You don't need presidential palaces, generals riding tanks, or even the CIA to make a coup happen. Democracy can be overthrown with far less pomp, fewer props and smaller bursts of state violence.
But these quieter coups are no less deadly for democracy.
At the end of September, just such a coup took place in South Africa.
It wasn't the kind involving parliament, or the inept and corrupt head of the African National Congress (ANC) Jacob Zuma. Quite the opposite.
It involved a genuinely democratic and respected social movement, the freely elected governing committee of the shack settlement at Kennedy Road in Durban.
And this peaceful democracy was overthrown by the South African government.
As South Africa prepares to host the 2010 soccer World Cup, the poorest South Africans are still waiting for the end of apartheid's predations. The country is spending US$1.1 billion just to build new stadiums, while those who fought apartheid wait in shack settlements for running water and electricity.
Levels of human development are now lower than in 1994. South Africa has overtaken Brazil as the country with the widest gap between rich and poor.
But not everyone is waiting patiently for the government to drop something into their palms. Those living in shack communities have organised to bring the dividends of housing, water, education, health care, employment and food to their communities.
When some communities organised to protest against their government, using freedoms enshrined in one of the most open and supportive constitutions in any modern democracy, the government responded with its bloody coup.
In the middle of the night on September 26, men armed with guns and descended on Kennedy Road, a shack settlement housing about 7000 people.
These men chanted slogans of ethnic cleansing, pitting Zulu against Pondo. With these words, they summoned an ethnic politics that was unthinkable even in apartheid's darkest days. Even the 1980s battles between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC were political rather than ethnic.
But in Zuma's South Africa, the Zulu nationalism once anathema to the ANC has become its standard operating procedure.
Four people were killed. The violence continued under the eyes of the police and local ANC officials.
Once it was over, the democratic leaders of the Kennedy Road Development Committee were arrested (even though many weren't in the settlement at the time of the attacks). Thousands of shack dwellers have fled the settlement and many shacks have been destroyed.
It has become clear the thugs were backed by the local ANC branch. Jackson Gumede, the chairperson of the local branch executive committee, has now taken over the settlement. Those remaining live in a state of fear.
The ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial government has also become a willing partner.
It has also become clear the target of the attacks is the autonomous and grassroots democratic shack-dweller organisation Abahlali baseMjondolo, which has grown over the past four years into the largest poor people's movement in South Africa.
Abahlali has become a significant thorn in the side of the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government. What particularly irks the ANC is Abahlali's refusal to let the shack dwellers continue to be a vote bank for the ANC at election time.
Rather than supporting any political party, Abahlali has promoted a "No house, no land, no vote" policy. Abahlali has taken the provincial government to court over the constitutionality of the government's Elimination of Slums Act. It has spoken out against the forced relocation of shack dwellers to transit or temporary camps outside the urban areas.
Abahlali also had successes. Through their activism, Abahlali activists forced the Durban municipality to agree to upgrade some of their settlements.
Control over the settlement means control over the disbursement of funds. This is the prize that ANC local politicians covet.
The ANC's decision to destroy a grassroots poor people's movement has been condemned around the world.
The South Africa Council of Churches (SACC) has called it "an attack on democracy" and issued a statement of alarm at how community leaders are being criminalised.
Bishop Rubin Phillip, the chairperson of the KwaZulu-Natal Christian Council and Anglican Bishop of Natal, who had visited Kennedy Road, was "torn with anguish" by the attack and spoke of the real social hope that Abahlali was creating.
Statements of solidarity and outrage continue to pour in from South Africa and around the world.
These pressures may give the ANC pause in its actions against Abahlali. It is also clear that the ANC is not in control of the violence that it has unleashed.
At the settlement, anyone associated with Abahlali has been threatened with violence and forced to leave. Already 2000 people have been left homeless. S'bu Zikode, the elected chair of Abahlali, is now in hiding after receiving a number of death threats.
On September 29, Zikode said: "This attack is an attempt to terrorise [the voice of the poor] back into the dark corners. It is an attempt to turn the frustration and anger of the poor onto the poor so that we will miss the real enemy."
He asked that the world give "close and careful scrutiny into the nature of democracy in South Africa".
The attack augurs ill for South Africa's future. Once unleashed, the demons of ethnic hatred could tear the "Rainbow Nation" apart.
Without swift and transparent justice to right this grave wrong, the future looks grim. History makes one thing very clear: small coups beget bigger ones.
[Abridged from Pambazuka News. More articles on this topic can be found at Links.org.au.]