What the fizzled Egyptian revolution tells us is that the power of the people rises not so much for freedom as for bread. And who am I but a fat and comfortable American to think there’s anything wrong with that?
Today’s demonstrations are pitiful by last week’s standards. It’s also more rigidly organized, capable of orchestrated violence. It’s a quickly maturing opposition that lost Round One. Round One’s heart and soul was people power; that’s gone. Next moves – if they exist at all – must be contemplated without people power.
People power has retreated to homes and businesses. Many workers want to start spending the 15% pay rises announced over the weekend by the Egyptian government. The more effete have the promises of political reform to solace them at night. “Free” is an adjective being attached to everything from the continuing protest to Hare Krishna dancing.
We know different, of course: our media celebrities are now confined to describing their confinements: the press has been muzzled as never before. There’s internet, again. There’s even the Google executive let out of jail. Yet Egypt progressives write feverishly of a crackdown of dissidents in serious high gear, now directed by the so-called people friendly army not police.
My style carries gloom, but also guilt. I fret about which is more important: the crackdown, the disheartened revolution, the recovery of most power by Mubarak with the same indecision about which kind bagel I should pull from my well-stocked pantry to toast.
Mubarak can’t afford 15% pay rises to a huge section of his population with pipe lines being blown up, tourists fleeing the country and capital evaporating. But don’t forget sugar daddy sitting just to the southeast. I suspect some remarkable new alliances between Egypt and Saudia Arabia are being worked out right now.
If sugar daddy runs out of sugar, that’s another story altogether. Bread digests quickly. If there’s not more in the days ahead, people power will rise, again.
But feed the beast long enough and it will go to sleep. The emasculation of rapid ideological change is a longer process. Sometimes it works quickly, like in China. And sometimes it works slowly, like in Zimbabwe.
As this blog goes to press millions are at Tahrir Square just ending prayers. This mostly and remarkably peaceful revolution is a new kind. No longer revolution, but Twevolution!
Click here! This is a live twitter feed of the Revolution!
Peaceful attempts to topple governments in my lifetime have been mostly failures. The one possible exception was the toppling of Peru’s President Fujimora in 2000 although it was not just the people in the streets but Peru’s other arms of government including its military that wanted him gone.
But in all the other cases, government change only came after tremendous violence often involving foreign governments.
This appears to be different. Really different.
Woe to Boeing and Lockheed, but it seems that fighter bombers might have been replaced by….
Twitter. Facebook. YouTube and so much more!
The amateur video which follows was picked up by AlJazeera and probably did more than any other video to really fuel the revolution. It shows the first street confrontation on January 28 between protesters and police, finally won by the protesters.
The video below was created a week earlier by a single, courageous woman pleading with everyone to join her in protest. She challenges watchers with the memory of Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian who self-immolated himself.
Peaceful protest in the past seemed to be destined for failure. How many bodies must fall in front of a tank before the phlanx of bodies succeeds? Buddhism and nonviolence has thus had a checkered history.
But until now, Buddhism and nonviolence lacked a winning tool.
There is an answer to “how many bodies” and Tahrir Square may just have them at this very minute. There is a calculus where not even a nuclear bomb can suppress a united protest.
When NBC reporter Richard Engel was asked on a live internet feed Wednesday night what strategy the anti-government protesters could possibly employ to counter the armed and carefully organized thugs fighting them, he hesitated, but then answered enthusiastically, “Information!”
That’s it! America is discombobulated by competing media pretending to report social will but actually governed by a need to produce entertainment. So even while we are in possession of the greatest technology skills and assets in the world, and while those were used to elect our first black president, I see them mostly coopted by our commercial priorities.
But not a place like Egypt. Desperation is very subjective. It’s completely fair to say that many in the U.S. feel as desperate trapped by the socio-economic system as Mohammed Bouazizi felt within his Tunisian society before he set himself on fire. But as that first video by that courageous young woman explains, there are alternatives in this highly connected world to removing yourself from society.
Mohammed’s action galvanized the desperation in his society. But not with steel and bullets, just with … Nielson Ratings!
Finally enough voices fell in line that their universal message could not be defeated even by overwhelming force.
Alive in Egypt is a consolidation site of videos, audio and tweets.
More skilled videos being created from around the world about the revolution can be found at Mibazaar.
Because there are so many tourists in Egypt, and because there’s no legal requirement that tour companies honestly reveal the scope of their operations, it’s very difficult to get an accurate picture of tourists and tourism right now. But here’s my best try.
Before the trouble last week, the U.S. State Department reported there were about 50,000 Americans in the country, of which 3-5000 were tourists. Since January 25, probably 6-7000 of those have left, of which 1500 may be tourists. That leaves around 3500 tourists and 43,500 nontourist Americans in Egypt right now.
And I venture to say they will not be hurt. No one likes what’s happening in Tahrir Square, now, but the violence in the country is localized. Savvy tourists will remain safe.
About a third of the 6-7000 Americans who have been able to leave did so aboard U.S. government supplied evacuation charters. But most of the travelers on the U.S. government charters were not tourists; they were government workers and U.S. residents living in Egypt.
Two-thirds of the Americans who have evacuated seemed to have done so on commercial flights.
Since 2800 Americans had previously registered with the U.S. State Department as intending to visit Egypt now, I estimate there were about 5000 American tourists there when the trouble started last week.
Tourist registration with foreign consulates is a service all countries provide, but in recent times it’s mostly large tour companies that register their clients, rather than individuals, and it’s usually hardly a third to a half of the actual tourists who travel.
In the best of times true tourist numbers are very hard to get. This is because no U.S. or foreign agency reports the numbers of people entering or leaving a country in real-time. The U.S. is the best for reporting inbound tourists on a quarterly basis. But Egypt, for example, reports suspicious statistics only once annually.
What irritates me is that in the absence of being able to get this hard information, media turns to professional tour companies. This is a terrible mistake, because most tour companies (especially American ones) grossly inflate their actual production and often to the great pleasure of host countries.
Yesterday, for instance, in a single dispatch from Moscow reported in Britain’s Daily Mail the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported a ridiculous 45,000 Russians touring in the country at the moment. In virtually the same paragraph, Konstantin Shvartser of the Pegas Touristik said there were only 18,000. And in a continuation of the numbers folly, he then claimed only 18 Russians altogether want to leave the country, now.
USAToday reports on tourism by surveying well-known American tour companies like Abercrombie & Kent and Grand Circle.
But those (good) companies won’t reveal their numbers, and the fact is that the majority of American tourists traveling to Egypt these days don’t use established tour companies like these, so what’s happening to their customers is really rather insignificant to the bigger picture.
Most travelers to Egypt, today, book through the internet often directly with Egyptian companies. It’s likely, in fact, that as many Americans book Nile cruises with British companies as with American companies.
In trying to gauge the “real situation” imagine being a resident of Washington, D.C. or Watts in L.A. during the riots of the 1960s. The longer the crisis continues, the more basic services become strained of course. But unless you actually walk into the midst of the trouble, until strained services reach a critical point, you’re probably going to be OK.
Officially, most foreign nations have advised their citizens to avoid central Cairo and Alexandria. But many European countries, including Britain, have advised tourists who find themselves elsewhere (such as Sharm el-Sheik or Luxor) to remain until travel to international airports becomes easier and safer.
Most Nile cruises have stopped sailing, although we also know that large companies like Sonesta (which owns 5 ships), Sofitel and Hilton are continuing to provide services (food, shelter) to passengers who were onboard when the trouble broke out.
“Living conditions in Cairo and the risks to foreigners are not quite as bad as they may appear in the media,” writes the only excellent coverage I’ve so far found, in today’s Huffington Post.
So the bottom line is that the vast majority of foreigners, including tourists, remain in the country and have had enough time to position themselves in a safe way. Commercial flights continue to operate at the Cairo airport.
I am no expert on the MidEast, and I have been wrong in predictions before. But as one experienced traveler voice, I don’t see what’s happening in Egypt right now as dangerous for the tourists or foreign residents who unfortunately find themselves there.
So far, so good for tourists stranded in Egypt. There are 30-50,000 tourists currently trying to leave Egypt, and their itinerary isn’t exactly what they thought.
They shouldn’t try to leave. They should hunker down like the majority of tourists, there, now.
In near lockstep with the delicate balance of the American government, tourists had initially decided to wait-and-see. Large American tour operators like Isram Travel and Abercrombie & Kent sent out bulletins assuring the world that their tourists were doing just fine.
But when the conflict stretched over last weekend, curiosity turned to ennui and finally real concern. And when the tourists tried to leave and couldn’t, the panic button was hit. That happened to thousands yesterday and may have been a mistake.
I’ve been in a number of conflicts as a tourist during my life time of travel. Most of the time the thing to do is … hunker down and wait it out. (Not always, but it is the thing to do this time in Egypt.) Patience, not a tourist attribute, has to be summoned up then cultivated for as long as it might take.
This is not another Rwandan genocide or Balkan War. This is a popular uprising that looks surprisingly disciplined. Until that “look” changes, stay put tourists!
Egypt gets between 15 and 16 million tourists every year, and right now is the highest of the high seasons. It is likely there are several hundred thousand tourists in the country right now. The U.S. State Department believes there are at least 5000 Americans currently touring Egypt, and possibly twice that number.
Desperate tourists don’t make good decisions. Those panicking and trying to leave are mostly being disappointed. Their chances of leaving aren’t good, and it will be extremely expensive. Much more expensive than “hunkering down.”
Television reports, of course, laud those who made it out. Because a lot of television can’t make it in to tell those stories. And of course there will be headlines about the odd act of violence at a tourist hotel … something that likely might have happened with a revolution or not.
The majority of tourists in Egypt right now are doing the right thing: stay there and wait it out.
At any given time, there are as many as 50,000 American in the country, including teachers, engineers and technicians working on the Suez Canal and many involved in the oil and gas industries.
Regina Fraser who hosts the PBS show “Grannies on Safari” may have enjoyed being interviewed by CNN but by yesterday she wanted out.
Regina was on a cruise ship on the Nile, and remains there unable to get to Cairo. At any given time there can be as many as 150 cruise ships sailing between Luxor and Aswan carrying as many as 15-20,000 tourists.
Egypt’s tourism contributes enormously to its economy. (Estimates vary from 5% according to the World Tourist Organization, the as much as 10% according to the Egyptian Tourist Board.) It is one of the last value markets for tourism of any kind to Africa, where a ten-day trip is available for under $2,000. This is half to a third the average elsewhere on the continent.
And most importantly, so far, no tourists have been harmed. In fact the opposite seems to be true. When I was a young kid traveling the world the last place to find a young single woman was Egypt. But Emma Vielbig, 19, was traveling alone in Egypt last week when the trouble started.
Like any kid, she ventured into the streets and tear gas. She got caught in mayhem but was rescued by some anonymous fellow on a motorcycle who grabbed her shouting “You’ve got to get out here” and motored her back to her hostel.
Few would plan a vacation into a revolution. A vacation is supposed to be at least a good measure of R&R. But a revolution is what’s happening in Egypt, and so far, tourists are not being redefined. They remain tolerated onlookers, cash heavy foreigners, but so far, safe.
There is an important lesson for all of us who travel. The situation in Egypt was mostly a surprise. It has much to unfold yet. But so far, tourists are safe. All they have to worry about is their own impatience.
Egypt’s popular rising by a better educated generation reflects a global interconnectivity that transmits the will of the people as effectively as bar photos. But do Americans in particular understand what these people really want? I don’t think so.
Cries of “Freedom!” are easily translated from most any language, but “democracy” is another word altogether. Americans have consistently reported on African uprisings as “democratic movements.” Some are but most aren’t.
Sunday’s announced results in the Sudanese referendum – long expected – is hardly a step in the democratic process many claim. It’s a step in a process that secedes power in Khartoum to a political group that has been working for it throughout my life time, and in my opinion, well earned. But there is no room in this process for competing views about governance.
And whether or not the northern tribes will receive the fair attention proscribed in the new South Sudan constitution remains to be seen. Unlike truly democratic societies where law is the foundation of governance, that isn’t at all certain in the new South Sudan.
The first spark of popular uprisings in Africa began long ago in South Africa, and ever since the regime changed in 1994 Nelson Mandela’s party, the African National Congress, has been firmly in control and often in defiance of democratic ideals like freedom of the press.
Following the horrendous genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the populist uprising of Watutsi mostly in exile in Uganda stormed into the country and took control. Paul Kagame was the military general that led the attack, and he has remained president ever since. In the last election, his opponents were either jailed or killed.
Yet South Africa, Rwanda and now the South Sudan are definitely fulfilling the aspirations of the people who brought them to power. Those aspirations can be summed up in a single word, justice.
Americans misinterpret democracy for justice. We also tend to believe that democracy is more absolute than justice. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The filibuster in the Senate is a case in point. Manifestly not democracy, it prevails nonetheless as just. Ditto for the electoral college, or the ability of our courts to reverse a popular referendum.
The people in the street may be screaming for freedom and democracy to get the attention of CNN, but what they really want is … justice.
And that’s what makes the recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and likely soon elsewhere in the Arab world, to be so problematic. Wealth and opportunity cannot be redistributed as quickly as a Hosni Mubarak can be toppled from power.
And so it’s a matter of how patient the revolutionists will be. Africa is legend for the patience of its people, and that’s why I remain completely optimistic in the future of South Africa and most of Africa in general.
The big question, then, is whether Egyptians have the same patience as South Africans and Kenyans. It’s a very big continent: I just don’t know.
Not just Gabby shot, but now David murdered in certain part because of the hatred created by the American Right. There are two things I just don’t understand: (1) how can anyone deny this obvious link, and (2) how could we possibly have let these happen? Who will be next?
Wednesday afternoon one of the finest, gentlest and most articulate Ugandans to have lived was beaten to death in his Kampala home with a hammer. Kato was Uganda’s most prominent gay rights activist.
Kato’s death, like Gabriel Gifford’s attempted assassination, was not random. They were both likely done by crazed individuals, but individuals directed if not wholly inspired by hate speech from the American Right.
The incredible attempts by Americans including President Obama to deny this represents a dangerously irresponsible lack of common sense, if not a terrible act of cowardice.
We all know the connection of the American Right to Gabby’s shooting. And hold on! “American Right” is not a person, it is not Sarah Palin. But Sarah Palin is a part of the “American Right,” thousands of individuals and countless organizations who have irresponsibly implied violence (if not called for it outright) against individuals opposing their views.
Val Kalende, the head of a major Ugandan gay rights organization told South Africa’s Pambazuka News shortly after the murder, “The Ugandan Government and the so-called U.S Evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood!”
Reporter Leigh Phillips of the European Union on-line publication EUObserver reported today that some EU States have now “threatened to cut aid funding to [Uganda] as a result of the [anti-gay] legislation, which was introduced after a group of American right-wing Christians travelled to the country in March 2009 to hold anti-gay rallies.”
You can read my own accounts of this terribly developing story, including lots of links and videos at “Trail of Hate Rounds the World”.
I am especially saddened and angered by President Obama. Both in his State of the Union address last week, and in a message deploring Kato’s death he refused to link the heated American Right rhetoric to the acts.
I can understand the special importance that a leader of such power has in reducing tensions – especially deadly ones – but in the State of the Union Obama specifically stated “There is no connection” between heated rhetoric and Representative Gabriel Gifford’s attempted assassination. Not to affirm a connection was wrong of Obama. But to affirm the lie that there is no connection is despicable.
His message about Kato was more circumspect. Denial comes only as inference in what was not said. Better, but no cigar.
With no cap on the lunacy from our leaders, denial of the causal relationship between the American Right’s rhetoric and violence has gone viral in America. We are once again burying our heads in the sand of deceit and fantasy.
This senseless violence will end only when the American Right changes the tone of public debate. And that tone is not – as often suggested – equally created by “both sides.” It is an American Right phenomenon. Only they can end it.
As I listened to President Obama last night, I thought of the State of Africa, and I realized that real hope for future justice in the world is squarely with Africa, today, not America.
Many will consider me foolish: yesterday was a day of tear gas, rioting and general upheaval in much of north Africa. But what I see are people uprising, renewed and respirited. And what I heard last night was Obama snuffing out new spirits in America.
Africa has been in the throes of radical change ever since apartheid in South Africa fell almost 20 years ago. Economic catastrophe today is the motivation that carries the spirit of liberty from South Africa to Tunisia. There’s nothing odd about that.
Economic catastrophe has always been a reason for political change throughout the history of civilized society, and so it should be, since it is often caused by the older society unable to adjust to newer social realities.
In Africa this has led to radical changes in the political organizations in South Africa, Kenya, Liberia, Senegal, Madagascar, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire and the Comoros. I’m not suggesting that the direction of this change is yet fully understood or right now universally good. But it is all fueled by people power. And that all by itself, is good.
Respirited mass movements lead to real recalibration of society. Former winners become losers and former losers become winners. The cocktail party phrase that social change can be a win-win situation is premature. There is too much injustice and prejudice in the world still for that to yet be fully possible.
But it doesn’t mean that the new losers are relegated to the same misery that the former losers might have suffered. In Africa, in fact, it means that the powerful just become a little less powerful. Kenya’s former dictator, Daniel arap Moi, enjoys a wonderful retirement, safe and comfy and in fact respected by a wide section of Kenyan society.
But his ouster by the people of Kenya led to a series of events that has heralded in a new populist who is likely to radically alter the Kenyan economy currently defined by legions of poor. No single movement or leader is capable of changing the science of economics. But Raila Odinga is likely to elevate the condition of Kenya’s poor in the next decade far beyond what I could have imagined, and no doubt at the expense of the rich and powerful.
Who will by all standards, still be rich and powerful. Just not as rich and powerful as before.
This is precisely what happened and continues to happen in South Africa. It began a generation ago, as the richest and most powerful emigrated to the tune of 1800 per month starting in the 1980s, as they realized their lofty positions could not be sustained in a modern African society.
Throughout Africa, populist movements are ushering in more just and equitable societies.
In America, Obama was that symbol as well in 2008. But he failed. He is far behind his times.
Obama’s message is one of unity, and in all fairness, this is no surprise. He has been extremely true to his theories. But that was not what brought him to power. What brought him to power was a massive belief that real change would occur in America.
That may be our fault, not his, but he was complicit. He accepted the mantle of change. He now revels in the temerity of those who condescend to answer a robo phone poll. But he seems too steeped in the past to be pried from his 19th century politics, constrained by dead heroes like Abraham Lincoln, so great for their times but as outdated today as a buggy wagon.
I look at Africa, and my heart beats fast and hopefully. I listen to Obama and grow depressed.
Robert Mugabe, czar of Zim, may be coming to an end. But the era of Robert Mugabe is set to last a very, very long time.
Mugabe remains in Malaysia where he returned unexpectedly following his annual vacation, for emergency prostrate surgery. He was too paranoid to have the surgery in Europe, which is nearer to Zimbabwe, or next-door South Africa where the first heart transplant was performed, certain that unfriendly doctors would kill him. He says he’s 86 years old, but most of us believe he’s 89 or 90. He has suffered from various cancers for years.
Last week, the day after Mugabe left, Zimbabwean troops were deployed across the country, swaggering and arrogant as usual, setting up camps where there weren’t hotels and ordering out without paying.
Mugabe’s illness is being well reported in the Zimbabwean Mail, the only reliable “local” media on Zimbabwe. (It’s published in London.)
Mugabe regularly takes a vacation every December/January, and this time it was to not-so-unfriendly Malaysia. He left on Saturday to return home, then abruptly switched gears and returned to Malaysia for surgery.
The Mail reported Tuesday that the surgery was fairly major removing all of the prostate. The newspaper reported Wednesday that before Mugabe left he ordered his underlings to prepare a new election.
The opposition won the last election according to the few outside observers that were allowed in, but the government overturned the numbers. After some street violence the two sides settled on a coalition government that gives the opposition a face but absolutely no power.
The government uses a voter registration roll of which a third of the names are over 120 years old or already declared dead.
Tendai Biti, one of the opposition faces in the unity government, told a hastily summoned press conference Wednesday that the election will cause a bloodbath.
Not exactly.
Zimbabwe, which is effectively Mugabe, controls everything including whose blood will be drawn at any moment. Rest assured government thugs, militias and supporters will be just fine.
What’s become so interesting about Zimbabwe is a certain purity of evil. Unlike so many authoritarian countries in the world, Zim makes no bones about, say, a voter registration poll. It doesn’t matter to the authorities if everyone knows that people who elect them are dead.
Mugabe’s humility at sitting next to Morgan Tsvangirai, his “prime minister” in the coalition government, is astounding. Tsvangirai has a Mercedes just like Mugabe, but virtually nothing else.
Tsvangirai has been beaten nearly to death several times, has lost his wife in a suspicious car accident, has had all of his assets attached, and has virtually no power to do anything but flee the country, which he has decided not to do.
Mugabe must hate the dickens out of him, but the old man patiently sits next to Tsvangirai especially for the foreign press and listens patiently to a now well-known litany of criticisms, then Mugabe says nothing and leaves the room.
And, so, nothing changes.
An election will cause blood to flow, but it won’t pool in a bath. It’s always a one-directional fight in Zimbabwe. That’s the reason Mugabe wants another election. He wants to rev up the level of terror as he fades from the scene.
The country is, well, not really a country anymore. The joke of the Zimbabwean dollar reaching a quadtrillion mark note was finally too difficult for money printers, so it’s now the U.S. dollar and nothing else. And for this country which was once was the 8th largest economy in Africa, there are now fewer dollars in circulation and in local assets than in Raleigh, West Virginia.
Once one of Africa’s richest agricultural areas, there is not enough food produced to feed a tenth of its remaining population. Mines over rich natural resources are functioning at about a tenth of capacity. Tourism is dead. Most rational Zimbabweans left long ago.
And for many of the same reasons that China doesn’t take a proactive stand with North Korea, South Africa is quite happy to maintain the status quo. A total and complete breakdown of the country would send too many immigrants all at once into South Africa.
And don’t think that the status quo will change if Mugabe dies. There are legions who depend on Mugabe’s intricate architecture of payoffs, and the hierarchy is already in place. His likely successor is Defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa.
If not Mnangagwa, then Vice-President John Nkomo. If not Nkomo, then head of the army, General Constantine Chiwenga. If not Chiwenga, then secret service boss Happyson Bonyongwe. And if not Bonyongwe, then Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri.
It’s all neatly diagramed out. And there are a thousand other names that fall further down the tree of power. And every single one of them on the toothpick highrise knows it will come tumbling down if one toothpick moves out of line. And then, there would be a real bloodbath.
But it wouldn’t bring good people to power. The good people are gone. Zim’s problem was that good, educated, decent Zimbabweans left instead of fought. It’s been easier for them over the years to slip down to South Africa, move over to Mozambique or become refugees in far flung places like .. America. All the proactive will for good in Zimbabwean has been beaten out.
Some contrarians (optimists?) believe when the stick house falls that Tsvangirai will plaster the pieces of left over government back together, the way he’s so often plastered up his own skull.
Today is an American holiday, Martin Luther King Day. I am a white man who has spent nearly half of every year of his working life in black societies. I am witness to the change that King’s type of philosophy has made in Africa and at home.
King was America’s black civil rights champion, and what I and probably most people remember of his turbulent last days was nearly unspeakable violence. My most vivid memory is as a very young journalist, penned in under a burning El Stop in downtown Chicago as the city raged following King’s assassination.
I remember gun fire as a regular sound in my low-rent apartment in Washington during the summer of the 1968. Or the unending sirens and tear gas around my apartment in Berkeley in 1969.
King is duly revered for radically changing American society with non-violence? When what I remember most is fire, bullets and ambulances?
It’s been more than 40 years since then. Trauma has a way of finding its small berth among the many more ordinary memories of earlier life. My young student years were lived in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Of the more than 1000 students in public middle and high schools when I was there, there was not a single black. Less than a decade after I graduated, I returned to Jonesboro for a wedding, and learned that almost half the town was black.
I lived in Jonesboro for 5 years. I went to school, groomed pretty dogs at a vet’s, shopped on main street, sipped sodas at the donut shop, cheered at school sports’ matches, went to church socials. I remember regularly seeing only one black, Bessie Mae, our maid.
I left that society for the turbulent 60s, then left the turbulent 60s for Africa, and when I returned how things had changed!
King’s philosophy of non-violence, like Gandhi’s and to a much smaller but significant extent, Mandela’s, were not eras of no violence. There was incredible violence, and this violence, as with the sizzling El Stop that nearly fell on me, will be blazoned in our memories forever. But with time we’re able to reflect that that violence was the reaction to those heros’ methodical, unswerving actions for a freer, fairer society.
Those movements as a whole were not violent. But the reactions to them were hideously violent, and then sometimes when Watts or Chicago burned, the frustration of the oppressed boiled over. But mostly it was not that. Mostly it was unarmed hundreds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators being tear gassed and shot by police.
And why? Because it was the desperation of trying to stop the inevitable. I really believe there is more good in the world than bad. Justice will ultimately prevail.
We are a deeply rooted Chicago family. My father was sent from Chicago to Jonesboro to start a factory owned by an Illinois company to avoid the growing union movement in the north. One of the first things he did was pack up us three young kids in the car and drive us into the cotton fields west of Memphis, stopping the car, saying nothing, and making us watch black share-croppers toiling in the summer sun.
Try as I may, that and Bessie Mae, are the only blacks I remember as a teenager, living in the midst of them.
Today, my President is black. My Attorney General is black. My closest friends, many in Africa, are black. My rare return to Jonesboro encountered many blacks. Memories created of life, today, are no longer monochrome or technicolor, they are just wonderfully vivid.
Social justice does prevail. In some places, throughout Africa for example, it seems to take longer than in my more developed society, and perhaps that’s the reason. The messages get around more quickly. So in my life time, the personal sacrifices of Africans are understandably greater than here at my home.
But the sacrifices of each individual are the same. And what King taught us is that they’re effective. All you need to do is rise to the needs of your community above the needs of yourself.
I am so fortunate to have lived long enough to see King’s work transform the bad in my society to good, almost as an imperative. An imperative that I believe I now at this very moment see happening throughout so much of Africa.
Happy Birthday, Martin! You’d have been 82, today!
Violence is largely an “American” thing. Not African, not Chinese, although some of the worst violence in mankind’s history has occurred there. But organic violence, violence allowed free reign to grow, is distinctly American.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and others murdered in Tucson is why I say this.
If you’re reading this instead of the billions of other blogs about Giffords, it’s because you know my life has been spent in Africa. And when it hasn’t been in Africa, I spend a lot of time talking to other people who aren’t African about how Africa isn’t really as violent, isn’t as murderous, isn’t as corrupt as … well, America.
And here’s why.
First, let’s start with just the ultimate violence: killing. In my lifetime, Americans have been involved (either as the killers or the killed) in killings in the world more than any other nationality.
Add up the Rwanda genocide, the slaughters in the Congo, the political killings throughout China and North Korea, the secret killings in Argentina and Chile, the Balkan slaughters, and the ongoing and endless civil wars in the Horn of Africa.
It still doesn’t equal the involved killings in all the American wars of my lifetime. Likely it doesn’t even add up to the involved killings of the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
In the generation before me, this supreme total wasn’t America’s. It was Europe’s, with the holocaust and the Balkan genocides such as Armenia. (A close second was the prolonged killings of the Stalin regime.)
Not Africa. Not then, not now.
Violence as a true act of self-defense is a bitter morality. But during my lifetime violence in self-defense (WWII) has morphed into violence as preemption.
I don’t think that Giffords’ accused murderer was a sane activist. But he was influenced by the hate and vile (vitriol, as the Puma County Sheriff explains) of the Right.
Fact: Sarah Palin removed her website of “targeted” Congressional seats, where crosshairs were used to designate the Congressional districts the tea party should beat, within hours of the Giffords’ shootings.
Sarah Palin knew it was inflammatory. Removal so quickly was an admission it was wrong to begin with.
A number of other sites came down quickly from the Right as well.
Likely there will always be violence. Poorly brought up, abused, neglected children often turn violent. Abused, neglected, tortured and impoverished adults often turn violent. I believe society should try to rectify all this, but even without doing so, in the past these unhinged people did not direct their violence against Government.
So often it was against women, wives and daughters.
So often it was against other ethnic races, immigrants, other religions, people who aren’t like you. Sometimes it was against animals, or glass because it makes such a clatter shattering. Sometimes it was random.
But in my generation, in America, it’s turned from all of those to… Government.
That’s new. We have never had as many Timothy McVeigh or Jared Lee Loughner wannabees as before. There were some. Nearly one out of every four American presidents has been assassinated. But nowhere near as many Oklahoma Public Buildings, or Maryland State Buildings, or airplanes, or churches… or public officials “targeted in crosshairs” as today.
A junior Congressmen from Idaho didn’t have a body guard when I was child. It didn’t take me two hours to check-in at O’Hare. I wasn’t allowed to bring an unconcealed gun into the Davenport city council meeting, or into my Econ 101 lecture at the University of Iowa as a part of my “right to self-defense.”
Sarah Palin isn’t the cause. She’s just another symptom. She transferred her violence from herself to the public at large. Society couldn’t make her happy. So better than beating a grandchild, she beats Government. There’s a certain bitter-sweet logic to this. And by the very nature of her public scope, she transfers this violence to millions.
We can’t live without Government. We can’t live without Big Government. And we can’t live without Big Government doing a lot more than just “defense.”
Government is Society, Community, the Group of Us. By our neglect of Society, Community, the Group of Us, we have become our own targets. We have become socially suicidal. Americans have put themselves in the Crosshairs.
Sunday is the beginning of the end of one of the most monumental conflicts Africa has ever experience, and Sen. John Kerry was there this week to gently help see it through.
Sen. Kerry arrived in The Sudan on Tuesday and returned home yesterday. Today Jimmy Carter arrived with his wife to monitor the election. Amazingly, there’s very little in American news about this watershed event. There’s not even anything on John Kerry’s own website. But thank goodness he and Jimmy are there.
Kerry has been pivotal in shepherding a half century struggle in southern Sudan to some peaceful conclusion, untangling the mess the British created during the colonial period. His latest carrot to the Sudanese masters in Khartoum was a stunning one: that he could support removing the north from the “States that sponsor terrorism” list if all goes well this week in the South.
There’s no doubt about the outcome of the election which begins Sunday and goes on for a week. The outcome will officially express the will of The South to secede from The North. Everyone knows this and has known it for years. Diplomats have been in training for more than a year. Western donor nations have built the rooms that the new Parliament will use. Even the neutral U.N. has a presence of presumed Peace-Keepers along the contentious potential border with the North.
The question is what happens afterwards.
The election calls for formal succession by July. But that means between now and then a number of contentious issues must be resolved that haven’t been, yet. Such as the border line. How much of Sudan’s current $36 billion dollar debt will be assumed by The South. And probably most dangerous of all, who gets the oil.
The proposed dividing line between North and South goes right through Sudan’s most productive oil fields. The irony is that they haven’t produced very well, because for nearly 50 years there’s been shooting going on. In 1981 I was myself given an offer by a giant oil company to help ransom oil workers being held hostage in the area, who were later killed in the fighting.
But as I’ve been saying for some time, I think this is going to happen, and pretty peacefully. And there is such hope in the air at the moment, that there is a nearly giddy presumption the success of next week’s election will spill over with goodness into regions like the troubled Darfur. Sen. Kerry arrived Tuesday.
Here’s an extremely simplified time line of the history of Sudan:
The British annexed The Sudan in 1899. They didn’t really want to because it was considered a desert wasteland, which it looked at the time. But The Nile runs right through the country, and Britain was in a contentious and globally sensitive battle with France over control of Egypt. So with reluctance and little real interest the outposts along the Nile raised Her Majesty’s flags.
Seventeen years later in 1916 with World War I as a backdrop the massive Sultanate of Darfur was absorbed by the British into the hodgepodge of what they called The Sudan. This was a terrible mistake which prevails until today. Darfur was a kingdom relatively progressive by the standards of those days, and distinctly non-Muslim. This defined a religious battle that until then simply hadn’t existed.
The British had almost two decades of training Sudanese in Muslim Khartoum as government officials, and as they wrongly did everywhere, they sent into foreign lands the officials they trained in the African capital city. In Kenya, they sent Kikuyu to Luo. In The Sudan, they sent fanatic Muslims into animistic regions like Darfur. That mistake is still bleeding.
The next generation was relatively peaceful. The colonizers of Africa I believe actually did their best work as “colonizers” in the period of 1920-1940. In part this was because of an enormous emphasis on education, but also in part because of the troubled world economies that resulted in a sort of benign interest in things overseas. World War II changed all that.
The end of WWII left a crippled Britain on the world stage, bankrupt and exhausted. Winston Churchill said it was time to end the colonial era. Not much had happened in the colonies over the last 20 years and there was not much hope anything could. The exit from the era of colonialism was a pragmatic, not a moral one. Independence would save money.
And this driving western motivation, saving money, is a theme that has caused so much havoc in Africa. Just collect as many jobs as you possibly can afford and give them as large a responsibility as possible. Forget the hodgepodge of eons of cultures and societies that you’re instantly integrating: just do it, be done with it, and get out.
Britain had essentially neglected all of The Sudan for a half century. Now it was giving it eight years to reach Independence, a collection of tribes, more than 200 language groups, and viciously antagonistic religions. This wasn’t oil and water, it was refined uranium and explosions of the sun.
Independence was set for 1956. Imagine the millennia of battles between gallant horse-riding knights and primitive tribes over Sharia, Jesus Christ, palm nuts and women, between 200 groups of people who understood nothing about one another except the length of each other’s spears. They were in 8 short years to create a modern nation, with … a single leader.
War broke out in The South in 1955.
The South which lies over the rich agricultural regions of Uganda was populated by non-Muslim tribes from the Lake Victoria region, the same groups of people who would form the country of Uganda in 1963. In fact, that was what they were fighting for in the beginning, to become a part of Uganda, not of The Sudan.
The Sudan was independent according to British prescription for all of two years: 1956 and 1957. The country was being torn asunder. A military coup in 1958 held it together. All vestiges of British idealism about self-government were gone.
In 1962 as Uganda was about to achieve independence, military leaders of the south declared their own country, South Sudan. The world took no notice. I can imagine JFK looking towards Cuba and finding a second to ask his ambassador to Britain how things were going in the former colonials and not listening to an answer that never came.
Britain didn’t like these upstarts disturbing its jet age plans for African independence. No, Britain said to The South, you can’t join Uganda.
And for that matter, Uganda wasn’t really interested, either. No one knew about the oil, yet.
In Khartoum in the North, one military coup after another essentially destroyed the place until a real strongman, Gaafar Mohamed El-Nimeiri, started a holocaust in 1969 of the most brutal and extreme ever known in this part of Africa. When the dust settled (it took two years), Nimeiri was firmly in control and terrified the world.
But he was pragmatic. He wanted to get rid of the distant war in The South, so in 1972 in Addis Ababa, he signed a Peace Agreement with southern rebels that ended the fighting for nearly a decade, giving them autonomous control of their region.
Things might have stayed that way. Except for one unexpected development.
OIL. 1978.
Chevron began building rigs throughout the Sudd region that exactly today will divide the North and South. It’s a swampy, ridiculously hot, horribly unnice area for human beings. Except for a few areas where nomadic tribes did herd hoofed stock, it was a wasteland. But, of course, no more.
For five years Chevron pumped more and more oil out of the region, paying royalties usually to warlords rather than any established government officials. Niemeri watched millions of dollars creeping away.
Most of these bucks crept south, admittedly. They strengthened the “autonomous region” of the south by, well, providing guns. Oil companies have a way of doing this.
Niemeri was now a dictator growing a heart. The Cold War wasn’t over, but it was cooling. He was growing more acceptable to the West. In a move that at the time meant nothing to the west, he declared Sharia law the law of the land, and this essentially empowered him even further. In 1983 he sent troops into the Judd to secure the oil fields.
All hell broke lose.
And the South prevailed. The north lost the battle. And Niemeri was deposed and killed by fellow officers in 1986. After a few insignificant military coups later, the current president, Omar al-Bashir comes to power in 1993.
The battle rages on in The South. The North grows indebted having lost its Cold War patrons. War has now been going on for nearly 50 years. In 1998 Bill Clinton sends a missile into Khartoum and blows up a factory he claimed was making terrorists’ weapons.
The North is further weakened. Lots of leaders are killed and jailed, but Bashir survives another coup and emerges as a peace-maker in 1999, pledging to end the horrible travail Sudanese in The North have experienced for generations.
In 2002 he signs a peace deal with the South. Rebels in Darfur begin fighting, emboldened by Bashir’s apparent concessions in The South. The North is further weakened as it tries desperately to manage the growing war in Darfur.
In 2005 Bashir and John Sarang of The South sign a comprehensive understanding that would lead to an election for succession the second week of January, 2011.
Fiance of opposition candidate, Wilbrod Slaa, challenges police in Arusha.It happened all too quickly. Tanzania’s second largest city erupted in violence Wednesday, three people killed and scores injured. The push for democracy and transparency in Tanzania has exploded faster than even I expected.
Right now Arusha is calm. EWT, in fact, had clients who were in the town today. But the situation remains tense, and the government of Tanzania is acting only in ways that will make it worse.
The Tanzanian government is trying to suppress all news about the affair. Click here for a manual link to YouTube about the demonstration. The reporter, who I can’t identify and doesn’t want to be identified, has requested that YouTube remove all embedding code that would allow it to be dispersed more easily through blogs like these.
The video captures much of the chaos over most of Wednesday afternoon. It has a clip of the fiance of defeated opposition presidential candidate Wilbrod Slaa, her face bloodied.
The violence began when federal police used tear gas on a rally called to criticize the current government.
The initial battle with tear gas occurred at a large open field where Chadema’s rally (the opposition party) was just starting.
A large anti-riot police vehicle equipped with its tear-gas throwers disturbed the crowd, who had assembled with a police permit. The police claimed the vehicle was there to prevent marchers who were arriving from the central city to join the rally, because while police had granted a permit for the rally, they had denied a permit for the march to the rally.
“Police keep away, this is an official meeting and we have permission to gather here,” shouted Wilbrod Slaa, the defeated Chadema candidate for president of Tanzania who was at the time addressing the rally.
As marchers appeared, the tear gas went off and chaos errupted. Police arrested a number of the leaders in the front of the march, including Godbless Lema, the wildly popular and newly elected MP from Arusha, and (opposition party) Chadema chairman Freeman Mbowe.
As the two high profile politicians were being driven away with 47 others arrested, the crowd exploded: scores of people raced towards the police vehicle throwing rocks. The police responded with more tear gas.
Crowds then formed throughout the city trying to converge on the police station, where it was presumed the leaders were being held. Police used live ammunition against the crowd, there, and the afternoon became one of continuous pitched battles throughout the city between police and demonstrators.
Police confirmed 2 dead and 9 injured but area hospitals suggested 3 dead and injured closer to 100.
Arusha opposition MP Lema is a rebel rouser, and this is not his first brush with the law. He has been in jail twice before during his campaign for Parliament, which he won in the national election the end of November.
The specific issue that ignited yesterday’s violence was a federal government move over the weekend that stacked the Arusha city council with government supporters allowed to vote for mayor, but who did not actually reside in the city.
The real city councilors had boycotted the meeting and claim, therefore, that there was not a quorum sufficient to elect a mayor. But the government ordered the election to continue, and the result is that at least officially, Arusha now has a mayor allied to the government ruling party, a mayor overlording a city that is hugely in the opposition’s camp.
This does not happy days make.
But there were other issues to be discussed at the rally which was never completed: that the presidential election last November was unfair, that the government is corrupt, and a host of lingering accusations that during the November national election campaign the government suppressed all opposition.
I’m not sure how far this is going to go. The opposition in Arusha is incredibly strong and has support from several other larger communities in northern Tanzania like Karatu. But other important areas in northern Tanzania like Moshi, Monduli and Mto-wa-Mbu are firmly on the government’s side.
The blogosphere is cautious, I fear worried that the government is looking over their shoulders. There are numerous references to what has happened in Arusha is like Tiananmen Square, protests in Berlin before the wall went down, and demonstrations in Kenya that led to more transparent government.
Without doubt the police acted wrongly. It remains to be seen if they acted on their own, or are following in lock-step the darkening oligarchy in Dar.
From IPP Media. The Government suppressed most photos.It was a brutal New Years in Tanzania. Courageous protesters started to lay the country’s Road to Democracy but were bulldozed down. This Road is as full of pitfalls as the proposed road in the Serengeti, but this one’s got to be built!
Tanzania’s main city of Dar-es-Salaam – normally in structured chaos with millions of people bustling through overcrowded bus depots and through congested city streets – resembled a ghost town last Tuesday following a repressive response by police to a little demonstration calling for a new constitution.
Shops were shuddered. Streets were empty.
Several hundred activists had decided to ignore a police order banning their demonstration from submitting a new draft constitution to the Justice Minister. The group was hardly larger than a crowded bus stop. But the government responded with enough police, tear gas and even live ammunition to rival the anti-defense missile system that one of its last Prime Ministers tried to buy.
So the demonstration was immediately scattered. But courageous protesters then led police on a cat-and-mouse chase through the city as multiple individuals running in different directions pretended to be the ones with the actual “document” they were trying to deliver.
A draft of a new constitution. Which, presumably, allows peaceful protest.
The air cleared, the tear gas dispersed and the weekend was lazy as normally would be the case on New Years. Except in a complete reversal that made the demonstration seem successful, Tanzania’s president over the weekend agreed to form a commission to review the constitution.
Jakaya Kikwete didn’t say so himself, and that was a mistake. He let an important don of the University of Dar-es-Salaam make the announcement. Dr. Benson Bana said Kikwete had asked him to form a committee to start the process.
It’s all so absurd, frightening and enlightening. Why make the decision, and then relegate it such little importance and issue the announcement during the New Years’ weekend?
Because (1) you have no intention of following through, or (2) the movement is growing so powerful you’re trying to defuse it?
Tanzania has always had a much more authoritarian government than its sister, Kenya, ever since at Independence it fell firmly into the eastern “communist” camp. That was reformed considerably in 1986-1988, but the same political party has remained in control nonetheless.
Politically, (i.e., in their respective original constitutions) there couldn’t be two more different countries than Kenya and Tanzania. Yet for the last generation daily life has been very similar.
I find the greatest difference in education. Tanzanians as a whole are better educated than Kenyans, a result of Tanzania’s historical attention to education, but there are many more very highly educated Kenyans than Tanzanians a result of being able to pay for the Ivy usually abroad.
And that means that Tanzanians are much less tribal than in Kenya, one of the real pitfalls of many African societies trying to emerge into the modern world.
There is much less economic class stratification in Tanzania than Kenya. But as seems to have been proved in history, that produced less wealth overall. There are many, many more rich Kenyans than Tanzanians. (And also, correspondingly, many more very poor Kenyans than Tanzanians.)
Tanzania’s election the end of November was declared fair and free by most outside observers, so the issue is less how democratic this single election was than the way elections as a whole are handled.
It would be unthinkable, for example, if the Kenyan government banned broadcasting political debate between candidates as is the case in Tanzania. In fact, the ruling party in Tanzania even banned its candidates from participating in debates at all – whether they were broadcast or not!
It is, in a nutshell, an excellent example of the difference between a more socialist and a more capitalist society.
And now after a generation or so, the more educated (Tanzanians) know better that they are less rich than some of the less educated neighbors (Kenyans).
So Tanzanians are split right down the spine of morality. The proactive middle class demonstrating Tuesday wants more wealth and believes the way is through more democracy. The plutocracy argues that unshackling society to increase wealth also will increase poverty, or at least the gap between the rich and the poor.
Both are right. But who has the purer motivations?
A policeman firing on an unarmed demonstrator is the answer. One believes in his heart. The other believes in his gun.
*****************************************
Here’s the time line since the end of November election:
Several days before Tanzania’s election in November, the Minister for Constitutional Affairs and Justice Ms Celina Kombani declared the government would not consider altering the constitution.
A day or so later, the newly elected MP from from Arusha, young Godbless Lema, told cheering supporters that a new constitution was needed to “liberate all of us. Otherwise, we will continue guarding our votes at polling stations during each election.”
The next day, December 9, Tanzania’s Chief Justice, Augustino Ramadhani, applauded Lema’s statement and urged the government to consider a new constitution. (Here’s a great irony. Ramadhani made the statement in a speech at the Russian Cultural Center!)
The ball was rolling.
A week later, the government nodded a very little bit. Too many newly elected MPs, even from its own party, were talking about a “new constitution like Kenya.”
Reversing Kombani’s November 28 pronouncement against any new constitution, a high government official, John Tendwa, told a forum in Dar on December 14 that calls for a new constitution were legitimate.
On December 23, steel reeling from a separate election in Zanzibar from which they felt denied real representation, the Muslim organizations in Tanzania came out very strongly in support of Pinda’s statement.
The next day, Tuesday, a ridiculously large police force brutally dispersed several hundred demonstrators.
A few days later, bubbly still effervescing, Kikwete tells a university professor to form a committee to look into the matter.
This is not strong leadership. It’s a wimp wondering where to go.
I see no choice. Tanzania is falling way behind Kenya in all areas: economy, tourism, and perhaps now, even education. Its archaic form of government is stifling the manifestations of its successful process of educating its population.
Tuesday’s demonstration is a sign. Ignore it and the country will head right off the cliff.
When you’re sick inside, the outside looks terrible: 2010 was a year of striking differences between surging Kenya and its backward neighbors. 2011 will be the same.
Socially, culturally and politically, it was a GREAT YEAR for Kenya but a BAD YEAR for its neighbors.
Kenya grew fast, started to implement a radical new constitution, improved tourism even while increasing tourist rates, and deftly participated in major global controversies like the CITES attempt to allow selling ivory and the run-up to the South Sudan election.
But the other countries in East Africa? Terrible. Socially and politically Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda all took huge steps backwards. Contested or ramrodded elections, scandals of unbelievable corruption, and horrendous attempts to extinguish moves to improve human rights gave this part of East Africa a 20th century dictatorial look.
And the actual bombings in Kampala that killed more than 70 people almost suggest that when your internal body isn’t doing so well, you’re going to be nicked by the viruses from the outside.
For many years Tanzania’s tourism was inching up on Kenya’s, outpacing both growth and development. Last year that was reversed, and one can only suppose that tourism is sinking with the overall quicksand felt throughout the country.
It was a BAD YEAR for wilderness and wildlife. The “mini-drought” is now two years behind us, and so almost anything looks good in comparison, but there were two horrendous trends appearing throughout East Africa last year:
Poaching and Politics.
There’s always been poaching, but nothing like the corporate poaching that successfully kills and transports out of private, fenced and patrolled reserves a black rhino. That happened in both Kenya and South Africa. And in Tanzania, the Serengeti lost 20% of its wild rhinos (1 of 5, that until now were patrolled like a child in a perambulator with the Nanny’s grip fastened.)
And Tanzania in its drive to become Africa’s newest pariah first spearheaded a campaign to reverse CITES sanctions on selling ivory, and then announced it was going to kill the wildebeest migration with a road.
In Uganda, Father Museveni gave the nod to start hunting, again, and let South Africans develop the hunting of the rare sitantunga, even as its wildlife count declines.
And there’s nearly as bad a flipside to this wildlife story: where poaching and politics aren’t screwing things up, elephants are. The population explosion is eroding the population’s confidence everywhere that governments can keep the jumbo out of the farm.
It just doesn’t look good for wildlife in this turbulent and developing era in East Africa.
It’s hard to imagine 2011 can be as bad. And at the risk of jinxing the whole kebab but being true to end-of-year stock taking, I’m going to predict the Serengeti highway won’t happen, at least not completely as planned. And if we can get at least that victory, I guess the battle continues with some hope.
And with that my marker for WILDLIFE below moves from bad to good.
Strictly economically, Kenya is in the stratosphere, leaving its neighbors way behind. Now a lot of this is foreign donors nudging the county towards implementing the new constitution, so you would normally expect that to end next year. But next year is one year before the next election, and it was the last election when everything fell apart, so I feel this outside stimulus is going to continue. And then, there’s China, flooding Kenya with infrastructure money as if it’s taken a page out of Obama 2.0.
Elsewhere in East Africa, including Tanzania and despite recent fossil fuel discoveries, things don’t look so rosy. Tanzania’s debt is massive, Rwanda’s long flirtation with foreign aid is about over, and Uganda is so mired in bad bookkeeping we can only presume the worst.
I’m afraid that 2011 will be worse for Kenya’s neighbors and probably the same for near inebriated Kenya.
Here’s my summary for what it was and what it will be:
East Africa Report
2009
2010
2011
SOCIETY Kenya The Rest
Good Bad
Good Bad
Good Bad
WILDLIFE
Bad
Bad
Good
WEATHER
Bad
Good
Good
TOURISM Kenya The Rest
Bad Bad
Good Bad
Good Bad
ECONOMY Kenya The Rest
Bad Bad
Good Bad
Good Bad
Predictions are just that, based on the here and now. If Tanzania can move swiftly to its own new constitution, if Father Museveni steps down, if Karume disappears and is replaced by a coalition-building young person, then societies throughout East Africa will improve.
And with the society, so will the economy.
East Africa is booming, so many of the stories of 2010 were terrifically good news. But there were the tragedies as well like the Kampala bombings. Below I try to put the year in perspective with my top ten stories for East Africa for 2010.
1. Populace democracy grows.
2. Terrorism grows, as does the battle against it.
3. Huge stop in the mercenary purchases of Coltan.
4. Momentum for peace in the runup to establishing a new South Sudan.
5. Tourism clashes with development, especially with the proposed Serengeti Highway.
6. New discoveries of fossil fuels produces new wealth and a new relationship with China.
7. Gay Rights grow public but loses ground.
8. Rhino poaching becomes corporate.
9. Hot air ballooning’s safety newly questioned in game parks.
10. Newest early man discoveries reconfirm sub-Saharan Africa as the birthplace of man.
#1: POPULACE DEMOCRACY GROWS
Theoretically, all the East African countries have operated as “democracies” except for the torrential years of Idi Amin in Uganda. But the quality of this democracy was never very good.
Tanzania was a one-party state for its first 20 years, and that same party continues to rule although more democratically today. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi experienced one dictator after another, even while democratic elections at regional levels challenged the executive.
But the end of the Cold War destroyed the alliances these developing countries had with super powers. Purse strings were cut, and political cow-towing ended. All of them moved towards a truly more democratic culture.
And in 2010 huge leaps were made in all the countries towards more truly representative government. The most important example by far was the overwhelming passing of the new constitution in Kenya in a national referendum where more than 75% of registered voters participated.
And like the U.S. election which followed shortly thereafter, and like support for national health care in the U.S. and so many other issues (like no tax cuts for the rich), Kenyan politicians dragged their feet right up to the critical moment. They tried and tried, and ultimately failed, to dissuade Kenyans from their fundamental desire to eliminate tribalism in government and more fairly distribute the huge wealth being newly created.
I see this as People vs. Politicians, and in this wonderful case, the People won!
And there was some progress as well in Tanzania’s December election, with the opposition growing and its influence today moving that country towards a more democratic constitution.
(It was not so good in Rwanda or Uganda, where stiff-arm techniques and government manipulation of the electoral process undermined any attempt at real democracy.) But the huge leap forward in Kenya, and the little hop in Tanzania, made this the absolute top story of the year.
#2: TERRORISM GROWS
Four smaller bombings in Nairobi’s central business district over the year were eclipsed by two horrible simultaneous bombings in Kampala bars on July 11 while patrons were watching the world cup. Police display an unexploded suicide vest.
Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda in Somali, claimed responsibility. And throughout the year Shabaab grew increasingly visible along the Kenyan border as its power in Somali increased.
I’ve written for a long time about how the west has had its collective head in the sand as regards terrorism and Al-Qaeda in particular. Long ago I pointed out that the locus of Al-Qaeda terrorism had moved to the horn from Afghanistan, and this year proved it in spades.
The country with the most to lose and most to gain in this war on terror is Kenya, because of its long shared border with Somalia. And the year also marked a striking increase in the Kenyan government’s war on terror, and with considerable success.
With much more deftness and delicacy than us Kenya has stepped up the battle against Al-Shabaab while pursuing policies aimed at pacifying any overt threats to its security, by such brilliant moves as allowing Omar Bashir into the country and not arresting him (on an international U.N. warrant). As I said in a blog, Kenya Gets It, and the story is therefore a hopeful one.
The Dodd-Frank Act is our victory!The Congo Wars continue but are abating, and in large part because of a little known provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act which now makes it almost impossible for major corporations in the U.S. to buy the precious metal Coltan on the black market.
A black market which has funded perhaps Africa’s most horrible war for more than a generation. Hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – have been killed and raped, and more than 20,000 children conscripted into brutal wars, funded by purchases of Coltan and other precious metals by Intel, Sony and Apple.
It certainly wasn’t just this little legislative move. The U.N. peace-keeping force, fabulous diplomatic initiatives by Uganda and a real diplomatic vigilance by the U.S. all were instrumental. But the year ended with the least violence in the region in more than two decades.
#4: SOUTH SUDAN
I may be jumping the gun on this one, because the referendum to create a new country, the South Sudan, is not scheduled to occur before next month. But the runup to the referendum, including the registration process, while labored looks like it’s working.
Allied loosely with the Congo Wars, the civil war between the North and South Sudan had gone on for generations until a brokered peace deal five years ago included the ultimate end to the story: succession of the South into a new country.
The concept is rife with problems, most notably that the division line straddles important oil-producing areas. But in spite of all of this, and many other ups and downs along the way, it looks to me like there will be a South Sudan, and soon. And this year’s new U.N. presence in Juba, donor-construction of roads and airports, all points to the main global players in the controversy also thinking the same.
The creation of a new state out of a near failed one is not the be-all or end-all of the many problems of this massive and powerfully oil-rich area. But it is a giant leap forward.
#5: THE SERENGETI HIGHWAY & TOURISM
Last night NBC news aired a segment on the Serengeti Highway controversy, elevating an East African story into American prime time. Good.
But like so many reports of this controversy, the simplification ran amok. NBC’s reporter Engels claimed the motivation for the road was to facilitate rare earth metals like Coltan (see above) getting into Chinese hands more quickly.
While there may be something to this, it’s definitely not the main reason, which is much more general and harder therefore to fight. As I’ve often written, the highway as planned will be a real boon to the Maasai currently living to the east of the Serengeti, as much if not more than to the Chinese.
And as far as I know, Maasai don’t use Coltan.
Roads bring commerce and may be the single quickest way to develop a region. This region is sorely in need of development and recent Tanzania politics has aligned to the need for this regional development.
The highway is just one of many such issues which came to the fore throughout 2010 in Kenya and Tanzania. Concern that the west is just interested in East Africa as a vacation destination with no regards for the struggle for development, has governed quite a few local elections this year.
The whole concept of tourism may be changing as the debate progresses. I believe very deeply that the Serengeti highway as proposed would hinder rather than help development. But as I’ve pointed out, alternatives are in the works.
And the real story of which the highway story is only a part, is how dramatically different East Africans have begun to view tourists in 2010.
#6: NEW RESOURCE DISCOVERIES ALTER GEOPOLITICS
For years I and other African experts have referred to East Africa as “resource-poor.” Kenya, in particular, had nothing but potash. Boy, did that change this year!
Although only one proven reserve has been announced in Kenya, several have begun production in Uganda and we know many more are to come.
China has announced plans for a pipeline and oil port in northern Kenya at a cost of nearly $16 billion dollars, that’s more than twice the entire annual budget for the Kenya government! Deep earth techniques have matured, and China knows how to use them.
More gold has been found in Tanzania, new coal deposits in Uganda, more precious metals in Rwanda… East Africa is turning into the world’s rare earth commodities market.
A lot of these new discoveries are a result of technology improving: going deeper into the earth. But 2010 freed East Africa from the shackle of being “resource-poor” and that’s a very big deal.
#7: GAY RIGHTS ON THE HOOK
African societies have never embraced gay rights but as they rapidly develop, until now there was none of the gay bashing of the sort the rightest backlash produces in the U.S. U.S. Righties manipulating East Africa.
That changed this year, and in large part because of the meddling of U.S. rightest groups.
In what appears to now have been a concerted many year effort, support from U.S. righties is leading to a vote in Uganda’s parliament that would make homosexuality a capital offense, and would jail for long terms those who failed to out known gays.
This extreme is not African, it is American. Mostly an insidious attempt by those unable to evince such insanity in their own society to go to some more manipulative place. The story isn’t over as the vote has yet to occur, but it emerged and reached a crescendo this year.
#8: RHINO POACHING EXPLODES
Poaching is a constant problem in wildlife reserves worldwide and Africa in particular. Rhino are particularly vulnerable, and efforts to ensure safe, wild habitats have been decades in the making. Dagger from rhino horn.
This year, they seemed to come apart. It’s not clear if the economic downturn has something to do with this, but the poaching seems to have morphed this year from individual crimes to corporate business plans.
This leap in criminal sophistication must be explained by wealth opportunities that haven’t existed previously. And whether that was the depressing of financial goals caused by the economic downturn, increased wealth in the Horn of Africa where so much of the rhino horn is destined, or reduced law enforcement, we don’t yet know. But 2010 was the sad year that this poaching exploded.
#9: IS HOT AIR BALLOONING SAFE?
Hot air ballooning in Africa’s two great wildernesses of the Maasai Mara (Kenya) and the Serengeti (Tanzania) has been a staple of exciting options to visiting tourists for nearly 30 years. That might be changing. Is it Safe?
A terrible accident in the Serengeti in early October that killed two passengers and injured others opened a hornet’s nest of new questions.
After working on this story for some time I’ve personally concluded 2010 was the year I learned I should not step into a hot air balloon in East Africa, at least for the time being!
#10: EARLY MAN WONDERS
There were not quite as many spectacular discoveries or announcements about early man this year as in years previously, but one really did stand out as outstanding and you might wonder what it has to do with East Africa! Representation by Tomislan Maricic.
DNA testing of Neanderthal proved that early man from Africa didn’t wipe them out after all, but absorbed them into the ever-evolving homin species.
And that absorption, and not massacre, happened outside Africa to be sure. But it finally helps smooth out the story that began in Africa: It’s likely that Neanderthal were earlier migrants from Africa, and absorption was therefore easier, physiologically and biologically.
It’s a wonderful story, and fresh and exciting, unlike the only other major African early man announcement about Ardi which was really a much older story, anyway.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my loyal readers, with a giant thank you from me for your attention but especially your wonderful comments throughout the year. See you next year!
What the fizzled Egyptian revolution tells us is that the power of the people rises not so much for freedom as for bread. And who am I but a fat and comfortable American to think there’s anything wrong with that?
