Is an African Spring Looming on the 2012 Horizon? BBC Africa Debate explores and deliberate with Ghanaian listeners at the launch of their new program.
While researching towards this article, I couldn’t use any quote to support my opening than borrowing this from the Guardian’s Dave Sherman:
“Democracy does not begin and end with the ballot box – it’s a myth that this is all about an elite rejecting the popular vote.“
I vividly remember how the socio-political and economic grievances in Tunisia forced the computer science graduate- turned-fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi to set himself ablaze on Dec 17, 2010 which sparked the Arab Spring.
On Jan. 14, just 10 days after Bouazizi died President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali‘s 23-year rule of Tunisia was over. In case you’re in a fix and don’t know, what exactly the Arab Spring is about; here’s a brief explanation:
“The Arab Spring, otherwise known as the Arab Awakening, was a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests which occurred (still on-going in some parts of the Arab world) in the Arab world that began on Dec 18, 2010.”
Countries in the sub-Saharan region have not been affected by this wave of revolution, despite the existence of numerous old presidents, highly suppressive states, and populations facing high unemployment and with long-standing umbrage.
The risk of popular social unrest, fueled by mounting frustration with rising food prices, high unemployment and poor social conditions definitely represents a threat to governability in a number of African countries especially Senegal & Uganda.
For instance in Senegal, long serving Dictator-cum-President Abdoulaye Wade‘s apparent determination to run for a 3rd presidential term in the February polls is actually going to cause a chance of instability.
A two-term limit on the presidency was passed one year into his now 11-year-tenure, and Mr. Wade’s assertion that this does not apply retroactively to his first term is rejected by much of Senegal’s civil society and some constitutional scholars.
If Pres. Abdoulaye Wade wins the polls in the February election which actually gives him a 3rd term in office, the stability of Senegal could be jeopardized thereby starting an African Spring but that is far from happening. The case of Uganda isn’t different from Senegal.
Before starting this post; I remember inquiring from a few friends about their opinion on the Arab Spring and if a similar situation is possible in the sub-Saharan region. Most predicted, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni will be the first to go, followed by Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and then Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade but till date, nothing have happened as at yet.
I have been following my colleague Global Voices blogger; Rosebell Kagumire who constantly updated us via her twitter-feed on the Walk-to-Work protest which began on April 11, 2011 as a result of over-rising cost of fuel products.
Series of events took place which could have resulted in the African Spring but couldn’t materialize because of this observations:
- There are better economic conditions in North Africa & the Middle East than the sub-Saharan region.
- Most sub-Saharan Africans live from hand-to-mouth and often on less than a dollar a day so they wouldn’t jeopardize their chance of feeding and more!
- Ghanaians enjoys a certain type of peace which they can’t let go off in the name of revolution.
- In North Africa and the Middle East; Lawyers, Doctors and Engineers helped steered the Arab Spring but our elite in the sub-region tend to be passive observers ONLY.
As the BBC World Service Team launches their new programme BBC Africa Debate on Jan 27, 2012 in Accra, Ghana we shall be exploring and deliberating on the theme: Is an African Spring Looming on the 2012 Horizon?
Related articles
- African Social Media and the Arab Spring (edwardtagoe.com)
- Is an African Spring Necessary, Asks BBC (kajsaha.com)
- Tunisian Hopes for Arab Spring Innovation Spark in the Region (knowledgewhartonarabic.wordpress.com)
Mac-Jordan Degadjor, as far as i am concern this issue of “Is an African Spring Necessary” is pure nonsense and does not deserve the air time the BBC wants to waste on it. There are other relevant issues about Africa worth debating not this topic. Moreover, after reading your piece i found nothing of an emergency that will require an uprising from Africans, we have seen worse violence in the past, all alluding to giving Africans a better living conditions yet we have made little or no progress in that direction. So i believe my fellow Africans have gotten the message that an Up Spring does not change or make your problems go away. Hence, I want the BBC to know that it is not necessary. Rather, what is necessary is a “European Spring” in the face of austerity, economic down turn, dropping credit ratings, high food and fuel prices and unrealistic and bad economic policies in Europe and the so called Euro zone. I want the BBC to leave Accra, go to Paris and start the BBC Europe Debate on the topic Is a “European Spring†Looming on the 2012 Horizon?” I am tired of this Hippocrates. Leave Africa alone. You blood drinking Vampires. Shame unto you all.
I don’t think an African spring is necessary or looming. It seems to me that the fact that conditions differ from country would ensure that an uprising, even when it happens, will be confined to one country or two, and not to the rest of the continent, south of the Sahara. What do you think?
“Most sub-Saharan Africans live from hand-to-mouth – often on less than a dollar a day so they wouldn’t jeopardize their chance of feeding and more!”
Well, I do not think people would not fight for more if they deem it necessary. I also disagree with your assertion that West Africans won’t fight because it would jeopardise their “hand-to-mouth” life. I think it’s disrespect to them, what you say. These are people who work harder than anyone I know. Way harder.
I think you are quite on point about the elite in ‘sub-saharan’ Africa, most of whom are comfortable.
I need not read this post to have my views shared because I always have my thoughts on this subject that the Western machinery through their corporate mouthpiece are trying to foment and shove down our throats.
Why should there be an African Spring? Is it because there was a something called an Arab Spring? Would there ever be an American Spring? I hope that should have been the discussion with all these occupy wall street going on. None is talking about it. With all the European economies crushing and crashing they still get time to talk about an African Spring.
What they intend to do is to create a content for their Western audience whose penchant for vile and bloody news from Africa is anything but satiable.
What conditions led to the Arab spring? And let no one tell me that there the mere fact that a president stays in power for a longer time makes him/her a dictator. I’ve already shared my views on that thing we call dictator. A dictator dictates: he controls others and tells them what they should do. Isn’t America as a country a dictator to the world? The names that have been bandied about Museveni and Mugabe is to me funny in all its forms. Whatever the case may be Museveni is using the constitution to stay in power and unless that changes going nothing is going to change. You mention Mugabe. What is it that Mugabe has done that the West want him out? Why would they hate him so much. These are the things we should be thinking of. We need not pretend that the West wants our interest so much so that when they see a bad leader they quickly want to help the citizens. History has taught us that America has worked with the most oppressive governments ever and they still do. They worked and killed Patrice Lumumba but supported Mobutu. They supported Savimbe and made Mandela a terrorist. Think in earnest of these and let’s not think of what they think is good for us.
I hate it when African intellectuals regurgitate the same propagandist news spread by the West. It’s high time we refused to think along their lines. There are so many routes to development. What has actually happened in Libya, or Egypt, or even Tunisia? Just recently the Department of Defense couldn’t account for 2 billion of the 3 billion dollars Iraq gave them for reconstruction.
Let’s be careful in the way we jump to these news media who call themselves BBC, CNN, FOX and what not. They work for a phantom group who make business in times of unrest. Besides, are the conditions the same for a Spring or whatever -ing they call that? They are only sowing the seeds into our heads so that even when there is nothing to demonstrate people would go about creating it and they would descend in suits and cameras to take picture and show to the world telling them ‘these are the blacks, that’s all they can do’.
An African Spring is nonsense.
In fact, tell when has the US, France, UK et al. been democratic in their relationship with other countries?