Military Coups in Africa, Revolutions or Reactions? -By Aina Ademola

For our people to understand the political milieu, it’s necessary for us to clearly give a juxtaposition about military coups in Africa. Basically, military is not supposed to hold political offices because they have no political mandate, and it is not in their duty to demand one. However, there are times when usurpation of political power by the use  of guns by the military occurs, and this subversion can either be a revolution or a reaction. It’s quite not taxing to identify a military revolution or a usurpation of power engineered by reactionary-junior capitalist- national bourgeoisie counter revolutionary elements, the initial is revolutionary while the latter is not.

Military hijack of power retrogresses the African revolution.  However , there are conditions that ignites military subversion. The real African revolution doesn’t come from the military, it comes  from the people, genuine revolution comes from the organization of the masses of the people towards the destruction of oppressive political structures.

There are some revolutionary military subversion that have happened in Africa and have been to the benefit of the African people and against the enemies of the African revolution with some revolutionary political implementations put in place in favor of the people. Let’s take Burkinafaso for example, the military seizure of power by Thomas Sankara in 1983 is purely a revolutionary act, because the rule of Thomas’s Sankara itself entails revolutionary ingredients like anti imperialism , socialism, local production, Pan Africanism, Black consciousness, women empowerment and many more. The 1983 burkinafaso coup was purely an anti imperialist coup and that’s why most of the policies Sankara made was against the colonial enemy. Captain Thomas Sankara stopped the exploitation of the burkinafaso resources by France, he shunned the odious burkinafaso debt, collected the land from the oppressive feudal landlords and redistributed wealth equally in Burkinafaso, he reversed the former colonial name ‘Upper Volta’ to Burkinafaso and created alliance with many other revolutionary African governments, this alone in and of itself was nothing but revolutionary. Any military usurpation of power  based on scientific socialism, Pan Africanism and anti- imperialism is revolutionary.

We need to understand that colonialism hasn’t settled its debts to us when it’s flags and police have been removed from our territories, colonialism exits through the front political door and comes back in through the back economic door and it’s our duty as political revolutionaries to identify this refined colonialism called imperialism and destroy it through the organization of the masses of our people in any way it may wish to manifest itself.

We have sited military revolutionary usurpation of power with Burkinafaso as a case study, now let’s take a look at reactionary military seizure of power in Africa. Who are reactionaries? Reactionaries are bourgeois elements with metropolitan thinking, they are the National bourgeoisies; an extension of the metropolitan bourgeoisie, they are remnants of the feudal political epoch. They are, basically,bigots, criminals and enemies of the African revolution, they are not revolutionaries, they are nothing but reactionary pigs who work with their  capitalist- metropolitan-imperialist- neo colonial masters to distort and retrogress the African revolution; they are puppets and nothing but a vicious contraption of the metropolis against the African liberation struggle. A case study of reactionary seizure of political power in Africa is Ghana; in February 24 1966, there was a military mutiny between bourgeois police and military elements and their neo colonial masters in Europe to overthrow the democratically elected government of the honorable Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah. We all know that Nkrumah was in the Vangaurd of the struggle against capitalism and imperialism in Africa, he was the initiative behind the Africa union government. His government was overthrown by a police-army mutiny in February 24 1966 spearheaded by reactionary military elements. This imperialist military rule in Ghana before its collapse was purely based on capitalism, the military junta reversed all the revolutionary plans of the government of Nkrumah, sold state owned enterprises to private and metropolitan interests, disconnected Ghana from the African revolution, chased other African freedom fighters who sought asylum in Ghana, created an alliance with other colonial countries like Rhodesia, South Africa, jailed activists and arrested multitudes of the people of Ghana, reversed the seven years development plan of president Nkrumah, strengthened other puppets governments across Africa, banned Ghanaians from listening to the program on the radio called Voice of the Revolution aired from Conakry by Nkrumah and perpetrated many more  evils. We can see evidently that this regime in an of itself was a regime run by colonial masters but through reactionaries, counter revolutionaries and bourgeois elements within the Ghanaian army, the same reactionary military seizure of power completely the same with the Ghana’s own is that of 1987 military coup of burkinafaso spearheaded by Blaise Compaore; the same behavior, the same attitude and the same imperialist implementation.

We shun military coups of any nature in Africa, the genuine revolutionary change doesn’t come from the army, it must come from our peoples through organization of the revolutionary ingredients like the working class and peasants and most importantly, the lumpenproletariats by the Vangaurd revolutionary party led by revolutionary intelligentsias.

How do we solve the military usurpation of power in Africa? The police and army are peasants and working class in uniform, we must must never alienate them from their class by ostracizing them from politics,  instructions must not be on blind obedience, it must be on mutual understanding. The army must not be autonomous such that when idle will eventually go into politics, the army must in the first place be politicized and must be under the control of the Vangaurd socialist revolutionary party to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our nation, of Africa. The army is never to hold political offices because they have no political mandate; they are to with arms, defend the nation.

The masses  are the revolution, the revolution is the masses and not reactionary elements, We, the people of Africa, with our voice will pulverize into smithereens the machinations of oppression, bad leadership and neo-colonial exploitation.

Written by : Aina Ademola

Gmail: nirandemola@gmail.com

Twitte: OgbeniDemola.

Viva African revolution.