1976 Satavian coup d'état
| 1976 Satavian coup d'état | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Satavian Crisis | |||
 Soldiers of the Hope Province Provincial Guard look on as fires blaze out of control at the National Party Headquarters, Port Hope | |||
| Date | 27 September 1976; 48 years ago | ||
| Location | |||
| Caused by |
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| Methods | Coup d'état | ||
| Resulted in | Coup successful
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| Parties to the civil conflict | |||
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| Lead figures | |||
| Casualties and losses | |||
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| 6 civilians killed 42 killed in total during the Coup d'état | |||
The 1976 Satavian coup d'état, sometimes referred to as the September Revolution, was a military coup lead by elements of the Hope Province Provincial Guard and Satavian Naval Service on 27 September 1976 that overthrew the National Party regime of General Hendrik Botha in Satavia. The coup saw units of the Hope Province Provincial Guard enter Port Hope and seize control of the Parliament Complex, Government House, Port Hope, the offices of the Satavian Broadcasting Corporation, the prison at Fort William and a variety of other key targets. The coup was relatively bloodless, although reports of the summary execution of seven National Party politicians - including Senate leader Gustav Barclay - were never investigated. The coup led to the end of 37 years of National Party rule in Satavia, the restoration of democracy, as well as the beginning of a seven-year low-level insurgency in Satavia.
Satavia had been rocked by over a year of violent protests following reforms made by Prime Minister of Satavia, General Botha, that had been granted as concessions following the 1973 Satavian riots. Pro-democracy protesters believed that the reforms were not significant enough, and had begun to campaign for the overthrew of the National Party regime. Furthermore, General Botha had on 1 September issued Emergency (Martial Law) Ordinance 154, which gave Botha the power to crush protests with violence and authorised him to use state-sponsored paramilitaries to assist with the dispersal of protests. This did little to quell the protesters, and the number of protesters rose substantially in the following days. Furthermore, the Hope Post, at the time Satavia's most widely read newspaper, continued to report on the protests despite a super-injunction on press reporting the protests, which had nominally been in force since 17 July. However, on 9 September, the Hope Post published an opinion piece calling on the "National Party Crime Syndicate" to resign - and on the following day, the Port Hope headquarters of the Hope Post was ransacked by Security Forces loyal to the National Party government and a mob of pro-National party supporters. The entire editorial board was also interned that day at Fort William. The paper was published the following day regardless by Hope Post employees and continued to be published illegally. It was distributed by the general public and was available under the counter at most newsagents. Members of the Port Hope Police Constabulary began refusing politically-motivated orders from superiors around this time, and consequently, the distribution of the Hope Post and other anti-National Party publications went on largely unhindered. On 25 September, the Chief Constable of the Port Hope Police Constabulary, Max van der Graaf, issued a directive to all officers ordering them not to interfere with peaceful protests or to make politically-motivated arrests.
The Hope Province Provincial Guard, the local military reserve force of the Hope Province, had already dispersed protests in the capital four times in the previous two months, but opinions within the wider Satavian Armed Forces towards the National Party government had begun to sour. On the night of 16 September, anti-National elements of the Hope Province Provincial Guard moved against the pro-National members, arresting several hundred pro-National officers across the province. On 19 September, after protesters breached the secure area around the Parliament Buildings, the Provincial Guard was ordered by General Botha and Brigadier-General Edward Harrison, Governor of the Hope Province to enter the capital. Lieutenant colonel Johannes Klopper, leader of the cabal who had purged the Hope Province Provincial Guard a few days earlier, refused claiming all the roads into the capital were blocked. Botha requested support from Klopper again on 23 September - which Klopper again refused, citing congestion "preventing vehicular movement". The following day, Klopper met with General Jonathan Roper, sent as a representative of the Satavian Army High Command, Chief Constable Max van der Graaf and Rear Admiral Pieter Schmidt of the Satavian Naval Service. The meeting paved the way for the events of 27 September as General Roper confirmed that the Satavian Army would remain confined to barracks if ordered to disperse protests or block the Provincial Guard, whilst Rear Admiral Schmidt confirmed the support of the Naval Service for a change of power.
On the morning of 27 September, General Botha once again requested the Hope Province Provincial Guard enter Port Hope in order to dislodge the protesters occupying the capital. Klopper ordered the Provincial Guard instead to enter the city and support the protesters in seizing control of government buildings. At 11:26 local time, the Hope Province Provincial Guard took control of the Satavian Broadcasting Corporation Headquarters, and at 11:44, Klopper broadcast a now infamous message to the nation informing them that a military coup was in progress, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the National Government and restoring democracy. Before the Provincial Guard, Police and Protesters could break into the Office of the Prime Minister at The Residence, General Botha and several other high-ranking National Party members fled to the Party Headquarters, where they barricaded themselves in - and by 13:56, it remained the only important building not in the control of the military. Despite repeated calls to surrender, Botha refused and consequently at 14:04, Klopper ordered the shelling of the building by artillery, which promptly caught fire. Attempts to enter the building were met by small arms fire from within, and so the military waited to enter until the first of the National Party members began trickling out and surrendering. Sometime after 14:30, General Botha and Brigadier General Harrison were arrested and had to be escorted out of the city in a heavily armoured convoy after fears that the growing mob would attempt to dispense their own judgement upon them. 42 people had died during the storming of the National Party headquarters, the only place that saw fatalities during the coup. By the late afternoon, the army had flooded into the city and was now in complete control; by that evening, National Party officials across the country, including in the National Party homeland of the Orange Province, had been removed from power and arrested.
Klopper assumed power temporarily as Prime Minister of Satavia, as he had the support of the Army, Air Force, Naval Service and National Guard. Talks with pro-democratic leaders began on 28 September, and exiled democracy campaigners subject to banning orders were permitted to re-enter the country. Eric Edwards, the leader of the banned Liberal Party, returned from exile in Chistovodia on the 31st - and would later win a landslide majority in the elections held some two months after the coup. Nonetheless, there was some opposition to the coup which increased in intensity after the election of Eric Edwards, a self-described socialist, which lead to the outbreak of hostilities and the beginning of the Satavian Crisis. Despite the controversy relating to the alleged summary execution of Gustav Barclay, allegedly ordered by Klopper, Klopper was looked favourably upon for the rest of his life, although he retired from the military later that year. After Klopper's death in 2009, he was awarded the honour of a state funeral and is buried in St Patrick's Cathedral alongside some of Satavia's greatest statesmen and military commanders, and was hailed in the aftermath of the coup as the "Satavian Cincinnatus". The coup is primarily referred to as a revolution in Satavia and is remarkable in that it had near-universal approval from citizens within Port Hope, who did not make any attempts to resist the military. After the coup, thousands of National Party politicians were tried and convicted of various crimes including murder, torture, abduction and treason. Despite this, many high-profile National Party politicians were not charged, and the party continued to participate in Satavian politics, albeit with little support, until it was reorganised in 2001 as the Nuwe Nasionale party. Most notably, General Hendrik Botha was never tried, and only two weeks after his arrest fled first to Nuvania before moving in 1977 to Gapolania and eventually seeking political asylum in the Asterian Federative Republic, where he lived until his death in 2023.