RSS 2.0 FeedMarch 2011 Vol 30 Edition 1, Featured Articles, Southern Africa
Africa eyes Arab uprisings with hope, while dictators squirm
DAKAR - Across sub-Saharan Africa, countries weary of repression, poverty and corruption look north to the revolutions sweeping the Arab world with hope, while the strongmen that lead them look on with unease.
From Angola to Zimbabwe, a long list of African countries have been under the iron grip of one man for over 20 or 30 years.
But are the yawning gap between wealthy elites and the hungry masses and years of repression south of the Sahara enough to unleash a wave of popular anger as seen in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya?
"The popular revolt in North Africa will inspire sub Saharan Africa from Angola to Burkina Faso, from Nigeria to Eritrea to take the torch of freedom, defy the consequences and march forward," says leading Nigerian rights and political activist Shehu Sani.
"So whether the popular uprising will happen in southern Sahara is not a question of if, but when."
However Sani and other observers agree that while the kindling for revolution is stronger in sub-Saharan Africa than north Africa and the Middle East, ethnic and religious divides make it hard to form a common front.
North Africa enjoys "homogenity in terms of race, culture and religion - all these make it easier to mobilise as opposed to sub-Saharan Africa where there is fragmentation," says Nigerian academic Eze Osita.
Despite these differences opposition leaders across the continent are calling for their supporters to follow the Arab example and revolt while rulers scramble to contain the fallout.
Equatorial Guinea enforced a "media blackout" on events surrounding the fall of the Tunisian and Egyptian leaders.
In Angola, an anonymous call for a mass protest saw the ruling party - in power since independence in 1975 - warn that "serious measures" would be taken against protesters.
In Zimbabwe, where 87-year-old Robert Mugabe has ruled since 1980, a former lawmaker and 46 other people were arrested at a meeting discussing the protests in Egypt.
Even in less repressive countries such as Mozambique or Burkina Faso, and lauded democracies such as South Africa and Senegal, poverty, unemployment or lack of electricity have sent protesters to the street.
Key to the fall of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents, observers say, were the use of social networks to mobilise youth outside of traditional parties and unions, as well as the neutral attitude of their armies.
In sub-Saharan Africa armies are often subservient to the powers-that-be and the reach of the Internet is much lower than in the Maghreb.
"...The problem is that the army is not always republican, but submits to the will of the head of state," said Patrick N'Gouan, head of an Ivorian civil society movement CSCI.
His country is a case in point: After a disputed presidential election the army backed strongman Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to cede power to his rival Alassane Outtara, the internationally recognised victor.
In Uganda, where President Yoweri Museveni has been in power since 1986 and was recently re-elected under dubious conditions, the army "is highly partisan and often behaves like a political militia," Frederick Golooba Mutebi, a professor at the Makerere University Institute of Social Research, told AFP.
Mutebi also argued that sub-Saharan Africa, and Uganda in particular, has a smaller educated middle class and that north Africa is much more urbanized than sub-Saharan Africa.
"The infrastructure for starting and sustaining such an uprising is much stronger there. Whether it's through the Internet or other communication tools, the protesters in Egypt are constantly in touch with each other ... That level of infrastructure doesn't exist here," Mutebi told AFP.
Takavafira Zhou, an analyst with the state-run Masvingo University in Zimbabwe, warns that the Arab uprisings may have another effect, giving strongmen a chance "to increase dictatorship to consolidate their position in power."
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