Modalities of Civil-Military Stability in Africa

Abstract

If during the 1960s thecoup d'étatemerged as the most visible and recurrent characteristic of the African political experience, by the 1980s quasi-permanent military rule, of whatever ideological hue, had become the norm for much of the continent. At any moment in time, up to 65 per cent of all Africa's inhabitants and well over half its states are governed by military administrators. Civilian rule is but a distant memory in some countries. Few at some stage or another have not been run by an armed-forces junta, and fewer still have not been rocked at least once by an attempted coup, putsch, or military-sponsored plot. According to one tabulation, ‘only six states havenotwitnessed some form of extra-legal armed involvement in national politics since 1958’.1The phenomenon has even reached the non-state Homelands of Bophuthatswana, Transkei, and Ciskei in South Africa. Rule by civilians is very much the statistical ‘deviation’ from the continental norm, as military leaders lay a permanent claim to the political throne in much of Africa