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<span style="font-weight: bold">In search of an African revolution </span>
International media is following protests across the 'Arab world' but ignoring those in Africa.
Azad Essa Las
Demonstrations are continuing across the Middle East, interrupted only by the call for prayer when protesters fall to their knees on cheap carpets and straw mats and the riot police take a tea break. Egypt, in particular, with its scenes of unrelenting protesters staying put in Tahrir Square, playing guitars, singing, treating the injured and generally making Gandhi’s famous salt march of the 1940s look like an act of terror, captured the imagination of an international media and audience more familiar with the stereotype of Muslim youth blowing themselves and others up.
A non-violent revolution was turning the nation full circle, much to the admiration of the rest of the world.
"I think Egypt's cultural significance and massive population were very important factors in ensuring media coverage," says Ethan Zuckerman, the co-founder of Global Voices, an international community of online activists.
"International audiences know at least a few facts about Egypt, which makes it easier for them to connect to news there," he says, drawing a comparison with Bahrain, a country Zuckerman says few Americans would be able to locate on a map.
Zuckerman also believes that media organisations were in part motivated by a "sense of guilt" over their failure to effectively cover the Tunisian revolution and were, therefore, playing "catch up" in Egypt.
"Popular revolutions make for great TV," he adds. "The imagery from Tahrir square in particular was very powerful and led to a story that was easy for global media to cover closely."
<span style="font-weight: bold">The African Egypt versus the Arab Egypt</span>
Egypt was suddenly a sexy topic. But, <span style="font-weight: bold">despite the fact that the rich banks of the Nile are sourced from central Africa, the world looked upon the uprising in Egypt solely as a Middle Eastern issue </span>and commentators scrambled to predict what it would mean for the rest of the Arab world and, of course, Israel. <span style="font-weight: bold">Few seemed to care that Egypt was also part of Africa, a continent with a billion people, most living under despotic regimes and suffering economic strife and political suppression just like their Egyptian neighbours.</span>"Egypt is in Africa. We should not fool about with the attempts of the North to segregate the countries of North Africa from the rest of the continent," says Firoze Manji, the editor of Pambazuka Online, an advocacy website for social justice in Africa. "Their histories have been intertwined for millennia. <span style="font-weight: bold">Some Egyptians may not feel they are Africans, but that is neither here nor there. They are part of the heritage of the continent."</span>And, just like much of the rest of the world, Africans watched events unfold in Cairo with great interest. "There is little doubt that people [in Africa] are watching with enthusiasm what is going on in the Middle East, and drawing inspiration from that for their own struggles," says Manji.
He argues that globalisation and the accompanying economic liberalisation has created circumstances in which the people of the global South share very similar experiences: "Increasing pauperisation, growing unemployment, declining power to hold their governments to account, declining income from agricultural production, increasing accumulation by dispossession - something that is growing on a vast scale - and increasing willingness of governments to comply with the political and economic wishes of the North.
"In that sense, people in Africa recognise the experiences of citizens in the Middle East. There is enormous potential for solidarity to grow out from that. In any case, where does Africa end and the Middle East begin?"
Rallying cry
The ‘trouble’ that started in Tunisia (another African country) when street vendor Mohamed Bouzazi’s self-immolation articulated the frustrations of a nation spread to Algeria (yes, another African country), Yemen and Bahrain just as Hosni Mubarak made himself comfortable at a Sharm el Sheik spa.
Meanwhile, in <span style="font-weight: bold">'darkest Africa'</span>,
(wha dat mean?) far away from the media cameras, reports surfaced of political unrest in a West African country called Gabon. With little geo-political importance, news organisations seem largely oblivious to the drama that began unfolding on January 29, when the opposition protested against Ali Bhongo Odhimba’s government, whom they accuse of hijacking recent elections. The demonstrators demanded free elections and the security forces duly stepped in to lay those ambitions to rest. The clashes between protesters and police that followed show few signs of relenting.
"The events in Tunisia and Egypt have become, within Africa, a rallying cry for any number of opposition leaders, everyday people harbouring grievances and political opportunists looking to liken their country's regimes to those of Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak," says Drew Hinshaw, an American journalist based in West Africa. "In some cases that comparison is outrageous, but in all too many it is more than fair.
"Look at Gabon, a tragically under-developed oil exporter whose GDP per capita is more than twice that of Egypt's but whose people are living on wages that make Egypt look like the land of full employment.
"The Bhongo family has run that country for four decades, since before Mubarak ran nothing larger than an air force base, and yet they're still there. You can understand why the country's opposition is calling for new rounds of Egypt-like protests after seeing what Egypt and Tunisia were able to achieve."
Elsewhere on the continent protests have broken out in Khartoum, Sudan where students held Egypt-inspired demonstrations against proposed cuts to subsidies on petroleum products and sugar. Following the protests there on January 30, CPJ reported that staff from the weekly Al-Midan were arrested for covering the event.
Ethiopian media have also reported that police there detained the well-known journalist Eskinder Nega for "attempts to incite" Egypt-style protests. In Cameroon, the Social Democratic Front Party has said that the country might experience an uprising similar to those in North Africa if the government does not slash food prices.
"There are lots of Africans too who are young, unemployed, who see very few prospects for their future in countries ruled by the same old political elite that have ruled for 25 or 30 or 35 years," says CSM Africa bureau chief Scott Baldauf.
"I think all the same issues in Egypt are also present in other countries. You have leaders who have hung onto power for decades and who think the country can only function if they are in charge. A young Zimbabwean would understand the frustration of a young Egyptian."
Divide and rule
Sure, the continent is vast and acts of dissent and their subsequent suppression are the bread and butter of some oppressive African states. But just as self-immolation was not new in Tunisia, discontentment and rising restlessness is not alien to Africans. In the past three years, there been violent service delivery protests in South Africa and food riots in Cameroon, Madagascar, Mozambique and Senegal.
But whether the simmering discontent in Africa will result in protests on the scale of those in Egypt remains to be seen.
"All the same dry wood of bad governance is stacked in many African countries, waiting for a match to set it alight," says Baldauf. "But it takes leadership. It takes civil society organisation," something the CSM Africa bureau chief fears countries south of the Sahara do not have at the same levels as their North African neighbours.
Emmanuel Kisiangani, a senior researcher at the African Conflict Prevention Programme (ACCP) at the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) in South Africa, believes the difference in the success levels of protests in North and sub-Saharan Africa can be attributed in part to the ethnic make-up of the respective regions.
"In most of the countries that have had fairly 'successful riots' the societies are fairly homogeneous compared to sub-Saharan Africa where there are a multiplicity of ethnic groups that are themselves very polarised. In sub-Saharan Africa, where governments have been able to divide people along ethnic-political lines, it becomes easier to hijack an uprising because of ethnic differences, unlike in North Africa."
'Where is Anderson Cooper?'
Egypt and Tunisia may have been the catalysts for demonstrations across the Arab world, but will those ripples spread into the rest of Africa as well and, if they do, will the international media and its audience even notice?
"What the continent lacks is media coverage," says Hinshaw. "There's no powerhouse media for the region like Al Jazeera, while European and American media routinely reduce a conflict like [that in] Ivory Coast or Eastern Congo to a one-sentence news blurb at the bottom of the screen."
Hinshaw is particularly troubled by the failure of the international media to pay due attention to events in Ivory Coast, where the UN estimates that at least 300 people have died and the opposition puts the figure at 500.
"With due deference to the bravery of the Egyptian demonstrators, protesters who gathered this weekend in Abidjan [in Ivory Coast] aren't up against a military that safeguards them - it shoots at them.
"The country's economy has been coughing up blood since November, with banks shutting by the day, businesses closing by the hour and thousands of families fleeing their homes," he continues. "And in all of this where is Anderson Cooper? Where is Nicolas Kristof? Why is Bahrain a front page news story while Ivory Coast is something buried at the bottom of the news stack?"
The journalist is equally as disappointed in world leaders. "This Friday, Barack Obama publicly condemned the use of violence in Bahrain, Yemen and Libya. When was the last time you saw Obama come out and make a statement on Ivory Coast? Or Eastern Congo? Or Djibouti, where 20,000 people protested this weekend according to the opposition?
"<span style="font-weight: bold">The problem is that most American media compulsively ignore everything south of the Sahara and north of Johannesburg.</span> A demonstration has to be filmed, photographed, streamed live into the offices of foreign leaders to achieve everything Egypt's achieved."
Nanjala, a political analyst at the University of Oxford, suggests this journalistic shortcoming stems from journalists' <span style="font-weight: bold"> </span>
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International media is following protests across the 'Arab world' but ignoring those in Africa.
Azad Essa Las
Demonstrations are continuing across the Middle East, interrupted only by the call for prayer when protesters fall to their knees on cheap carpets and straw mats and the riot police take a tea break. Egypt, in particular, with its scenes of unrelenting protesters staying put in Tahrir Square, playing guitars, singing, treating the injured and generally making Gandhi’s famous salt march of the 1940s look like an act of terror, captured the imagination of an international media and audience more familiar with the stereotype of Muslim youth blowing themselves and others up.
A non-violent revolution was turning the nation full circle, much to the admiration of the rest of the world.
"I think Egypt's cultural significance and massive population were very important factors in ensuring media coverage," says Ethan Zuckerman, the co-founder of Global Voices, an international community of online activists.
"International audiences know at least a few facts about Egypt, which makes it easier for them to connect to news there," he says, drawing a comparison with Bahrain, a country Zuckerman says few Americans would be able to locate on a map.
Zuckerman also believes that media organisations were in part motivated by a "sense of guilt" over their failure to effectively cover the Tunisian revolution and were, therefore, playing "catch up" in Egypt.
"Popular revolutions make for great TV," he adds. "The imagery from Tahrir square in particular was very powerful and led to a story that was easy for global media to cover closely."
<span style="font-weight: bold">The African Egypt versus the Arab Egypt</span>
Egypt was suddenly a sexy topic. But, <span style="font-weight: bold">despite the fact that the rich banks of the Nile are sourced from central Africa, the world looked upon the uprising in Egypt solely as a Middle Eastern issue </span>and commentators scrambled to predict what it would mean for the rest of the Arab world and, of course, Israel. <span style="font-weight: bold">Few seemed to care that Egypt was also part of Africa, a continent with a billion people, most living under despotic regimes and suffering economic strife and political suppression just like their Egyptian neighbours.</span>"Egypt is in Africa. We should not fool about with the attempts of the North to segregate the countries of North Africa from the rest of the continent," says Firoze Manji, the editor of Pambazuka Online, an advocacy website for social justice in Africa. "Their histories have been intertwined for millennia. <span style="font-weight: bold">Some Egyptians may not feel they are Africans, but that is neither here nor there. They are part of the heritage of the continent."</span>And, just like much of the rest of the world, Africans watched events unfold in Cairo with great interest. "There is little doubt that people [in Africa] are watching with enthusiasm what is going on in the Middle East, and drawing inspiration from that for their own struggles," says Manji.
He argues that globalisation and the accompanying economic liberalisation has created circumstances in which the people of the global South share very similar experiences: "Increasing pauperisation, growing unemployment, declining power to hold their governments to account, declining income from agricultural production, increasing accumulation by dispossession - something that is growing on a vast scale - and increasing willingness of governments to comply with the political and economic wishes of the North.
"In that sense, people in Africa recognise the experiences of citizens in the Middle East. There is enormous potential for solidarity to grow out from that. In any case, where does Africa end and the Middle East begin?"
Rallying cry
The ‘trouble’ that started in Tunisia (another African country) when street vendor Mohamed Bouzazi’s self-immolation articulated the frustrations of a nation spread to Algeria (yes, another African country), Yemen and Bahrain just as Hosni Mubarak made himself comfortable at a Sharm el Sheik spa.
Meanwhile, in <span style="font-weight: bold">'darkest Africa'</span>,
(wha dat mean?) far away from the media cameras, reports surfaced of political unrest in a West African country called Gabon. With little geo-political importance, news organisations seem largely oblivious to the drama that began unfolding on January 29, when the opposition protested against Ali Bhongo Odhimba’s government, whom they accuse of hijacking recent elections. The demonstrators demanded free elections and the security forces duly stepped in to lay those ambitions to rest. The clashes between protesters and police that followed show few signs of relenting."The events in Tunisia and Egypt have become, within Africa, a rallying cry for any number of opposition leaders, everyday people harbouring grievances and political opportunists looking to liken their country's regimes to those of Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak," says Drew Hinshaw, an American journalist based in West Africa. "In some cases that comparison is outrageous, but in all too many it is more than fair.
"Look at Gabon, a tragically under-developed oil exporter whose GDP per capita is more than twice that of Egypt's but whose people are living on wages that make Egypt look like the land of full employment.
"The Bhongo family has run that country for four decades, since before Mubarak ran nothing larger than an air force base, and yet they're still there. You can understand why the country's opposition is calling for new rounds of Egypt-like protests after seeing what Egypt and Tunisia were able to achieve."
Elsewhere on the continent protests have broken out in Khartoum, Sudan where students held Egypt-inspired demonstrations against proposed cuts to subsidies on petroleum products and sugar. Following the protests there on January 30, CPJ reported that staff from the weekly Al-Midan were arrested for covering the event.
Ethiopian media have also reported that police there detained the well-known journalist Eskinder Nega for "attempts to incite" Egypt-style protests. In Cameroon, the Social Democratic Front Party has said that the country might experience an uprising similar to those in North Africa if the government does not slash food prices.
"There are lots of Africans too who are young, unemployed, who see very few prospects for their future in countries ruled by the same old political elite that have ruled for 25 or 30 or 35 years," says CSM Africa bureau chief Scott Baldauf.
"I think all the same issues in Egypt are also present in other countries. You have leaders who have hung onto power for decades and who think the country can only function if they are in charge. A young Zimbabwean would understand the frustration of a young Egyptian."
Divide and rule
Sure, the continent is vast and acts of dissent and their subsequent suppression are the bread and butter of some oppressive African states. But just as self-immolation was not new in Tunisia, discontentment and rising restlessness is not alien to Africans. In the past three years, there been violent service delivery protests in South Africa and food riots in Cameroon, Madagascar, Mozambique and Senegal.
But whether the simmering discontent in Africa will result in protests on the scale of those in Egypt remains to be seen.
"All the same dry wood of bad governance is stacked in many African countries, waiting for a match to set it alight," says Baldauf. "But it takes leadership. It takes civil society organisation," something the CSM Africa bureau chief fears countries south of the Sahara do not have at the same levels as their North African neighbours.
Emmanuel Kisiangani, a senior researcher at the African Conflict Prevention Programme (ACCP) at the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) in South Africa, believes the difference in the success levels of protests in North and sub-Saharan Africa can be attributed in part to the ethnic make-up of the respective regions.
"In most of the countries that have had fairly 'successful riots' the societies are fairly homogeneous compared to sub-Saharan Africa where there are a multiplicity of ethnic groups that are themselves very polarised. In sub-Saharan Africa, where governments have been able to divide people along ethnic-political lines, it becomes easier to hijack an uprising because of ethnic differences, unlike in North Africa."
'Where is Anderson Cooper?'
Egypt and Tunisia may have been the catalysts for demonstrations across the Arab world, but will those ripples spread into the rest of Africa as well and, if they do, will the international media and its audience even notice?
"What the continent lacks is media coverage," says Hinshaw. "There's no powerhouse media for the region like Al Jazeera, while European and American media routinely reduce a conflict like [that in] Ivory Coast or Eastern Congo to a one-sentence news blurb at the bottom of the screen."
Hinshaw is particularly troubled by the failure of the international media to pay due attention to events in Ivory Coast, where the UN estimates that at least 300 people have died and the opposition puts the figure at 500.
"With due deference to the bravery of the Egyptian demonstrators, protesters who gathered this weekend in Abidjan [in Ivory Coast] aren't up against a military that safeguards them - it shoots at them.
"The country's economy has been coughing up blood since November, with banks shutting by the day, businesses closing by the hour and thousands of families fleeing their homes," he continues. "And in all of this where is Anderson Cooper? Where is Nicolas Kristof? Why is Bahrain a front page news story while Ivory Coast is something buried at the bottom of the news stack?"
The journalist is equally as disappointed in world leaders. "This Friday, Barack Obama publicly condemned the use of violence in Bahrain, Yemen and Libya. When was the last time you saw Obama come out and make a statement on Ivory Coast? Or Eastern Congo? Or Djibouti, where 20,000 people protested this weekend according to the opposition?
"<span style="font-weight: bold">The problem is that most American media compulsively ignore everything south of the Sahara and north of Johannesburg.</span> A demonstration has to be filmed, photographed, streamed live into the offices of foreign leaders to achieve everything Egypt's achieved."
Nanjala, a political analyst at the University of Oxford, suggests this journalistic shortcoming stems from journalists' <span style="font-weight: bold"> </span>
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