The Army As The Central Factor In The Succes of "Street Revolutions"

By Dibussi Tande

In  a recent article on why the streets in sub-Saharan Africa have remained silent while massive anti-regime protests rock North Africa, the Christian Science Monitor posits that this is due to weak civil society organizations:
 

"Regime change is common in Africa, but it tends to come from the barrel of a gun and not because of street demonstrations, says Achille Mbembe, an historian at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. This means there are few organizations with the power to challenge the authority of rulers, to organize dissenters, and to articulate alternative ideas of government that ordinary people would be willing to give their lives for.

“Civil society organizations are often weak because they are divided along ethnic lines, and many nongovernmental organizations are simply revenue-generating activities, so they are not very helpful in building the values of a deep civil society,” says Mr. Mbembe".

Mbembe is correct about the absence of viable CSOs in most of sub-Saharan Africa that can to take control of, and organize sustained mass protest movements. However, this only partially explains the inability to ovethrow dictatorial regimes through street protests. The fact that street demonstrations don’t generally result in regime change in Sub-Saharan Africa is due in large part to the role of the military than anything else. 

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Comments

[limbekid]

Excellent analysis. Perfectly sums up the situation.