World: The Second Revolution

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If ever a revolution swept a continent, it was Black Africa's independence movement, which in one wild decade transformed 28 European colonies into nations. This year, for better or for worse, the continent has taken off on its second revolution, and at a pace even faster than the first. Military coups have overthrown six of the new regimes within the past four months.

The concept of military rule may seem repugnant to the world's established democracies, even when the generals replace such an unfriendly fellow as Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah. It is not necessarily evil in Africa, however. Nigeria, the continent's most populous land and one of its most sophisticated, rocked with cheers when the soldiers took over in January, and Ghanaians were still dancing in the streets last week. Far from being resented as oppressors, Africa's new military rulers are almost unanimously hailed as the saviors of their people. Their revolution was inevitable.

Tyranny & Greed. The reasons are not hard to find. Once they got into power, Africa's heroic independence leaders let their nations down. To the growing disgust of the populations and military alike, the new regimes began restricting political freedoms instead of broadening them, bleeding their nations instead of building them, dividing their peoples instead of uniting them. Nkrumah was a petulant oppressor who demanded constant adulation for himself and the wild schemes that all but sent his country into bankruptcy. In Nigeria, Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, although personally respected, presided over a conspicuously corrupt regime that stayed in power by rigging the census, playing one tribe against another, and cheating at the polls.

Before they were deposed by soldiers, most of the other African politicians had long ago frittered away their mandates in a binge of nepotism, incompetence, tribalism, petty tyranny or greedy corruption—while their countries rotted in anarchy and squalor. Items:

¶ In the Congo, President Joseph Kasavubu and ex-Premier Moise Tshombe were locked in a power struggle that had paralyzed the government, threatened to plunge the nation into another senseless civil war. "Political bankruptcy was complete," said Lieut. General Joseph Mobutu, the army commander, after his bloodless coup. "We are going to impose the spirit of discipline."

¶ In Dahomey, a running feud between the leaders of the nation's three main tribal groups had brought down two governments in three years. "I am taking over because of the incapacity of the politicians to govern," said Colonel Christophe Soglo when he brought down the third.

¶ In the Central African Republic, beset by everything from Chinese subversion to ministerial embezzlement to a staggering civil service payroll of 50,000 (for a population of 1.4 million), President David Dacko was overthrown by Colonel Jean-Bedel Bokassa, his cousin, who announced that he had acted "to head off two other coups, one against me and one against President Dacko."