Rwandan President Paul Kagame./COURTESY
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has warned that the increasing number of military coups in Africa may intensify in the coming years.
Kagame said some of the coups d’état are justified since “most of the leaders are not listening” to their people but to their masters in the West.
During last Thursday’s news conference at Village Urugwiro, the Rwandan leader spoke bluntly to The New Times of Rwanda as he addressed a subject that likely keeps many African leaders awake at night.
“I believe it’s true, where coups are taking place, there must be something wrong that has been happening all along,” Kagame said.
“Once there is a coup, maybe 90 per cent plus, it means that there has been a problem.”
The recent surge in military takeovers across Africa has overthrown leaders in Burkina Faso, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Sudan. At least seven coup attempts have been thwarted since 2020.
The latest one that removed Guinea-Bissau’s Umaro Sissoco Embaló from power earlier this week was the 10th on the continent in five years.
Last month, another group of military leaders seized power in Madagascar, ousting Andry Rajoelina, who, like Embaló, has since gone into exile.
“I’m vindicated,” he said, responding to a reference to his previous assertion that coups were often the result of leaders failing their people. “And maybe we’ll have more coups – and so be it.”
“What’s interesting is that some of these coups are happening in places where these people who make judgments about us, the West, have been praising leaders, as if to tell these people (the West), ‘you’ve been telling lies’.”
The Rwandan President, who has been in power for 25 years and came to office through an uprising that ended the Rwanda genocide, said not all coups are necessarily bad.
“There are good coups and bad coups,” Kagame said.
“There might be a coup by somebody who got high-handed, and high anyway, and became reckless and thought, because he has a gun, he’ll go and take power — that’s a bad coup.”
Kagame said analysts need to look deeper while assessing such developments and try to answer the question of “why the coup should not have happened anyway.”
“We might then get to understand whether there have been underlying problems or not, and somebody just, out of madness, acted and overthrew a government,” he noted.
But he added, “If a group of people said, ‘no, enough is enough, these guys have been telling us lies, they’re enriching themselves, they are cheating us, we can’t have it anymore, it’s stinking,’ and they go for whatever form they do it, I think I’m okay with it,” the President said.
“I know I’ll be misunderstood, but I’m happy to take the risk, I’m okay with that.”
However, Kagame warned that coup leaders must act differently and correct the wrongs for which they seized power.
“I won’t feel settled entirely until I see that somebody who did that — or people who did that, who said they were sick and tired and that was the justification — making a difference.”
