A CURIOUS OUTBREAK OF PEOPLE (and Facebook) POWER
Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng
"People of the world, be courageous, dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed." – Chairman Mao
The last two weeks have seen an unprecedented show of people power in North Africa and the Arab Middle East with Egypt hoarding the biggest share of international media focus. The phenomenon started in Tunisian where the Jasmine Revolution began with a group of young people breaking ranks with the entrenched culture of fear and silence and calling for accountability and democracy. The result has exceeded the expectations of even the most ardent democrats in the region while confounding the prevailing analysis of power relations in those dictator-ridden countries in the ancient world.
Journalists and the media have given much of the credit for igniting this wave of people power to Facebook and other digital and electronic devises on which the youthful activists of the region communicated and mobilised their ranks for the assault on these bastions of power. But in truth, the Tunisian revolution started from a most modest and mundane cause. The hero-martyr of the struggle was Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26 year old fruit seller who burnt himself to death over police harassment when he failed to produce a license that entitled him to sell his fruits in the market in the city of Sidi Bouzid.
According to media reports, Mohamed Bouazizi had been the sole income earner in his extended family of eight. He operated a purportedly unlicensed vegetable cart for seven years in Sidi Bouzid 190 miles (300 km) south of Tunis. On December 17, 2010 a policewoman confiscated his cart and produce. Bouazizi, who had had such an event happen to him before, refused to pay the 10-dinar fine/bribe (a day's wages, equivalent to 7USD). In response the policewoman slapped him, spat in his face, and insulted his deceased father. A humiliated Bouazizi then went to the provincial headquarters in an attempt to complain to local municipality officials. He was refused an audience. Without alerting his family, at 11:30 a.m. and within an hour of the initial confrontation, Bouazizi returned to the headquarters, doused himself with a flammable liquid and set himself on fire. Public outrage quickly grew over the incident, leading to protests by youths in the town.
Perhaps, this incident would have passed quietly but Facebook, Twitter and YouTube picked up the story, and the rest as they say, is history. It is not the first time the tools of communication would be deployed in the cause of revolutionary politics, but in Tunisia and later Egypt over the past few weeks, the blogosphere and twittersphere came into their own as instruments of intense and instant mobilisation of people power.
The effect of such mobilisation has been more dramatic than any movie maker would have dared put on the screen, largely because North Africa and the Arabic Middle East are ripe for revolution of the kind that took place centuries ago without Facebook and Twitter. Wherever autocratic rule becomes irrelevant to the aspirations and everyday lives of people except to deprive them of freedom, revolution, no matter how long delayed, would be the outcome. In North Africa, lack of basic freedoms and the longevity of heads of state in office combined with sharp rises in the food prices to set off the explosions.
In Tunisia, the President, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali abdicated and escaped the wrath of his angry compatriots by relocating to Saudi Arabia, which became the home of Idi Amin, the ruthless Ugandan dictator after he was overthrown in 1979 until his death in 2003. In Egypt, President Mubarak toughed it out although he was severely diminished by the demonstrations and pledged not to seek re-election in October 2011, as had been widely expected and feared. Similarly, in Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh indicated this week that he would leave office when his current term ends in 2013. He has been in power for three decades. In Jordan, King Abdullah of Jordan sacked his government and appointed a new Prime Minister charged with carrying out reform, as a way to stymie growing dissent against his rule.
Although only Tunisia's Ben Ali has been forced out of office, and pro-government forces are mounting a challenge for the streets in Egypt and elsewhere, People power has changed the face of the Middle East and Africa for ever. The first casualty of the revolution is the ditching of the hereditary rule that appeared to have become the dominant succession plan in the region. In Egypt, Gamal Mubarak, the 48 year old son of the President was widely tipped to succeed if and when the Octogenarian President chose to retire. Now, people power has drawn up the Mubarak Senior's retirement plan for him and thwarted the inheritance plan that would have led to Gamal's automatic coronation. In Yemen, Ali Saleh dismissed any such succession when he ruled himself out of another term after 2013. In other words, the notion of monarchical presidencies has been scuttled, at least for now.
People Power should not be overrated as an instrument for since its effects can be short-lived unless its aspirations and immediate gains can be solidified through genuine reform and structural changes in all spheres of life, especially of the economic structures and underlying ideological assumptions. The term "people power" was first used as political shorthand to describe a popular, nonviolent uprising when it was used to topple the Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. More than two million Filipino civilians and prominent military, social and military figures marched for several days until the dictator and leader of a very corrupt regime, supported by the US, fell and the Marcos family fled to America. Among the large pile of property they left behind were 5000 pairs of shoes belonging to Imelda Marcos, the first lady who was a former beauty queen.
People power restored democracy to Philippine but power relations between rich and poor have not changed much, although gender relations and opportunities for women have improved dramatically in the last 25 years in that country. The story is similar in countries where uprisings have led to changes in political culture but the dominant economic parameters remain unchanged. But democracy remains a major gain because it comes with the tools, such as freedom of expression, the right to peaceful assembly and of association, among others, with which the people can fight their cause and consolidate their advantage.
As battles have raged in the streets of Tunis and Cairo, one question that has been asked in the media is the effect of the events on the rest of Africa. It is a valid question. If history is a guide, we can at least guess intelligently that events in North Africa can have long range effects elsewhere on the continent. In July 1952, a group of Egyptian military officers known as the "Free Officers Movement" and led by Gamal Abdel Nasser staged a coup d'état that set off the Nasserite Revolution. Although the coup was initially aimed at overthrowing King Farouk, it inspired revolutionary aspirations throughout the Arabic and African countries, including Ghana whose independence leader, Kwame Nkrumah was an ardent admirer, comrade-in-arms, and friend of Nasser.
The ageing dictatorships of North Africa have been bastions of conservatism and the status quo in the African Union and their removal will lead to a change in the balance of power within the organisation. Or, maybe not, depending on what emerges post-people power in those countries. One can only hope that when the smoke clears in Cairo, Alexandra, Tunis, and elsewhere the blood of young people would not have been shed in vain, and the light that would shine on to the political stage in North Africa will be reflected in the rest of the continent where instinctive and ideological autocracy, not democracy, is still the norm.
(This article will appear in my column the Daily Graphic (Ghana) on Saturday.
Kwasi
(Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng, Journalist & Communications Consultant)
Programme Coordinator, Cultural Initiatives Support Programme
Du Bois Centre, PMB CT 219, Cantonments, Accra
Tel: +233 21 770677
Please copy OFFICIAL correspondence to kgapenteng@cispghana.org
ALSO
President, Ghana Association of Writers
PAWA House, Accra
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