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Soldier and State in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Direct military intervention, aimed at unseating civilian governments and replacing them with ruling councils drawn largely from the army, is a relatively recent phenomenon in Africa. With the exception of the Sudan, where officers led by General Ibrahim Abboud seized control in November 1958, no supplanting of civilian authority by a military junta occurred until 19 June 1965 (Algeria). Then, in rapid succession, the Governments of Congo-Kinshasa (25 November 1965), Dahomey (22 December 1965), Central African Republic (1 January 1966), Upper Volta (4 January 1966), Nigeria (15 July 1966), Ghana (24 February 1966), Nigeria once again (29 July, 1966), Burundi (28 November 1966), Togo (13 January 1967), and Sierra Leone (23 March 1967) fell victims to coups d'état.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

Page 305 note 1 Huntington, Samuel p. (ed.), Changing Patterns of Military Politics (New York, 1962), p. 40.Google Scholar

Page 305 note 2 To Lake one instance, a U.S. State Department bibliography, ‘Role of the Military in Less Developed Countries, January 1958-February 1964’, Contains references to four articles dealing with Africa, contrasted with 37 items on Latin America and 33 on the Middle East. There are no references to Africa in the bibliography in Huntington, op. cit.

Page 306 note 1 A key political event in Ghana's political history, for example, was the march on Christiansborg Castle, led by members of the Ex-Servicemen's Union on 28 February 1048. Riots broke out after the marchers were dispersed (and two killed) by police gunfire; the outbreak of violence led to the Watson Commissiun Repurt, of tremenduos significance in the hastening of constitutional progress. See Apter, David E., Ghana in Transitisn (New York, 1963), pp. 169 ff.,Google Scholar and Austin, Dennis, Politics in Ghana, 1946–1960 (London, 1964), pp. 73 ff.Google Scholar Demobilised veterans in Nigeria helped carry the gospel of nationalism to the ‘bush’: more than 100,000 Nigerians served in World War II 30,000 of them outside their native country. See Coleman, James S., Nigeria: background to nationalism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1958), pp. 254,Google Scholar and Schwarz, Frederick A. O. Jr, Nigeria: the tribes, the nation, or the race: the politics of independence (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 57–8.Google Scholar Also see Rothchild, Donald S., The Effects af Mobilization in British Africa (Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, Institute of African Affairs), Reprint No. 2.Google Scholar

Page 307 note 1 Coleman, James S. and Brice, Belmont Jr, ‘The Role of the Military in Sub-Saharan Africaè, in Johnson, John J. (ed.), The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton, 1962), pp. 366–7.Google Scholar

Page 307 note 2 Ibid. p. 370. Gutteridge noteo that in January 1961, three montho after Nigeria gained independence, 81 of about 300 officers in the Nigerian Army were Afrieano, the most senior being a Lieutenant-Colonel. Gutteridge, William F., ‘Military Elites in Ghana and Nigeria’, in African Forum (New York), II, 1, Summer 1966, p. 37.Google Scholar

Page 307 note 3 Coleman and Brice, op. cit. p. 379; Hoskyno, Catherine, The Congo Since Independence, January 1960-December 1961 (London, 1965), p. 59.Google Scholar

Page 307 note 4 Coleman and Brice, op. cit. p. 373.

Page 307 note 5 On the eve of World War H, the Britioh Secretary of State for the Colonies commented, ‘It may take generationo or e en centurieo for the peopleo in oosne parto of the Colonial Empire to achieve self-government’. Clearly he had Africa in mind. Quoted in Robinson, Kenneth, ‘World Opinion and Colonial Status’, in International Organization (Boston), VIII, 3, Summer 1954, p. 468.Google Scholar

Page 308 note 1 van den Berghe, Pierre L., ‘The Role of the Military in Contemporary Africa’, in Africa Report (Washington), X, 3, 03 1965, p. 17.Google Scholar

Page 308 note 2 Hoskyns, op. cit. p. 60.

Page 308 note 3 Ibid.

Page 309 note 1 Austin, op. cit. p. 158.

Page 309 note 2 Guinea is an obvious instance. After the Non vote in the referendum of 28 September 1958, which resulted in the country's independence, the French Government ‘almost at once began to repatriate Guineans then serving in its army’. All French troops were withdrawn by 30 November 1958, and the Guinea Government eschewed any French assistance in training. For a dithyrambic view of the reorientation of the Guinean army, see Du Bois, Victor D., ‘The Role of the Army in Guinea’, in Africa Report, VIII, X, 01 1963, pp. 3–5,Google Scholar from which the quotations were taken.

Page 309 note 3 Murray, Roger, ‘Militarism in Africa,’ in New Left Review (London), 0708 1966, p. 36.Google Scholar

Page 310 note 1 Source: Wood, David, The Armed Forces of African Slates (London, Institute for Strategic Studies, 1966), Adeiphi Papers No. 27, pp. 28–9.Google Scholar

Page 310 note 2 These estimates exclude the police and gendarmerie.

Page 311 note 1 Lieuwin, Edwin, Arms and Politics in Latin America (New York, 1961 rev. edn.), p. 19.Google Scholar

Page 312 note 1 A similar distinction is drawn by Mazrui, A. and Rothchild, D. S. in their article ‘The Soldier and the State in East Africa: some theoretical conclusions on the army mutinies of 1964’, in Western Political quarterly (Salt Lake City), XX, 1, 03 1967, p. 94.Google Scholar

Page 312 note 2 Hoskyns, op. cit. pp. 87–8.

Page 312 note 3 Quoted in Mazrui and Rothchild, op. cit. p. 82.

Page 313 note 1 Zolberg, Aristide R., Creating Political Order: the party-states of West Africa (Chicago, 1966), pp. 37 ff.Google Scholar

Page 314 note 1 Geertz, Clifford, ‘The Integrative Revolution: primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states’, in Geertz, Clifford (ed.), Old Societies and New States (New York, 1963), pp. 119–20.Google Scholar

Page 314 note 2 Zolberg, op. cit. p. 66.

Page 315 note 1 See, inter alia, the country studies and concluding chapter of Coleman, James S. and Rosberg, Carl L., Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964);Google ScholarKilson, Martin L., ‘Authoritarian and Single-Party Tendencies in African Politics’, in World Politics (Princeton), XV, 2, 01 1963, pp. 262–94:Google Scholar and Zolberg, op. cit. p. 66.

Page 315 note 2 Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘The Structure of Political Conflict in the New States of Tropical Africa’, unpublished paper delivered at the 1966 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, pp. 13–14. I have omitted Zolberg's point about the problem of legitimacy: he notes that the shift to force ‘enhances the problem of the legitimacy of the rulers in the eyes of those to whom the implementation of force must necessarily be entrusted'.

Page 315 note 3 Parsons, Talcott, ‘Some Reflections on the Place of Force in Social Process’, in Eckstein, Harry (ed.), Internal War: problems and approaches (New York, 1964), pp. 5861.Google Scholar

Page 316 note 1 Hoskyns, op. cit. p. 214.

Page 316 note 2 The regional tensions are extensively discussed by Thompson, Virginia, ‘Dahomey’, in Carter, Gwendolen M. (ed.), Five African States: responses to diversity (Ithaca, 1963), pp. 207–35.Google Scholar

Page 316 note 3 A sound strategy for coups, Major Goodspeed has commented, involves assessment of the sympathies of the country's armed forces, the state of public opinion, and the international situation. Goodspeed, D. J., The Conspirators: a study of the coup d' état (New York, 1962), p. 210.Google Scholar The six seizures of control analysed in this book are European.

Page 317 note 1 Wood, op. cit. p. 3.

Page 318 note 1 Ibid. p. 26.

Page 318 note 2 Ibid. pp. 19, 22, and 27.

Page 318 note 3 Kitchen, Helen, ‘Filling the Togo Vacuum’, in Africa Report, VIII, 2, 01 1963, p. 9.Google Scholar

Page 319 note 1 Quoted in Africa Research Bulletin (London), III, 2, 02 1966, p. 467c.Google Scholar

Page 320 note 1 In the Congo, to take an admittedly extreme example, the central government in 1962 estimated it would receive approximately 4,000,000,000 francs, while expenditures totalled more than 19,000,000,000 francs. Bustin, Edouard, ‘The Congo’, in Carter, (ed.), Five African States, p. 138n.Google Scholar

Page 320 note 2 See reports of hearings of 15 commissions of enquiry established by the Ankrah Government, and the rescheduling of Ghana's external debt of £280 million, in West Africa (London).

Page 320 note 3 Brinton's observations on revolutions seem apposite here. In his comparative analysis, he suggests that revolutions occurred in societies ‘on the whole on the upgrade economically before the revolution came, and the revolutionary movements seem to originate in the discontents of not unprosperous people who feel restraint, cramp, annoyance, rather than downright crushing oppression. Certainly these revolutions are not started by down-andouters, by starving, miserable people’. Brinton, Crane, The Anatomy of Revolution (New York, 1965), p. 250.Google Scholar

Page 321 note 1 Finer, S. E., The Man on Horseback: the role of the military in politics (London, 1962), pp. 23–60.Google Scholar

Page 321 note 2 Pye, Lucian W., ‘Armies in the Process of Political Modernization’, in Johnson (ed.), The Role of the Military, 83.Google Scholar

Page 321 note 3 Afrifa, Colonel A. A., The Ghana Coup, 24th February 1966 (New York, 1966), p. 37.Google Scholar