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She pointed out that it meant that all would be promptly released including, “above all Ali Seriati [chief of Ben Ali’s presidential guard] and Rafik Haj Kacem [former interior minister] This is serious. It is what happened under Ben Ali. So it is like we didn’t have a revolution.”  In previous trials Ali Seriati had been sentenced to 20 years and Rafik Haj Kacem, 15 years.

because of the depth of the current crisis of capitalism, that duality will become, I believe, ever more polarised in the coming period. In this presentation I want to explore some of the causes and dynamics around what I would describe as a time of African Awakenings.

Indeed, I think it would be a mistake to consider the shifting political and social climate in Africa being based on the overt, large-scale uprisings alone. There is growing evidence in a number of countries of social movements re-emerging during the last 10 years, providing a framework through which the disenfranchised have begun to re-assert their own dignity, proclaiming - even if only implicitly - their aspiration to determine their own destiny, their own right to self-determination.

The remarkable growth and spread of alternative media such as Pambazuka News is, I would suggest, further testimony of the changing mood on the continent. Ten years ago when we launched Pambazuka News, I was dismissed as a hopeless romantic for naming the website and newsletter 'Pambazuka' meaning, in Kiswahili, the awakening. I believe that the gathering momentum of these awakenings defines the social and political scene on the continent today. We are witnessing not so much an ‘Arab Spring’ as an African Awakening.

Yet, one local trade union may save the day.  If it did, it would not be doing so for the first time.  For this is no ordinary union.  The Tunisian General Union of Labour (UGTT) has affected the character of Tunisia as a whole since the late 1940s.  It impacted significantly the 2011 revolution and the transition period, and is likely to impact the future. In this, it is unparalleled elsewhere in the Arab world.  And it is largely because of it that one may confidently say that Tunisia is not Egypt, or Syria or Yemen. Indeed, to understand Tunisia, one must get to grips with its labour movement.

UGTT has been the outcome of Tunisian resistance and its incubator at the same time.  For example, in 1984 it aligned itself with the rioting people during the bread revolt; in 2008, it was the main catalyst of the disobedience movement in the Mining Basin of Gafsa; and, come December 2010, UGTT, particularly its teachers’ unions and local offices, became the headquarters of revolt against Ben Ali. 

In 1978, UGTT went on general strike to protest what amounted to a coup perpetrated by the Bourguiba government to change a union leadership judged to be too oppositional and too powerful.  The cost was the worst setback in the union’s history since the assassination of its founder in 1952.  The entire leadership of the union was put on trial and replaced by regime loyalists. Ensuing popular riots were repressed by the army, resulting in tens of deaths.

If the IMF leadership praised the dictatorship, insisted on austerity and advocated squeezing poor people for more taxes, what business does it have today in giving similar advice to Tunisia, or anywhere in the Middle East and North Africa, or for that matter Europe or anywhere at all? What can we learn about IMF thinking in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, as well as Palestine?

In contrast, there was no IMF conditionality aimed at reforming the dictatorship and halting widespread corruption by Ben Ali and his wife's notorious Trabelsi family, or lessening the two families' extreme level of business concentration, or ending the regime's reliance upon murderous security forces to defend Tunisian crony capitalism, or lowering the hedonism for which Ben Ali had become famous.

In that document, IMF staff worried that "managing popular expectations and providing some short-term relief measures will be essential to maintain social cohesion in the short term," and that this would come at a price: "external and fiscal financing gaps of US$9-12 billion... which would need to be filled with exceptional support from Egypt's multilateral and bilateral development partners, particularly given the limited scope for adjustment in the short term."

Nevertheless, the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi should not be solely held responsible for sectarian violence (even if they haven't helped matters), as the Egyptian state (especially security forces) are not under the control of Morsi and Coptic mobilization has crystallized.

Little has been done, however, to improve the state of the minorities in Egypt and recent attacks on Shiites reveal that it is not the Muslim Brotherhood but the state itself that is deeply sectarian.

The Egyptian state was reluctant to investigate such cases because security forces (who are supposed to investigate such cases) were involved. No one mentioned the rule of law.

Too many of those who participated didn’t see – for generational reasons, largely – that in order to hit home you have to have some form of political movement. It wasn’t surprising that the Muslim Brotherhood, which had taken part in the protests in Egypt at a late stage, took power: it was the only real political party in Egypt. But then the Brotherhood played straight into the hands of the military by behaving like Mubarak – by offering deals to the security services, offering deals to the Israelis – so people began to wonder what the point was of having them in power. The military was thus able to mobilise support and get rid of the Brotherhood. All this has demoralised an entire generation in the Middle East.

At the lunch, he said: ‘Now it’s time for questions – I’ll start off. Tariq Ali, I read the piece you wrote in the Guardian arguing that Tony Blair should be charged for war crimes in the International Criminal Court. Do you mind explaining why?’ I spent about ten minutes explaining, to the bemusement of the Syrian guests. At the end the ambassador said: ‘Well, I agree totally with that – I don’t know about the rest of you.’ After the guests had left, I said: ‘That was very courageous of you.’ And the MI6 man who was at the lunch said: ‘Yeah, he can do that, because he’s retiring in December.’ But a similar thing happened at the embassy in Vienna, where I gave a press conference attacking the Iraq war in the British ambassador’s living room. These people aren’t fools – they knew exactly what they were doing. And they acted as they did as a result of the humiliation they felt at having a government which, even though the Americans had said they could manage without the UK, insisted on joining in anyway.

The Greeks are being punished not so much for the debt as for their failure to make the reforms demanded by the EU. The right-wing government Syriza defeated only managed to push through three of the 14 reforms the EU insisted on. They couldn’t do more because what they did push through helped create a situation in Greece which has some similarities with Iraq: demodernisation; totally unnecessary privatisations, linked to political corruption; the immiseration of ordinary people.