The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring

A Season of Rebirth?

Charles Villa-Vicencio, Erik Doxtader, Ebrahim Moosa, Charles Villa-Vicencio, Erik Doxtader, Ebrahim Moosa

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781626161979, 9781626161993
• eBook ISBN: 9781626161986
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring addresses the often unspoken connection between the powerful call for a political-cultural renaissance that emerged with the end of South African apartheid and the popular revolts of 2011 that dramatically remade the landscape in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Looking between southern and northern Africa, the transcontinental line from Cape to Cairo that for so long supported colonialism, its chapters explore the deep roots of these two decisive events and demonstrate how they are linked by shared opposition to legacies of political, economic, and cultural subjugation. As they work from African, Islamic, and Western perspectives, the book’s contributors shed important light on a continent’s difficult history and undertake a critical conversation about whether and how the desire for radical change holds the possibility of a new beginning for Africa, a beginning that may well reshape the contours of global affairs.

1
From Cairo to the Cape

The Dilemmas of Revolution

SHAMIL JEPPIE

The historic events in North Africa since December 2010 have affected in multiple ways the countries sharing common borders across the immense Sahara Desert and even countries further to the south. Mali in the west and the Republic of Sudan in the east are among the countries of the Saraha and Sahel that have not been directly affected by sustained uprisings or revolutionary stirrings but were and are influenced by the Arab Spring. The coup d’état in Mali in late March 2012 was led by middle-ranking officers furious with the government’s inability to deal with an armed insurgency by the Tuaregs in the northern parts of the country. The Tuareg insurgents eventually declared independence for the country’s entire northeastern region known as the Azawad. The insurgents were apparently emboldened by well-equipped and trained Tuareg fighters who had fled Libya after the uprising, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing of that country, and the eventual killing of Colonel Qaddafi in October 2011. Malian soldiers in distant northern towns such as Kidal, Timbuktu, and Gao simply fled from their posts when the rebels entered these towns. The coup d’état, the subsequent withdrawal of the military, the installation of a caretaker president (who was then attacked in his office), and the occupation of key northern towns by different factions of the rebels—including a militant Wahhabi group called Ansar al-Din—led to a wholly unstable situation in Mali. This is the most outstanding case of the unintended consequences and external impact of the so-called Arab Spring on the continent. In January 2013, the French landed in Mali to recover Malian territory taken by the rebels.¹

The Arab Spring was watched with great interest throughout the continent. Rulers and ruled alike kept an eye on the dramatic developments in Tunis and in Maydan al-Tahrir (Tahrir Square) in Cairo. Other rulers feared that similarly threatening events could unseat them, while various sections of the citizenry were keenly interested in adapting some of the lessons from the protests to the situations in their own countries.

Thus, in Zimbabwe there was a de facto ban on people communicating about the events in Egypt, and some persons who had watched footage of protests in Cairo were arrested.² In Senegal there were large and persistent popular protests beginning in June 2011 against the presidential reelection campaign of Abdoulaye Wade. The eighty-year-old had secured a high court judgment allowing him to run for a third term. He was eventually beaten in the runoff by his former protégé, Macky Sall.³

The Arabic-speaking ruling elite in northern Sudan remained unaffected until June 2012 although there were attempts during 2011 to stage protest meetings. The Sudanese were preoccupied with other significant developments: the breakup of the Sudan and birth of South Sudan in July 2011 and, soon thereafter, a border war between the two states and ongoing instability along the border. In late June 2012, however, increasing numbers of protesters took regularly to the streets to protest the government austerity measures and the rising cost of living. The Bashir government cracked down hard on these protests and, in an attempt to restore its faltering legitimacy, invoked Sharia and promulgated what it said was a fully Islamic constitution. Sporadic protests have continued through 2013.⁴

The Arab Spring thus influenced society and politics far beyond those countries where Arabic is the dominant language. Writing from the southern end of the continent, I want to first offer a reading of the events of the northern parts of the continent and place them in larger and deeper historical context. I hope to introduce some considerations regarding the understanding of these events as revolutions that I believe are not often enough raised, probably because the events are still in the making; thus, the actors are too deeply involved in keeping the process of protest and revolt alive, and commentators are mostly concerned about keeping abreast of them. Second, I shall try to make the case for a comparative reading of these developments with a specific period and experience in the history of southern Africa (ca. 1975–ca. 1994), an exciting but also very violent period that saw the last of the settler-colonial regimes of the region surrender power to majority parties in democratic elections.

Intifadah and Thawra Begin in Africa

An extensive political science literature is devoted to authoritarianism in the Arab world, reflecting both a reality and a disciplinary perspective—perhaps bias—that is concerned only with the state. Thus, until the Arab Spring, what literature there was on social movements in those regions was almost wholly concerned with Islamist organizations. Yet there is a pattern of mobilization, protest, and periodic resurgence of movements against the authoritarian state. In March 1985 an uprising spread through Khartoum, capital of the Republic of Sudan, while the country’s president, Ja’afar Numayri, was on a trip to the United States; the revolt led to his removal from power and exile. Only a few weeks after the popular uprising against his rule, his party apparatus, security services, and supporters had to make way for an interim military authority. By April 1986 a new civilian government was in power. This was a major achievement for the Sudanese, who had lived with the authoritarian and capricious regime of Numayri since 1969. His rule began in the name of socialism with support from the well-organized Sudanese Communist Party; it ended after his turn to sharia punishment, his implementation of the so-called September laws with support from the well-organized Sudanese Muslim Brothers, and his move to ally himself with the West. The popular intifadah against the Numayri regime is one of many heroic uprisings among the Sudanese. The Sudanese uprising is also a reminder of the long-standing capability of peoples in the region to rise up against repressive and unpopular governments.⁵

Two years later, in December 1987, and thousands of kilometers to the northeast of Khartoum, Palestinian youth, who had known only Israeli military occupation since 1967, began an uprising that would continue for years. It would lead to the Oslo Accords, another round of uprisings (the second intifadah of 2000), and the introduction of new forms of repression. But the 1987 uprising introduced the term intifadah into the vocabulary of the region and the world. After this time many people across the world saw intifadah as a specifically Palestinian phenomenon. People celebrated the intifadah in other parts of the Middle East, looking for spaces in which to contest the oppressive situations in which they found themselves.⁶

Skirmishes and radical contestation occurred across the region. Intifadah came to define rebellion and uprisings against the state. It generally was used in cases where the power imbalance was huge and the issues very clear rather than when protests became more sustained uprisings or military insurrections.⁷

Through the 1980s, the 1990s, and into the new millennium, the states of North Africa and the surrounding region confronted their opponents using militaristic tactics and capacities. This response began after the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat, who was killed during a military parade in October 1981 by army officers linked to the Islamic Group and Islamic Jihad.⁸ With this assassination came a major state crackdown by the military, with armed resistance and also outright terrorism spreading across Egypt. After the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1988 and 1989, many Arab fighters who had left Egypt to fight in Afghanistan returned to Egypt in pursuit of what was being promoted as permanent revolution to achieve liberation from oppressive rule. Nobody used the term intifadah to describe these activities, instead using the word irhab, or terrorism. The state used this threat of irhab to muzzle opposition and crack down on any potential intifadahs. The state even managed to win over organized sections of the secular left in the fight against this terror, which was being carried out in the name of religion. Thus the last intifadah in Egypt was the so-called bread riots of January 1977 that shook the Sadat government. Resistance to the state remained mostly dispersed, sporadic, and unorganized.

In North Africa in the 1990s Algeria was far more dangerous than Egypt. The latter endured a low-intensity war between the state and Islamist groupings but nothing compared to what was going on in Algeria. The large-scale armed conflict between the Algerian military and Islamist militants quickly became a civil war in the 1990s. The cause of the conflict was the cancellation of a second round of elections in which the opposition Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was bound to win based on their massive victories during the first round. The FIS presented a major challenge to the ruling party, and there was a strong possibility that it could win the elections of 1991. Consequently, the elections were canceled, which resulted in leading members either fleeing the country or taking up arms. Between 1992 and 1998 a civil war plagued the entire country. Tens of thousands were killed, mostly at the hands of groups such as the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the state’s paramilitary forces. The Algerian state has always spoken of its fight against irhab. Tens of thousands of Algerians died in the brutal civil war. With memories of the repression and civil war of the 1990s still fresh, the attempt at intifadah in Algeria while there was an Arab Spring in the region was half-hearted.⁹

What has happened in the region since December 2010 is described among the actors there as a revolution (thawra). This is especially the case in Egypt. It is not necessary to narrate here the chronology of events since the immolation in Tunis of the hawker Mohamed Bouazizi, the fleeing of Ben Ali, and the impact of these events on other states.

In Tunisia the overthrow of the ruler took about one month. Within about a year the country had a new government. Tunisia is among the smallest of the countries of the region—in geographical extent and in population size. The elite, which had ruled the country since its independence in 1956, grew increasingly out of touch with the country’s people and their culture, language, and economic struggles. The state and the elite were oriented to the West, and France in particular. The fear of irhab was used by the state to stifle opposition and dissent. However, the uprising against the Ben Ali dictatorship was nonviolent and, in fact, largely limited to seeing the removal of the man, his wife, and the elite around him. To what extent it was a thawra is another matter, which we shall explore in a moment.

Egyptians with any political education have had profound affection for the term thawra. In popular speech and media, intifadah is far too limited and timid to describe major events in modern Egyptian history. Even a coup d’état is described as a thawra: The modern Egyptian revolutions are the ’Urabi Revolution in 1882, the Nationalist Revolution in 1919, a 1952 coup d’état to end about one and a half centuries of monarchy, and finally the events of 2011 and of mid-2013. In Egypt the use of the term “revolution” is sometimes more specific, and a revolution is seen not so much as a process covering a period of a year or a few years but as an event that happened on a particular month and day. So we have the “Revolution of January 25,” which refers to the date Mubarak left office for the resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh. The Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim is rare among Egyptian intellectuals in having consistently spoken of these events as an intifadah and not a thawra.¹⁰

So far I have paid some attention to a few Arabic words. This brings me to the role of communication in the recent events. Language specialists inside the region have bemoaned the decline in standards of Arabic usage across the region. Some foreign specialists have noted the major dialectical differences across the Arabic-speaking world and have found the differences are in fact growing. In other words, there is a steady breakup of the Arabic linguistic community—the basis of Arab nation building and nationalism. However, the speed at which news of events spread through Al Jazeera and other regionwide media points to a lively persistence of the linguistic ties that bind the region. The dramatic events in Tunis were immediately taken up in Cairo, then in Tripoli and Manama and Sana’a and Damascus. There is thus a basis for invoking the signifier “Arab” for the events in the region. Some of the slogans are the same, demands expressed in simple terms such as “The people want the fall of the system” or “Dignity” or “Go (Leave).” It appears then that the elements of an Arabic identity that transcend the fragile nation-states (products of twentieth-century imperial power) remain attractive and powerful. The new communication media—mobile phone, e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter—were undoubtedly important, but their significance tends to be overestimated. They were tools, and in their absence other instruments of communication would have been found to spread the information. Equally important was the existence of a symbolic space—Tahrir Square, Liberation Square—where citizens could convene in opposition to oppressive rule.

A deep resentment of the regimes had led to sustained and frequent acts of resistance throughout Egypt for at least three or four years before the events of 2011. Egypt was actually on the brink of revolution or a major rebellion for some time. Many critical intellectuals and activists were aware of what was happening in the small towns in the Nile Delta and the industrial towns outside Cairo, but they were also aware of the vast state security apparatus ready to apply ruthless repression in the face of any protests. The April 6 movement emerged as a group of young people mobilizing support for the labor movement and in particular for a minimum wage. The young men and women—from middle-class families of Muslim and Coptic faiths—were unprepared for the events of 2011 in which they had played a catalytic role.¹¹

What were the conditions in Egypt on the eve of the intifadah of 2011? Dissatisfaction with the Mubarak regime had been growing over the previous decade. Using the cover of engaging in a “war on terror,” the regime was able to tighten the screws on opposition even further. Mubarak presented Egypt to the West as a bulwark against extremist terrorism, safe for investment, and presented himself as a moderate leader keen on democracy. Thus Obama chose Cairo as the place where he would address the Muslim world on relations between the West and Islam. As long as the regime kept the peace with Israel, aid (largely for the military) of US$3 billion per annum would be forthcoming from the United States. Mubarak in fact bent over backward in promoting good relations with Israel—far beyond what any previous Egyptian ruler had done, and possibly as far as the Jordanians. Thus the imprisonment of Palestinians in Gaza was also the work of Egyptian security and military forces.

Mubarak and the obedient men around him grew e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 From Cairo to the Cape: The Dilemmas of Revolution
• 2 Gathering the Pieces: The Structural, Social, and Psychological Elements of African Renewal
• 3 Understanding a Flawed Miracle: The History, Dynamics, and Continental Implications of South Africa’s Transition
• 4 Irreconcilable Truths?: Gender-Based Violence and the Struggle to Build an Inclusive History
• 5 Managing Transition: Lessons from Tunisia
• 6 Is There a Center to Hold? The Problem of Transition in Post-Qaddafi Libya
• 7 The Pharaoh Returns: The “Politics of Order” and the Muslim Yearning for Freedom
• 8 Political Theology in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring: Returning to the Ethical
• 9 The One and the Many: Religious Coexistence and Belonging in Postapartheid Society
• 10 A Popular Revolution? Gender Inequality and Political Change in North Africa
• 11 A “New” Pan-Africanism: Future Challenges
• 12 The Potential of an African Assertion—Once More, in the Name of a Renaissance
• Appendices
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Contributors
• Index