“Why do we think that the conditions here are any different? What justification is there for believing that we are immune?” These rhetorical questions came from the mouth of a Moroccan political scientist at a drinks party during the African Network of Constitutional Lawyers’ annual conference in Rabat earlier this month.
The function was hosted in an opulent house and there were plenty of posh people around. He seemed to be addressing his question to them rather than me, yet he lowered his voice as he spoke, conspiratorially.
This conversation took place in the sliver of time sandwiched, as it turned out, between Tunisia and Egypt. Since then, the revolutions have been coming thick and fast. Too fast for CNN and the BBC, even for Al Jazeera. The one thing that has become entirely clear is that these apparently great media empires can do only one revolution at a time.
They would have coped okay in 1989-90, when the so-called “velvet” revolutions of Eastern Europe conveniently spaced themselves a few weeks apart. One had time to digest the fall of the Berlin Wall before moving on to Prague, although it is also true that the gruesome if welcome end of Ceau-sescu in Romania on Christmas Day 1989 was surprisingly abrupt.
The consequences of that period of change were unlimited and unpredictable; and not all of them by any means fitted the romantic narrative of popular democratic revolution. Tito was a thoroughly unpleasant man, but the blood-soaked post-Tito “former” Yugoslavia, riven by war, was hardly a bundle of laughs either.
So, the consequences of such uprisings for the balance of power in the Middle East are uncertain and perilous, which is why Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton look like rabbits caught in the headlights. The Israelis are steeling themselves. Let us pray that the finger near their red button is sufficiently steady, otherwise world war will not be far away.
For this continent, liberation will shake up the politics of the African Union. As Moammar Gadaffi’s eyes glint madly as he makes his last stand, Thabo Mbeki will quietly celebrate the elimination of his former bête noir.
‘Wave’ of victories
For Jacob Zuma, however, a possible dilemma presents itself. During his most troubled days, Zuma visited the Libyan tyrant at least once and presumably it was not to drink tea and discuss the price of fish. There may well be a debt to be called in. Conveniently, former Haitian dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide is apparently on the cusp of returning to his homeland, so perhaps Zuma will invite Gadaffi to be our new house guest?
But back to my Moroccan companion’s rhetorical questions: do we have any right to assume that the conditions here — in South Africa — are any different? Are we immune from such popular uprising?
Of course, to construct the questions in this way implies that such an uprising would be unwelcome. Within the language lies an establishment interest in the status quo: I’m alright, Jack, but millions aren’t.
On the face of it South Africa is different. It has had its revolutionary moment — well, its transfer of power at least, in 1994 — and its democracy, though far from fully consolidated, with some wobbly institutions and creepingly corrosive corrupt tendencies driven by a rentier class within the ruling elite, is nonetheless vibrant, with an encouragingly resilient rule of law. But this comparison makes an important and possibly fatal assumption. It buys into the romantic notion of democratic revolution that is being peddled by many analysts and observers of the dramatic events in the Maghreb: that the protests are driven by a desire for democracy per se rather than against the desperate socio-economic conditions in which most working men and women in those countries live.
That this should confuse those who wish to see another (fourth) “wave” of victories for liberal democracy should be no surprise. They have long been flummoxed by the evidence of opinion polling on this continent that shows that Africans value democracy not for the procedural safeguards and niceties that it provides, but for the promise of a materially better life.
To their great cost, liberal-democratic theorists have persistently misunderstood or refused to accept the relationship between democratic processes on the one hand and socio-economic outcomes on the other.
Although it is simply too soon to say for certain what the main drivers of change were in the Arab countries that have entered such a significant period of change, or what the ingredients were that created the critical mass of active opposition to autocratic rule, I would venture the hypothesis that it was anger about the cost of food and the lack of access to the ordinary necessities of daily life such as water and electricity that were the primary causes. If so, then most of the world should prepare for some of the same. The population of the world recently passed the seven billion mark; by 2050 it will be nine billion, at least. The events in Egypt and Libya prove that no fence is tall enough to withstand the pressure. The levels of poverty and inequality are, quite simply, unsustainable.
As they are in South Africa. We are not immune; nor should we be.