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From: senaey fethi (senaeyfethi@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jul 25 2011 - 10:30:37 EDT
The authoritarian leaders of Africa know that the Arab
Spring won't spread south and that tribalism will save
them!
When Wealth Breeds Rage
By JOHN GITHONGOJuly 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24africa.html?_r=1&ref=economy&pagewanted=print
John Githongo is the chief executive of Inuka Kenya Trust and
chairman of the Africa Institute for Governing With Integrity. He was
Kenya’s permanent secretary for governance and ethics from 2003 to 2005.
Nairobi, Kenya
ACROSS the Middle East and North Africa, superficial political calm has
been shattered by convulsions of rage. Idealistic young protesters have
toppled some of the most ruthless and well-resourced political strongmen on the planet. In sub-Saharan Africa, many are asking: will the Arab
Spring spread south?
Thus far, the authoritarian leaders who dominate the continent have
withstood protests, stubbornly maintaining that tribalism will save
them. They and their loyal supporters insist that African societies are
so fragmented along ethnic, sectarian and regional lines that it would
be impossible today to whip up the perfect Tahrir Square storm; instead, they believe, an outcome like Libya’s civil war or the messy departure
of Yemen’s president is more likely.
And yet many of the underlying realities are the same. As food and fuel
prices rise, inflation is driving millions of Africans below the poverty line just when the world’s great aggregators of economic data have been preaching the opposite: that growth will benefit all. Radical and
growing economic inequality animated much of what was at stake in the
various Arab uprisings, and it will play a major role in shaping African politics for years to come.
The Tunisian street vendor who set himself alight was not so different from the disaffected young
men of Nairobi’s and Kampala’s slums. They are Africa’s overwhelming
majority: poor, marginalized and angry about corruption and soaring food and fuel prices. It is those young men and women who endure the daily
humiliations of poverty, struggling to find jobs as elites crow about
“growth” and an African renaissance.
But the much-vaunted middle class remains a tiny sliver of the
population in most African countries — one that is largely dependent on
state patronage for its survival. Africa’s middle class has grown in
recent years, but its members are politically and economically
vulnerable and their lives can be overturned by the whims of elites who
rule instead of govern.
Meanwhile, the poor are assaulted daily by the potent symbols of rising
inequality: glitzy malls filled with designer goods and status-enhancing baubles that cost 10 times the monthly minimum wage. Jealousy of
ill-gotten gains is particularly acute among members of the giant youth
bulge across Africa and the Middle East — in Kenya, for example, over 78 percent of the population is younger than 34, and that population is
growing at one million a year.
Their resentment is only heightened by the tools of the information age, which remind them that they have been excluded from feeding at the
trough enjoyed so blatantly by the nouveau riche — a lifestyle that is
showcased by the newly minted wealthy on television, Twitter, Facebook
and the Web in infuriating detail. Globalization has changed the
aspirations of the poor, and their expectations will follow.
Indeed, it is resentment of the president’s son’s Ferrari, more than
envy of Europe and America’s comparative wealth, that is driving young
Africans into the streets to challenge their kleptocratic governments.
If the Arab revolutions have taught us anything, it is that inequality
and perceptions of inequality within poor countries have now replaced
poverty as the No. 1 development challenge facing the world. And
consequently, the struggle to mitigate inequality, rather than “making
poverty history” through debt relief has become the most urgent task.
Narrowing wealth disparities within nations rather than among them is
now paramount.
The world has seen a dramatic decline in global poverty over the last
decade. The total number of poor people around the world fell to under
900 million in 2010 from over 1.3 billion in 2005 — most of them in
China. Although the Chinese Communist Party celebrates the nation’s
economic progress, it also recognizes that growth has been far from
evenly distributed. The latest Chinese development plan specifically
confronts inequality and attempts to mitigate it. African leaders have
yet to catch on, and consequently inequality has been left to fester.
Across the world, as growth has spread and accelerated, so has
inequality. It is clear that growth is often not enough to guarantee
stable, cohesive societies. Rather than create a rising tide that lifts
all boats, it can actually increase inequality in a society. And
inequality, unlike poverty, is far more easily politicized, ethnicized
and militarized, especially in African countries with heterogeneous
populations and weak judicial and regulatory institutions. It is also
far more combustible because it creates an identifiable enemy — a class
that benefits disproportionately because of its unfair access to those
who wield power. Mismanaging it can be catastrophic.
Steady economic growth and urbanization, combined with high levels of
youth unemployment and conspicuous consumption on the part of the
corrupt ruling elite, create a situation in which growth exacerbates
political volatility instead of quelling it. China, with its highly
centralized system of economic management and ruthlessly efficient
security machine, has been able to keep a lid on the contradictions thus far.
But as African countries grow, despite the unevenly shared benefits of
that growth, the expectations of the poor and the aspiring middle class
will continue to advance — aided by social media — and both groups will
only become more angry and predisposed to protest as they perceive the
stark inequalities surrounding them.
That is precisely what happened in Tunisia and Egypt. It is no
coincidence that five Arab countries — including Tunisia, Algeria and
Morocco — were among the top 10 listed in the United Nations Human
Development Report’s assessment of progress last year. Their advances
were largely due to decades of improvements in health and education.
Indeed, in 1970, according to research by Mwangi Kimenyi of the
Brookings Institution, life expectancy in Tunisia was lower than in
Congo Republic — and there were fewer children in school in Morocco than in Malawi.
The Arab Spring occurred at a moment when economic development had
outpaced political development in much of the region; ossified political systems no longer satisfied a population yearning for modern freedoms.
The explosive democratization in the Arab world, therefore, is a result
of development’s success, not its failure. An authoritarian country
cannot grow itself out of its fundamental underlying political
contradictions. Eventually, a democratic deficit sets in.
A country can experience economic growth and get all the hardware of
governance right (education, health, infrastructure, sanitation) while
getting all the software wrong (basic freedoms, leadership, mitigating
inequalities, addressing the youths’ demands). Eventually the system
crashes. We’ve seen it in North Africa and the Middle East. And Kenya’s
postelection meltdown in 2007-8 came on the heels of a five-year
economic boom. It was also a period of particularly parochial and
backward politics, which laid the groundwork for violent polarization
along ethnic lines.
IMPROVED macroeconomic management, higher commodity prices and a
generally positive economic trajectory since the late 1990s could spare
sub-Saharan Africa from the spasms erupting throughout the Arab world.
But this growth is taking place in a region where the capacity to create jobs in the formal sector has been woefully inadequate; and
antediluvian elites have mastered the manipulation of ethnic,
linguistic, religious and regional differences to maintain their grip on power. Their rule has turned systemic inequalities and, more important, perceptions of inequality, into potent triggers for violence.
The supreme irony of the Arab Spring is that the leaders of Kenya,
Uganda, Malawi and other countries have, in their alarmed reaction to
events in North Africa, helped bring the revolution south, at least as
an idea. In Kenya, youth groups agitating against soaring commodity
prices include “revolution” in their names and slogans. In Uganda,
opposition attempts to hold demonstrations against spiraling food prices as well as a mass “walk to work” protest have been met with
irrationally disproportionate violence that reveals the deep fears of
the country’s leaders. And last week, Malawi’s police killed at least 18 anti-regime protesters.
By 2025, sub-Saharan Africa will be home to a quarter of the world’s
people under the age of 24, and their anger is growing. For Africa’s
youth, many of them educated and unemployed, the future seemingly holds
no hope under the current arrangement. Speak to them of G.D.P. growth
and their reactions are visceral. “The economy is growing for whom?”
they ask. “Not for us!”
For now, their demonstrations have been easily dispersed. But if their
complaints merge with long-festering ethnic and regional grievances,
that could lead to a far more volatile uprising.
The idea of revolution has arrived, among the minority of youth with
access to social media but also among the masses via the poor man’s
Facebook: FM radio. And their geriatric presidents and prime ministers
are nervous.
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