. Gen. Christon Tembo were undeterred, those arrested together with Gen. Tembo were then serving officers Lt. Col. Bizwayo Nkunika, Lt. Col. Chongo Shula and Maj. Knight Mulenga.
As the pressure to change government kept on mounting, in June 1990, another coup attempt announced by a young and charismatic signals officer from 5 ZR of the Zambia Army, Lt Mwamba Luchembe was foiled.
When Zambia reverted to multi-partism, only one coup attempt was foiled. This was in 1997 when Capt. Steven Lungu alias Capt. Solo and his co-accused Capt. Jack Chiti announced to the unsuspecting nation that the Zambia Army had overthrown Chiluba’s democratically elected government and the reasons they advanced for the takeover was rampant corruption and the break down in the rule of law by shielding from prosecution those who were allegedly to be involved in corrupt practices.
Military coup leaders just like their one party state counterparts justify the unconstitutional takeover of governments; and anyone in the fallen government connected to the reasons of their takeover is hunted and brought to stand before the court marshal (military court). They will go for all those who worked with the fallen government in the legislature, the Judiciary and the Executive; it doesn’t matter whether or not they were politicians, civil servants or constitutional office bearers, they will be court marshaled.
The Military justice system is very swift, there are no reserved judgments and adjournments are rare. A trial can start in the morning, by afternoon the trial would have been concluded and the suspects sentenced. In many cases the sentence is standard regardless of the offence committed; death by firing squad.
From the foregoing, the choice is up to the UPND government to continue on the destructive path of installing a one party state dictatorship where change of power is through the barrel of the gun or support thriving multi partism where there is a peaceful transfer of power through the ballot box. Those who doubted that the country is heading towards one party dictatorship should see the announcement made by the UPND deputy Secretary General Gertrude Imenda and echoed by the Inspector General of Police Graphael Musamba that no opposition political party will be allowed to hold public rallies. This is a decree the duo has issued and is not backed by any law. Who gave the duo the mandate to issue such lethal decrees?
From this discourse it is very clear that no one should wish for a military coup d’état for like a one party state it too is a dictatorship.