In a little noticed battle in a little noticed country, another African leader has been deposed, to be replaced with yet another promise of a transition to democracy. The Central African Republic, a country twice the size of Britain but with just 4 million people, has endured half a dozen coups and more or less constant civil war since it became independent from France in 1960.
Michel Djotodia
The latest coup took place on 24th March, when Michel Djotodia led his 3,000 strong Seleka Alliance army into the capital Bangui and forced the President Francois Bozize to flee to neighbouring Cameroon. Reports say that about 80 people were killed.
French and South African troops tried to oppose the rebels but they ended up shooting child soldiers who were being used as front line troops – according to some of the South Africans involved. The South African forces themselves lost 13 of their men. This came as a shock to many people back home who did not realise that South Africa had sent 300 soldiers into this basket-case country to defend a regime already mired in corruption and alleged electoral fraud.
As a result of the confusion, the hunt for the notorious terrorist Joseph Kong, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has been suspended just as the net was closing around him in the east of the country.
And so the tragedy of Africa goes on…failed government, constant coups and civil wars, corruption, terror, disputed elections, arbitrary killings and imprisonment, all leaving the ordinary people in abject poverty and despair. We’ve seen it in country after country – Mali, Ethiopia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Nigeria, the Congo etc. Since 1960, there have been some 200 coups in Africa, 80 of them successful.
The new man in the Central African Republic has promised to hold elections in 2016. He’s kept the serving prime minister in post, Nicolas Tiangaye, because he’s been supported by the main opposition parties. And he remains the only leader recognised by the UN, the African Union and the United States. Djotodia himself is a former civil servant turned rebel leader. A large man physically, he’s in his 60s and was educated in the Soviet Union. He is the first Muslim to lead a coup in the nominally Christian country.
So let’s hope he turns out to be unlike his predecessors – all of whom were rascals or worse, with the possible exception of Ange-Felix Patasse who actually won a fair election in 1993 and led a civilian government for ten years before being toppled in another coup.
Jean-Bodel Bokassa
I met one of the worst of the CAR’s dictators back in 1975, Jean-Bodel Bokassa, a nasty little man who modelled himself on Napoleon. He even declared himself Emperor and had himself crowned on a jewel-encrusted throne in a ceremony costing £15m. This in one of the poorest countries in the world. He came to visit one of his many sons who was studying at a youth centre in Bangui where I was staying. He arrived with a large entourage in a fleet of army vehicles and fancy cars and waved his fly-swotting cane at the students while he lectured them on being obedient and studying hard. He smiled like a snake. In the end, after 15 years in power, the French backed a coup against him when it emerged that he’d ordered the killing of 100 youths who’d refused to wear school uniform.
With leaders like these, it is not much wonder the Central African Republic remains the 11th poorest country on Earth. And this despite having good agricultural land with a mighty river running through it ( the Ubangi), miles of virgin rainforest, reserves of crude oil, gold, diamonds and uranium. What a waste. And to take just one example – because of the lack of proper policing, poachers have reduced the elephant population by 62 per cent in last decade, according to a study by Stirling University. There are now fewer than 100,000 elephants left, compared with over a million 30 years ago.
It is not easy to know what we outsiders should do about what we call these days “governance” in Africa. For every Nelson Mandela there seems to be a hundred Bokassas. Some people blame the long years of oppression by the colonial powers but that doesn’t answer the question of what we should do now. Interventions, like the French in Mali, or the British in Sierra Leone, or the surprised South Africans in the CAR, are all very well but they can so easily go wrong. But we owe it to the ordinary people of Africa to do more than leave their fate to the aid agencies, especially when the big issue is political stability and better governance.
The UN should insist that Djotodia abides by his promise of open and free elections in 2016 and, in the meantime, he is gentle with his political opponents and takes action against corruption and the use of child soldiers. The democracies of the world should stand by to support the UN with whatever sanctions or soldiers are necessary.