This is according to Africa Analyst and Researcher, Khwezi Mngqibisa, who was speaking on Channel Africa’s Africa Rise and Shine programme this Friday.

This week Burkina Faso's transitional parliament passed a law granting amnesty to soldiers accused of a coup attempt in 2015. This has been seen as an attempt to mend the country's turbulent past.

“When they took power in 2022, the military junta made the commitment that the transition to civilian rule would be complete, or at least would be affected 21 months after the coup was done. But in April or May of last year, the military decided that no, there was still a lot of democratising to be done. There was still a lot of patriotism to be infused into society and the transition would actually be effective now for another five years. Meaning moving from 2024 to 2029. So many of the moves that have occurred in the country since then have been seen as a way of the military to bring to practical fruitions some of the ambitions that they've committed themselves to. The problem is that nobody knows fully what those are. Amongst some of the changes we have seen has been the firing of the Prime Minister as we were just about to close the new year, communicating for some of us who are analysing and researching these matters, a reconfiguration of those that the military junta would like to see this region through. We know that the government in the country is made-up of those that come from civil society, from traditional leadership, from political parties. But of course, with the military ushering in or overseeing the entire transition with the very firm hand, we know some of the principal objectives of the country; they want to make sure that nothing French continues to touch or define Burkina Faso, they want to fight terrorism and extremism. These are some of the things that are the lenses that we're using in order to say, when they give an amnesty to the military, as they have done right now, they're trying to consolidate the whole that they have, so that the military remains a united, coherent, omnipresent force in society,” Mngqibisa said.

Mngqibisa also spoke on events that preceded this latest development.

“Well, (then) President (Blaise) Compaoré had been in power for close to, what, 27 years in 2014, when he had a very bad luck of crossing hairs of his general populace and public, which had protested at his attempts to extend that 27 year rule by actually changing the Constitution, fudging with the electoral management body. All in an effort to make sure that those that are in opposition to him would not necessarily have a proper run at challenging him at the polls. So, what had happened is that during that decade or the past decade, popular uprisings where one of the forms that had proven very effective in unsettling long entrenched dictators. So members of the public  went to the streets for a number of days leading to arrests, (and) people being shot, leading to him resigning and actually leaving the country, which then installed the transitional government. So, what then happened is that once the transitional government was in place and charged with organising elections in order to actually transition the country out of that period of instability. Soldiers loyal to Compaoré then seemingly made moves to reinstall him. This, of course was rejected by other segments of the military and the transition was successful. So it is this batch of soldiers that had wanted to reinstall Compaoré that had been as of late as 2019, had been given very severe penalties of jail time that the current administration, again made-up of soldiers, has extended an amnesty to,” said Mngqibisa.

With the country’s security continuing to be fragile and insecurity worsening with growing insurgency, Mngqibisa says solutions to this will have to be inclusive, not just be imposed by force.

“There is a characterisation of the military as being too keen on military solutions and very much exclusionary. Whatever the ambitions of the military are, if they are not inclusive in being pursued by involving other actors other than the military by taking approaches other than that of force, they are not likely to succeed, because what we are seeing is that some of these unattended issues are evolving into new points of grievance, which might mean that even when they are positive aspects of the transition as led by the military, they would always be issues that are that have got a residual destabilising factor for the stability in that country”.

--ChannelAfrica--