An Introduction to the Politics of Tropical Africa by Hodder-Williams Richard;

Author:Hodder-Williams, Richard; [Hodder-Williams, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Although this was written of the communist states of Europe, the logic holds for Africa. Yet it misses one crucial point; the people may be helpless to remove a government that has failed them, but the military is not.

Military Government

At independence the national armies of the new states of Africa were generally quite small. Their function up to the transfer of power had been twofold: first, they were expected to assist the imperial power to preserve internal order and were thus used, on occasions, to put down small uprisings or break strikes. Secondly, they were used to assist the imperial power in its military activities elsewhere in the world. This was particularly true of the two great wars and many Africans first became politicised as a result of their experiences on these occasions. By the 1950s, however, few such men remained in the army. In consequence, at independence African armies, which were largely recruited from the more ‘backward’ peoples of a country and still officered by expatriates, were not prestigious institutions in the eyes of the new nationalist leadership nor, indeed, of their general mass following (see, generally, Lee, 1969). In few states were the black military in evidence in the social and political life of the country (Lloyd, 1966).

In the first few years after independence, African armies grew and developed in significant ways. Due partly to the new governments’ feeling that independent states should have armies of which they could be proud, partly to genuine problems on their borders which required military action, and partly to outside powers’ enthusiasm to establish ties of loyalty through the provision of military aid, they expanded markedly in numbers and became much more sophisticated in their weaponry. They also became more obviously national institutions as the officer corps changed from expatriate dominance to local dominance. The mutinies which swept East Africa in 1964 were not fundamental challenges to the governmental systems so much as demands for improved pay and conditions and, above all, the Africanisation of the officer corps (Bienen, ed., 1968). Within a few years of the imperial powers leaving, therefore, the status, capability and composition of most armies had changed markedly.

It is as dangerous to generalise about African armies as about most other things African. The Sudan Army had a comparatively long history of Sudanese officers and enjoyed a high status at independence; in a few countries an army was shunned altogether or expatriate commanders were retained for many years. Even among the vast majority of armies that fall into neither of these categories, there is an important distinction to be made between those countries, such as Uganda, in which the officers rose through the ranks and those, such as Ghana, in which officers were selected and trained in the exclusive academies of their former imperial masters. This last group, which dominated the armies of French-speaking Africa and much of the old British territories, became part of that small élite which dominated the national institutions of the new states. They were

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