Spirit of sacrifice is the key to an ‘African Spring’
By Charles Ochen Okwir
23rd January 2012: On the 15th of January, Tunisians celebrated the first anniversary of the ouster of their former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Most analysts agree that the socio-political and economic grievances that forced fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi to set himself ablaze on 17th December 2010 exist in much of sub-Saharan Africa. However, some key issues still cause disharmony among African affairs analysts.
The first is whether or not sub-Saharan Africa has already experienced its own “African Spring”. The second issue revolves around disagreements about the prospects and obstacles to an African Spring. On the first issue for example, Ghanaian born scholar Prof George Ayittey has, with some degree of nostalgia, argued that sub-Saharan Africa witnessed its African Spring long before the Arab Spring came along. In his view, the 1990s “wind of change” that blew away most of Africa’s post-independence leaders was in fact an African Spring.
However, in maintaining that stance, Prof Ayittey may have unwittingly failed to put the fate of a possible African Spring within the context of the current Arab Spring. I say “unwittingly failed” because he agrees that the poverty inspired frustrations that pushed Mohamed Bouazizi to take his own life were partly caused by what he called “…the oppressive nature of autocrats who occupy the seats of power in African countries”.
The African Poverty Factor
The African poverty factor is indispensible in any rigorous analysis of why the success of the Arab Spring has not yet cascaded southwards along the rapids of the Great River Nile. Yes, we may argue about the degree, but there is no doubt that the better economic conditions in North Africa and the Middle East contributed massively to the success of the Arab Spring.
With better savings, Arab activists could, and indeed managed to sustain long protests without worrying about feeding their families. That is more than can be said about sub-Saharan Africans. Successive UN Human Development Reports have consistently shown that most sub-Saharan Africans live from hand-to-mouth – often on less than a dollar a day! In such circumstances, second tier struggles for democratic rights and liberties end up being relegated to the dispensable realm of luxuries.
And Prof Ayittey is right to point the finger of blame for this tragic state of affairs on the oppressive nature of autocrats who occupy the seats of power in African countries. In my book Portrait of a Despot, I argued that quite often, African despots set out to deliberately impoverish their people in order to deny them the capacity to organise themselves into anti-establishment movements like the Arab Spring. But there are other factors that have frustrated all recent African Spring attempts.
Africa’s Docile Elite
Sub-Saharan Africa has churned out a considerable number of graduates over the last twenty years, the “structural adjustment generation” as I call them. These new elites started their working lives after the IMF’s structural adjustment programme of the 1990s that has been variously blamed for much of the corruption pervading Africa today.
For these elites, quick, and often primitive accumulation of wealth is their primary concern. They have vested interests in maintaining the despotic patronage policies that feed corruption. It’s therefore unsurprising that unlike the Doctors, Engineers, and Lawyers who helped steer the Arab Spring to success, the sub-Saharan elites have, at best, tended to be passive observers of recent struggles for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa.
Lessons from the Arab Spring
This may be an oxymoron of sorts, but the Arab Spring itself also gave African tyrants invaluable lessons that informed their preparations to crash any potential African Spring. In Uganda for example, Museveni’s regime has adopted a “zero tolerance” approach to public protests. (See: Deadly Crackdown on Uganda’s Walk-to-Work Protests – TIME). Tough terrorism and treason laws have been invoked to stop protesters from establishing what Police Chief Gen. Kale Kayihura called “a Tahir Square”.
And the Ugandan case is not unique. From Senegal to Morocco, and from Sudan to Malawi, dictators have adopted similar, if not identical tactics to avert an African Spring. “…I will use any measure I can think of to quell the demonstrations”, Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika warned.
The Spirit of Sacrifice
I am convinced that the near-suicidal Arab psyche clearly separates them from sub-Saharan Africans. If ever we needed reminding, then the Arab Spring certainly proved that Arabs have no qualms about paying the ultimate price for what they passionately believe in. With their faith acting as a unifying factor, they matched against tyrannical bullets in broad day light towards freedom.
On the contrary, history has shown that African revolutionaries prefer to hide behind the relative safety of African jungles to launch their struggles for freedom. So clearly, if ever there were to an African Spring, then some menacing obstacles have to be overcome first.
Mr Okwir is a UK based Political Analyst, Journalist, and Author of Portrait of a Despot
Twitter: @COkwir
