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Praetorianism in Commonwealth West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Claude E. Welch
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Extract

Within five years, some of the cadets to whom these remarks were addressed helped overthrow Kwame Nkrumah. Despite the warning, ‘Politics are not for soldiers’, the armed forces in Ghana – as in 14 other African states – assumed full political control. The military thus changed in Africa from relatively insignificant relics of colonial administration into prime arbiters of political disputes – settling arguments, in many instances, by the direct seizure of power. Praetorianism had reached south of the Sahara.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , July 1972 , pp. 203 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

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Page 220 note 1 ‘A coup in itself is not a good thing; but it is one of the most effective methods of restoring the constitutional rights of the people when they have been deprived of the constitutional means for changing a corrupt and tyrannical government.’ Afrifa, op. cit. pp. 85–6.

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Page 220 note 3 Gutteridge, op. cit. p. 79.

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Page 222 note 1 Cf. Watkins, ‘Praetorianism’, loc. cit. p. 307.