There is a new, dubious phenomenon sweeping across Africa’s politics — army generals, pretending to defect or switch sides at the 11th hour of a people’s revolt, and then suddenly grabbing the outcome — and throttling the result. False change of guards in outcomes in Egypt (2014), Zimbabwe (2017), perhaps Algeria now and DR Congo (2018), means we ought to be suspicious of reading too much into Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir’s dramatic departure.

Bashir’s toppling in today’s street protests via an army putsch is not his departure.

Bashir is deposed but the security web he carefully nurtured over 30 years, remains very much alive. Perhaps. As one protester in Khartoum lamented on hearing the army’s takeover — “we have replaced five thieves with five new thieves”.

This writer, I ought to admit, was one of those who jived in streets in November 2017, gifting crispy $10 bills to jovial soldiers after Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s strongmen was put under house arrest. A year later — as unlawful killings, rape and impunity resurrected in Zimbabwe — a lesson has been learnt. We quickly found out that however hungry people are for change, a military takeover never oils the cause of democracy.

As respected African theorist, Charles Onyango-Obbo, says today on the eve of the Bashir ousting: “If Sudan’s Bashir falls today or the next few days, it means in the last decade in Africa these are the three ways in which long-ruling Big Men have left office: (1) Protests (2) Military intervention (3) Old age & disease/illness. That ouster through a democratic vote remains elusive.”

Indeed — In the last 12 months, armies have chased three presidents in Africa out of office — in Zimbabwe, Algeria and Sudan. Africa’s armies, it seems, have found a clever way to pre-empt peoples’ revolutions. The formula is: watch the uprising grow, pretend to bless the revolution at the 11th hour, act as if in sync with angry masses, commit a coup against the president, and seize the result. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt put this classic template to brutally effective use in 2014.

Yes, Omar al-Bashir is probably guilty of carrying out unspeakable crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region and he must be made available to an impartial court. But, crucially, Bashir never acted alone. The army generals who today have put Sudan under a two-year military “transitional government” have over the decades been at the forefront of planning, financing and co-ordinating militias that have pillaged, raped and fanned proxy wars from Khartoum to Juba to Chad.

It is a bit of too much a fairy tale that Sudan’s army which underpinned Bashir’s rampaging rule for 30 years, is suddenly a friend of change in 2019.

One wishes all best regards to the people of Sudan as they embark on this striking new chapter of their future — but we will properly celebrate a revolution in Africa when a leader is swept out of office at the ballot box, not an opportunistic army at the 11th hour. DM