Not to be alarmist or anything:
From 1965, however, far from being random events, army interventions became increasingly frequent. In June Algeria’s first leader, Ahmed Ben Bella, was deposed by Colonel Houari Boumédienne, his austere, secretive minister of defence, after a prolonged struggle for power. In November the Congo’s army commander, General Mobutu, ousted President Kasa-Vubu and assumed the presidency for himself. A spate of coups followed in West Africa. In Dahomey (Benin) after a period of strikes, demonstrations and political deadlock, the army commander, Colonel Christophe Soglo, banned political activity altogether and set himself up in power. Ten days later, Colonel Jean-Bedel Bokassa seized power in the Central African Republic, citing the wholesale corruption prevalent amongst ministers and civil servants in David Dacko’s one-party regime. Three days later on 2 January 1966, Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana stepped in to remove Upper Volta’s president, Maurice Yaméogo, after crowds of demonstrators in Ouagadougou had implored the army to intervene. Like so many other African politicians of that era, Yaméogo had begun his regime popularly elected, determined to maintain an efficient administration and outspoken in his condemnation of corruption. ‘Government is not a gang of old pals having it good on nice food at the expense of the people,’ he said. Yet the one-party regime he installed was notorious for corruption. While issuing ringing calls for sacrifice and austerity, Yaméogo lived in a luxuriously furnished presidential palace, ostentatiously married a 22-year-old beauty queen and indulged in other extravagances. He was subsequently convicted of embezzling more than £1 million.
None of the coups in Dahomey, the Central African Republic and Upper Volta attracted much attention. All were desperately poor countries, dependent on French subsidies for survival. Dahomey seemed to be encumbered with every imaginable difficulty: it was crowded, insolvent, beset by tribal divisions, huge debts, mass unemployment, frequent strikes and unending struggles for power among corrupt politicians. All three coup leaders were French army veterans who saw themselves in the tradition of de Gaulle and the Fifth French Republic, replacing ailing regimes with a salutary spell of military rule. ‘We had been taught two things by the French army: discipline and how to save the state’s finances,’ said Lamizana after taking power. ‘This lesson we have not forgotten.’
Yet the sequence of coups did not stop there. Like a contagion they spread across the continent, striking not only regimes that were inherently weak and unstable but bringing down even the giants of Africa - Ghana, Nigeria and even Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie.
That is from Martin Meredith’s excellent The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence (pages 177-8) which was published in 2011. History hardly repeats but it definitely does rhyme.
Three days after a presidential election which the incumbent Ali Bongo won in Gabon, the military announced they had stepped in to take power with the cookie-cutter soldier appearing on TV declaring that ‘we have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime.’
Whatever the peculiar circumstances of the current wave might be - military corruption from defence contracts, a Spiderman meme effect playing out between the military and politicians - the one thing that’s clear is we are now dealing with a runaway train.