Africa in contemporary world politics the dynamics and effects of domination
Thesis_Template_Allison_Solomon_FINALv1
1. By Means of the Gun: African States after Assassination
by Allison Solomon
B.A. in Political Science, May 2008, Mercer University
A Thesis submitted to
The Faculty of
Elliott School of International Affairs
of The George Washington University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Arts
January 31, 2011
Thesis directed by
Paul Williams
3. Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Dr. Paul Williams and Dr. Gina Lambright for their guidance
and support in completing this thesis.
The author would also like to thank Aaron McKay and Ginny Solomon for listening and
advising throughout the creative process.
4. iv
Abstract of Thesis
By Means of the Gun: African States after
Assassination
Head of state assassinations have been rife across an independent Africa, yet a
comprehensive analysis of the political impacts of these events has been lacking. This
thesis seeks not only to assess the impacts of the 27 cases of assassination, but also to
identify the factors most likely to influence the results. Gaining insight into these issues
will provide a new perspective on the African state, and may even offer practical guidance
for policymakers dealing with post-assassination states.
In order to approach the problem, a comparative historical case study analysis was
employed using nine cases to illustrate a range of impacts. The cases were also distinct in
terms of governance system, historical decade, economic environment, and geography.
The impacts of the cases were then scored using ten political indicators (political violence,
ethnic strain, civil war, etc.) to determine impact. The results from the case studies and the
additional assassinations were then used to develop trends regarding potential explanatory
factors for the impacts.
The outcomes revealed that the majority of impacts have been low or moderate,
suggesting that while the frequency of assassinations may be troubling, the impacts are
generally minor. In terms of the African state, these findings indicate that individual
leadership is not as important as the continuity of the structures of the state, for those states
with sound political structures proved to be the most stable after assassinations.
Accordingly, states with structural dynamism, meaning those with a history of coups d‘etat,
regime transition, military interference, and nascent democratization, were the ones to most
likely experience a higher degree of post-assassination impact.
5. v
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................iii
Abstract of Thesis..............................................................................................................iv
List of Tables .....................................................................................................................vi
List of Acronyms .............................................................................................................viii
Introduction.........................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1: Assassinations..................................................................................................7
Chapter 2: Low Impact Case Studies ...........................................................................17
Chapter 3: Moderate Impact Case Studies..................................................................42
Chapter 4: High Impact Case Studies ..........................................................................67
Chapter 5: Conclusion……………………………………………………….99
Appendices.......................................................................................................................106
References........................................................................................................................ 120
8. viii
List of Acronyms
ABAKO Alliance des Ba-Kongo
ADF Allied Democratic Forces
AFDL Alliance des Forces Democratiques Pour la Liberation du Congo
ANC African National Congress
APC Assemblees Populaires Communales
APW Assemblees Populaires Wilayas
AU African Union
CDR Comites de Defense de la Revolution
CMP Conseil Militaire du Parti
CNE National Electoral Commission
CNN Conseil Consultatif National
CNR Conseil National de la Revolution
CONAKAT Confederation des Associations Tribales du Katanga
CPLP Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries
CPP Comites de Pouvoir Populaire
CR Comites Revolutionnaires
CSC Confederation Syndicale Congolaise
DEC Delegations Executives Communales
DRC Democratic Republic of Congo
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
9. ix
EP European Parliament
EU European Union
FAR Forces Armees Rwandaises
FAZ Forces Armees Zairoises
FDD Forces for the Defense of Democracy
FIS Front Islamique du Salut
FLN Front de Liberation Nationale
FP Front Populaire
FRDD Front Pour la Restoration et la Defense de la Democratie
FRODEBU Front des Democrates du Burundi
GIA Armed Islamic Group
HCE State High Council
IMF International Monetary Fund
INEC Independent National Electoral Commission
JRR Jeunesse Revolutionnaire Rwagasore
MAOL Movement of Free Officers
MIA Islamic Armed Movement
MIOB International Observer Mission to Burundi
MLC Mouvement Pour la Liberation du Congo
MNC Mouvement National Congolais
MNSD National Movement for the Development of Society
NP National Party
10. x
OAU Organization of African Unity
PALIPE Parti Pour la Liberation de Peuple Hutu
-HUTU
PCT Congolese Labor Party
PL Parti Liberal
PNP Parti National du Progres
PP Parti du Peuple
RCD Rassemblement Congolais Pour la Democratie
RPB Rassemblement du Peuple Burundais
RPN Rassemblement Patriotique National
SADC Southern African Development Community
UCB Union des Communistes Burkinabe
ULCR Union des Luttes Communistes
UN United Nations
UNITA National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
UPRONA Union Pour le Progres National
11. 1
―These people attacked my residence with a single objective:
to physically liquidate me. No one has the right to
massacre the people of Guinea-Bissau in order
to steal power by means of the gun.‖
President Joao Bernardo Vieira
24 November 2008
Introduction
Shortly after midnight on 23 November 2008, armed soldiers attacked the private
residence of Guinea-Bissau‘s president, Joao Bernardo Vieira, in an attempt to assassinate
the political leader.1
Vieira ultimately survived the assault and, in a press conference
delivered the same afternoon, reassured citizens that the ―situation is under control.‖2
It
was one of the last times Vieira would deliver a major address as only four months later he
would be killed in yet another attack by mutinous troops.3
His death marked the first
assassination of a head of state on the African continent since that of the Democratic
Republic of Congo‘s autocratic leader, Laurent Kabila, in 2001. Just as in the aftermath of
Kabila‘s murder, the issues of succession, authority, and political power loomed large in
Guinea-Bissau. Fearing statewide upheaval, organizations like the International Crisis
Group warned that ―without outside help to end military involvement in politics and
impunity, it may be impossible to halt a slide into further violence.‖4
As other
1 Amnesty International reports that no elected head of state has completed the five-year term in Guinea-Bissau either as a
result of coups or assassinations; see Document-Guinea-Bissau: Briefing for International Election Observers,
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR30/005/2009/en/6de6d38d-5f96-4031-904e-
28b3fe2c0b3b/afr300052009en.html (June 2009).
2 Associated Press, “Guinea-Bissau Repels Attack on President,” New York Times, (23 November 2008).
3 The attack was considered retaliation for Vieira’s alleged—and still unfounded—involvement in the death of Guinea-Bissau’s
army chief of staff just one day prior.
4 International Crisis Group (ICG), “Guinea-Bissau: Beyond Rule of the Gun,” Africa Briefing 61 (2009): 1.
12. 2
assassinations followed with the murders of a presidential candidate, a former minister, and
a bodyguard on 5 June, their concerns appeared to be substantiated.
Issuing an international response to the chaos, the European Parliament (EP)
enacted a Resolution on Guinea-Bissau urging ―all political stakeholders (in Guinea-
Bissau) and military authorities to respect the constitutional order and to exercise
maximum restraint in order to enable a return to stability and the democratic process while
maintaining the rule of law.‖5
The European Union (EU) put its rhetoric into practice,
dispatching an electoral observer mission to monitor the transition process alongside
observers from the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS), and the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP). Their
presence would prove invaluable as the people of Guinea-Bissau, a nation known for its
political turmoil and violence, chose the former president of the National People‘s
Assembly, Malam Bacai Sanha, as their leader in an unprecedented July 2009 run-off
election—making Sanha only the fourth president in national history to be democratically
elected.6
Yet, even with these positive outcomes, questions remain as to the course of
Guinea-Bissau‘s future: Will it be possible for the state to sustain a democratic system?
Can it do this without the presence of international stakeholders? How long will Sanha last
as a leader? In fact, one expert maintains that only ―an appearance of calm‖ currently
5 European Parliament, “Resolution on Guinea-Bissau,” (B6-0115/2009),
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+MOTION+B6-2009-
0115+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN
13. 3
exists in Guinea-Bissau and, further that ―there is no reason to believe that the present
political situation is any different (from the past).‖7
Ultimately, these sentiments reflect the
uncertainty surrounding what exactly will be the final impact of Vieira‘s assassination.
Of course, Guinea-Bissau and the DRC are just two of several examples of
executive assassination in independent Africa. To be sure, the incidence of assassination
has been rife throughout the continent with 28 African rulers having been slain since
decolonization and independence took hold in the 1950s (27 cases resulting from the
double-murder of Rwanda‘s Juvenal Habyarimana and Agathe Uwilingiyimana).8
Nevertheless, no comprehensive analysis of the political impact of these events exists to
date. Such research would address broader issues of state and institutional legitimacy,
while also providing more utilitarian use for policymakers in developing diplomatic
toolkits for post-assassination states. Accordingly, the present study aims at filling these
gaps by answering two basic questions: First, what have been the systemic political impacts
of assassinations in Africa? Second, what factors appear to influence these results and
what accounts for variation in the level of impact?
6 The constitution of Guinea-Bissau mandates that elections are to be held within 60 days of a presidential death; however,
violence and bureaucratic delays pushed back the first round of elections to 28 June 2009. No candidate won the majority
vote in the first round, thereby necessitating the July run-off election.
7 Moncrieff, “Guinea-Bissau: The Post-Election Test,” (13 August 2009), http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/guinea-
bissau-the-post-election-test-0
8For the full list of assassinations, see Appendix I.
Only states that had declared independence were considered, a qualifier which ruled out the assassination of the Burundian
mandate’s Louis Rwagasore in 1961.
Although Liberia (1847), South Africa (1910), Egypt (1922), and Ethiopia (1941) all declared independence prior to the mid-
20th century, the “winds of change,” meaning a larger movement of African decolonization and independence did not really
begin until Libya’s declaration in 1951, followed by a succession of declarations (Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, and
Guinea) in the late 1950s and a veritable deluge of independent states in the 1960s.
14. 4
To answer these questions, this thesis will employ a comparative historical analysis,
using a total of nine case studies to highlight different post-assassination results; three each
for low, moderate, and high impact. The specific cases were chosen not only to illustrate
distinct impacts, but also for their representative diversity in other factors, including
historical decade, government structure, economy, and geographic region. Moreover, the
cases reflect varying levels of academic notoriety, with some being more well-known in
modern historical literature (i.e. Anwar Sadat, Patrice Lumumba), while others have been
less studied (Ibrahim Mainassara, Mohamed Boudiaf).
The cases will be used to analyze the political, economic, and social developments
both in the years prior to and the immediate aftermath of assassination (approximately 1
year). From the outset, one important issue is to define political ―impact,‖ which, for this
research, has been determined on the basis of ten scoring indicators. Low impact cases
represent a score of 0-2; moderate are 3-5; and high impact are 6-10.9
The specific impact indicators are outlined below:
1. No legitimated transition – the absence of rules of succession, a party or central
government determined succession, or elections.
2. Significant personnel shifts, power struggles, and administrative restructuring
– personnel either within or external to the government openly vie for power,
disrupting governance. Political bodies, such as legislatures and local political
outfits, may be illegitimately re-organized or dissolved.
9 Even though the cases are grouped into category, it is important to consider the cases along a sliding scale. This is particularly
important for the discussion of influential factors, for moderate cases with lower scores will have more in common with low
impact cases in terms of factors than with high impact cases.
15. 5
3. Suspension of constitution/political rights
4. Military or external interference in civilian governance
5. Ethnic, religious, or ideological strain
6. Isolated killings and political violence
7. Systemic governance shifts – A complete paradigm shift in governance, for
example from multi-party civilian rule to military dictatorship
8. A Coup d’etat
9. Secession or rise of armed factions – splinter groups both internal and external to
the government emerge and may amass arms and insurgent forces
10. Civil War
Drawing on previous research in failing and collapsed states, it was originally
expected that the results of this thesis would indicate a greater number of high post-
assassination impacts. As many African governments in the study exhibit patrimonial
structures, institutional weakness, or chronic susceptibility to external forces (military
regimes, etc.), it seemed likely that most states would not be able to absorb the institutional
―shock‖ resulting from the loss of a leader. Yet of all the cases, 18 were in fact low or
moderate, findings that revealed a prevalence of stable post-assassination impacts. Thus
despite the frequency of assassination on the continent, the continuity of states and civil
societies appears not to wholly depend on who is in the executive office.
In examining the factors that could explain such findings, characteristics related
both to the state and civil society were considered. The state factor that appears to most
definitively influence a low impact result is the presence of a transition framework, such as
16. 6
a strong political party or a continuous structure of dictatorship. Conversely, those that
generate higher impact assassinations are factors of structural dynamism, such as a recent
history of political upheaval, nascent democratization, and military interference. In
essence, these are states in which the political institutions have been so continuously
interfered with or altered that the frameworks that support stable transitions simply do not
exist. From a civil society perspective, a fragmented or weak opposition consistently
allowed for low impact post-assassination transitions, while a civil society with intense
cleavages, to include ethnic or religious, significantly influenced higher impact results.
The present study first investigates assassinations from disciplines outside a strict
international relations lens, including psychology, philosophy, history, and political science
(Chapter 1). Chapters 2, 3, and 4 include the case studies of low, moderate, and high
impact respectively. Chapter 5 opens with a general analysis on the prevalence of low and
moderate impacts, while also explaining in detail the factors influential to political and
social impact. The chapter concludes with implications and questions for future research.
17. 7
―Every assassination…changes history:
one special and peculiar piece, one unique human
being, is gone from the board,
and his passage was violent.‖
J. Bowyer Bell, 2005
1. Assassinations
Assassinations do not feature prominently in the broader field of international
relations – a point which while helping to justify this study, also makes more difficult the
task of investigating appropriate background literature. As a result, the following looks
into other disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, and political science, that have a
more developed body of work on the subject. In respect to the thesis, some of the
perspectives are more useful to answering the questions of impact in the African context,
while others are not.
1.1 The Definition of Assassination
Much like other areas of study within the social sciences, philological issues plague
the academic discourse on assassinations, leaving scholars such as Havens to appropriately
contend that ―…assassination is not an easy term to define precisely.‖10
Just how different
is the act from murder? Who should count when identifying the ―assassinated,‖ all public
figures or just the powerful ones? These and other such questions in turn drive a range of
seemingly nuanced definitions, from Khatchadourian‘s use of the term political
assassination to signify the ―killing of a private person or a public figure mainly or wholly
10 Havens et al. The Politics of Assassination. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1970), 3.
18. 8
for political reasons or motives‖ to Padover‘s more straightforward conceptualization of
assassination as the ―trucidation of a political figure without due process of law.‖11
In refining such variations as those above, Crotty has established five categories of
assassination that are delineated by motive, outcome, and leader: 1) Anomic assassinations,
denoting the murder of a political figure for predominately private reasons; 2) Elite
substitutions in which a political leader is murdered so that a member of his inner circle can
assume leadership; 3) Tyrannicide, or the murder of a despot in order to ―replace him with
one more amenable to the people and needs of a nation‖; 4) Terroristic assassination,
which is essentially randomized assassinations used on a mass basis to thwart a regime as a
whole; and 5) Propaganda by deed, or the use of assassination to draw attention to larger
social or political issues.12
These categories provide a useful framework for understanding
the data in this study as they encompass the full range of assassinations that have occurred
in post-colonial Africa.
1.2 The Psychology of Assassins
Psychology has much to contribute to the understanding of assassinations,
discussing such issues as the relationship between political violence and psycho-social
issues like past trauma and mental illness. The modern psychologist Gopal Singh
appropriately sets up the psychological framework, suggesting that ―political violence is
not an ineluctable manifestation of human nature. It is a specific kind of response to
11 See Khatchadourian. “Is Political Assassination Ever Morally Justified?” in Assassination ed. Zellner. (Cambridge: Schenkman
Publishing Company, 1974), 41; and Padover, “Patterns of Assassination in Occupied Territory,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 7:4
(1943), 680.
12 Crotty. Assassinations and the Political Order. (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 12.
19. 9
specific conditions of social existence.‖13
To be sure, psychology seeks to understand and
explain what these triggering ―conditions of social existence‖ are.
In regards to methodology, most psychological studies of assassins have typically
followed a patient case study approach, much like Heyman‘s 1984 study of 22 presidential
assassins and would-be assassins. 14
Heyman used the case studies to ―determine common
characteristics as well as other clues to the identification of potentially dangerous persons,‖
and then placed the assassins into groups reflecting a spectrum of mental stability.15
With
few exceptions, Heyman determined that presidential assassins fall into one of six
categories, including: 1) ―Crazies,‖ or the mentally incompetent; 2) ―Marginal Crazies,‖
meaning those who are confused but mentally stable on the whole; 3) ―Psychopaths,‖ or
those who are without conscience but intellectually competent; 4) ―Normals,‖ denoting
people who are normally adjusted, but co-opted by circumstance or societal pressure into
antisocial behavior; 5) ―Marginal Disorders,‖ or assassins who are mentally affected by
their environments; and finally 6) ―Behavioral Disorders,‖ implying the people who lack
social and intellectual skills to meet social problems and are typically outcasts of society.
Most of the assassins in the study were placed into the first and last categories, suggesting a
correlation between mental or behavioral disorders and assassination.16
13 Singh. “Psychology of Political Violence.” Social Scientist 4:6 (1976), 3-4.
14 See Heyman, M. “A Study of Presidential Assassins,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 2:2 (1984), 131-150; Freedman.
“Psychopathology of Assassination.” In Assassinations and the Political Order. Ed Crotty (New York: Harper and Row, 1971),
143-161; and Africa. “The Mask of an Assassin: A Psychohistorical Study of M. Junius Brutus.” Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 8:4 (1978), 599-626.
15 Heyman (1984), 131.
16 This does not suggest, however, that assassins with mental or behavioral disorders lack the organization and planning skills
necessary to carry out high-profile murders.
20. 10
Greening conducted a similar study analyzing the behavior of assassins within the
parameters of depth psychology, a special field of psychology that declares ―all acts to be
multilaterally determined by a complex configuration of forces within the personality and
environment.‖17
Like Heyman, he used patient case studies and expert testimony to make
his conclusions, developing a set of 11 personal and environmental factors that combine to
produce the idea, will, and capacity to carry out an assassination. These include: 1) values
and principles; 2) intellectual assessment of reality; 3) cultural climate; 4) psychodynamic
motivation; 5) motivational escalation; 6) deficiency of restraining forces; 7) deficiency of
alternative outlets; 8) physiological factors; 9) competence; 10) victim‘s role; and 11)
triggering. Greening‘s case studies have further suggested that the psychodynamic
motivations, motivational escalations, and deficiency of alternative outlets are the most
relevant factors in influencing an assassin to kill as these are the indicators reflecting
mental illness and emotional trauma.
Rather than exploring several different assassins, psychological analyses may
concentrate on one particular case study, as did Clarke‘s research on Arthur Bremer, the
would-be assassin of Alabama Governor George Wallace.18
As the focus is exclusively on
Bremer, Clarke‘s study takes the reader deep into the mind and history of the assassin,
exploring personal events, relationships, and thoughts that compelled Bremer along a path
of political violence. In terms of motive, Clarke argued that despite Bremer‘s obvious
17 Greening. “The Psychological Study of Assassins.” In Assassinations and the Political Order. Ed. Crotty. (New York: Harper and
Row, 1971), 222-269.
18 Clarke. “Emotional Deprivation and Political Deviance: Some Observations on Governor Wallace’s Would-be Assassin,
Arthur H. Bremer.” Political Psychology, 3:1/2 (1981), 84-115.
21. 11
psychopathic mentality, the assassination attempt was one driven largely by a yearning for
publicity and a deep hatred for society and social mores. For Bremer, a political target was
a rational choice as the murder would achieve the dual ends of notoriety for Bremer and the
loss of a very public representative of the society he so hated. In sum, these more detailed
accounts allow researchers to follow the developmental path of an assassin, knowledge
which may help to prevent others with similar histories or disorders from carrying out such
atrocities.
In the African context, mental illness has not been a significant factor; in fact, only
one of the nine cases includes an assassin with a diagnosed mental disorder. As such, it is
unsurprising that most psychological studies like the ones referenced previously have
focused on assassinations in other parts of the world, most notably the industrialized West.
The lack of psychological investigation into the African assassinations could also result
from the fact that the assassins in many of these cases have not been specifically identified,
or were acting as part of a larger political group. Indeed, the cases exhibit more pure
―political‖ assassinations with political motives and gains sought from the murders. This
thus makes psychology a less useful lens from which to view the cases under study.
1.3 The Ethics of Assassination
Even though assassinations occupy a gray area in the spectrum of violence, as evidenced by the
difficulties in definition, they nonetheless present a controversial moral dilemma for
decision-makers. The ethical concerns posed by assassinations are not without comparison
as similar questions arise when considering armed combat or humanitarian intervention.
Appropriately, Just War Theory, a doctrine of limited warfare dating back to ancient
22. 12
Roman philosophy, may lend some important considerations for the ethics of
assassination.19
In principle, Just War Theory has criteria for: initiating warfare, or jus ad
bellum; for proper military conduct during war, referred to as jus in bello; and for actions
after war, or jus post-bellum. The former requires that war have a just cause; that it be
declared by a legitimate authority; that it be fought with the right intention; that the actions
represent a proportionate response; and that it represent an action of last resort. The
conditions for jus in bello are fewer, namely that war be fought with discrimination,
meaning delineating between combatants and civilians; and that military conduct be both
proportional and to the most minimal degree necessary. Theoretically, many of these same
conditions can be reframed to examine morality in the context of assassinations: that the
cause is just and with right intention, and that it is a minimal, proportional act of last resort.
One key question is whether a political assassination can satisfy the Just War
condition of legitimacy. Indeed, with widespread legal acceptance of principles like
statehood, sovereignty, human rights and international law, a global norm has developed in
opposition to assassination as an overt foreign policy tool.20
For instance, the charter of the
19 See Crawford. “Just War Theory and the US Counterterror War.” Perspectives on Politics, 1:1 (2003), 5-25; Walzler. Just and
Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. (New York: Basic Books, 2006); Zupan. War, Morality, and Autonomy:
An Investigation in Just War Theory. (Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2004); and Smit. Just War and Terrorism. (Amsterdam:
Peeters Publishers, 2005)
20 Steven David also writes, “The notion that assassination is not an accepted practice of statecraft became prominent with the
writings of Hugo Grotius and Emmerich de Vattel in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The prohibition against
assassination was strengthened in the mid-1970s following congressional investigations into activities by American
intelligence agencies” (112).
David, S. “Israel’s Policy of Targeted Killing.” Ethics and International Affairs. 17:1 (2003) 111-126.
See also Thomas. “Norms and Security: The Case of International Assassination.” International Security 25:1 (2000), 105-133.
Nevertheless, this is not to say that targeted political assassinations do not occur in the covert international arena. Indeed, the
American Central Intelligence Agency has been implicated in the assassinations of Lumumba, and has attempted to eliminate
such political leaders Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Jospeh Kony of Uganda.
23. 13
Organization of African Unity codifies an ―unreserved condemnation, in all its forms, of
political assassinations.‖21
Nevertheless, both the rise of unconventional warfare and
developments in military technology have called the implied ban on assassination into
question. Further still, notions like the Responsibility to Protect, a principle allowing for
foreign humanitarian intervention in certain conditions (such as when a government is
unwilling or unable to protect its people), and the preventative strategy encompassed in the
Bush Doctrine have also altered perceptions of sovereignty—effectively changing the
mindset of what may or may not be politically off-limits.22
Illustrating this paradigm shift
is Altman and Wellman‘s argument that: ―Once one agrees that armed intervention is
sometimes permissible, it becomes very difficult to argue consistently that assassination is
always morally impermissible.‖23
Accordingly, the legal and ethical implications of assassination as a tool of the state
have been the theses of high-profile debates between many modern foreign policy
scholars.24
One of the most controversial cases of dispute involves Israel‘s practice of
―targeted killing,‖ a term which supporters claim is strategically different from
assassination. Semantics aside, the policy entails the assassination of key terrorism
suspects in Israel‘s ongoing battle against extremist political organizations that have
historically utilized terror such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Arguing that Israel is essentially
21 Organization of African Unity Charter. (1963), 4.
22 United Nations. “World Summit Outcome.” (2005), 1-2.
See also National Security Council. “National Security Strategy of the United States of America.” (2002).
23 Altman and Wellman. “From Humanitarian Intervention to Assassination: Human Rights and Political Violence.” Ethics 118
(2008), 251.
24. 14
at war with these groups, rendering them legally defined ―combatants,‖ David relies on the
Just War tests of proportionality and discrimination to defend the morality of targeted
killing, claiming that:
Just war tradition from the time of Saint Augustine to the present has emphasized
the need for armed conflict to be discriminate and proportionate in the pursuit of
legitimate ends for the use of force to be moral. Targeted killing can be done in a
way that meets these criteria. It is discriminate in that it upholds noncombatant
immunity and minimizes collateral damage. It is proportionate in that only enough
force is used to accomplish the task.25
Ultimately, David maintains that Israel‘s use of targeted killing is ―retribution, plain and
simple,‖ and as counter-terrorism policy, is a ―legitimate and moral response.‖26
Alternatively, others like Stein refute the legitimacy of the practice, calling the notion of retribution
unjustifiable by law. Invoking such international accords as the Geneva Convention and
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Stein condemns the policy as a
flagrant violation of human rights law in that it unequivocally deprives the victims of their
rights to life and trial. In direct contradiction to David‘s Just War arguments, Stein writes
that: ―The assassination policy does not meet these (Just War) conditions. About a third of
the people killed in the course of these attacks so far have been innocent bystanders.‖27
He
goes on to assert that the killing of civilians is a ―problem of errors,‖ prompted by the
secretive, extrajudicial nature of the implementation. As such, Stein not only objects to the
policy in terms of morality, but also from a legal perspective; evidence which, while
24 For general discussions on morality and assassination, see: Norris. “The Serpent’s Egg: On the Ethics of Political
Assassination.” Southern Humanities Review. 42:1 (2008), 1-35; and Khatchadourian (f.11)
25 David, 121.
26 Ibid, 126.
27 Stein, Y. “Any Name Illegal and Immoral.” Ethics and International Affairs. 17:1 (2003) 127-137.
25. 15
lending a certain measure of support to arguments against assassination, does by no means
conclude the ethical debate.
1.4 The Politics of Assassination
Not far removed from the moral dilemma of assassinations is the issue of their political
expedience. Inherent within this line of thought is whether the relative efficiency of
removing a political leader is worth the means. Marvick concludes that, given the lack of
due process and political fairness, ―It is difficult to maintain that assassination can ever be a
stabilizing form of ‗competition.‘ The suggestion that ‗institutionalized‘ political
homicide…may be consistent with a model of competitive party politics should be
discounted.‖28
In practice, few political systems would legitimate such political
transitions—would a democracy consider legally accepting assassination rather than
election? Would a monarchy transfer the throne through the means of murder? Moreover,
Marvick contends that ―The sudden death of a leader leaves various groups without
preparation for the loss of representation or championship, and without preparation for the
unexpected opportunity thus created to augment their influence.‖29
This line of reasoning
runs into similar criticisms as those raised when considering the ethics of assassination;
namely that if and when a polity is run so corruptly, so despotically, or so violently the
concerns over the political legitimacy of the act takes a lesser priority than the communal
good or survival of the populace.
1.5 Assessment
28 Marvick. “The Political Consequences of Assassination.” In Assassinations and the Political Order. Ed by Crotty. (New York:
Harper and Row, 1971): 529.
29 Ibid, 531.
26. 16
Taken as a whole, the above analyses offer valuable insights into the broad academic
research on assassinations. More importantly, they also illustrate ongoing scholarly
contentions, disagreements which may perhaps explain why the field of study is so ripe for
fresh analysis. Regarding issues of definition, this study has limited the cases to those of a
political nature with specific focus on the murder of a state‘s de facto head of political
power. The motivation, morality, and political expedience of assassinations, while all
central issues to consider, are not explicit focuses in the following case studies. The
discussions on these issues were included to provide a clearer picture of the academic field
of assassinations, but will not necessarily guide the examination of the cases.
27. 17
―How can we accept that this happened
for the third time this year—and that
this time, the worst has happened?‖
-Senator Edward Kennedy
on the death of Anwar Sadat, 1981
2. Case Studies: Low Impact
The cases under study were chosen to reflect not only differences in impact, but
also a wide range of other factors including geographic region, economy, political system,
ethnography, and historical decade. Of the nine cases under study, the three with the
lowest impact fall in countries with vastly different political, economic, and social systems:
South Africa, Egypt, and the DRC. These also occurred within several different historical
periods, from the height of the Cold War in 1966 (South Africa) to the turn of the new
millennium in 2001 (the DRC). Even so, it is what binds them in common – post-
assassination stability – that will be examined in the following sections.
2.1 Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa, 1966
Domestic and International Context: Apartheid, Prosperity, and Isolation
The South Africa of 1966 was a state of economic prosperity for the elite, relative
political stability, and, most notably, the system of racial apartheid. The exploitative
system had been an outgrowth of the Afrikaner nationalist movement of the 1950‘s, with
the new republic‘s first Prime Minister, Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, being one of its chief
architects. As a devout Afrikaner ideologue, Verwoerd had used his previous cabinet
position as Minister of Native Affairs to craft extraordinarily discriminatory legislation,
including: the Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act of 1951 which forced the resettlement of
native Africans to urban, blacks-only areas; the Natives Act of 1952 requiring every
28. 18
African to carry a ―reference book‖ at all times containing photographs, employment
records, and other personal documents; and the Bantu Education Act of 1953 which
officially segregated the public education system.1
By the time he assumed the premiership
in 1958, Verwoerd had developed the full model of apartheid by encouraging bureaucratic
growth to manage resettlement, deepening repression of urban blacks, and engineering new
ethnic nationalisms to foster more intense cleavages amongst the races.2
Thus, apartheid
was more than just the physical separation of the races, for in the very words of Verwoerd:
Apartheid comprises a whole multiplicity of phenomena. It comprises the political
sphere; it is necessary in the social sphere; it is aimed at in Church matters; it is
relevant to every sphere of life. Even with the economic sphere it is not just a
question of numbers. What is of more importance there is whether one maintains
the color bar or not.3
Of course, major resistance to these policies erupted almost immediately, with
violent confrontation being a frequent result. The most notorious of these had been the
Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960, in which police opened fire on a crowd of African
protesters killing 69. That event, combined with a failed assassination attempt on
Verwoerd only two weeks later, drove the Prime Minister and his Afrikaner National Party
(NP) to turn the country into a virtual police state, enacting legislation that allowed security
forces to detain suspects without charge, place individuals under arbitrary house arrest, and
try defendants without due process. By 1966, one third of the state expenditure went to
funding police and domestic security forces; the jail population doubled from 39,920 in
1956 to 72,267 in 1965; and more than 750,000 cases were brought to trial under the pass
1 See Davenport and Saunders. South Africa: A Modern History, Fifth Edition. (London: Macmillan, 2000): 390.
2 See Louw. The Rise, Fall, and Legacy of Apartheid. (Wesport, Connecticut: Prager Publishers, 2004): 62-68.
29. 19
and urban areas laws. 4
The bulk of these efforts were aimed at opposition parties,
including the African National Congress (ANC) and the Communist Party, thereby
allowing Verwoerd to consolidate political power within the NP.
Yet, this strength did not just come from the political sphere, for at the time of
Verwoerd‘s death, South Africa was one of the wealthiest countries on the African
continent. From the end of World War II until the mid-1970s, the country experienced
rapid growth of nearly 7 percent per annum, driven predominately by unprecedented
growth in both the gold mining sector, which expanded output from just 14 percent in 1936
to 41 percent in 1969, and manufacturing, an industry that comprised approximately 30
percent of the GDP by 1970.5
The development was also guided by the country‘s import
substitution strategy, a practice which provided for ―sustained innovation and
modernization on the supply side and expanding markets on the demand side.‖6
Making
the economic success even more unique was that it occurred within the confines of an
apartheid system that promoted inferior education, slum housing, malnutrition, disease, and
political discontent within a majority population that outnumbered the ruling Afrikaners
nearly five to one.7
Regardless, Verwoerd saw it as the ―fountain-head of the economic
prosperity of South Africa,‖ and in its earliest stages, the system did in fact provide jobs
3 Davenport. South Africa: A Modern History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978): 270.
4 Hepple. Verwoerd. (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1967): 201
5 See Feinstein. An Economic History of South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 143-199 and Stadler. The
Political Economy of Modern South Africa (London: Croom Helm, 1987): 34-86.
6 Feinstein. (2005): 173.
7 Davenport (2000): 428.
30. 20
and services for all of South Africa‘s diverse population at a level far superior to other
African countries.8
Nevertheless, increasingly negative global opinions of the regime served to
diplomatically isolate Verwoerd‘s government. In large part, this reaction was due to the
revolutionary changes taking place on the African continent; namely decolonization and
independence. Occurring against the backdrop of an ever more complex and menacing
Cold War, the newly independent African states made self-determination their main
objective, and ―virtually declared war on all non-representative regimes in southern
Africa.‖9
South Africa was an obvious target not only for its domestic politics, but also for
its external diplomatic violations, including the controversial occupation of South West
Africa (Namibia) and its financial support for the de facto apartheid regime in Rhodesia.10
Verwoerd largely dismissed their censure, and even refused the requests to visit South
Africa made by representatives from Nigeria and Malawi.11
The condemnation extended
far beyond the African continent, however, as the United Nations Security Council enacted
a voluntary arms embargo against the state in response to the violence at Sharpeville. Even
South Africa‘s most powerful economic allies, the United States and Great Britain, began
to retreat from a supportive stance by the mid 1960s, choosing to abstain from rather than
8 Verwoerd. Verwoerd Speaks:Speeches 1948-1966. (Johannesburg: APB Publishers, 1966): 342.
9 Stultz. “The Politics of Security: South Africa under Verwoerd, 1961-6.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, 7 (1969), 4.
10 See Pfister. Apartheid South Africa and African States: From Pariah to Middle Power. (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2005).
11 Lapping. Apartheid: A History (London: Grafton Books, 1986).
31. 21
oppose a General Assembly vote recommending mandatory sanctions against the state.12
Although politically powerful in his own right, Verwoerd faced significant opposition both
at home and abroad in the years leading up to his death. Even so, few either feared or
suspected the impending assassination, which would occur only six months after Verwoerd
was re-elected as Prime Minister by a wide margin.
The Assassination
On Tuesday, 6 September 1966, Verwoerd was due to make his first speech to Parliament
since the session had opened in late July. While Parliament members were entering the
chamber that morning, a uniformed messenger, Demetrio Tsafendas, approached the bench
where Verwoerd was seated. Pulling out a dagger, Tsafendas stabbed the leader three
times in the throat and chest, leaving him dead on the chamber floor. In the investigations
that followed, it was found that Tsafendas was a schizophrenic and had acted alone in
carrying out the attack. The Prime Minister was later buried in a state funeral service held
in Pretoria and attend by more than 250,000 citizens — nearly all of them Afrikaner.
Impact
Verwoerd‘s assassination, though shocking to the Afrikaner nationalists, had almost no impact
on the country within either the political or civil society spheres. Although the 1961 South
African Constitution was more focused on the rules of succession for the presidency rather
than the premiership, this was an intentional omission created to allow Verwoerd to extend
his leadership as needed. Nevertheless, the NP, which in 1966 was arguably the most
12 The lack of support, at least from the U.S. perspective, is a result of the Civil Rights movement that reached its climax in the
mid-1960s. Thus, as the U.S. began its move towards desegregation, its government could not politically afford to back a
racially segregated government like South Africa’s. Hepple, A. (1967): 192-197.
32. 22
developed institutional body in South African politics, had methodologies in place for
filling Verwoerd‘s post. Within days of the killing, the NP began quiet negotiations to
determine the successor, choosing between three possibilities: Theophilus Donges, Minister
of Finance; BJ Schoeman, Minister of Transport and Leader of the House; and BJ Vorster,
Minister of Justice. Vorster, the most politically popular of three despite a lack of
seniority, was chosen by the party leaders, thereby replacing Verwoerd in a manner both
quick and stable. Upon his election, Vorster cemented his fidelity to the previous
administration, declaring that ―My role is to walk further along the road set by Hendrik
Verwoerd.‖13
Ascribing to ―Verweordism‖ was exactly what he did, altering the dead
leader‘s grand apartheid model only in terms of style, rather than structure. In respect to
apartheid politics, Vorster was more of a pragmatist than Verwoerd, choosing as such to
relax enforcement of some of the more deplorable policies of the previous regime, such as
the Mixed Marriages and Separate Amenities Acts.14
Even so, Vorster‘s government did
continue to push other apartheid practices, such as arbitrarily evicting nonwhites from their
homes and outlawing multiracial political parties, while also setting out to establish new
institutions, including creating a separate legislature for black Africans. Not only did
Vorster retain the form and function of the administration, but also the majority of the
personnel who had been active in Verwoerd‘s government. In fact, throughout his entire
first year in office, Vorster shifted only four men—three fewer than Verwoerd himself had
done after the elections of March 1966. It then seemed clear that the policies of the NP,
13 Hepple, 207.
14 Louw, 68.
33. 23
and further of apartheid itself, were not dependent upon any particular individual, even its
leading designer and advocate, Verwoerd.
2.2 Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, 1981
Domestic and International Context: Presidential Power, Economic Reform, and Western
Alliances
Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat assumed the presidency of Egypt in 1970 upon the death of the
nation‘s most revered, albeit dictatorial, leader in modern history, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
His main objective was to shift Egypt away from Nasserite Arab Socialism, and in
consequence away from the Soviet Union, and towards economic liberalization manifested
by greater cooperation with the United States and the West. To achieve such political and
economic goals, Sadat moved to acquire enormous power both by administering a ―divide
and rule‖ reorganization of Egypt‘s political structure, resulting in the dismissal of the vice-
president and over 100 other political appointments thought to oppose his rule, and by
passing a new constitution that legally granted him unquestionable authority. Sadat‘s
consolidation of power reflects a personality and leadership style based on a patriarchal,
and even patrimonial, perception of authority.15
He believed that he alone could shape
events and their outcomes, and often acted against the conventional wisdom of his top
advisors. The surprise October War of 1973, pitting Egypt and Syria against the military
15 Hinnebusch. Egyptian Politics Under Sadat. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985): 78-91.
34. 24
might of Israel, is a prime example of Sadat‘s political style in action. With the public and
legislature at odds over whether to risk military confrontation with Israel, Sadat took over
the responsibilities of Prime Minister in March 1973, formed a war cabinet, and authorized
the military to purchase more arms from the USSR than ever before.16
While militarily the
result of the war was less decisive, as Israel had all-but converged on Cairo before U.S. and
USSR intervention, the ensuing cease-fire did in fact bring about unprecedented popularity
for Sadat, and consequently the ideal opportunity to begin his re-orientation of the Egyptian
economy.
What became known as infitah, or literally the opening, was a strategy to lessen the
statist controls put in place under Nasserite Arab socialism with the dual objectives being to
stimulate foreign investment, particularly from the West, and liberalize foreign trade.
Accordingly, Law 43 of 1974 opened Egypt to foreign investment in practically any field,
provided guarantees against nationalization, exempted new investment from taxes and
tariffs for at least five years, and allowed the repatriation of profits and capital after five
years. Law 118 of 1975 also dismantled public control of foreign trade, while Law 97 of
1976 permitted a free market in foreign exchange.17
Yet within a few short years, it was
clear that infitah was not producing the outcomes Sadat had predicted. Although the policy
had managed to attract large amounts of foreign loans and grants, it failed to bring in
substantial foreign direct investment, leaving the Egyptian public sector to contribute over
16 See Cooper. Transformation of Egypt. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982): 83-91 and Goldschmidt. A Brief
History of Egypt. (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2008): 187-212).
17 Hinnebusch (1985): 272-279.
35. 25
60 percent of total investment in the country.18
The money that did come in to the country
was seldom invested productively, but was allocated to such luxury sectors as banking and
real estate. Domestic production lagged while consumption and imports soared, resulting
in a trade deficit of over 20 percent and inflation rates of between 25 and 35 percent by the
end of 1976.19
Egypt became existentially dependent not only on loans from the Western
states and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but also on remittances from the
estimated two to three million emigrants working in the Arab oil fields. The result was an
economy completely out of balance, and a society facing an ever expanding gap between
the new rich, said to number approximately 27,000 millionaires, and the poor.20
Thus, Egyptians were in outrage over their economic predicament, believing
liberalization to have utterly failed them. Their frustrations culminated in the massive
January 1977 anti-government riots, in which citizens from Alexandria to Aswan fiercely
protested both the government‘s decision to end subsidies on basic consumer goods, and
the larger problems of inequality, nepotism, and corruption spawned by infitah. Even so,
Sadat failed to change course and instead moved even closer to the United States, forming
a strong diplomatic relationship with the superpower that first led to renewed peace talks
between Egypt and Israel, and eventually the Camp David Accords of 1978 and the
Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty of 1979. The response to such an initiative varied widely
across the world. The Western states considered Sadat to be an international hero and
offered fresh commitments of foreign aid. Conversely, the Arab states, believing him to
18 Farah. Egypt’s Political Economy (New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2009), 39.
19 Cooper (1982), 107.
36. 26
have committed the ultimate betrayal, moved to sever diplomatic and economic ties with
Egypt.21
The domestic reaction, on the other hand, was a mixture of both optimism and
opposition. Most Egyptians supported at least the early manifestations of the negotiations,
hoping that peace with Israel would finally increase Western investment and reduce the
military expenditures that had strained the state since Nasser‘s presidency. While
investment did slowly rise between 1978 and 1981, the Egyptian government also started
buying new, more expensive weapons from the United States, serving the dual external and
domestic purposes of countering a rogue Libya and keeping the military close to Sadat‘s
inner circle. This amounted to nothing more than maintaining the status quo, in which a
wide swathe of the population still received no benefits from either Sadat‘s foreign or
economic policies.
From then on, full-scale opposition to Sadat‘s administration emerged and the
disgruntled masses looked to Islamic radicalism to ease their plight. To be sure, religious
fervor had been growing in the country since Nasser‘s defeat at the hands of Israel in 1967;
in truth, by the late 1970s, Muslim fundamentalist groups like al-Takfir and Al-Jihad were
well entrenched in the universities and even the armed forces.22
These groups were
different from the Muslim Brotherhood who viewed Sadat with an ambivalent distrust, for
they wanted a revolution on par with the Islamic uprising that was raging in Iran. As Sadat
20 Marsot. A History of Egypt. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 162.
21 Beattie. Egypt During the Sadat Years. (New York: Palgrave, 2000): 231.
22 See Khazen. The Sadat Assassination: Background and Implications. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Center for
Contemporary Arab Studies, 1981).
37. 27
became aware of the political opposition posed by these forces, his rule became more hard-
lined and authoritarian. The notorious 1980 ―Law of Shame‖ made it a crime to ―advocate
opposition to, hatred of, or contempt for the state‘s political, social or economic systems‖
and further prohibited the formation of organizations threatening national unity, including
those promoting religious fanaticism or extremism.23
Worse still, the law was used in
September 1981 to arrest more than 1,500 suspects, most of whom were not the radicals
espousing violence and insurgency, but rather intellectuals and journalists peacefully
opposed to the political landscape.24
All the same, the arrests galvanized the Islamic
groups and Sadat, now isolated simultaneously from the Egyptian public and the Arab
world, was helpless to slow down their movement.
The Assassination
The plot to kill Sadat was conceived by a young military officer, First Lieutenant
Khalid al-Islambuli, whose brother, Muhammad, had been detained in the mass September
arrests. Islambuli had been granted a spot in the 6 October parade honoring the 1973 war,
which Sadat would be attending. Ideologically, he belonged to a small group of right-wing
fundamentalists who supported a fatwa issued early in 1981 that condemned Sadat to death
for his lack of deference to Islam. To carry out Sadat‘s death, Islambuli collaborated with
Mohammed Abdel Farag, the leader of a radical mosque outside the city of Asuit. Farag
not only wanted Sadat dead, but also intended for an Islamic revolution to fill the political
23 Jackson. “Sadat’s Perils.” Foreign Policy 42 (1981): 58-73.
24 Heikal. Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat. (New York: Random House, 1983): 110.
38. 28
void. Together, they formed a squad of sharpshooters and gathered munitions for the 6
October parade.25
On the day of the parade, Islambuli stored the cache of weapons in a parade vehicle, and
while pulling a gun to the driver‘s head, forced the truck to a halt before the Sadat‘s
grandstand. Rising to return what he thought to be an officer‘s salute, Sadat was shot first
by an assassin in the back of the truck and then by the Kalashnikov wielding Islambuli.
Sadat, along with seven others, were dead before any medical help could arrive. Despite
the ensuing pandemonium, Islambuli and another attacker were captured, and would be
executed just six months later.
A state funeral was held in the weeks after the attack, attended by high-ranking
officials from the United States, Europe, and Israel. Indeed, three American presidents,
Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon, were in attendance. Yet almost no Arab
leaders were present and in contrast to the outpouring of grief after the death of Nasser,
relatively few Egyptians attended the services. The streets of Cairo, which had been filled
with mourners for Nasser, were quiet except for the police on preventive patrol.
Impact
At the time of the assassination, Vice President Hosni Mubarak had stood at Sadat‘s side on
the grand stand, receiving a slight injury to his arm in the confusing melee. He had been
appointed to the vice presidency in 1975 and, as the post had been an appointment rather
than the result of an election, Sadat‘s death did not immediately render Mubarak to be the
successor. Instead, the Egyptian constitution mandated the speaker of the Parliament, Sufi
25 Beattie, 276.
39. 29
Abu Talib, to become acting president. Talib would only hold the post for 40 days as the
Parliament swiftly nominated Mubarak for president and a nationwide plebiscite voted in
his favor.26
The succession was distinctly stable and precisely followed the guidelines
dictated by the 1971 Constitution, thereby reflecting ―Egypt‘s political maturity.‖27
Although the plotters Islambuli and Farag had envisioned a massive uprising to
result from their efforts, revolutionary violence took place in only one city, Asuit, a known
stronghold of fundamentalism. Colonel Abboud el-Zumr, a military member of the Islamic
movement and known conspirator in the assassination plot, had attempted to gain control of
the city‘s governorate, taking up arms against the local police in a battle that would lead to
over 100 deaths.28
In any case, the army quickly overran and imprisoned Zumr, effectively
ending the small chance for revolution.
Even so, it is unlikely that a successful uprising in Asuit would have amounted to
much across the Egyptian landscape. The people largely welcomed their leader‘s passing
as an opportunity to return to normalized relations with the Arab world and, more
importantly, improve the economic and social crises Sadat had created. In Cairo, the
political center of Egypt, life continued normally, save for a few disturbances in the poorer
quarters of the city.
Once in office, Mubarak pledged to the Egyptian public that he would continue
with Sadat‘s policies, but in a method more ―dynamic and wise.‖29
To this end, Mubarak
26 Reich. Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa. (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing, 1990): 369.
27 Goldschmidt, 212.
28 Heikal, 262.
29 Al-Awadi. In Pursuit of Legitimacy: The Muslim Brothers and Mubarak, 1982-2000. (London: Tauris, 2004): 49-76.
40. 30
initially vocalized support for popular democracy, even asserting his disapproval for long-
term presidential rule.30
Egypt‘s authoritarian legacy, however, would not fade with
Mubarak as the incumbent would only mirror his predecessors‘ old habits by reversing the
pro-democratic position and granting himself such unlimited constitutional authority that
he is now in the final year of an unprecedented fifth term in office. Sadat‘s assassination
ushered in neither a political void nor a power struggle, but rather the continued
legitimization of the authoritarian rule that has dominated Egyptian politics since Nasser‘s
coup of 1952.
2.3 Laurent Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2001
Domestic and Regional Context: The Fall of Mobutu and the Second Congo War
Although formerly a Lumumba activist in the early days of Congolese
independence, Laurent-Desire Kabila spent most of his adult life in remote isolation along
the country‘s eastern border, becoming as Ottaway describes, little more than ―a petty
warlord surviving on smuggling.‖31
Yet, as regional voices began to oppose the rule of
Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in the mid-1990s, Kabila would emerge from
obscurity to become the ―Congolese face‖ of a vast, transnational movement aiming to
overthrow Mobutu‘s regime.32
In truth, Kabila‘s rise to power was almost exclusively
organized by external forces, having been orchestrated by Rwanda‘s Paul Kagame and
30 See Kassem. Egyptian Politics: the Dynamics of Authoritarian Rule. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishing, 2004).
31 Ottaway. Africa’s New Leaders: Democracy or State Reconstruction? (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, 1999), 92.
32 See Lemarchand. The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Nzongola-
Ntalaja. The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History. (New York: Palgrave, 2002); and Dunn. Imagining the Congo: The
International Relations of Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
41. 31
supported by troops from Rwanda, Uganda, and Angola.33
At the time, each country had a
vested political interest in establishing security zones within the Congo to prevent cross-
border raids from rebel groups based on Congolese soil: Rwanda from the Hutu-led
Interahamwe and Forces Armees Rwandaises (FAR), Uganda from the Allied Democratic
Forces (ADF), and Angola from the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
(UNITA), which had been receiving aid from Mobutu since the 1970s. Through Kabila,
the regimes hoped to establish legitimacy not only for their interventionist security
measures, but also for the opportunity to capitalize on the Congo‘s vast natural resources.
In October 1996, Kabila formally entered the rebel movement through the
establishment of the loosely organized Alliance des forces democratiques pour la liberation
du Congo (AFDL), which was essentially a coalition of various Congolese splinter groups
and troops from Rwanda and Uganda. With the external military support, the AFDL
quickly gained control of the eastern frontier, routing Mobutu‘s fragmented Forces Armees
Zairoises (FAZ) first in Uvira, then in Bukavu and Goma—all by 1 November. Although
Mobutu attempted to organize a counteroffensive from Kinshasa, Kabila and the AFDL
continued their march westward to the capital, gaining control of the mineral rich provinces
of Kasai and Shaba in April before taking siege of Kinshasa, and the Congolese
government, in May 1997.
Once in power, Kabila and his ―incoherent‖ AFDL, having hardly any grassroots
support within Congolese civil society, also appeared to have ―no discernible game plan
33 Kabila had been acquainted with Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni since 1986 when Kabila attempted an arms deal with
Museveni. He also began working with Kagame in 1994, after being introduced by Museveni, to establish the anti-Mobutu
42. 32
other than to stay in power.‖34
To this end, Kabila‘s regime maintained an ―utter
dependence on Kigali,‖ most evident by the heavy presence of Rwandan and
Banyamulenge (ethnic Tutsi Rwandans from the Congo‘s South Kivu) advisors in his inner
political circle.35
Domestically, this foreign, and more importantly excessively Tutsi,
dependence was met with suspicion and disapproval. As such, Kabila began to seek
greater political autonomy, first by removing key Rwandans from his staff and announcing
the expulsion of all foreign troops from the DRC, and then by systematically reducing the
power of the AFDL in favor of a more personalized regime. From thenceforth, patrimonial
divide and rule tactics, political repression, and kleptocratic corruption became the
definitive hallmarks of Kabila‘s leadership.36
Despite a desperate longing for democratic
pluralism, civil society and the NGO community were forced under Kabila‘s control via a
policy of dissolution, as he banned all political parties not affiliated with the AFDL and
dissolved key NGOs, such as the human rights organization AZADHO.37
Under the guise
of granting power to the masses, however, Kabila established the Marxist and North-
Korean inspired Comites de Pouvoir Populaire (CPPs) in 1999, which became nothing
more than a network of armed spies ―with a view to extorting money or denouncing
‗antipatriotic‘ activities to the security services.‖38
The armed forces, meanwhile, were
movement. International Crisis Group. “How Kabila Lost his Way: The Performance of Laurent Desire Kabila’s
Government.” ICG Democratic Republic of Congo Report 3 (1999), 5.
34 Ottaway (1999), 93.
35 Lemarchand (2009), 231.
36 International Crisis Group (ICG). “Scramble for the Congo: Anatomy of an Ugly War.” ICG Africa Report 6 (2000), 47-50.
37 ICG (1999), 15.
38 ICG (2000), 43.
43. 33
kept under close surveillance through a network of official and private intelligence units,
while also undergoing frequent personnel purges and patrimonial appointments. Likewise,
family members filled key cabinet positions, including that of his son Joseph who was
Deputy-Chief of Staff and Commander of the Land Forces. Father and son would also use
a private front company, Comiex, to ―create joint ventures to exploit state assets for private
gain‖—a practice obviously reminiscent of Kabila‘s illicit trading operations of the 1970s
and 1980s.39
Thus, the brief hope that had surrounded Kabila the revolutionary quickly
faded as he did little more than mirror the authoritarian policies of his predecessor, creating
a regime that was, as Lemarchand iterates, ―Mobutisme sans Mobutu.‖40
Predictably, hostility towards Kabila flared both inside and outside the Congo.
Angered by Kabila‘s ―quest for regional leadership, his tolerance of rebels aiming to
destabilize the governments of his neighbours on the DRC territory, and his unwillingness
to cooperate on economic projects,‖ Kagame and Museveni began plotting Kabila‘s
downfall. In August 1998, the anti-Kabila Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie
(RCD), led by Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, was established in Kigali with the regimes of
Rwanda, Uganda, and, to a lesser extent Burundi, lending full support. A military mutiny
erupted in the eastern DRC, and with most of the international community believing, or
39 Nest. The Democratic Republic of Congo: Economic Dimensions of War and Peace. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006), 45.
40 Lemarchand (2009), 231.
Lemarchand also writes of Kabila, “What is beyond dispute is that in his three and a half years in office, Laurent Kabila outdid
Mobutu in taking his country into the abyss. Measured by the familiar yardsticks of the Mobutu dictatorship—extreme
personalization of power and nepotism, corruption and rent seeking, neglect of public services, and indifference to the
demands of civil society—his performance is arguably even worse than that of his predecessor. Although Mobutu must
bear full responsibility for sponsoring the collapse of the state, Laurent Kabila’s ineptitude is what precipitated its
dismemberment” (2009), 238.
44. 34
perhaps wanting to believe, the hostilities to be merely an internal civil war, the reinforced
RCD joined the mutineers and marched towards Kinshasa initiating what would be called
―Africa‘s World War.‖41
Another rebel group, the Mouvement pour la Liberation du
Congo (MLC), arose in the Equateur and Orientale provinces and also headed west towards
Kinshasa. Stepping in to defend Kabila‘s regime, however, were the governments of
Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, all claiming a partnership with the Congo via the
Southern African Development Community (SADC). Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe
contributed the largest armed force, some 11,000 troops, while additional troops from
Chad, Eritrea, and the Sudan also supported the pro-government forces in the early phases
of the war. Several violent confrontations, including the brutal ethnic-related fighting in
the Ituri province killing more than 10,000, resulted in a tactical military stalemate in mid-
1999. Shortly thereafter, the Lusaka Ceasefire agreement was signed not only by Kabila,
but also by the heads of state of Namibia, Angola, Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and
Zambia. Even with the agreement, protracted fighting would continue throughout the
country resulting in the deaths of some 1,700,000 people between August 1998 and May
2000.42
41 Indeed, Nzongola-Ntalaja quotes the Ugandan newspaper The Monitor as stating, “In August 1998, the Western world in
general and the US in particular looked on as Uganda and Rwanda invaded the DRC with the aim of overthrowing the very
government they had been instrumental in bringing to power. The Western powers readily bought the propaganda of the
Ugandan and Rwandan governments to the effect that they had occupied the DRC to safeguard their security interests”
(2002), 232. The inaction has been considered to stem both from the US/major power interests in maintaining access to the
Congo’s resources and out of an international guilt for failing to stop the Rwandan genocide that allowed Kagame to pursue
his Great Lakes policies unobstructed by and with support from the international community.
42 Nzongola-Ntalaja (2002), 242.
45. 35
By this time, the RCD had splintered into two main factions, each holding territorial
zones in the east, while the MLC maintained control of a northern zone.43
Foreign
belligerents, both pro and anti-Kabila, remained in the Congo and quickly turned their
attention to pursuing economic interests, both to support the war effort and to raise quick
profits.44
To be sure, the Congolese economy prior to the war had been in ruins, with per
capita incomes at some 25 percent of 1970 levels and agricultural production, which had
comprised some 50 percent of the Gross National Product, in steady decline.45
As the war
raged on, the Congolese government faced a mounting fiscal crisis resulting not only from
the high costs of fighting, but also from a dramatic decrease in foreign aid. Consequently,
the GDP growth rate slowed to just 1 percent in 1999, while inflation soared to an
unprecedented 540 percent in 2000, resulting in a GDP per capita of just US$600.46
The
weakened state, controlling roughly half of its pre-war territory, was unable to face these
problems, and as a result, criminal activity, corruption, and exploitation turned into the
pillars of the DRC‘s war economy. Nearly every actor in the war, from Kabila and the
RCD/MLC factions to Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and Uganda, became involved in a vast
network of economic pillage. RCD-Goma, for example, asserted that illicit coltan mining
brought in over a million dollars a month by early 2000, while profits from Rwandan
43 Moore. “From King Leopold to King Kabila in the Congo: The Continuities and Contradictions of the Long Road from
Warlordism to Democracy in the Heart of Africa.” Review of African Political Economy 28:87 (2001), 130-135.
44 Ugandan and Rwandan troops also occupied large swathes of the eastern territory, while Zimbabwean, Angolan, and
Namibian soldiers supported Kabila’s army in Kinshasa.
45 Nest (2006), 32-34.
46 “Congo, the Democratic Republic of.” CIA World Factbook 1999 and 2000. Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Public
Affairs.
46. 36
ventures were estimated to total US$320 million in 1999 alone.47
Kabila himself controlled
a vast client network that was eager to keep him in power in order to continue reaping
financial kickbacks. While these groups profited from the country‘s vast resources, the
average Congolese was plunged only further into abject poverty, while malnutrition,
disease, and displacement made the living conditions in the Congo of the new millennium a
veritable hell on earth.48
Nevertheless, in December 2000 the ICG reported that ―Despite widespread
popular discontent with his rule, Kabila‘s regime is not threatened by internal unrest, or
even a coup,‖ suggesting that his foreign supporters and large client network provided
enough backing to keep such a ―ruler by default‖ in power.49
Assassination
On 16 January 2001 — almost 40 years to the day after the assassination of the DRC‘s first
elected leader, Patrice Lumumba — Rachidi Kasereka, a kadogo or child soldier in
Kabila‘s security detail, walked into Kabila‘s office and fatally shot the president at point
blank range. The president was flown to Zimbabwe on life-support, but would be declared
dead in an official statewide broadcast on 18 January. Kasereka, meanwhile, reportedly
fled the scene, but was later apprehended and killed by Kabila‘s chief of staff, Eddy
Kappend.
Wild rumors swirled in the aftermath as theorists pointed to a lengthy list of enemies who
47 Ibid, 47-52.
48The ICG reported in 2000 that the Congolese government dedicated “less than 1 percent to education and less than 2 percent
to public health,” while more than 80 percent of the revenue was spent on the continued war effort (41).
49 ICG (2000), 40.
47. 37
could have orchestrated such an attack ranged from scorned Lebanese diamond merchants
and the CIA, to his own former Angolan and Zimbabwean allies Jose Eduardo dos Santos
and Robert Mugabe.50
Nonetheless, it was not improbable that Kasereka simply acted of
his own accord as the life of a kadogo offered ample motive: little pay, no rest, and
frequent abuse. Indeed, Kabila himself oversaw the execution of 45 kadogos suspected of
plotting a coup attempt just after he had assumed power.51
In the end, over 50 people,
mostly other child soldiers, were detained without charge for suspected involvement in the
assassination.
Impact
Although no formal rules of succession had been codified during Kabila‘s tenure, the
late leader‘s oldest son, Joseph-Desire Kabila, had been considered the heir to the
presidency and, as such, took office a mere three days after his father‘s death. Cabinet
member in his father‘s government, most being linked to Kabila‘s patronage network and
able to gain if another Kabila was in office, made the formal decision which Parliament
then confirmed. By Congolese standards, the transition was remarkably smooth, and in
fact, appropriate for as Moore surmises:
It is not surprising to see a monarchical mode of transition in the DRC, for if there
have been any strong continuities in the Congo's history they lie in the fact that this
huge (it's the size of the European Union, or of the United States east of the
Mississippi and it's home to nearly 45 million people), disparate (it contains around
250 ethnic groups) extremely well endowed (commentators always gush about its
abundance of gold, diamonds, many more minerals, hydro- electric power, and
50 Moore (2001), 131.
51 Edgerton. The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 231.
48. 38
agricultural potential) and fragile social formation has been run by 'kings' with more
or less control of their inheritance.52
At the time of the takeover, 29-year old Joseph Kabila was the youngest president in the
world, yet showed strong political potential in the months following his ascendancy.
Promising not only to fulfill the Lusaka peace agreement which his father had ignored, he
also emphasized the need for democratic and economic reform. On 1 February, 2001,
Kabila traveled to Washington, DC for a meeting with Paul Kagame to discuss the future of
the Lusaka accord and the Great Lakes region before venturing to Paris for a conference
with then president Jacques Chirac and finally Brussels at the request of Prime Minister
Guy Verhofstadt. Appearing to win over his European counterparts, the European Union
offered Kabila US$28 million to commence political restructuring and set aside an
additional US$101 million conditional on progress towards peace.
Despite such maneuvers, the changeover was largely unnoticed by a Congolese society more
focused on day-to-day survival than governmental affairs. Although thousands of
mourners expressed their grief in Kabila‘s native Katanga province, his death meant little to
the masses in Kinshasa as poignantly expressed by a citizen who stated, ―No, the people are
too hungry to mourn. We are tired. We want just to eat and for our children to eat and go
to school and to dance. Just those simple things are a struggle. So, Mobutu, Kabila,
another Kabila—we don‘t care.‖53
2.4 Assessment
52 Moore (2001), 130.
53 Clark. The African Stakes of the Congo War. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 124.
49. 39
The following depicts the scores and indicators for the above case studies and
concludes with a discussion of common factors identified in the cases that are likely to
explain the impact outcomes:
Table 1: South Africa (Verwoerd) Impact
Indicator Examples Score
No legitimated transition None 0
Significant personnel
shifts/power struggles
None 0
Suspension of
constitution/political rights
None 0
Military/External interference None 0
Ethnic, religious, ideological
strain
None 0
Isolated killings and political
violence
None 0
Systemic governance shifts None 0
Coup d‘etat None 0
Secession/Rise of armed
factions
None 0
Civil War None 0
Final Score 0
Table 2: Egypt (Sadat) Impact
Indicator Examples Score
No legitimated transition None 0
Significant personnel
shifts/power struggles
None 0
Suspension of
constitution/political rights
None 0
Military/External interference None 0
Ethnic, religious, ideological
strain
None 0
Isolated killings and political
violence
Asuit uprising 1
Systemic governance shifts None 0
Coup d‘etat None 0
Secession/Rise of armed
factions
None 0
Civil War None 0
Final Score 1
50. 40
Table 3: DRC (Kabila) Impact
Indicator Examples Score
No legitimated transition None 0
Significant personnel
shifts/power struggles
None 0
Suspension of
constitution/political rights
None 0
Military/External interference None 0
Ethnic, religious, ideological
strain
None 0
Isolated killings and political
violence
None 0
Systemic governance shifts None 0
Coup d‘etat None 0
Secession/Rise of armed
factions
None 0
Civil War None 0
Final Score 0
Potential Explanatory Factors:
1. Assassin: Limited objectives, limited support
These low impact murders featured assassins who either did not have the express intent
of government overthrow (South Africa and DRC), or who lacked a strong and widespread
insurgent base as in the case of Egypt. As a result, the successful execution of murder did
not lead to more intense political outcomes. This becomes a more notable point when
compared to moderate and high impact cases, for the assassins in these cases had both the
express intent and the power to use assassination to achieve political gain.
2. Transition Framework
In each case, a legal or de facto transition framework was in place; either through
existing rules of succession found within the constitutions of Egypt and the NP party of
South Africa, or via the almost monarchical, but legitimated, transition of father to son in
51. 41
the DRC. In the examples of South Africa and Egypt, the systems were both strong and
legitimate enough for a stable transition to take place; in other words, the political parties
and administrations in question could continue without Verwoerd or Sadat. In the DRC, it
is the continuity of dictatorship, from Mobutu to Kabila the Elder and then to Kabila the
Younger, that makes the actual persona in charge seemingly inconsequential.
3. Fragmented or Weak Opposition
The opposition groups against the assassinated leaders‘ administrations (repressed
urban blacks in South Africa; Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt; RCD and other anti-Kabila
forces in DRC) were fragmented, weak, or simply politically inactive at the time of
assassination, and therefore unable to seize the power shift to affect impactful change. This
is significant as a structured and dynamic base of opposition would be in better position to
use assassination as a vehicle to promote new policies, personnel, or an entirely distinct
form of governance. Moreover, opposition should not be limited to civil society or political
opposition, but could also include military opposition if applicable. For example, in
Kabila‘s assassination, factions within the military opposed the dictator, but could not
organize to utilize the murder to their advantage.
4. Balanced Civilian-Military Relations
In each of these cases, the military was in political check – unable and, at least in the
cases of South Africa and Egypt, disinclined to interfere in civilian government. Having
armed forces that do not act like an additional branch of government aided in preventing a
military coup d‘etat in the wake of the assassinations, and as a result, significantly limited
the resulting political and social impacts.
52. 42
―If you kill Sankara,
tomorrow there will be
twenty more Sankaras.‖
-Thomas Sankara, 1983
3. Case Studies: Moderate Impact
3.1 Marien Ngouabi, President of the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), 1977
Domestic and International Context: Factions, Riots, and Scientific Socialism
Marien Ngouabi entered Congolese politics in 1969 through the force of the
military, toppling the civilian regime of his more moderate predecessor, Alphonse
Massemba-Debat, in what was the second coup d‘etat in the country since it declared
independence in 1960. While the highly urbanized state featured a rather advanced
education system, active trade unions, and a larger than average technocratic middle class,
political stability remained elusive. The former French colony had transitioned from a
parliamentary system and capitalist economy under its ―Father of Independence,‖ President
Fulbert Youlou, to a singly party socialist government before Ngouabi‘s Marxist military
regime seized power. Such rapid changeovers created a population that was ―in a state of
permanent mobilization,‖ a condition which would not change under Ngouabi‘s
presidency.54
From the outset, Ngouabi ushered in three fundamental changes to the political
landscape, including: 1) Becoming the first of the northern Kouyou tribe to assume
political power; 2) Establishing the Marxist-Leninist Congolese Labor Party (PCT) in 1969
and soon thereafter declaring the country a ―People‘s Republic‖ complete with a Soviet-
54 Thompson and Adloff. Historical Dictionary of the People’s Republic of the Congo. (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1984), 17.
53. 43
style constitution and governing structure; and 3) Initiating the scientific socialism model, a
development plan built heavily on state planning and empirical standards. When Ngouabi,
whose Kouyou sub-clan is a part of the larger northern M‘Bochi tribe, assumed power
authority moved away from traditional Bakongo power centers in the south. By 1971,
Bakongo opposition groups had coalesced into rioting factions that were becoming
increasingly shaped by extremist ideological sentiments.55
Ngouabi faced numerous coup
attempts both from inside and outside the PCT, including one by members of Massemba-
Debat‘s more conservative Lari tribe. The most notorious attempt within the party was led
by Lieutenant Ange Diawara, a member of the radical Maoist contingency, who was
eventually executed for the failed coup.56
Although Ngouabi later purged the PCT of most
of Diawara‘s fellow Maoist elements, he still sought to placate the left-wing with the more
radicalized agenda of scientific socialism; a system he thought would also counteract the
tribal divisions in the country.
As a development strategy, scientific socialism encompassed several basic
objectives: from the more abstract goals of diminishing social inequalities and establishing
harmonious equilibrium between the regions, to administering concrete reforms in
agricultural production and health services.57
As intense state planning is the hallmark of
55 See Ishiyama. “The Former Marxist Leninist Parties in Africa after the End of the Cold War.” Acta Politica 40 (2005), 459-
479.
To be sure, factionalization even occurred within Ngouabi’s own PCT as the extreme right and left of Congolese politics began
to pull farther apart.
56 Radu and Klinghoffer. The Dynamics of Soviet Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1991), 52-55.
It is also important to note that Diawara had been trained by Cuban military leaders in the late 1960s who sought a more
radicalized partner on the African continent.
57 Damachi. Leadership Ideology in Africa. (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1976), 75.
54. 44
this socialist offshoot, the regime established the National Planning Council to be the
guiding institutional body, while other strategic councils at the regional and communal
levels were created to bring the policy more effectively to the masses. In practice,
Ngouabi‘s economic model not only failed to produce positive results, but truly fell short of
becoming a radicalized, and thereby distinct, policy.58
Much like his predecessor, for
instance, Ngouabi‘s regime continued to nationalize foreign companies, increase
expenditures for state enterprises, and augment the proportion of state-owned shares in
mining and other resource industries. He also made no attempts to decrease a bureaucratic
behemoth that had swelled from 3,300 personnel in 1960 to over 21,000 by 1972.59
By the
end of 1973, new problems of inflation and rising unemployment faced the regime,
opening space for the perennial issues of tribalism and ideological conflict to resurface.
Even though most of the relevant developments within these early years of
Ngouabi‘s presidency were driven chiefly by internal causes — a testament perhaps to the
Congo‘s rather impractical devotion to non-alignment — external Cold War and colonial
forces played active supporting roles in the country. Unsurprisingly, the Congo had close
relations with its Marxist-Leninist neighbor, Angola, whose president was in negotiations
for a formal treaty of friendship with Ngouabi only five months before the Congolese
leader‘s assassination. Ngouabi‘s government also had friendly relations with other states
in the Soviet bloc, as it was the first non-aligned African state to recognize the Peking
58 Damachi (1976): 81.
59 On the positive side, however, the state’s nascent petroleum industry reached full production just as the 1973 oil crisis
engulfed the international community, resulting in a windfall of revenues for Ngouabi’s administration. The ride would be
short-lived as both the OPEC oil embargo subsided and Congolese oil production declined. In the wake,
55. 45
government in 1964 and had become the recipient of nearly annual foreign aid from the
Soviet Union since 1965.60
Thus, while other proxy states typically fell under either
Chinese or Soviet purview, Ngouabi‘s regime ―treated both communist giants with great
and evenhanded consideration,‖ mostly out of need to ensure continued technical and
economic aid from both the Marxist and Maoist nations.61
Finally, like many Francophone
states in Africa, the Congo maintained close economic relations with its former colonizer.
Even though the countries were ideologically and politically opposed, France became the
independent Congo‘s chief trading partner and its principal provider of foreign aid, a status
which the French government retained well into the 1980s.
Despite such far-reaching external support, the economic decline in 1974 sent the
regime into a two year-period of sustained political infighting from which Ngouabi‘s
administration would never recover. Student riots in 1975 and a general strike in March
1976 pitted the ever more organized leftist elements in direct assault against an isolated
Ngouabi. Conservatives, on the other hand, aimed to reduce what they saw to be
unchecked radicalism in Ngouabi‘s ―Declaration of December 15, 1975,‖ which in reality,
only called for increased austerity, self-sacrifice, and solidarity in working towards a
continued Congolese revolution.62
By late 1976, leaders from opposition factions, and the
resurgent Confederation Syndicale Congolaise (CSC), began calling for Ngouabi to step
down or face reprisal.
60 Cuba’s military involvement in the country is also notable as it was directly involved in training youth military forces, first
under Massemba-Debat’s MNR party, and then in an attempt to bring the extreme left-wing into power through the 22
February 1972 assassination plot.
61 Thomspon and Adloff (1984), 81-90.
62 Amphas. Political Transformations of the Congo. (Durham, UK: Pentland Press, 2000), 47-72.
56. 46
The Assassination
Although several versions of the plot to assassinate Ngouabi emerged in the aftermath of his death,
what is known for sure is that on 18 March 1977, a four-man squadron entered the
presidential palace and gunned down Ngouabi in a quick, calculated attack. Days later, the
National Defence Ministry announced that Captain Barthelemy Kikadidi, the alleged leader
of the attack, had assassinated Ngouabi in order to replace him with Massemba-Debat.
Political insider Jos Blaise Alima then added to that narrative by saying the assassination
was a part of a larger power struggle between the M‘bochi and the Bakongo, and further
that Massemba-Debat and Ngouabi had agreed to a sham kidnapping plot allowing
Massemba-Debat to take over. Kikadidi allegedly learned of the plot in advance and shot
Ngouabi before any peaceful takeover could occur.63
Even though the circumstances of the assassination remained unclear, more than 40 people
were arrested and tried for involvement in the killing; however, Kikadidi, perhaps the only
true known conspirator in the whole scheme, was gunned down in Brazzaville before any
trial ever started. The hearing, condemned internationally as a judicial farce and violation
of human rights, led to the executions of Massemba-Debat and four other soldiers,
including one who was a member of Ngouabi‘s personal guard. Three other soldiers were
given prison sentences; four former politicians were sentenced to hard labor; and seven
more were banished to remote areas of the Congolese hinterland.
Impact
63 Legum. “Congo People’s Republic.” African Contemporary Record Volume 10 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978), B552-
B555.
57. 47
Congolese society, despite being traditionally desensitized to political instability,
was in total shock over Ngouabi‘s violent and mystifying death, marking the first
assassination in the independent country‘s brief history. Writing only a year after the
incident, Legum describes the people of the Congo as being ―traumatized by his
(Ngouabi‘s) death, unsure of its motive and circumstances, and uncertain of the country‘s
political and economic future.‖64
The trial and executions had been difficult for the country
to bear. Protests were held against the lack of due process, but were rapidly quashed by a
new government more militarized than ever.
Within weeks of the assassination, the army had illegally taken over all vestiges of
governance—imposing a curfew for Brazzaville, suspending the 1973 constitution, and
issuing the Fundamental Act which established the ruling eleven-member Conseil Militaire
du Parti (CMP). Although there were several heirs apparent to the presidency, the CMP
nominated Yhomby Opango, a Kouyou military officer like Ngouabi, as president of the
council. Presidency of the CMP gave Opango de facto inertia to take over the PCT, and on
5 April 1977, Opango was officially sworn in as president of the PCT‘s central committee,
thereby making him the Congo‘s official head of state. The two other main contenders for
the presidency, Sassou Nguesso and Louis-Sylvan Goma, remained in the government
serving as first and second vice presidents respectively. Opango‘s administration thus
marked the first time in Congolese politics that the government was run exclusively by the
military, which consequently reduced the power of Ngouabi‘s civilian-military PCT.
64 Legum (1978), B552.
58. 48
Notwithstanding his extralegal upheaval of the political institutions, Opango
initially promised to continue Ngouabi‘s plans for continued socialist entrenchment,
swearing in his oath of office to keep ―the socialist path for which President Ngouabi gave
his life.‖65
Nonetheless, the triumvirate of Opango, Nguesso, and Goma, began to rule as a
type of military oligarchy, with Opango being a leader of the most authoritarian political
stripe. His abrogation of the constitution had disbanded the National Assembly, and
essentially nullified any political power within the public. The group arbitrarily arrested
hundreds of alleged ―enemies of the revolution,‖ some of whom were ideological or tribal
opponents, while others, like a French technician arrested in Brazzaville, were simply
targets of an increasingly dictatorial regime. They made other similarly unpopular moves:
suspending the pay of thousands of state workers and military officers, setting up sham
courts across the country, and criticizing the PCT, which the populace had wanted restored
to its full power, for its ―inefficiency and self-satisfaction.‖66
In truth, Opango had not
followed even a modicum of socialist rhetoric or administration, actions which amounted to
political suicide in a country that had so dedicated itself to Marxist teachings. After less
than two years in office, he was brought before the PCT, forced to nullify the Fundamental
Act and the CMP, and asked to surrender as head of the Congolese state. Opango‘s exit, so
soon after Ngouabi‘s demise, would mark yet another period of political turmoil in the
young country‘s history.
65 Ibid, B555.
66 Legum (1978), B553.
59. 49
3.2 Thomas Sankara, President of Burkina Faso (Formerly Upper Volta), 1987
Domestic and International Context: The Revolutionary and the People’s Revolution
Captain Thomas Sankara emerged as the head of state in politically tumultuous
Upper Volta in August 1983, riding a wave of socio-political revolution in which a military
coup d‘etat – the third in the country since 1980 – brought the military leader into power.67
Having only briefly served as prime minister under the government of Jean-Baptiste
Ouedraogo before being imprisoned for radicalism, the 33-year old Sankara was a relative
political novice in a country facing an array of complex challenges. At the time,
landlocked Upper Volta was not only the third poorest country in the world, but also had an
illiteracy rate of over 90 percent, an average yearly per capita income of $150, and the
world‘s highest infant mortality rate of roughly 280 deaths for every 1,000 births.
Combined with a harsh lack of natural resources, a skyrocketing population growth rate,
and an exceedingly rural and heterogeneous populace, the country was a failing state
considered to be essentially ungovernable.68
Nonetheless Sankara, a gifted orator and
charismatic revolutionary likened to such renowned African leaders as Ghana‘s Kwame
Nkrumah, Kenya‘s Jomo Kenyatta, and the DRC‘s Patrice Lumumba, set out on a
trailblazing populist campaign to reverse the fortunes of his homeland.
Upon taking control of Ouagadougou on 4 August, Sankara delivered a radio address declaring
67 The coup was led by another military officer, Blaise Compaore, who was one of Sankara’s closest friends and would become
an integral part of the regime before becoming embroiled in the controversy surrounding the assassination plot against
Sankara.
68 Ray, Carina. “True Visionary Thomas Sankara (1949-1987).” New African (2007):8-9; Englebert, Pierre. Burkina Faso: Unsteady
Statehood in West Africa. (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1996), 1.
