The 38th Summit of the African Union (AU) which held in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) between the 12th and 16th of February 2025 and which witnessed the elections of Djibouti’s foreign minister, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, as the next chair of the Union’s commission, recorded the absence of six African states. The absentee-states are the six states that are currently under military governments. They are: Niger Republic, Mali, Guinea, Gabon, Burkina Faso and Sudan.
These military-governed states have been suspended by the AU and barred from participating in the Union ’s elections for being under non-democratic governments. Though the pan-African bloc claims that the suspension of these military-governed states accords with its ‘zero tolerance against unconstitutional changes of government’, such claim of democratic puritanism by the bloc reeks of hypocrisy, especially considering the fact that most of the civilian-led African states who are posturing as enforcers of democracy are guilty of same crime they accuse the military-governed states of.
Just like the military heads of state, most civilian Presidents in Africa are self-imposed leaders who became presidents in the respective states by rigging their ways into power against the wishes of majority of their people. Also identical is the fact that most civilian Presidents in Africa overstay their tenures in office. They do this by constantly amending their countries’ electoral laws to elongate their tenures or by organising sham elections just to confer a false sense of democratic legitimacy on themselves.
Surprisingly, most of these autocratic civilian leaders not only get accepted by the AU but play hold key positions in the bloc. For instance, during the just-concluded summit of the AU, the Peace and Security Council meeting of the bloc was chaired by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo who has been an absolute leader in Equatorial Guinea for the past 45 years. Obiang who holds the current record for the longest-serving President in the whole world first led his country for two years (1979 – 1982) as a military head before removing military the regalia and reappearing as a civilian President. Since then, he has refused to step down and has continued to elongate his tenure by draconian amendment of his country’s constitution.
In September last year, the same AU’s Peace and Security Council was chaired by Cameroon, another country that has been under autocratic civilian leadership for years. The fact that Cameroon has been under the civilian dictatorship of a 92-year old President Paul Biya for over 42 years didn’t matter to the AU. Same case as when as Yoweri Museveni who has been autocratic leader in Uganda for about 39 years was appointed as the chairperson of the AU for two consecutive years.
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Other civilian Presidents who have played prominent role for the AU despite having captured and emasculated democracy in their countries include Paul Kagame of Rwanda who has ruled his country country since the year 2000; Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo who has been in power for a total period of 40 years; etc.
For years, the AU pretended that it was not her business to meddle into the internal affairs of her members. Despite being adequately aware that most of these civilian Presidents assumed or retained power by subverting democratic processes in their states, the AU refused to do anything about it, claiming that Article 3 of its Constitutive Act enjoins to respect the sovereignty of its member-states. The question is, why the sudden departure from its traditional non-interventionist approach? And why is the sanctions for non-democratic government only reserved for the military-government states?
What the AU doesn’t know (or what it pretends not to know) is that, legally-speaking, a military government is not an illegal government. A successful military coup displaces both the civilian government and the constitution under which such a civilian was elected or selected. It replaces the constitution with its own military decrees, thereby ushering in an entirely new legal order whose validity cannot be challenged by reference to the laws/constitution which existed prior to the coup.
It’s in view of the above facts that many see the recent pro-democracy grandstanding of the AU as being insincere and contradictory. It is insincere because an association that dines and wines with self-imposed like Paul Biya of Cameroon lacks the moral right to preach democracy to others. It is insincere because the suspension of the military-governed states contradicts AU’s traditional non-interventionist approach which it has always defended by pretending to be a respecter of her member-states sovereignty.
