Five reasons for progressives to cheer the rumbling coup crisis in tiny Burundi

Protestors and police clash in Bujumbura on May 13, 2015 during a march against President Nkurunziza's bid for a third term. PHOTO | JENNIFER HUXTA |

What you need to know:

  • Despite the gloom over Bujumbura there are a few glimmers of hope for Africa.
  • Pierrre Nkurunziza is a singularly hopeless president.

The announcement of the coup attempt in Burundi on Wednesday was one of those rare occasions where the temptation to join in celebrating the toppling of the constitutional order is very great.

Pierrre Nkurunziza is a singularly hopeless president. He has kept his country desperately poor and divided and made no effort to build lasting institutions to overcome the bitter civil war that the country endured from the mid-1990s.

About his only achievement is his dubious positioning as the top scorer in the Haleluya FC veterans football team he owns, a situation which recalls Idi Amin’s endless victories in every sporting pursuit he attempted when he was the King of Kampala.

It was notable from television pictures over the past week that many residents of Bujumbura were running around without shoes, probably the only capital in the region where so many still walk barefoot in this day and age.

Despite the gloom and uncertainty hanging over that country and the cost in lives and livelihoods, there are a few glimmers of hope for Africa from the crisis.

RESISTANCE TO THE BIG MAN

Perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from the successful uprising in Burkina Faso, which ousted long-sitting president Blaise Compaore in October, the wonderful civic spirit of Nigerians who defied Boko Haram and the power of incumbency to oust the tired and inept PDP party, the bubbling awakening in Kinshasa against Kabila Junior and the ongoing protests in Burundi is that Africans are no longer willing to sit idly by and allow inept and authoritarian leaders to always get their way.

In the 1980s and part of the 1990s, the dominant analysis was that Africans — poor and under-educated — were fatalistic victims of greedy dictators.

As seen in Burundi, a young, restless, ambitious and more informed population is signalling those days are over.

CITY IS KING

Residents of capital cities who have access to more TV channels, independent radio and social media and are exposed to more expatriates are an indispensable incubator for change in Africa.

Nairobi, Harare and Kampala were the key bastions of opposition agitation through the 1990s.

Bujumbura, too, has taken a stand. While the farmers in the rural areas seem indifferent to the proposition of Nkurunziza staying on for an unconstitutional third term, many residents of the city have refused to bow to the Big Man.

SOCIAL MEDIA VS OLD MEDIA

The main battles in Bujumbura were for the control of the state broadcaster, showing old habits die hard. But the protesters were mainly spreading their messages on social media.

The authorities tried to block Internet access to mobiles but the youth turned to virtual private networks to beat this.

Meanwhile, Nkurunziza was sending a stream of messages on Twitter, showing the folly of the decision to block the Internet.

The old controls exercised by state media are fast going out of fashion.

ETHNIC COHESION

The area in which Burundi beats Kenya hands down is in the fact that the political camps are not primarily defined by ethnicity.  

Many of Nkurunziza’s opponents, including the leader of the coup plot, are from his own Hutu ethnic group.

The military, too, did not break down along clearly ethnic lines. In this respect, tiny Burundi is miles ahead of Kenya where political allegiances are neatly defined by people’s last names.

RWANDA AS A REGIONAL PREFECT

The role of Rwanda in all this is interesting. Despite its small size, that country has possibly the region’s best disciplined and most effective military.

Kigali’s warnings to Nkurunziza not to allow “Hutu power” militias who were behind the genocide aimed at Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994 to cross over from the DRC and target innocents had a clear subtext that Rwanda was willing to send troops in to stop this.

Rwanda, therefore, is showing that one of the legacies of the genocide is that, small though it is, it will not allow that crime to be repeated anywhere where it can stop it.

There will be a bitter and divisive debate when Paul Kagame makes the unfortunate decision to go for his own third term.

But for now, one of the legacies of his effective stewardship of that country is that it is a regional, anti-genocide prefect.