West African Spring

     Back in 2011-12-ish, large protest movements swept the Middle East and North Africa, collectively referred to as the Arab Spring. They started in Tunisia after a 26 year old street vendor named Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest over police confiscating his supplies, fining him, and otherwise harassing him for just trying to work for a living. The dictator of Tunisia fled the unrest with a plane-load of stolen money. Tunisia’s post-Arab Spring democracy has been shaky, but survived. As is well known, the other countries rocked by large protest movements were less lucky.

     To many, the Arab Spring was a huge disappointment and confirmed predispositions against democracy and/or Islamic/religious parties. But taking a wider view of the world, one finds many other relative success stories of people-power leading to democracy, as it did in Tunisia. One region in particular stands out to me: West Africa. Whereas the Arab Spring arose quickly and spread like wildfire, the West African Spring has smoldered on for nearly a decade, or longer if you include the democratic transitions of Liberia and Sierra Leone (or even longer if you include democratic transitions in Ghana and Nigeria), slowly passing from country to country. Like the Arab Spring, not every uprising has been peaceful or successful. But I think it argues against those who would prefer the illusory stability of autocrats.

     A potential starting point could be Côte d'Ivoire, aka Ivory Coast. In 2010, Côte d'Ivoire held elections that were supposed to happen in 2005. The incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo lost, but cried foul and his buddies on the Supreme Court nullified enough votes for him to be declared the winner. International observers, the UN, and most nations recognized Gbagbo’s opponent, Alassane Ouattara, to be the winner. The elections were part of a peace deal that ended the First Ivorian Civil War in 2002. The fighting was generally between the rebel north and the south of the country. After Gbagbo refused to step down, the Second Civil War started up, essentially a continuation of the previously frozen conflict. UN and particularly French (the former colonial power) military forces intervened on the side of the rebels whose leader they deemed won the election. The conflict ended in 2011 with Ouattara assuming the presidency.

     As far as I remember Gbagbo is now on trial at the International Criminal Court. Ouattara was re-elected in 2015. Côte d'Ivoire’s democracy remains untested by a transition of power, and military units occasionally mutiny over demands for higher pay but it’s a start.

     Pro-democracy street protest then hit Senegal in 2012. Senegal has been a democracy since (re-)independence in 1960, has never suffered a coup, and has had transitions of power between political parties. However, in 2012 the two-term then-president Abdoulaye Wade, decided the constitutional term limits he helped to bring about did not apply to him and would only apply to his successors. His buddies on the Supreme Court (notice a pattern?) agreed with him. Outraged Senegalese took to the streets in protest. The opposition united behind a single candidate, Macky Sall, who had fallen out with Wade, and won on a platform of kicking that fool out of office.

     In 2014, pro-democracy protests hit Burkina Faso for a similar reason as in Senegal, though Burkina Faso was no democracy. Its 27 year “president” Blaise Compaoré, had previously agreed to constitutional changes that included term limits that would have removed Compaoré as a candidate in the next election. Like Wade, Compaoré got cold feet about leaving power and announced he wouldn’t. But widespread street protests eventually took him down and a transition government took power and scheduled elections for October 2015. 

    In September 2015, a military coup, led by the Regiment of Presidential Security (aka the former president’s goons), attempted to take control and captured the leaders of the transitional government. But Burkinabés weren’t having that shit. Again they took to the streets in protest. A combination of those protests and the rest of Burkina Faso’s army advancing on the capitol convinced the coup leaders to free their prisoners and publicly apologize a few weeks after seizing power. Elections were held the following November, and Roch Marc Christian Kaboré won them.

     Just over a year later, in December 2016, in what was supposed to be a sham election in The Gambia (yes, “The” is part of its name) led to a pro-democracy uprising. In the lead up to the election a senior member of the opposition, Solo Sandeng, was taken into police custody and somehow went missing (the police tortured him to death). Another lead opposition figure was arrested in the protests that followed. It seemed the president, His Excellency Al-Haji Dr. Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh (yes, that was his title and is his name)[1] was trying to eliminate opponents in the run up to the election.

     The opposition united behind a single candidate, Adama Barrow, who was a relative unknown, which was perhaps a strength in terms of being underestimated and therefore not imprisoned or killed by the state. The election commission ran an honest election. Either Jammeh was over-confident of his popularity or election officials took a huge risk in defying him. Barrow won a plurality of the vote and Jammeh shockingly conceded. In retrospect in appears he did that to buy time to make sure the military would back him staying on. Once he had all the pieces in place, Jammeh went back on his word and announced he’d be staying. 

    The Gambia’s only neighbor, Senegal, wasn’t trying to have that. Jammeh had always been an annoyance to Senegal and this was the perfect chance to remove him. With Senegal’s leadership, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) urged Jammeh to leave and threatened military intervention if he didn’t. Come inauguration day, Barrow was sworn in in The Gambia’s embassy in Senegal, and ECOWAS troops entered Gambian territory. In the end Jammeh left for exile in Equatorial Guinea, with a plane load of stolen cash (a lot of patterns here), and Barrow is now president.

     And presently in Togo there is a large pro-democracy protest movement that has taken to the streets, risking violent repression. They are demanding term limits to be reintroduced and for the current president, Faure Gnassingbé, who followed his dad as president in a disputed election result, step down. Gnassingbé is on his third term, having decided term limits weren’t for him. Former West African heads of state, including Ghana’s former military dictator, who eventually stepped down in a transition back to democracy, have urged him to make reforms to the constitution that protesters are asking for. But unfortunately ECOWAS has been largely silent, as its current chairman is Gnassingbé himself.

     The momentous transition to democracy in West Africa reminds me of the democratic transition in Latin America. It is incomplete and took a long time, but Latin America is overwhelmingly democratic where it used to be overwhelmingly authoritarian. May the slow smoldering burn of the West African Spring continue to claim more dictators and give rise to, or in many cases a return to, more democracies.

1. At least at that was his title at the time I was in The Gambia. But older posters of him had a variety of titles such as his self-bestowed military ranks (he was just a junior officer when he launched a coup). The Dr. comes from St. Mary’s College of Maryland giving him an honorary doctorate in 2003-ish, which was very shameful at the time let alone now. Also why the hell does a college that only awards BAs get to go around giving out honorary “doctorates”? Jammeh also claimed to be able to cure AIDS, using a mixture of herbs and other ingredients such as bananas, what looked like peanut butter (or groundnut as they call it there, a major crop), and, I strongly suspect, cannabis (return of appetite and pain relief were commonly reported symptoms from those who ingested the mixture). But he could only spend time curing AIDS a few days a week and would not share his cure with anyone else. By the way, AIDS is not very prevalent in West Africa; it first appeared in East Africa is now concentrated in Southern Africa. West Africa has infection rates similar to Washington D.C.. Jammeh also threatened to execute gay people found in The Gambia, including tourists. Despite the secular constitution, he declared The Gambia to be an “Islamic State”, at a time when the Middle Eastern terrorist group Islamic State was well known. Anyway he sucked big and is gone now.