Group items tagged

Of course, African protest movements do not face an easy route. Confronted with the deregulatory pressures of global development frameworks these movements must contend with mushrooming food and utility prices, and the violence meted out by states when faced with meaningful opposition to neo-liberal economic programmes. Indeed, the negativity questioned by the audience member in London referred to the state-sponsored violence visited upon African protestors which the different protestors repeatedly referred to.

social change takes time, and requires a broader social base than just the urban middle class elite which characterised the Tahrir Square phenomenon.

Calls for greater democracy in Africa are not framed purely within the actions of specific corrupt ruling elites. Rather it is the relationships between these ruling elites and the agents of global free-market capitalism which are the source of much public anger. It is these relationships which have amongst other things shrunk public services and robbed the continent of the bulk of the profits from its most valuable natural resources. And these relationships have been enabled by international donor policies which have shrunk the state in Africa in the belief that it is the state which has been the source of African’s problems. 

And so, if we search for images of recent African protests what we will find is not an overwhelming number of crowds with placards calling for greater openness in government, but a set of explicitly socio-economic demands relating to price rises and unemployment, or the withdrawal of affordable public services and utilities, all brought on by the skewed position of Africa in the global economy, and the enforced privatisation of land, energy and other resources which have largely fallen into the hands of foreign profit-extractive companies and their collaborators in the ruling elites of African countries. 

African elites are not uniquely corrupt, nor do they exist in a vacuum of African corruption, but neither is Africa a pure victim of contemporary economic imperialism.  African elites are as complicit in processes of resource and profit extraction as the multinational corporations such as Shell Oil who so often come in for the vitriol of social justice and anti-corporate activists.

It is not enough for international donors to call for ‘free and fair’ elections, only for them to enforce, by dint of the implicit threat of aid withdrawal, a complicity amongst all the candidates with neoliberal economic orthodoxy. This is what we find repeatedly in African elections, and in this respect at least it would be fair to say that African elections differ very little from elections in many other parts of the world, including the UK. 

African activists have much to teach the rest of the world in resisting austerity, and the many obstacles that lie in the path of such resistance, and it is about time more of us started to listen.

The media succeeded in playing on this by portraying that what Egyptians want is by no means a kind of »secular« society, or state, but they don’t want religious extremists either. And the discourse leading up to the summer of 2013 was increasingly pointing out the extremism of the MB.

the armed militants in Sinai fighting the military were quickly identified with the MB although again there is no proof of this connection. The situation there is very difficult to assess and I have serious doubts about a lot of media stories, especially if they are based on statements by the Ministry of Interior or the military. They use these kinds of situations to spread rumors and fear. So, all this is happening in the background leading up to the summer of 2013.

But I personally do not believe that the MB had the agenda of becoming religious extremists. Up until now, all the examples the media, the military and Sisi have used to portray the MB as some kind of terrorist entity, there is zero proof of any of that. That is not to say that it could not ever happen. But I do not believe that it has happened. It wouldn't be in the interest of the MB whatsoever. But this narrative has succeeded and provided the perfect enemy required to increase patriotism and suppress a lot of civil rights.

t was in the interests of the security regime in Egypt, the military and the Ministry of Interior and so these apparatuses co-opted it. Fights occurred on various occasions, MB headquarters were attacked and vandalised, and every time the Ministry of Interior would support the protesters.

Some people would say that this kind of plan, to eventually scapegoat the MB, had already been organized when the MB came to power. I don’t think this was the case. The MB was by far the entity with the most following in the streets. When the elections happened, in 2012, the generals were not seen as that favorable. Because this was the end of the period of the military junta known as SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces), where some of their violence against the population was becoming more and more known and there was actually a growing harsh criticism. Many people opposed the idea of a new military regime taking power and I don’t think the generals considered this strategic at the time. So there was this common sentiment for civilian leadership, and the MB was the best entity to fill that role.

Here we cannot exclude foreign interests. The USA, the Russians, the Europeans, all of them have some push and pull. When members of the American Congress came to visit they were very happy with the MB because they agreed on all the major points. They were not going to change any of the previous agreements, so Camp David agreement with Israel was going to be maintained, according to their promises. And the MB promised to continue the neoliberalisation of the economy. There are a lot of military links between Egypt and the US, and it was clear that it was an acceptable scenario for the MB to take power at that time.

two things happened. One, the MB were not able to maintain enough popularity. So the streets remained unstable; protests continued, especially spontaneous protests with increasing violence. This increasing instability was to nobody’s interest. Not to any of the foreign powers interests, because anyone with money and power is interested in a stable Egypt. It does not really matter who is in power – whether they are a military dictatorship or have a religious agenda – as long as they can maintain a stable situation. And the MB were proving themselves increasingly unable to do that. Secondly, as mentioned before, a lot of the government structure that the MB inherited remained to a certain extent loyal to the old regime. So there was this constant competition, and this internal, slow, everyday opposition to what the MB could do. But at the same time, part of this opposition was also to the MB trying to place their individuals in positions of power.

What was the situation like when the military began massacring people? The situation was really shocking. At the end of the day, it was a military strategy of divide and conquer. The military really succeeded in dividing the opposition, by creating a scenario where you are either with the MB or you are not. There is nothing else. Protests that were not pro-MB, but simply criticized the military, were quickly portrayed by the media but also by military spokespersonS as supporting of the MB and therefore immediately delegitimized. Sadly, a lot of intellectuals, a lot of previously very active and well-known figures in the revolution, took this position to not criticize the military yet and to rather give them a chance and see what kind of transition they would be able offer us because our main concern right now was making sure the MB do not have another chance at power.

Is this also true for the workers? First of all, there is no workers movement. There was a wave of workers’ strikes. I have written about this in my article '2011 is not 1968'. Tunisia, for example, has a very different historical background as far as labour organizations are concerned. In Egypt, they were very harshly suppressed. So strikes continued, but they always happened in a separate sphere from street protests. Sadly, these two processes are quite separate.

In my view, there wasn’t a kind of momentum of a workers’ movement. There was a very significant wave of worker actions, but it was extremely difficult to mobilize workers even to have solidarity to a nearby strike or action. Because jobs are so threatened, you do not want to lose your job. In certain periods people were willing to risk their jobs in order to improve their situation, but very rarely for political ends.

When the MB won, strikes quieted down for a while because there was a broad perception that things would change. I remember having conversations where people were saying: »This age of corruption is over, privatization is over.« There had been promises that there would be no more privatization …

As I mentioned earlier, the powerful players both inside and outside of Egypt have as their main interest a strong stable state. And the way the cards have been played is in the interests of this kind of stability.

Capitalism is not a thing, I would rather want to speak of the spirit of capitalism that in the Egyptian context has manifested itself as a convoluted oligarchy, where the power lies with those with capital, with control of militarized statist institutions. Capitalism in this form in Egypt will only drive people that are not a part of this club of rulers deeper into crisis. Prices are rising excessively as neoliberal policies are maintained by the Sisi government as they were by Morsi. Gas prices have gone up, transport and food prices are constantly going up and wages remain constant, jobs are hard to get ahold of. The more the guarantees for a decent way of life wane, the more capitalism approaches its end. The next battle will be much more violent.

A further question on the economic prospects: the general situation seems to be very shaky but there have been massive capital inflows from the Gulf states and grandiose development plans more recently. Many people are still convinced of the good interests of the current regime. With prices going up, there is a perception of foreign funds flowing into the country as a positive thing.

The Suez canal is seen as a national treasure. So we are going to make more money out of it? Great. As far as we know, all the income from the Suez canal used to go straight into Mubarak's coffers. I was part of a group that was working on debt in the past couple of years and we don't know where that money went. So if they are going to increase the profits from there, where is that going to go?

I don't think this is going to happen in the next few months, but it will come back. The conditions that brought people to the streets in 2011 are already here and so protest will return in the near future. And I think that it will be much more violent the next time, from both sides. I think you can't discredit what happened in the past three years, even though many people paid with their lives or are paying with heavy prison sentences. The kind of consciousness that has been created through these moments of revolt and the various different debates and mobilizations that have occurred, it can’t be undone. It has left a very deep impression on the population at large. We have gone through a lot of waves in the past four years. In 2011, in 2012, there were already heavy moments of depression and almost regret for what has occurred. It is far from over.

Looking back on the years since the so-called revolution in 2011 one can see that people were able to topple governments, there were massive workers‘ struggles and a strong youth movement striving for freedom rights. At the same time, however, people first supported the military against Mubarak, then the MB against the military and finally the military against the MB… After the coup in July 2013, there was widespread acceptance of the military’s massacres. How could the next wave of struggles look like?

I think the system really needs to collapse in order for some kind of better form of society to emerge. But what that means, I have no idea. And maybe that is not such a bad thing. I think one of the important lessons to learn here is that things cannot easily happen in Egypt in a vacuum, apart from what happens elsewhere in the world. Because you constantly have this influence from the outside, whether it is from the Gulf or from the western states that are sending in at this point weapons and military training and financial support and maintain their trade agreements in order to shape the power constellation. So for things to significantly change in Egypt there needs to be a significant change in those different centers of power as well.