Africa Spring needs spirit of sacrifice

On January 15, Tunisians celebrated the first anniversary of the ouster of their former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Most analysts agree the socio-political and economic grievances that forced fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi to set himself ablaze on December 17, 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 George Ayittey has, with some degree of nostalgia, argued 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 the poverty-inspired frustrations that pushed Mohamed Bouazizi to take his own life were partly caused by what he called "oppressive nature of autocrats who occupy the seats of power in African countries". The African poverty factor is indispensable 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 the better economic conditions in North Africa and the Middle East contributed massively to the success of the Arab Spring. Hand-to-mouth lifeWith 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 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 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 Africa. In my book Portrait of a Despot, I argued quite often, African despots set out to deliberately impoverish their people 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. Sub-Saharan Africa has churned out a considerable number of graduates over the last 20 years. These new elites started their working lives after IMF’s structural adjustment programme of the 1990s that has been variously blamed for much of the corruption pervading Africa. 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, not surprising 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.This may be an oxymoron of sorts, but the Arab Spring itself also gave African tyrants invaluable lessons that informed their preparations to crush any potential African Spring. In Uganda for example, President Yoweri Museveni’s regime has adopted a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to public protests. 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. The near-suicidal Arab psyche clearly separates them from sub-Saharan Africans. If ever we needed reminding, then the Arab Spring certainly proved Arabs have no qualms about paying the ultimate price for what they passionately believe in. With their faith acting as a unifying factor, they marched against tyrannical bullets in broad daylight towards freedom. On the contrary, history has shown African revolutionaries prefer to hide behind the relative safety of African jungles to launch their struggles for freedom.Clearly, if ever there were to an African Spring, then some menacing obstacles have to be overcome first.{Charles Okwir, Via Email}

Africa Spring needs spirit of sacrifice

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