Chasing coup in Ouagadougou: A journalist’s front row experience of a few days of political chaos

When I boarded the early morning Ethiopian Airways flight on September 14 headed for Ouagadougou, I could not have imagined that my visit this year to the Burkina Faso capital would turn out to be so dramatic.

I have become a regular visitor to Ouagadougou for the biennial Festival International de la Liberte D’Expression et de la Presse (International Festival for Freedom of Expression and the Press) Filep, hosted by the Centre National du’Presse Nobert Zongo, CNP-NZ.

However, this time I’d headed out with a keen sense of anticipation, knowing that the sixth edition of the festival would be special.

This would be the first since the ‘Burkina Spring’ of one year ago, the popular citizens revolt that ended the 27-year reign of strongman Blaise Compaore. The military dictator-turned civilian leader, like so many of his ilk on the continent, had sought a constitutional amendment to allow him to stand for a fifth term as president.

A transitional government and national assembly were established to run the country for one year pending elections that were scheduled for October 11, just a few weeks after the sixth edition of Filep.

REOPENING OF INVESTIGATIONS

But what was most poignant was that Filep and the National Press Centre were inexorably tied to the events of one year ago that toppled a dictator.

Both were run by crusading journalist Cheriff Moumina Sy, the founder of the Bendre newspaper and former President of The African Editors’ Forum (Taef).

As a journalist and activist, Cheriff was an outspoken campaigner for human rights and justice. He had used his platforms to run relentless crusades dedicated to keeping alive the memory and ideals of charismatic Burkina Faso leader Thomas Sankara, who was deposed and killed in the October 1987 coup led by his compatriot, Compaore.

The National Press Centre itself was named after an investigative journalist, Nobert Zongo, the publisher and editor of the L’Indépendant newspaper who was killed in 1998 while pursuing an investigation into corruption and murder in Compaore’s presidential palace.

The Press Centre had long campaigned for reopening of investigations into the killings of both Sankara and Zongo, and all fingers pointed at President Compaore and powerful figures in his regime.
STREET ACTIVISM
This time Cheriff Sy was to host us, not just as the crusading, driving force behind Filep, but also as President of the Transitional National Council, the interim legislature put in place after the Burkina Spring.

He had played a frontline role in mobilising the citizens revolt that toppled Compaore. Among the key players were the media and the influential civil society movement Balai Citoyen (Citizen’s Broom), formed and led by two popular musicians, Smockey and Sams’K Le Jah.

A highlight of my previous visits to the Filep had always been the gala music concert in the closing days.

Headlined by Smockey and Sams’K Le Jah, it also featured a large group of musicians from Burkina Faso and across the region, from Senegal and Mali to Togo and Niger, featuring a riotous mix of protest music in reggae and traditional beats.

The largely young audience was held spellbound by both the music and the message, celebrating revolution, Sankara, Che Guevara, Bob Marley and other icons of popular protest.

At those concerts, Cheriff Sy was lauded as ‘Monsieur President’, and I always wondered what the outcome would be if the fiery exuberance was translated action.

In 2013, Smockey and Sams’K Le Jah took the next step. With support from Cheriff and an increasingly influential civil society movement, they formed Balai Citoyen and took their activism beyond newspaper columns and civil society workshops into the streets.

CONTROVERSIAL APPOINTMENT
The following year when President Compaore tried to extend his rule, Cheriff, Smockey and Sams’K Le Jah were in the frontline when citizens rose up in protest.

When Compaore was toppled and an interim administration formed, Cheriff was a strong candidate for either president or prime minister, but eventually settled for presidency of the Transitional National Council.

Michel Kafando, a retired ambassador to the United Nations, was elected interim president, and he in turn picked the former deputy head of the powerful presidential guard, Lt Col Isaac Zida, as prime minister.

That appointment was quite controversial as Lt Col Zida was associated with the ousted regime. In the wake of Compaore’s exit he had declared himself the president, but was rejected by civil society groups.

His appointment was also strategic, for he was well-placed to help the transitional government counter the pro-Compaore elements that were still powerful in the military.

That was the Burkina Faso I landed in, in the afternoon of Monday, September 14, 2015. Although the actual festival was not set to start until two days later, some of us had been required to arrive early to judge entries for the Norbert Zongo Prize for Investigative Journalism.

NO INKLING OF PERIL
I was looking forward to renewing acquaintances with Cheriff, a friend and fellow founding-member of Taef, which he chaired till his ascension to leadership of the Burkana Faso interim legislature.

Save for a few e-mail messages, we had not met nor had any serious discussions since the dizzying events placed him near the top of Burkina politics.

I had been aware that the transitional administration had been plagued by crisis after another, especially with the powerful Praetorian guard fighting to retain its place and aggressively countering efforts to clip its wings.

There had been tensions over a decision by the Transitional Assembly to bar from the forthcoming polls politicians associated with the ousted regime.

And just on the day I landed, a government commission released a report recommending dissolution of the presidential guard and its incorporation into the mainstream military. Still, I sensed nothing untoward.

After settling down, a few of us who had linked up on the connecting flight at Addis Ababa — founding Taef president Mathatha Tsedu from South Africa, Taef Secretary-General Emrakeb Assefa from Ethiopia, and Uganda radio journalist Lillian Keno — walked the streets for lunch at a restaurant away from our base at Palm Beach Hotel.

In the evening I went out for a meal and a drink at a popular sidewalk café and found Burkina night life its usual bustling self.

On Tuesday evening, Cheriff hosted some of the delegates to dinner at his house, but I missed it because I was cloistered in my room going through some journalism competition papers.

REFRESHMENT TIME
On Wednesday, 16, the festival, appropriately dedicated to the role of the media in driving political change in Africa, officially opened.

Cheriff Sy, in white flowing robes, was in his element, this time in attendance not just as ‘Godfather’ of Filep and the National Press Centre, as he was described, but as President of the Transitional National Council.

His entrance was preceded by a loud hand clap calling everybody to attention, then a subaltern barking out: “Monsieur Le President!”

His speech was brief and to the point, recalling the history of struggle behind the festival, the continuing quest across Africa for freedom of expression and media, and also the search for justice on the killings of Thomas Sankara and Nobert Zongo.

He urged the African Union and African governments to be partners rather than impediments in the quest for freedom and justice, hailing the Burkina Spring as an example of what the media and civil society can do towards changing Africa peacefully without bloodshed and civil war.

After the official opening, it was time for a refreshment in the garden, where Cheriff freely mingled with delegates and posed for photographs. I missed the next session to attend to media prize jury duty at the Amiso Hotel.

After going through some formalities with the rest of the members of the jury until mid-afternoon, we each picked up the heavy bundles of scripts and retreated to our hotels.

SHOCKING NEWS
I was locked up in my hotel room going through the entries while the TV hummed in the background. I was not paying much attention to the TV, especially as it was on a French channel, a language in which I am severely limited.

I was kicked out of French class after Form One when the dandy of a teacher, Monsieur Maximin, determined it was useless struggling me with further.

I still had my head buried in scripts when I glanced at the TV to see some breaking news about Burkina Faso scrolling at the bottom of the screen.

I started flipping channels until I came to the English language edition of France24 TV, and the shocking news was that the presidential guard had stormed a Cabinet meeting and detained President Kafando, Premier Zida, and Cabinet ministers.

Now alarmed, I tried to reach Cheriff on phone but got no response. His right-hand man, Filep coordinator Abdoulaye Diallo, also was not responding.

I managed to get a message through on WhatsApp to Lillian Keno at the conference, and she had no clue that things were happening. It was not until much later that contacts with Mathatha and Emrakeb, who had been with Cheriff in the early afternoon, established the facts.

UNUSUALLY QUITE

The festival organisers were determined to proceed normally. The afternoon programme went on as scheduled, and in the evening buses were sent to pick delegates from various hotels and take them to the opening of a photography and cartoon exhibition dedicated to the festival theme.

Cheriff also sent word that a dinner for the festival delegates at his house would proceed as scheduled. Word, however, was that he had gone into hiding, from where he was trying to coordinate resistance to the coup.

After the exhibition we all boarded buses for Cheriff’s residence, where a well-laid banquet and good supply of drinks awaited. The host was absent, but aides assured us that he was safe in a secure place and would be joining us later.

He never turned up, and under the uncertain circumstances, the gathering broke up earlier than usual. By around 9:30pm, the buses were delivering delegates to their respective hotels through unusually quiet streets.

The city centre, where most of the delegates were staying, was quiet and the usual din of street hawkers and thousands of motorbikes was absent.

A few enterprising delegates had managed to liberate some bottles of alcohol from Cheriff’s house with which to continue the party in their hotels since going out to the pubs was not a good idea.

NIGHT CURFEW
From afar there were scattered volleys of gunshots as soldiers worked to disperse angry youth who were trying to make their way to the town square and the presidential palace, setting up barricades of blazing tyres along the way.

We went to bed still not knowing who had mounted the coup, though Cheriff, from hiding, released a strong statement condemning the presidential guard, demanding immediate freedom for the President and Prime Minister, and urging citizens to rise up in defense of liberty and democracy.

On Thursday morning, I woke up early and sauntered over to the street outside the hotel to encounter an eerie silence.

Over breakfast, word finally came through a TV broadcast in which presidential guard spokesman, Lt Col Mamadou Bamba, confirmed the coup d’etat. He proclaimed dissolution of the transitional government and assembly, and assumption of power by a ‘National Council for Democracy’.

He also declared a night curfew and closure of the country’s borders and the international airport.

But it was clear also that Lt Col Bamba was just a spokesman, and the real coup leader was yet to emerge. From then on it was a case of waiting for more information.

Proceeding with the festival was not an option, so we stuck to the hotel lobby and tried to catch up with scant information from the local TV stations.

There were reports of riots on the outskirts of the capital, and sometimes the gunshots we were hearing in the distance came quite close.

THE RIGHT-HAND MAN
One of our colleagues, Willy Mponda from Zimbabwe, braved the uncertainty to make his way on foot to Palm Beach Hotel from the nearby Pacific Hotel.

When he reported that there was no trouble in the streets, I got a ride from the festival organisers’ car and drove to the Pacific, where I picked up Lillian Keno and brought her to Palm Beach to be amongst friends.

It was not until late in the evening that the real coup leader revealed himself. Brig-Gen Gilbert Diendere has been one of the most powerful men in Burkina Faso for more than three decades.

He served as the ousted President Compaore’s right-hand man for more than 30 years, and was his military chief of staff before the 2014 revolution.

Gen Diendere was the officer who announced the October 1987 coup that brought Compaore to power after the assassination of Sankara.

He was instrumental in the formation the presidential guard in 1995, and acted as its de facto head until Compaore was ousted.

He built a force that was better trained and equipped than the main military, and which controlled security in the capital city while the mainstream military brigades were scattered in barracks across the country.

A LOT TO LOSE

This was a man who had a lot to personally lose if the democratic transition brought in place a government that moved to bring to justice the killers of Thomas Sankara and Nobert Zongo.

Not to mention that his wife, Fatoumata Diallo Diendere, was an MP in Compaore’s former ruling party, CDP, and one of the politicians banned from contesting the elections.

While Gen Diendere claimed to have the support of the military, I quickly noted that the mainstream armed forces had not themselves publicly supported the coup.

It was also apparent that he was coming under relentless pressure from the strong stance taken against the coup by the African Union and the regional block, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).

The African Union had released an unprecedented statement demanding that the coup leaders release the detained leaders and restore the interim government.

It declared the coup a “terrorist” action and threatened to impose personal sanctions, including seizure of assets and travel bans, on the coup leaders and any persons who accepted appointment in the illegitimate regime.

Strongest was the threat of international arrest warrants on terrorism charges for the coup leaders.

EVIDENTLY NERVOUS
When Ecowas mediators, Presidents Macky Sall of Senegal and Thomas Boni of Benin, arrived on Friday, Gen Diendere pulled all the stops at the airport welcoming ceremony to demonstrate that he was the boss.

But it soon became apparent that they were not impressed. They had come to deliver the simple message that he must abandon the coup or face severe consequences.

Apart from talking with Gen Diendere, the two presidents made a point of consulting widely with various groups opposed to the coup. They managed to see President Kafando and secure his release.

They talked, through emissaries, with Cheriff, who was still in hiding, and also conferred with the civil society groups that were adamant there was nothing to negotiate with a “terrorist”.

On Saturday night, Gen Diendere appeared on television to signal that a deal was in the offing. Though still insisting he was in power, he was not the cocky, confident coup leader who had proclaimed the seizure of power. He was clearly nervous.

Meanwhile, word went round from the negotiating teams that a major announcement would be made on Sunday at 11am.

In the morning, four of us got a car form the organisers and tried to make our way to the Laico Ouga 2000 Hotel, where the talks were talking place.

NO LONGER IN CHARGE
Our first attempt to get to the venue from Palm Beach Hotel aborted when we received reports of gunfire around the venue. We were informed that a group of pro-coup demonstrators put together by the presidential guard had stormed the Laico.

We returned to our hotel but shortly afterwards go the all clear. We had to pass through various checkpoints.

As we disembarked from the car at the Laico gate, we spotted a small group of demonstrators that had apparently been allowed to breach the barricades by the presidential guard. They turned loudly hostile when we aimed cameras at them.

Almost as soon as we entered the lobby at around 11am, the Senegal president was making his way out.

He was going to meet with coup leader Gen Diendere, who was elsewhere trying to persuade his troops to accept a deal to return to barracks and restore the ousted transitional government.

We also heard that Diendere was reluctant to come to the hotel because he now feared for his own safety after troops from the national military and national police took charge of security around the hotels.

The picture we got was that the putative strongman had now been reduced to negotiating not just surrender of power, but amnesty for himself and his collaborators.
IN CIVILIAN DRAB
The civil society groups that were deeply involved in the negotiations were rejecting the idea of amnesty floated by the Ecowas mediators.

They were demanding that Gen Diendere and his soldiers be tried for treason and also be held responsible for the 10 demonstrators slain since Wednesday and another 25 killed during the 2014 uprising.

At about 12:40pm President Sacky and his entourage arrived and went straight into a room upstairs. We waited outside until about 2:30pm, when Gen Diendere drove in escorted by SUVs full of presidential guard troopers.

He walked quickly into the hotel with a tight cordon of red-beretted presidential guards, and also went straight upstairs. For the first time since the coup, he appeared publicly in civilian clothes, without his bemedalled military uniform. That was telling.

Again, another long wait as the main players conversed upstairs. In the same hotel a conference where the main body of negotiators, civil society, legislators, religious leaders, election candidates, and other were gathered, was underway.

Outside the door was a lectern form where the announcement of a deal was expected. It was already overflowing with microphones and recorders and surrounded by journalists seeking vantage points.

Around the briefing area were national police in their blue camouflage fatigues, and further on Diendere’s presidential guard in green-brown fatigues and maroon berets.

Occasionally, the police would hold whispered conversations among themselves, as if to exclude the presidential guards.

PHEW!

Meanwhile, it was just waiting and waiting, until late in the afternoon when some aides came forward and announced that the briefing would be in the conference room.

As journalists rushed to move their tripods and microphones from the lectern and into the hall, there was a mad scramble that almost crushed the security guards.

They were trying to limit entrance to those with accreditation. Having surrendered my Nation Media Group card and allowed my Media Council of Kenya Press Card to lapse, I didn’t have anything of the sort.

Nonetheless, I made my way to the front of the scrum and came face to face with the senior police officer at the door. “Card!” he barked. “Kenya,” I answered. “Kenya Media”.

He let out a tirade in French that I could not understand, so I helpfully showed him a business card I’d printed just before leaving Kenya. It simply read ‘Macharia Gaitho – Journalist’.

“Pooh!” he sputtered.

“Anglais! Anglais! Anglais! Media, Kenya,” I yelled back.

The man looked at me and smiled.

“You think I don’t know English? Get in!”
Phew!