by Guy Arnold
On 24 February 1966, when Nkrumah was on a visit to China, the Army announced it had seized power and had established a National Liberation Council (NLC) under General J.A. Ankrah. The Police Commissioner, J.W.K. Harlley, was the general’s deputy. The coup had been planned at Brigade Headquarters in the north of the country and then carried through under the guise of a routine training exercise. MPs and CPP officials were rounded up. Colonel E. K. Kotoka, Commander of the 2nd Brigade, led the actual takeover. Guards of Flagstaff House loyal to Nkrumah resisted for two days. Nkrumah’s statue outside Parliament was demolished. The day following the coup The Times recognized that ‘Ghana would be worth salvaging again; it had swung back to reliance upon the West’.9 An attempted coup against the Ankrah regime on 17 April 1967 was crushed after an hour of heavy fighting in which Lt-Gen. E.K. Kotoka, promoted to commander of the armed forces, died of wounds received in the fighting. In an editorial the following day, the Guardian said: ‘Military regimes are irksome and even Ghanaians, so recently delivered from a worse one under Nkrumah, are getting understandably restive under theirs… To replace the still broadly popular NLC with another set of soldiers would have served no purpose, and most people, inside and outside Ghana, will welcome the defeat of the attempt.’10 Subsequently, three junior officers appeared before a five-man military tribunal in Accra accused of subversion and murder during the coup attempt. Two of them – Lt Samuel Benjamin Arthur (the leader) and Lt Moses Yebouh – were sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on 9 May before a crowd of 20,000. In 1969, a rare event then and later, the coup-makers of 1966 returned the country to civilian rule and the Progress Party of Dr Busia won 105 of 140 seats with 59 per cent of the poll.
Guinea’s radical leader Touré outlasted Ghana’s Nkrumah by many years. His defiance of de Gaulle and refusal to join the French Community, opting for complete independence instead, made him a hero in much of Africa. Like Nkrumah, he created a mass movement, turned Guinea into a one-party state and was numbered among Africa’s radical leaders. But the harsh realities of economic power, or rather its lack, which were exacerbated by the decision of France to cut off all aid and other ties, led to increasing problems. France had been developed as the export market for Guinea and when Touré turned to the Communist bloc for assistance this simply meant less interest from the West and a growing sense of diplomatic isolation. Between 1961 and 1973 there were some six internal challenges to Touré, including alleged plots against the regime, though none succeeded in overthrowing it. A sense of paranoia developed as Touré saw, in turn, the USSR, the US and Portugal – and always France – as enemies attempting to overthrow the state. The paranoia certainly had a basis in fact and in November 1970, at the very end of the decade, there was a two-day Portuguese-inspired invasion of Conakry in which the President’s summer palace and the local offices of the Partido Africano de Independência da Guiné e Cabro Verde (PAIGC) were destroyed. A number of Guineans and foreigners were killed and some captured Portuguese soldiers and opponents of Touré were released from prison. Guinea, to use the Maoist term, was ‘ripe for revolution’ but in this case a revolution from the right rather than the left. The lessons from Ghana and Guinea were the same: that a centralized, all-powerful one-party system that did not encourage some genuine form of debate within its ranks could only be challenged by means of the coup.
When Mali became independent in June 1960 it was briefly federated with Senegal but Senegal broke the connection after two months. Modibo Keita, another of the radical group of leaders, worked quickly after independence to eliminate all opposition. He wanted and proclaimed a socialist state. He had the two principal opposition leaders arrested in 1962 (they were to die in custody). At the same time he took Mali out of the franc zone and extended government control into most aspects of the economy. Although elections were held in 1964 opposition candidates were not allowed to present themselves to the electorate. As with Guinea, economic weakness proved to be Keita’s Achilles heel: he found it impossible to develop a full socialist economic policy and in 1967 had to come to terms with France and negotiate re-entry into the franc zone. France imposed harsh conditions including 90 per cent devaluation and the imposition of extensive French supervision of the economy. Unsurprisingly, given earlier socialist rhetoric and denunciations of France, the return to the French fold provoked opposition from militant students and youths who claimed, correctly, that the regime was bowing to colonialist pressures. The position worsened when the government imposed economic austerity measures. Then the newly formed People’s Militia, which Keita had created as a radical counter-weight to the army and to provide support for himself, arrested several army officers, provoking immediate fears in the military that Keita intended to reduce the size of the army. Apparently, the army was to be sent on 21 November to help bring in the harvest while the militia would seize the barracks. The army, therefore, had to carry out a pre-emptive strike to save itself and on 19 November 1968 carried out a bloodless coup and deposed Keita. A 14-member Military Committee of National Liberation (CMLN) was established with Lt (later Brig.-Gen.) Moussa Traoré as President and Captain Yoro Diakite as Head of Government. Keita failed but as a militant socialist he had tried to reduce Mali’s dependence on overseas aid and free it from French influence. What happened in Mali was a classic illustration of the conflict between radical politics leading to economic crisis that could only be overcome by turning back to the metropolitan power (in later years to the IMF) for an economic rescue operation. Jean-Marie Koné, a former minister, became foreign minister in Diakite’s government. He claimed that the army had seized power to put an end to ‘the radicalization of the Marxist regime’ of Keita who, he said, after following a policy of balance between the moderates and the Marxists had decided in August 1967 to govern with the backing of the toughest Marxist theoreticians who had forgotten Malian realities. The Chinese trained militia, which had become armed ruffians, were disbanded.11
Upper Volta (later Burkina Faso) followed a similar path to that of Mali. The Union Démocratique Voltaique (UDV), with Maurice Yameogo as President, formed the government, which turned out to be autocratic and made opposition parties illegal soon after independence. Single list elections were held in 1965, giving Yameogo’s UDV 99 per cent of the vote. This result led to mass demonstrations with civil servants and trade unionists being joined by radical students who opposed the government’s dependence upon France. In January 1966, with a general strike threatened, the army intervened and deposed Yameogo, a move that received much popular support. The Constitution was suspended, the National Assembly dissolved and a government was formed under Lt-Col. (later Gen.) Sangoule Lamizana. The new government worked to restore the economy. Although the military said they would restore civilian rule and held round table talks with the politicians, failure to achieve reconciliation and further threats of disturbances led the army to announce in December 1966 that it would remain in power for four years. Commenting upon the army takeover, the Guardian reflected more generally upon what had occurred in the former French colonies:
The former French colonies followed a very different path from that of their English neighbours. Their culture and civilization has been so involved with that of France that their independence was more a gesture to world opinion than a genuine expression of nationalism. For a time they have adhered closely to France, but France has indicated that she is unwilling to prop them up indefinitely. As the French attitude has changed, so nationalism has caught up with them. They are hopelessly unprepared for it. Few of the States are economically viable. National income is absurdly distributed. In Upper Volta, for example, over one-third of the budget is spent on educating 7 per cent of the school-age population. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that adjustment to a changing situation will take place painfully. We sometimes grumble about the way the British former colonies behave, but compared with French Africa they seem positively English in their stability.12
Although much of this
comment was valid, the smug Guardian comparison between Francophone and Anglophone Africa was soon to be overtaken by events in Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
The tiny West African states of Togo and Benin were both to suffer their shares of army takeovers during the 1960s. In the case of Togo, the end of the Algerian war in 1962 saw the demobilization from the French army of some 600 Togolese soldiers, who had served the French on individual enlistment, being repatriated to Togo. They wanted to be absorbed into the Togo army but the government could not afford either to enlist them in the army or provide them with other employment; so they joined up with the army and mutinied on 13 January 1963 when the Olympio government was overthrown and the President shot dead. Nicolas Grunitzky formed a coalition government but this turned out to be an uneasy affair and was opposed by Olympio’s party, Comité de l’Unité Togolaise (CUT). After several uneasy years the army, under Lt-Col. Etienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma, seized power in January 1967, Eyadéma citing fears of civil war as his justification. A Committee of National Reconciliation was set up which, within three months, would create ‘the institutions which will lead to free and democratic elections, after which the Army will undertake to withdraw from the political scene’.
Following independence in 1960 Dahomey (Benin) was to experience six bloodless coups in 12 years and in this case economic problems were the principal cause of the upheavals. As it happened, Dahomey had a well-developed educational system and had exported much of its trained manpower during colonial times to neighbouring Francophone countries. After 1960, however, most of the Francophone territories passed legislation to exclude foreign nationals with the result that many Beninois had to return home so that the country faced an influx of highly trained personnel looking for employment. Many found jobs in a rapidly expanded civil service and tended to be good fodder for coups. The President of Dahomey at independence was Hubert Maga whose main support came from the north of the country. He was allied to Sourou-Migan Apithy whose base was in the south-east. Their alliance became increasingly strained and, following trade union and student riots, the government was overthrown by the army, which then created a new civilian government under Justin Ahomadegbe, who represented the south-west region, and Apithy who was appointed President.
This government lasted until November 1965 when the army intervened for a second time and General Christophe Soglo (who had also led the army coup of 1963) first presided over a series of consultations between the different political factions and then, when no agreement was reached, formed a government of soldiers and technical experts on 22 December 1965. The Soglo government, in its turn, was overthrown in December 1967 by a group of younger army officers, led by Maj. Maurice Kouandeté, who appointed Lt-Col. Alphonse Alley head of state to prepare the way for a return to civilian rule. A strong presidential constitution was submitted to referendum in March 1968 and presidential elections were held in May but they were annulled because the three main candidates – Apithy, Maga and Ahomadegbe – were disqualified. In July Dr Emile Zinsou was made President by the army. Eighteen months later, on 10 December 1969, the army deposed Zinsou and Lt-Col. Maurice Kouandete became head of state. He broadcast to the nation that Zinsou had failed in his task of reconciliation obliging the army, once more, to assume its responsibilities. Elections in 1970 in which Apithy, Maga and Ahomadegbe again stood brought the country close to civil war between north and south. A presidential commission of these three was then established; it was transformed into a presidential council and each man, by rotation, was to serve for a two-year period. None of this political-military manoeuvring during the 1960s brought the country any closer to solving its economic problems.
In Nigeria, the giant of West Africa, the increasing strains between the three great regions – east, west and north – occupied respectively by the Ibo, Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani finally destroyed the creaking federal structure that had lasted since independence in 1960. The tribal factor now came to dominate the political-military scene and ‘In Nigeria, the minority Ibo group inside the army struck first, and thus destroyed the existing regime and endangered the whole coherence of the army itself’.14 On 15 January 1966 the first Nigerian military coup brought about the downfall of the Federal Government of Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to spark off the events that would lead to the civil war. Immediately, Maj.-Gen. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi became head of a military government that would last until the second coup of 1966, which took place in July when Ironsi was killed and succeeded by Lt-Gen. Yakubu Gowon. Nigeria would descend into civil war in 1967.
When Sierra Leone became independent in 1961 the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) under Sir Milton Margai formed the government. When he died in 1964 his brother, Sir Albert Margai, became Prime Minister. The SLPP drew its main support from the chiefs and people of the interior: that is, the conservative elements in the country. The more progressive opposition formed round the All-People’s Congress (APC), led by Siaka Stevens. In February 1966 Sir Albert Margai established a committee to consider whether the country should become a one-party state. Resistance to the idea came principally from the Creoles (descendants of the resettled slaves) of Freetown and the APC. Sir Albert was more interested in adopting the Ghanaian model for a one-party state rather than the model that had been established in Tanzania where choice of candidates was permitted and encouraged. Opponents of Sir Albert assumed that he wished to keep himself permanently in power. In the elections of March 1967 the APC won a majority of seats, Stevens gaining five more than Margai. Many people had voted against Margai because they opposed both a one-party system and turning Sierra Leone into a republic. The Governor, Sir Henry Lightfoot-Boston, suggested that a coalition should be formed, but Stevens refused. The Governor, therefore, swore in Stevens as Prime Minister and the members of his cabinet but then troops under the Army Commander, Brig. David Lansana, a supporter of Margai, surrounded State House and detained the leaders of the new government. Lansana reinstated Margai in office. Two days later, however, a group of officers arrested Lansana and Margai and established the National Reformation Council, which suspended the Constitution, dissolved all political parties and prohibited all political activity. The Council claimed that Brig. Lansana had been overthrown because his attitude ‘was not to bring about the creation of a national government but to impose Sir Albert Margai as Prime Minister of this country’. A military government under Col. A. J. Juxon-Smith ruled Sierra Leone until April 1968 when it was overthrown in a revolt of private soldiers assisted by some NCOs who arrested the officers and promised a quick return to civilian rule. One week later Siaka Stevens, who had been ousted in March 1967, was again sworn in as Prime Minister. The SLPP went into opposition.
The coups of Sierra Leone were at three different levels. The first coup was carried out by the army commander who on his own initiative used the army to prevent Siaka Stevens from coming legitimately to power. The second coup was conducted by senior officers who overthrew the commander in order to establish the National Reformation Council. The third coup was carried out by warrant officers and privates who denounced the policy that had been pursued by the National Reformation Council. These coups demonstrated that there was little solidarity within the ranks of the army.
CENTRAL AND EQUATORIAL AFRICA
The army of Congo (Brazzaville) received over a sixth of the state’s revenue in the first 56 months after independence, 25 billion out of 150 billion Congolese francs, making it the most favoured organization in the country. At independence Abbé Fulbert Youlou became president and a new constitution gave him extensive powers. His policies exacerbated tribal tensions while his pro-Western stance and support for Tshombe’s breakaway state in neighbouring Congo (Kinshasa) were not popular. On 13 August 1963 strikes and riots took place in Brazzaville where demonstrators set fire to the prison and released prisoners. Troops were obliged to intervene when the police failed to quell the riots. On 15 August the resignation of President Youlou was announced. A spokesman for the
French forces stationed in Brazzaville said that President Youlou’s resignation ended the armed support given to him (or rather not given to him) by the French garrison at the start of the disturbances. Power was entrusted to the National Congolese Army pending a new constitution and a new government. Youlou’s plan to create a single-party system was at the root of the disturbances. At first the trade unions had co-operated in negotiations with the government but that co-operation collapsed when a government decree banned all political meetings until the parti-unique had been created. The unions claimed that the government was depriving the people of their rights under the UN Charter. Alphonse Massamba-Debat, former planning minister and Speaker of the National Assembly, became Prime Minister. Commenting on these events, the Observer said: ‘Democratic forces in Africa have won a significant triumph by overthrowing Abbé Fulbert Youlou’s government in the French Congo. If the populist revolt can consolidate its success – and so prevent the one-party rule of President Youlou – the storming of the Brazzaville prison may come to acquire for Africa the significance of the fall of the Bastille.’15 This upbeat assessment of the Congo revolution was capped a week later by The Economist: ‘It was neat, less expensive than it might have been, and instructive. In three eventful days, from August 14 to 17, the people of the ex-French Congo rioted, brought down President Fulbert Youlou and replaced him by a man with a reputation for honesty, M. Massamba-Debat. Four of the rioters were killed and ten times as many wounded; sundry houses and cars belonging to M. Youlou’s ministers were burnt.’16 These enthusiastic British reactions to the fall of Youlou and the forestalling of a one-party system were to be echoed a few years later at the fall of Nkrumah.
