I would have preferred Mugabe’s inevitable march to self-destructive ignominy. I hope that democracy in Africa will find a way to consign Paul Biya, Yoweri Museveni, and Teodoro Obiang to the dustbin of history without the dirty hands of the military.
Military coup has never been a solution to anything. Tanks in the public sphere will always be a pox on civilisation. I condemn the coup-not-coup-apparent-coup in Zimbabwe.
Yes, Mugabe and Gucci Grace are an embarrassment to themselves, to Zimbabwe, and to Africa.
However, we should watch the actions of those celebrating this military coup the loudest. The Western media has been behaving like a kid in a chocolate store today. The West has a pox on her civilisation who has done more damage to her democratic norms in less than a year than Mugabe has done to democracy in four decades. Yes, I know, I am being hyperbolic for effect.
I am talking about the neo-nazi racist buffoon in the White House. Go and read the New York Times‘s recent op-ed empirically cataloguing this lunatic’s assault on the constitution in just one year. The list includes actual assaults, putative assaults, and wish-list assaults.
Yet, none of them has proposed military coup as a solution to the West’s nightmare in Washington. Everyone just somehow believes in the ability of democracy to resolve its own contradictions in the West. In Africa, they need jackboots to resolve such contradictions.
Remember this also: if this coup had happened against an African good boy, these same folks jumping up and down in celebration in Washington and London would have been the loudest in condemning it and screaming about democracy. It would not have mattered if the good boy were a murderous dictator.
I would have preferred Mugabe’s inevitable march to self-destructive ignominy. I hope that democracy in Africa will find a way to consign Paul Biya, Yoweri Museveni, and Teodoro Obiang to the dustbin of history without the dirty hands of the military.
Pius Adesanmi, a professor of English, is Director of the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Canada.
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