Mali: What Political Space Exists in Junta-Ruled Bamako?
Colonel Assimi Goïta confronts a few alternative power centers, but none strong enough to overthrow him at present.
The August 2020 coup in Mali ended not just the seven-year civilian presidency of Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, but also the broader political order that had obtained in Mali since the 1991-1992 transition to democracy. A short-lived coup in 2012, and a transitional government in 2012-2013, interrupted that wider political order, but it soon resumed; the 2020 coup overturned it.
When Colonel Assimi Goïta and four other officers took power in 2020, Mali’s established political parties - the then-ruling Rally for Mali (French acronym RPM), the ex-ruling party the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (ADEMA), and the major opposition party the Union for the Republic and Democracy (URD) - evoked low levels of trust from the Malian public. Turnout was low in most of Mali’s presidential elections between 1992 and 2018, falling below 30% in several cases (the first and second rounds in 1992, the sole round in 1997, and the second round in 2002), and never breaking 50%. In the last pre-coup survey by Afrobarometer, a major research organization, Malians reported low levels of confidence in both the ruling RPM and the opposition parties (p. 46):
In the years before the coup, Malian commentators repeatedly complained that the “political class” lacked vision and leadership commensurate with the revolutionary aspirations of the Malian people as expressed in the popular mobilization of 1991. (See here for one example of such commentary, in French.)
A key factor enabling the success of the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger has thus been popular disdain for the political class and the established parties; coup-makers benefited from ordinary people’s high levels of trust in the military and low levels of trust in civilian politicians, meaning that coup-makers benefited from some (real but difficult to measure) level of popular support following their coups, and then had enough space to consolidate and hold power even as the weaknesses and failures of their own rule became evident to most observers.
With this background, we can turn to the main question here - what space remains for civilian political mobilization in Mali? Or rather, in line with the title of this post, let us say Bamako instead of Mali, given that the parties had a national character but were and are very Bamako-centric, and given that the junta has tight control over Bamako but varying degrees of control elsewhere.
In any case, let’s look at four potential civilian power centers in the capital:
The political parties are down but not completely out: Emblematic of the junta’s crackdown on the parties, and the relative impunity the junta enjoys, was the May 2021 arrest of the major politician and ex-Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga, followed by his death from an illness in March 2022 after release on “medical parole.” The parties as well as individual politicians have been subjected to further intimidation, culminating in the junta’s April 2024 decree suspending the activities of political parties and associations. Interestingly, though, the junta lifted that suspension in July, in a gesture of seeming grace that nevertheless comes amid a continued will to power by the junta; the military authorities now envision another 2-5 years in power, potentially followed by a Goïta run for president. Seeking some leverage, the parties boycotted a junta-led dialogue session just after the suspension was lifted. Yet their room to maneuver remains very limited.
The M5-RFP protest movement is fractured: A coalition of political parties, civic associations, and religious activists, the M5-RFP led mass protests against President Keïta in 2020, and the coup occurred in the resulting atmosphere of tension. The junta has had an ambivalent relationship with the M5-RFP, coopting parts of the movement - namely one key leader, Choguel Maïga, who became Prime Minister in June 2021 - while tangling with other wings. The M5-RFP has also lost much of its mobilizing power, as some elements have gone their own way while others have sought to preserve the movement as an opposition force and still others have joined the transitional, military-dominated government. Maïga’s own relationship with the junta sometimes appears fraught, and rumors periodically arise to the effect that he is on the verge of being dismissed. In May 2024, the M5-RFP released a statement condemning the junta’s plans to remain in power for several more years; the statement reportedly came from the wing of the movement close to Maïga, and the statement’s release prompted the authorities to arrest Boubacar Traoré, an M5-RFP leader close to Maïga. In short, the M5-RFP’s influence is limited and it remains susceptible to repression and divide-and-rule tactics by the junta.
Imam Mahmoud Dicko and his followers worry the junta but don’t presently threaten it: Much of the protest mobilization in 2020 owed to the presence of Imam Mahmoud Dicko, a major albeit controversial religious leader who in 2020 joined the M5-RFP coalition. Dicko’s own movement is called the Coordination of Movements, Associations, and Sympathizers of Imam Mahmoud Dicko (CMAS). Dicko, too, had a complicated relationship for the junta for a time, ostensibly retiring from politics but then publicly criticizing the military authorities. CMAS threatened a mass rally against the junta in October 2023, but then pulled back. Relations deteriorated decisively in December 2023 when Dicko visited Mali’s neighbor Algeria and met Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, outraging the junta, which saw Dicko as trespassing on their diplomatic prerogatives and interfering in the ultra-sensitive issue of the resumption of rebellion in northern Mali. More recently, the junta dissolved CMAS in March and then arrested its coordinator, Youssouf Daba Diawara, in July. Dicko remains a formidable figure in Malian politics, but the junta is clearly not afraid to go after his allies and institutions.
The labor movement may be the most resilient sector against the junta’s repression, but is also somewhat deferential to the junta: A revealing episode occurred in June 2024 when the authorities arrested Hamadoun Bah, Secretary-General of the National Syndicate of Banks, Insurance Companies, and Financial, Micro-Finance, and Commercial Establishments of Mali (Synabef). Bah is also the Deputy Secretary-General of Mali’s largest union, the National Union of Malian Workers (UNTM). Bah ended up spending just five nights in jail - a strike by Synabef drastically affected banks, insurance companies, and gas stations, forcing Bah’s release. The episode seemed to showcase labor’s power to defy the junta by striking at the heart of the economy in ways the junta could not ignore. And yet, on the other hand, Bah has reportedly expressed support for an eventual presidential candidacy by Goïta. Are the unions the potential vanguard and core institutional base of mass pushback against the junta, then, or are they willing to stand down so long as their own direct interests are not threatened? Perhaps it is the latter. At the moment, meanwhile, the kind of multi-sector mobilization that erupted in 1991 seems fairly remote; student associations, another key constituency from the early 1990s, have also been targeted by the junta. Note that these bans on civic associations also continue and extend the junta’s project of undoing the 1992-2020 political order.
In short, then, the junta retains political dominance in Bamako, in part through the power to arrest critics and ban movements while simultaneously co-opting others. Nevertheless, the junta still confronts a complex political landscape where some other actors continue to hold some influence, especially by either threatening or carrying out strikes and protests. If the episode with Bah shows that the junta’s power has limits, meanwhile, that episode also suggests that a mass popular uprising against the junta is not in the making any time soon.