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‘We’ve heard so much negativity, but can you tell us what you are actually doing about it?’ The question came from the back of the hall at the Africa Centre in London, where over 100 people had gathered to hear about the state of contemporary African protest movements from a panel of African activists including Ayanda Kota of the South African Unemployed Peoples’ Movement, Bayo Oyenuga of Occupy Nigeria, Osama Zumam of the Sudanese Communist Party and the respected commentator and political activist Yash Tandon.

However, these events have rarely been articulated into an African narrative, with the result that western audiences end up being drip-fed stories reinforcing the impression of stereotypical African instability and ‘Afro-pessimism’. Yet if the under or mis-reported uprisings, protests, revolts and changes of regime in many parts of Africa over the past few years (including, amongst others Cote D'Ivoire, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and Mozambique) have told us anything, it is that politics on the continent does not always, or mostly, take place at the point of a gun. 

Shrinking the state in Africa (an outcome of these policies as enforced by international donors) has produced the very conditions which protestors have revolted against: corruption, rising utility prices, and growing inequality.

On November 26, 2013, we saw the first implementation of a new Egyptian law effectively banning any and all protest not approved and regulated by the Ministry of Interior. This is the same Interior Ministry whose soldiers have killed thousands of protesters, maimed tens of thousands and tortured unknown others in recent years. This security apparatus is acting with renewed arrogance since the July coup that returned the Egyptian Army to a position of direct authority.

Hours later, the “No Military Trials for Civilians” campaign organized a protest against the new anti-protest law as well as the inclusion of military trials for civilians in the constitution currently being drafted. This time, the police beat and arrested dozens, among them some of Egypt’s most renowned activists, the same people who fought the injustice and oppression of Mubarak, the SCAF, the Muslim Brotherhood, and now Abdel Fattah al Sisi and the puppet civilian government in place since the coup.

Hours later, the police stormed Alaa Abdel Fattah’s home without a search warrant, beat him and his wife and kidnapped him; all this for charges of organizing the protest on the 26th. The following morning the prosecution questioned him at the Cairo Security Directorate and extended his detention to four days pending investigation.

On November 26, 2013, we saw the first implementation of a new Egyptian law effectively banning any and all protest not approved and regulated by the Ministry of Interior. This is the same Interior Ministry whose soldiers have killed thousands of protesters, maimed tens of thousands and tortured unknown others in recent years. This security apparatus is acting with renewed arrogance since the July coup that returned the Egyptian Army to a position of direct authority.

Hours later, the “No Military Trials for Civilians” campaign organized a protest against the new anti-protest law as well as the inclusion of military trials for civilians in the constitution currently being drafted. This time, the police beat and arrested dozens, among them some of Egypt’s most renowned activists, the same people who fought the injustice and oppression of Mubarak, the SCAF, the Muslim Brotherhood, and now Abdel Fattah al Sisi and the puppet civilian government in place since the coup.

Hours later, the police stormed Alaa Abdel Fattah’s home without a search warrant, beat him and his wife and kidnapped him; all this for charges of organizing the protest on the 26th. The following morning the prosecution questioned him at the Cairo Security Directorate and extended his detention to four days pending investigation.

There was something very important in this phase which leads up to the mass demonstrations on June 30th 2013 and the following days: The media played an extremely different role than they did in early 2011 and then again after the military coup on July 3rd. Priot to June 30th, They actually covered these events very clearly and showed the police suppression on the streets

Just to give a little anecdote: Our group Mosireen, that in the past had filmed things that were for us the perspective of the street, almost did not have a role any longer because so much of this repression was being covered by television and news outlets.

To rephrase the question in more concrete terms: Were these mass protests a response to continuing repression and social misery or did the specific nature of the MB as an Islamic party, slowly trying to “islamicise” society, play a role? Initially opposition was growing because repression was maintained and especially because it was covered more than in any other period.

These news agencies interviewed political commentators or activists — increasingly becoming celebrities in their own right — to decipher the actions behind the images seen. As interpretation and then meaning were layered onto the images, a significant distortion took place to the acts behind the scenes. Non-Arabic language media outlets relied primarily on English-speaking activists, many of us middle class, many of us already politicized before January 25. Arabic-language news stations similarly turned often to middle class activists to speak on behalf of the revolution, each of whom interpreted every moment according to their respective ideological perspectives.

Our explanations also satisfied the practical requirements and standards of a media industry with a target audience accustomed to an interlocutor with a particular profile using a specific political discourse. This process drowned out the voices of the majority. No matter how hard we tried to argue otherwise, we fit the part — middle class, internet-savvy, youth, and thus revolutionary.

Other industries soon followed suit: right after journalism, academia, film, art, the world of NGOs relied on us as the ideal interpreter of the extraordinary. They all eventually bought into and further fueled the hyper-glorification of the individual, the actor, the youth subject, the revolutionary artist, the woman, the non-violent protester, the Internet user.

While notable exceptions exist, the overall tendency of most accounts has been to compartmentalize and classify. Middle-Eastern resistance to dictatorship, Northern Mediterranean unrest against externally enforced austerity measures, and an Anglo-American revolt against the tyranny of the financial sector, have been analyzed as discrete cases each with their own structural and contingent dynamics. The results of this compartmentalization are all too predictable. Two years on, instead of a single image of global rebellion, we are left with fractured portraits of localized discontent.

Rather than view these uprisings within the recently sanitized history of revolution and an increasingly ineffectual grammar of social movements, it is high time to call the global occupations of public space what they are: social arrests.

The uprisings against authoritarian rule in Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and Egypt were uniformly proclaimed as “expressing the will of the people”, while the strikingly similar manifestations of their Spanish, Greek, and American counterparts were all but ignored. This bifurcation in Western responses, one equally evident in governments and the mainstream media, is indicative of how we have come to perceive the role of mass political protest in the first decade of the 21st century. In the tradition of the French Revolution, uprisings against authoritarian rule are signified as acts of popular sovereignty — legitimate manifestations of a people unable to express their will through alternate channels — whereas similar protests within liberal representative democracies are marginalized as the acts of a raucous minority.

With the Egyptian military’s removal of the Muslim Brotherhood from power, local media immediately changed its narrative, de-humanizing in the process the pro-Morsi camp and praising the military that would save Egypt from “terrorism.” Since then they have been downplaying clear attempts by the authorities to stifle the ongoing revolution and to provide further protection for the police force whose brutal tactics provoked the uprising in the first place.

On November 24, interim President Adly Mansour officially approved a new protest law granting the Ministry of Interior vast powers. This law requires ‘notification’ (subject to refusal) of the MoI a few days prior to planned demonstrations – defined as any public gathering of more than 10 people.

The way security officials handled the situation couldn’t have been more indicative of how the police state is alive and well. No safe exit from the demonstration was provided for the protestors, nor were they asked to leave prior to the police dispersal, as stipulated in the protest law. Instead, protesters were water cannoned and seconds later, a number of policemen, some with batons, and some of whom were masked or in plainclothes – in violation of the new law – charged at the protesters and forcefully detained those they could get their hands on. Not only were the #NoMilTrials protesters arrested, but both women and men were sexually assaulted, beaten, stripped and dragged along the ground during these arrests.

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.

As Gaddafi finds new ways to attack Libyans, Libyans unleash their fury against his deployment of mercenaries from West and East Africa as migrant workers from south of the Sahara face increasing attacks and are prevented from leaving the country. Given the racism in Libya and low status of foreign black workers, it was only a matter of time before innocent people were attacked.

The language and subtext being used in some of the reports is cause for concern. In a video by Al Jazeera, ‘Immigrant workers under suspicion’, the US-based Frontlines of Revolution uses the headline ‘White Arab supremacy: Revolution or Moor black oppression?’ There is no doubt that there that racism is rife in Libya and that black foreign workers are being targeted, but language like this and lack of historical or political context only inflames the situation

Nonetheless, the assault on black Africans is disturbing, not least because the uprisings in North Africa have been framed within an Arab/Middle East context, not just by Western media but more importantly by Al Jazeera, which itself has become part of the revolutionary story. This in itself further antagonises Arab–African/Arab–black tensions and also raises the monumental question as to who is an African and what do we mean by Africa. Pambazuka News editor Firoze Manji addresses this in a recent interview with Al Jazeera – could this possibly be a response to growing criticism of their framing the North African uprisings solely in an ‘Arab’ context?

as narratives of victimhood and heroism have been performed and re-interpreted by various actors to numerous audiences, contentious claims have been made in the names of these political martyrs by state and religious institutions, as well as the public. ‘Ownership’ of the memory of Egypt’s revolutionary martyrs is being utilised to defend and attack the use of violence by the state and security forces.

The barricading in of the Ministry of Interior with walls lays bare the intention of a weak regime to protect itself rather than its people. Likewise, the actions of the military and police, exposed by human rights groups and NGOs such as ‘No to Military Trials’, signifies the increasing desperation of the regime to hold on to power. The recent murder of twelve-year-old street vendor Omar Salah Omran by a military conscript in Cairo near the US embassy, and even more poignantly the cover- up attempts of fellow army officers, doctors and ambulance staff, shows the incompetence of the Morsi regime to deal with daily life in Egypt without resorting to violence and coercion.

Despite the chaos, opposition groups are learning from each subsequent wave of protest. As the state repeats its familiar tactics of repression, NGOs and activist organisations are becoming more adept at evidencing the brutality of the regime, from filming and capturing events on camera to uncovering and exposing false autopsy reports. Recent widespread civilian action in Port Said, ranging from government workers to microbus drivers, indicates a growing impatience that spans all sectors of society. It is common to hear people sitting in ahwas (street coffee houses) speaking of their latest plans to demand better conditions at work through strikes and walkouts. This culture of protest has been present in Egypt for years within certain groups and sectors, but now appears to be more prevalent than ever.

Egypt was never cleansed of corrupt figures by the Muslim Brotherhood, which instead joined them. Key figures in Egypt, like Al-Azhar’s Grand Mufti Ahmed Al-Tayeb (who was appointed by Mubarak), criticized the Muslim Brotherhood when Mubark was in power, then denounced Mubarak and supported the Muslim Brotherhood when it gained power, and then denounced the Muslim Brotherhood when the military removed it from power.

Unless a democratically-elected government is killing its own people arbitrarily and acting outside the law, there is no legitimate excuse for removing it from power by means of military force. There is nothing wrong with the act of protesting, but there is something wrong when a military coup is initiated by a corrupt military force that works in the services of Washington and Tel Aviv.

Expecting to win the 2012 elections, at first the Egyptian military fielded one of its generals and a former Mubarak cabinet minister (and the last prime minister to serve under Mubarak), Ahmed Shafik, for the position of Egyptian president. If not a Mubarak loyalist per se, Shafik was a supporter of the old regime’s political establishment that gave him and the military privileged powers. When Ahmed Shafik lost there was a delay in recognizing Morsi as the president-elect, because the military was considering rejecting the election results and instead announcing a military coup.

However, only specialists could have guessed the influence figures like Essam Sultan, El’Awa, Ayman Nour, Hesham Kandil, Emad Abdel Ghafour, Amro Elleithy and Samir Morcos would exert in Morsi’s state. Theoretically, such figures are referred to as ‘the regime’s periphery’. Yet in practice, the so-called periphery might exert more pressure on the leadership than the core.

As was obvious in his ‘ousting speech’ on July 3, El Sisi is not a typical military man wedded to unilateral decision-making. On the contrary, he acted then as a typical diplomat might, talking to all the possible major stakeholders before making his decision, and surrounding himself with a variety of public representatives who include religious figures, revolutionary figures, youth figures, old regime figures, and even representatives of political Islam.

Very similar to Nasser, El Sisi has been forced into a position he did not really expect. His personal charisma has exposed him to leadership, yet he has had no in depth preparation for rising popularity or how to maintain it.

Mohandseen would have been one of the zones where the army had an overwhelming majority, because many of those that benefit most from the patronage system that is the Egyptian state live there, whilst the army lies at the apex of this food chain.

It is rather unfortunate that many reports call our demonstrations ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ protests, because when we last did a count at al-Nahda square of the proportion of Muslim Brothers there, they came to about 20-25%. This is in fact a representative proportion across all protesters at the moment.

The Front for National Conscience is headed by ex-diplomat Ibrahim Yusri, who was ambassador for Egypt in Algeria during the political crisis of 1991-2 over the role of the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) in political, and talks here to al-Jazeera Arabic of his experience at that time and his strong opposition to the removal of Morsi as duly elected president and to the annulment of the legally binding constitution.

My focus is going to be on the articles related to the military, and rather than follow a liberal interpretation of law, where law is seen as apolitical, this analysis will be based on a realist interpretation of law, where law is seen as the codification of a political relationship backed by force. Although still subject to change, the draft constitution can tell us volumes on the current power relations within the Egyptian polity.

The most visible article that has provoked substantial controversy is article (174), which allows military tribunals for civilians. The proponents of this article have argued that it has been severely restricted, compared to earlier versions, and that it will only apply to cases of "terrorism". This argument, however, does not stand the test of scrutiny. The danger of this article is that it allows military tribunals to be held for “transgression against the public property of the military”. Considering that the military has an extensive economic empire that some experts estimate reaches up to 40% of the economy, this places the Egyptian working class in severe peril. In other words, if workers in those military establishments go on strike, perform acts of civil disobedience or occupy the factories, they can easily be deemed to be “transgressing” the property of the military, and sent to military tribunals, where the presiding judge is also an officer. This effectively means that the largest “capitalist” in the country has the power to send his workers to jail without the right to appeal. Needless to mention, the military's vast economic empire is not mentioned in the draft constitution, nor does it require civilian oversight and it is not subject to taxation. The military economic empire remains intact and protected. 

The council’s aim is to develop the media according to standards of “professionalism”, “ethics” and following the prerogatives of “national security”. This, combined with the leaked video of El Sisi planning a media clampdown and the shutting down of Bassem Youssef’s popular satirical show, do not bode well for freedom of media in Egypt. It is already extremely difficult to come across any media outlet that’s willing to take a critical stance towards the military. This control is now being codified into law.

Belatedly, after the Arab League expelled Libya, the chairperson of the AU Commission, Jean Ping, expressed ‘deep concern’ about what was going on in Libya. It is in the face of the timid position of the leaders of the African states that this statement wants to forthrightly express solidarity with the peoples of Libya and their demand to end the Gaddafi police state.

It is in the midst of this confusion it is necessary to say just as how Tanzanians did not classify all Libyans as supporters of Idi Amin of Uganda when Gaddafi used his mercenaries to back up that dictator in invading Tanzania in 1979 so it is also necessary to distinguish between poor African migrant workers in Libya and mercenaries and military entrepreneurs who are the leftovers from the military adventures of Gaddafi. This kind of clarity is necessary so that Africans in Libya and in other parts of the continent can distinguish between the oppressed and their oppressors in order to form the solidarity that could bring about true revolutionary transformation of relations of peoples across the Nile and the Sahara.

Libya is supposed to be the country in Africa with the highest Human Development Index ranking in Africa. Yet, even with significant oil reserves, the wealth of Libya did little for the peoples of Libya since only a small clique around Gaddafi and his family benefited from the billions of dollars of oil revenue. Gaddafi and his ‘revolutionary committees’ did very little to address the deep exploitation and marginalisation of the peoples of Libya, especially among the country's largely young population

certain factors do help explain the volatility in north Africa and the relative quiet to the south – and why that may not persist indefinitely. The first is the idea of the nation itself, along with regional identity.

A second factor is the role of the military. The Egyptian army's decision not to fire on protesters was key to the success of the February revolution. Sadly, we couldn't expect the same in sub-Saharan Africa,

More tragic evidence of this was provided last week when unarmed women expressing their opinion about the disputed election in Ivory Coast were mown down by troops loyal to the incumbent president. Not only was this a clear violation of human rights, but evidence of recklessness and impunity, and the extreme lengths to which leaders will go to protect their power.

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.

Burkina Faso has a vibrant civil society that has managed to resist attempts by successive regimes in the post-colonial period to be co-opted into the single party system or the system of trade union representation that continues to dog the country.

In contrast to Ben Ali’s Tunisia and Mubarak’s Egypt, Burkina Faso has always had a certain degree of freedom of information and expression and the right to organise. It is easier for young people from underprivileged classes to meet and plan their actions in person[3] rather than on the net[4].

Echoes of North Africa can also be seen in the relations with the police. Police brutality in the country make police stations a favourite target during demonstrations, yet in Leo some members of the armed forces reportedly apologised to demonstrators, assuring them they understood their desire for justice. ‘This immediately brought down tensions, demonstrators agreed to move on shouting bravos to the soldiers for their solidarity and compassion.’[6]