Lessons from popular uprisings in North Africa

When 26 year-old unemployed Tunisian, Mohamed Bouzizi, set himself ablaze on December 17, 2010 sparking off mass protests in the country, it led to the collapse of former president Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali’s government. Few days later, Abdo abelmoneim Gafr, a baker in Egypt, also set himself on fire outside the parliament building leading to a similar fate for Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Since then, protests have spread to Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain and now Libya. No doubt, dictators’ days are numbered.

This trend of mass political defiance cannot be ignored elsewhere on the African continent where dictatorship prevails. The demands for all these protesters are regime change due to unemployment, poverty, oppression, authoritarianism, nepotism, corruption, poor standard of living, name it.

Often seen as firmly entrenched and impregnable, some of these dictatorships have proved unable to withstand the concerted political, economic, and social defiance of the people. Tunisia and Egypt have succumbed to the people power within weeks, the same is about to happen in the affected countries because these protesters are being guided by the core principles of nonviolent action, unity based on robust coalition and strategic and tactical planning provided by courageous leadership.

Even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the governed. “If enough people withdraw their cooperation, they will shrink the government’s legitimacy and raise the cost of enforcing its will,” said Mohandas Gandhi, the father of nonviolent struggle.

Brutal dictators such as Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia (2000), General Augusto Pinochet of Chile (1998), Ferdinand Marcos of Philippines (1989), Ben Ali of Tunisia (2011) and Hosni Mubarak (2011), among others, were all forced out of office through nonviolent revolution. Protestors in these countries employed the ideas of renowned scholars such as Gandhi, Gene Sharp, Ackerman and Helvey on nonviolence social change movement.

Sharp in his writing, Role of Power in nonviolent struggle (1990), stated that it’s an obvious, simple, but often forgotten observation of great theoretical and practical significance that the power wielded by individuals and groups in the highest political position of command and decision in any government is not intrinsic to them, such power must come from outside themselves (people). There must therefore be cooperation of the population and of the institution of society (the governed). Without the cooperation and obedience of many groups and institutions, special personnel, and the general population, the regime collapses.

The organisers of successful uprisings developed explicit strategies to increase the cost of repression and undermine the willingness of security forces to engage in violent acts against them by employing persuasion and deterrence tailored to the particular institutions they were addressing, the movements were able to avoid a violent crackdown.

Strategists of nonviolent conflict argue, therefore, that one core objective of unarmed movement should be to undermine the loyalties and obedience of a regime’s police, military, and other essential “pillars of support”. The Serbian Otpor Movement to oust Milosevic (2000), the Ukrainian Orange Movement (2004) and the Rose Revolution in Poland both achieved this objective. The Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan protesters have all applied the principle in their struggles. “If people are not afraid of the dictatorship, that dictatorship is in big trouble”-Gene Sharp.

Freedom and democracy, the will of the people, free and fair elections are more powerful than any state machinery, not withstanding its strength and severity. These are facts often ignored by dictators in power, but change is inevitable when that time has come.

Mr Omara is a student of Conflict Transformation Studies, Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies, Gulu University
omara.christopher@yahoo.com