{"id":171981,"date":"2020-11-13T15:54:22","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T13:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/remembering-amadou-toure-malis-soldier-of-democracy-who-left-a-problematic-legacy\/"},"modified":"2020-11-13T15:54:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T13:54:22","slug":"remembering-amadou-toure-malis-soldier-of-democracy-who-left-a-problematic-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/remembering-amadou-toure-malis-soldier-of-democracy-who-left-a-problematic-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Amadou Tour\u00e9: Mali’s soldier of democracy who left a problematic legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As they say in Mali\u2019s Manding language, yiriba binna<\/em>: a giant tree has fallen. <\/p>\n

Amadou Toumani Tour\u00e9, who died in an Istanbul hospital on November 10th at age 72, is being warmly remembered in Mali<\/a> as one of the country\u2019s greatest leaders. As a 42-year-old army colonel, he led the coup that ended more than two decades of authoritarian rule<\/a> and initiated the transition to multiparty democracy. <\/p>\n

During his year as interim head of state, Tour\u00e9 enjoyed such popularity that after he broadcast a statement condemning the chaos and looting in the coup\u2019s wake, Bamako residents recall seeing people return stolen goods to the buildings they\u2019d taken them from. <\/p>\n

When, after presiding over that transition, Tour\u00e9 voluntarily stepped down to make way for an elected head of state in 1992, he set a shining example for others to follow. A decade later he again served as president. Two decades later, his reputation lay in tatters.<\/p>\n

Colonel Tour\u00e9<\/h2>\n

In many respects Tour\u00e9\u2019s life mirrored that of postcolonial Mali and Africa at large. As a student during the regime of President Modibo Keita (1960-68), Tour\u00e9 trained to become a teacher and embody the values of socialist nation-building. A few months after Keita\u2019s ouster in a military coup, however, Tour\u00e9 decided to join the army. He became a paratrooper and rose through the ranks<\/a>, ultimately commanding the airborne regiment and the presidential guard.<\/p>\n

In March 1991, as nascent democratic movements proliferated across Africa, Colonel Tour\u00e9 intervened following weeks of street protests in Bamako against the harsh and unpopular regime of President Moussa Traor\u00e9. He arrested the president, halted the bloody crackdown against demonstrators, and established an interim government. Under his leadership the foundation was laid for new democratic institutions that would reshape the country for decades to come<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the time he left office, Tour\u00e9 had become known as Mali\u2019s \u201csoldier of democracy\u201d<\/a>. In the heady, optimistic era between the end of the Cold War and the September 11th attacks in New York, he devoted himself to international advocacy. For example, he campaigned with nongovernmental organisations like the Carter Center<\/a> to eradicate guinea worm and other infectious diseases, created a children\u2019s health foundation<\/a>, and worked to ban landmines. He also served as mediator in the conflict-torn Great Lakes region and the Central African Republic.<\/p>\n

Return to politics<\/h2>\n

After retiring from the army in 2001, Tour\u00e9 returned to Malian politics, capitalising on his broad public support. <\/p>\n

Rather than join one of the dozens of newly established parties or form his own, he entered and easily won the 2002 presidential election<\/a> as an independent. By bringing people from across Mali\u2019s political class into his government and by preaching \u201cconsensus-based governance\u201d, Tour\u00e9 sought to remain above the unruly partisan fray. <\/p>\n

This approach secured him a comfortable reelection in 2007<\/a>. But it is also what came to tarnish his legacy.<\/p>\n

Where supporters saw Tour\u00e9\u2019s rule as open and inclusive, detractors saw it as too ineffectual to tackle serious problems \u2013 and time ultimately proved the detractors right. <\/p>\n

Tour\u00e9\u2019s unwillingness to humiliate public officials guilty of embezzlement permitted a culture of impunity to harden. His reluctance to deploy troops to quell simmering unrest in Mali\u2019s northern desert regions led him instead to back local ethnic militias and to turn a blind eye to growing numbers of radical jihadi fighters and narcotraffickers<\/a>. Rather than implement necessary reforms of the military, Tour\u00e9 swelled the ranks of its generals while neglecting the rank and file. <\/p>\n

In the words of one prominent critic,<\/a> his consensus-driven approach \u201cdiluted all conflicts and emptied the political game of its content, with corruption as its foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n

These problems came home to roost as Tour\u00e9\u2019s second (and, under Mali\u2019s 1992 constitution, final) presidential term neared its end in early 2012. Latent conflict in the north escalated to open warfare<\/a> as battle-tested Tuareg fighters bent on secession joined forces with jihadi groups. The Malian military, too poorly equipped and badly led to fight this rebellion, abandoned its northern bases in humiliating defeat.<\/p>\n

By the time junior army officers mutinied in Bamako on March 21st 2012<\/a>, ordinary Malians were fed up with Tour\u00e9 and his governing style. Many believed that he had actually fomented the rebellion as a pretext to cancel elections and remain in power<\/a>. As the mutineers closed in on the presidential palace, Tour\u00e9 fled into hiding and then to Senegal. Mali\u2019s 20-year-old democratic experiment was reduced to an empty shell.<\/p>\n

Tour\u00e9 kept a low profile as an ex-president in exile. He returned home to Mali in December 2019<\/a> to little public fanfare. <\/p>\n

With his passing, Malians have chosen largely to remember him as a builder of democracy rather than as an agent of its demise. They pay tribute to what Tour\u00e9 achieved in the 1990s, when Mali seemed bright with promise, and keep silent about his subsequent missteps that helped to bring the nation to the brink amid proliferating violence and a fourth coup<\/a>. They do this not because they are in denial about his legacy, but because they prefer not to speak ill of the dead.<\/p>\n

Source: The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As they say in Mali\u2019s Manding language, yiriba binna: a giant tree has fallen. Amadou Toumani Tour\u00e9, who died in an Istanbul hospital on November 10th at age 72, is being warmly remembered in Mali as one of the country\u2019s greatest leaders. As a 42-year-old army colonel, he led the coup that ended more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":171982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-171981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa-news-2","8":"tag-mypr","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/remembering-amadou-toure-malis-soldier-of-democracy-who-left-a-problematic-legacy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}