African Awakening

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In various articles, reference is made to Franz Fanon (e.g. pp. 94-95) to underscore the idea that each generation approaches “revolution in the context of their moment in history” (p. 23), as well as to the changed use of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, which online activists use to spread information and revolutionary ideas. Nani-Koffi’s contribution focuses on Côte d’Ivoire and in particular its political crisis since 2000. The author sees this disaster as another manifestation of the crisis of post-colonial Africa. Esam Al- Amin compares the 1978-79 revolution in Iran to the 2010-11 uprising in Tunisia: what took 54 weeks to accomplish in Iran took less than four in Tunisia. His conclusion is that “real change is the product of popular will and sacrifice, not imposed by foreign interference or invasions” (p. 50). Khadija Sharife’s overview of Gabon’s “awakening” does not directly refer to a possible revolutionary upsurge, but rather focuses on the economic corporate-state deals (like the 25-year tax holiday given to China with regard to the Belinga iron-ore mining deal) of the “focal point of Françafrique,” France’s Africa policy, for the reader to deduce the possibility of revolution in this country.
Horace Campbell’s articles dated 27 January 2011 and 3 February 2011 (the latter directly linking the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions), and Melakou Tegegn’s contribution of 3 February 2011 comparing Tunisia to Ethiopia, complement Al-Amin’s analysis of the revolutionary process in Tunisia. The Egyptian revolution built on the three revolutionary stages visible in Tunisia (1. self-immolation and sacrifice of Mohamed Bouazizi; 2. Self-mobilization of the popular forces of Tunis and removal of office of Ben Ali; and 3. Dismantling of Ben Ali’s regime) by adding a fourth one: “the power of numbers and the test of creative means of self-defense” (p. 70).
On page 79, Campbell summarizes the key characteristics of the Arab Spring and African Awakening movements:
1. The revolutions are made by ordinary people; 2. Independent networks of networks are typical tools of these revolutions; 3. Self-mobilization of the people; 4. Non-violence; and 5. Ultimate goal: dignified human beings.
On 17 February 2011, Hassan El Ghayes published his personal viewpoint of a middle-class Egyptian of the Egyptian revolts. In this journalistic piece, the author gives a witness report of the Tahrir (“Liberation”) Square demonstrations, including the so-called “Friday of rage”, 28 January 2011. Another article, this time by Nigel Gibson, looks at the Egyptian situation and explains the notion of “Revolution 2.0,” the revolution without leaders, “a Wikipedia revolution” (p. 94) aided by social media. The focus of Fatma Naib’s contribution is on women: on Asmaa Mahfouz, the 26-year old founding member of the April 6 Youth Movement, on Mona Seif, researcher and daughter of an imprisoned activist, on 24 year-old political activist Gigi Ibrahim, and on 33 year-old filmmaker Salma El Tarzi.
Kah Walla, the presidential candidate for Cameroon Ô’Bosso, proposes excerpts from her protest diary recounting the peaceful protest of 23 March 2011 which was met by violent police repression. J. Oloka-Onyango writes about Uganda’s most recent elections and analyses why ruling president Yoweri Museveni did not suffer from any meaningful opposition while at the same time “warning” the ruling party of similar consequences as those witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt. In doing so, the author uses comparisons with Egypt, Libya and Tanzania to explain the elections’ victory: Uganda is not yet a fully functional multiparty democracy, Museveni bribed certain parts of the population during the elections, people feared the omnipresence of the military, and the existing opposition parties don’t have firm ideological positions. The diplomatic, financial, economic, and social impact of the Ivorian 2010-11 post-election crisis is discussed by Massan d’Almeida mainly from the viewpoint of two women’s rights activists, Mata Coulibaly and Honorine Sadia Vehi Toure.
Protests in Morocco and the Western Sahara are examined by Konstantina Isidoros. These protests surround the “hot geopolitical potato” (p. 122) of the Western Sahara conflict, which started more than 35 years ago with the invasion of that territory by Morocco and which threatens the “fundamental tenets of our modern Western political system, which espouses the inviolable sanctity of a nation-state’s own sovereignty, the basic rights of human beings and regional socio-economic stability” (p. 123). The author puts together reactions from bloggers and journalists from Morocco and Saudi Arabia to show the growing discontent about the Moroccan absolute monarch. Lila Chouli’s contribution draws the attention on the March peoples’ revolts, culminating in the April 8 general strike and a threat of a military coup on 14 April 2011 in Burkina Faso, which explicitly referred to Tunisian and Egyptian revolts through various slogans. Even though “things calmed down from this point on in the capital,” “spontaneous protests continued,” (p. 142) which needed “marathon negotiations” to bring the country “sitting on a volcano” (p. 145) to proposed political reforms.
In a not always very logical article entitled “North African dispatches: Why Algeria is different,” Imad Mesdoua describes some of the attempts by the Algerian people to follow suit of the other Arab Springs. Lakhtar Ghettas complements the picture in his article entitled “Unrest in Algeria: the window is closing fast”. Mahmood Mamdani evaluates the humanitarian interventions in Libya, following UN Security Council’s Resolution 1973. Jean-Paul Bougala’s article gives a detailed account of Libya’s financial assets, within the country and abroad, to underline the West’s involvement in its events. A further analysis of the Libyan situation is given by Yash Tandon in “Whose dictator is Gaddafi?” and “How might things move forward in Libya.”
This author makes a third contribution, “Imperial neurosis and the dangers of 'humanitarian’ interventionism,” in which the Arab Spring is analyzed in terms of the reactions of the empire. According to the writer, the “imperial neurosis” has only two possible consequences: “tightening of control over the political economies of the neocolonies of the third world” and “the emerging disintegration of the Euro-American system” (p. 232). The last chapter dealing with Libya has been written by Charles Abugre; it makes explicit the “true costs of war” (p. 297).
Peter Kenworthy reports on the 12-15 April “campaign” (p. 155), preceded by the 18 March marches, against financial turmoil, youth unemployment, and the undemocratic political regime in Swaziland. Still in Southern Africa, the recounting of Andries Tatane’s murder by Richard Pithouse gives the readers an opportunity to learn about South African police brutality and repression of grassroots dissidents.
Mahmood Mamdani connects the Egyptian Tahrir Square events with the subsequent African “awakenings,” but also linking it to the historical 1976 Soweto uprising and the 1987 Palestinian intifada. In addition, in his conclusion, the author states the remarkable fact that “no major event in contemporary history has been forecast, either by researchers or consultants, whether based in universities or in think tanks” (p. 208).
As “the detonator of the wave of protest and uprisings which have spread across North Africa and the Middle East since January 2011” (p. 218), Tunisia’s particular context receives further attention in an interview with Sadri Khiari. Samir Amin’s analysis somehow counters the viewpoint of the majority of the authors participating in this volume: while these look for similarities in this stories of the Arab Spring countries, Amin warns against easy generalizations about the whole Arab world and delves deep into Egyptian history, socio- economic makeup, and the different blocs constituting the reactionary front 
before looking at the peculiarities of some other “awakening” nations and peoples (in addition to others discussed in the volume, Samin adds Syria, Bahrain and Yemen).
As can be seen from the overview above, the first articles/chapters are day-to- day accounts of the heat of the uprisings, what happened where, and who was involved, while the articles towards the end of this compilation are more general in nature, more analytical of the long-term consequences of the revolts and revolutions. While quite often overlapping in content, most articles bring new information and analyses to the fore and therefore contribute to the world’s knowledge and interpretation of the dawn, evolution and effects of the Arab spring and its impact on Africa’s further awakening in which the geopolitical interests of the West (US and France namely) are at stake. This volume delivers on its promises: it contains a rich selection of reports and reviews, it gives links to additional reactions on Twitter, in blogs, newsletters and interviews (pp. 311- 312) and has an index which facilitates referencing. The publication is well-edited (in the sense that it contains few grammatical errors or spelling mistakes) but could have benefitted from a general conclusion summarizing a number of cross-cutting assumptions and deductions.

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African Awakenings begins with Pamabazuka editor Firoze Manji posing a question which goes on to form a central part of both the book and thinking about “Africa” in general: “Where does Africa begin and where does it end?” Historically there has been conceptual distinction between predominantly Muslim North Africa, which has been lumped in with the Arabic world and “black” sub-Saharan Africa, despite the fact that much of Africa's Muslim population is, in fact, black. In this, black Africa is culturally separated and walled off from the rebellious spirit of North Africa; it is stuck in the same primal stasis which Western commentators continually repeat in the same tired coverage on the ever-constant “African Crisis.”

The book itself has an explicit goal to rescue the “Arab Awakening” or “Arab Spring” from the insular liberal narratives which seek to isolate the revolutionary wave which swept North Africa and parts of the Middle East last year as a specifically “Arab thing,” a reawakening of the Arab people. This sort of ethnic narrative, which fits into the same limited pathology which failed to predict or understand the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia in the first place, except as a some of sort of Western inspired phenomena, inspired by the “Western forces” of Facebook and Twitter or according to the New York Times’s most respected court jester Thomas Friedman, even “Israel”…“Africa,” meaning specifically black Africa, is of course a place of stagnation and repetition, not of history and thus cannot be susceptible to such world-historic revolutionary moments. African Awakenings, on the contrary, attempts to situate this revolutionary wave within the context of long-running and emergent struggles across the continent directly linked to the events in the Maghreb.

Pambazuka is a unique entity formed of some 2800 writers, bloggers, activists, academics and artists, based in Oxford and edited by Firoze Manji; it is an earnest attempt to provide a continental forum for African intellectuals and activists located both in the continent and in exile across the globe. It is, as far as I know, the only source of both serious analysis and commentary by such leading intellectuals as Mahmood Mamdani and Samir Amin, as well as local reports of struggles from South Africa to Algeria. It functions both as an accumulator of information about various struggles across Africa and a forum for debate and conversation for those committed to serious change. The book itself is the offspring of some of the writings featured in a weekly newsletter which reaches an impressively sizable audience.

It speaks to the sheer diversity and strength of the content carried by Pambazuka that such a book could be assembled like this without being a complete waste of time. There is nothing earth-shatteringly new contained within the pages, rather a selection of on-the-ground reports and reflections from activists, particularly activists who participated in the Egyptian and Tunisian Revolutions, mixed with various essays from mainly academic contributors. In this the likes of Samir Amin and Mahmood Mamdani share the pages with dedicated members of the million strong Tahrir Square occupations. South African academics such as Patrick Bond and Richard Pithouse are featured along with those of a more international bent such as Nigel Gibson and Horace Campbell.

Pithouse’s contribution “South Africa: On the Murder of Andrias Tatane,” chronicles the resurrection of police militarization in South Africa during the build-up to and following the 2010 World Cup, leading to the eventual televised murder of an activist (Andrias Tatane). This wave of militarization closely resembles both politically and tactically similar developments in the United States, the results of which were experienced first-hand by those caught up in the various occupy protests, particularly in Oakland. South Africa according to Peter Alexander “can be reasonably described as “the protest capital of the world.” In the last three years, there has been an average of 2.9 “gatherings” per day resulting in a 12,654 “gathering” incidents during 2010–11.[1] This however has yet to transform into a mass movement capable of forming an effective challenge to the state or the ruling ANC’s (African National Congress) hegemony.

One of the notable points made early on in the book is the centrality of Africa to the functioning of the global economy. This centrality takes two forms, one in the form of the influx of debt payments to Western powers, most of it incurred during the heyday of Structural Adjustment Programs forced upon countries. Each year $340 billion flows from Africa Northwards to pay off $2.2 trillion of debt. Since 1980, over 50 Marshall Plans worth somewhere over $4.6 trillion have been sent from the peoples of “the periphery” to their creditors. Combine this with a staggering amount of capital flight—an estimated 30 percent of sub-Saharan Africa”s GDP and Africa might be a net creditor to the rest of the world.[2] Africa is also the location of strategically vital raw materials central to both Western powers and increasingly the emerging economic powerhouses of China and India. The immense mineral wealth of countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the oil riches of Libya, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria have been anything but a blessing to their people, as most of the population continues to live in relative poverty while a small elite continues to prosper and Western investors reap most of the benefits. Historic attempts to reverse this established neo-colonial paradigm in the form of organic attempts at building African Socialism or nationalist projects led by the likes of Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, have ended in failure, whether through the barrel of the gun of an assassin, a US sponsored insurgency or the pressures of international capital.

With this in mind and a recognition of both the crisis of capitalism we are currently experiencing and the emerging struggles across the globe, Africa, at least “black Africa,” has been conspicuously absent from the discussion. Attention has been focused on the Occupy Movement which swept across the United States last autumn, the student movements in Chile, the UK, the May 18 movement in Spain, the increasingly militant movements in Greece and of course the forces that brought about the downfall of Mubarak and Ben Ali. At the same time shack-dwellers’ movements and an increasing wave of small scale insurgent protest in my own nation of South Africa have been accompanied by protests and small insurrections in countries as diverse the Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Gabon and Burkina Faso. Even the last absolutist monarchy in the world found in the tiny country of Swaziland was rocked by a wave of mass demonstrations inspired by the “Arab Spring” and chronicled in the book by Peter Kenworthy. Furthermore, there was of course the latest grand outing of imperialism in Libya, another bout of regime change led by the French and endorsed by the UN in Ivory Coast, increased covert bombing and on-the-ground activity in Somalia and the beginnings of a new outpost of the American empire in Uganda (yes, even before the almost satirical imperialism of Kony 2012).

One of the weaknesses of the book is the homogeneity of the writers in the context of the particular struggles, mostly the country which I know best. Sadly all of the writers who have contributed in relation to the struggles are white middle-aged academics, not that their contributions are not important, but reports from working-class participants in said struggles would greatly strengthen the section. Furthermore, the lack of younger voices is troubling considering that in line with global paradigms younger activists are often at the front of these struggles, particularly in the cases of Egypt and Tunisia.

Another notable weakness is an excessive focus on Libya, rather than focusing on the emergence of new movements and the awakening of “Africa,” the text is stuck in chapter after chapter aimed at dismantling the myths surrounding the latest bout of humanitarian intervention and assaulting the myth-makers of Imperialism. Valuable as this may be, it’s out of place with the desired goals of the book and becomes repetitive quickly, even reaching dangerous flirtation with Qadaffi apologetics in the case of one essay by Jean Paul Pougala.

In South Africa, the precarious position of the youth is a national tragedy as the majority of young South Africans face the very real possibility of never finding decent work in their lifetimes. Furthermore, the official left formations of the national trade union COSATU (Congress of South Africa Trade Unions) and the SACP (South African Communist Party) have remained ensnared in a Faustian contract in the form of the tripartite alliance with the ruling ANC (African National Congress). The alliance has led to the leadership of both the SACP and COSATU being deployed as ANC cadre and defending ANC neoliberal policies. Both formations have been unable to provide a response, let alone leadership or formations, aimed at combating what is increasingly looking like a position for permanent precarity for the so-called “born frees,” referring to the generation that grew up after the fall of Apartheid in 1994. This political vacuum poses a challenge to forming a resurgent independent left in South Africa and remains alive with possibility particularly because the hegemony of the ANC is not quite so potent among those who have grown up in abject poverty. The absence of these voices amongst the independent left at least in South Africa, speaks of a current location on the margins of South African politics and the failure to take advantage of the lack of interest and neglect of the ANC aligned left.

The voices of this new generation of activists in South Africa and across the rest of the continent is where an “awakening,” if it can be called that, has its base. So far, we have yet to witness the transformations of current “African” struggles from local contexts into long-term revolutionary mass movements or see the transformation of spontaneous uprisings such as the one which gripped Nigeria early this year sparked off by marked increase in gas prices, due to an end in state subsidies, into sustained mass movements. A measure of realism is needed when assessing African politics, not a banal morbid fatalism, but an honest assessment of the strength of social movements, an avoidance of romanticism and the descent into sectarianism which distinguishes a marginalised left.

The book itself illustrates the formations of a new wave of struggles, but it is unfair to view them yet as a part of an “African Awakening.” The ambition of the book fails to match up to the current reality; this is not however to say that the seeds of dissent may not spring into something else in the near future. Although it is fair to place these struggles in the same political universe as the other movements of 2011, the book itself is not going to feature as a future monument to the world-historic events of 2011. It was hastily assembled and the essays featured within are a mixed bag; however it serves as a valuable introduction to contemporary African left politics. Furthermore, the internationalism and ambition at the heart of Pambazuka is admirable in itself; the fact that a book with such a diversity of content could be assembled in such a manner serves as testament to the strength and potential of Pambazuka News. In short an admirable if not quite successful book which, ultimately, is more useful than necessary.