How protest is redefining democracy around the world Zachariah Mampilly
Like many of you, I’m often frustrated
by the democratic process.
It’s messy, it’s complicated,
it’s often inefficient.
Our political leaders feel disconnected
from the concerns of ordinary people.
Many feel that voting every few years
for leaders disconnected
from their daily challenges
is pointless.
But before we reject democracy,
let’s imagine what it could be.
And I believe that African activists
are redefining democracy
by putting protest at its center,
what I refer to as “protest democracy.”
International organizations
and academic experts
define democracy as regular,
multiparty electoral competition.
But democracy should not only be
about elites competing at the ballot box.
For it to have meaning,
it’s something we must
engage in every day.
When I say “protest democracy,”
I’m challenging how we think
about democratic action.
Viewing democracy as only elections
is no longer adequate
and threatens democracy itself.
So we must protest democracy
to give it a renewed meaning.
What would this look like?
We need to turn to African societies,
where ordinary people
are increasingly taking to the streets
to transform their lives.
African social movements
have often been at the forefront
of conceptualizing democracy in this way.
This may come as a surprise
to those of who think
that the only way
Africans engage in politics
is through the barrel of the gun.
But increasingly, young people
are taking to the streets
and abandoning organized violence
in favor of more effective
nonviolent action.
I’ve spent much of the past two decades
talking to African activists,
both violent and nonviolent.
Across Africa, young people are rising up
to challenge almost every
type of regime known to humanity.
This is my friend Thiat.
He’s a rapper from Senegal.
He led a large movement in Senegal
that was successful in preventing
the president from stealing a third term.
From Morocco to Lesotho,
young people are rising up
against entrenched monarchies:
in Egypt and Sudan,
against brutal dictatorships;
in Uganda and Ethiopia,
against powerful militarized states
with quasi-democratic veneers;
in South Africa,
where this image was taken,
and Burundi,
against democratically elected leaders
who have done little to improve
the conditions for ordinary people.
Across the continent,
protest is not exceptional,
but a normal part of life.
Africans use protests
to challenge both dictators
as well as power cuts.
In a way, Africans are protesting
democracy itself,
enriching its possibilities for us all.
There have been two
major waves of African protest,
and we are currently living
through the third,
which began around 2005.
It includes the so-called Arab Spring,
which took place mostly on the continent.
The first wave took place
in the 1940s and 1950s
and led to Africa’s decolonization.
Kwame Nkrumah led
a broad coalition in Ghana
that overthrew British rule,
providing a template
for nonviolent movements globally.
The second wave took place
in the 1980s and 1990s
against austerity measures
that imposed harsh conditions
on African economies.
These protests led to the overthrow
of autocratic regimes
and led to the introduction
of multiparty elections
across the continent.
The ongoing third wave is correcting
the shortcomings of the earlier two.
If the first wave brought
liberation but not democracy,
and the second, elections
but only for the elites,
then it is the third wave
that is most concerned
with transforming democracy
into the rule of the people.
It includes movements
like Y’en a Marre in Senegal,
Le Balai Citoyen in Burkina Faso,
Tajamuka in Zimbabwe,
LUCHA and Filimbi
in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
movements that work outside of more
conventional nongovernmental organizations
and political parties
to challenge the economic
and political system itself,
often at great risk.
Brilliant young activists
like LUCHA’s Fred Bauma
have been detained and tortured,
often with little to no outcry
from the international community.
The list goes on, as you can see
from some of the data we collected.
There have been large popular protests
in over 40 African countries since 2005,
and if you look,
you’ll recognize that in 2011,
the year of the so-called Arab Spring,
was actually the spike
of this broader wave.
Contrary to popular belief,
many of these protests
have been successful.
We know of the dictators falling
in Tunisia and in Egypt,
but popular movements have prevented
presidents from stealing third terms
in Senegal, in Malawi
and Burkina Faso as well.
What’s driving this upsurge of protest?
Demographically,
Africa is both the youngest
and the fastest-growing continent,
with the largest age gap
between the people and their rulers.
It is urbanizing at a tremendous pace.
Economically, African countries
have been growing for over a decade now,
largely driven by investments from Asia.
But little of this wealth
is trickling down.
Formal jobs in the industrial sector
are actually decreasing,
with informal labor the only option left
for people to eke out a living.
As a result, inequality is skyrocketing,
and political leaders
are increasingly disconnected
from their much younger populations.
For those of us from outside of Africa,
we’re familiar with parts of this story:
a massive spike in inequality,
the product of a decline
in good jobs for good wages
that were once considered
the hallmark of an advanced society;
the capture of our
political parties by elites
accompanied by the hollowing
out of civil society
that once provided a voice
to ordinary people;
that sinking feeling
that no matter what you do,
external factors related
to the global economy
can disrupt our lives for the worse.
Our political leaders seem helpless,
insisting on austerity,
even as public goods diminish
to levels unseen in decades.
And this is when they’re not succumbing
to exclusionary nationalism,
blaming our woes on the weak
rather than the powerful.
What those of us from North America
and Western Europe consider to be new
has been the normal condition
of African life since the 1970s.
So who better to learn from
than those who have been engaged
in resistance to these conditions
for the longest period of time?
What can we learn
from African protest democracy?
First, democracy must begin
with ordinary people.
Viewing democracy as only elections
has led to widespread disillusionment.
We must instead work to center
ordinary people in democratic life.
Protest provides us one way to do that.
Regardless of your age,
sexuality, your gender,
whether you’re a citizen or a non-citizen,
able-bodied or disabled,
anyone can participate.
In contrast to elections,
protests are not confined
by rigid electoral cycles.
They offer a much more
immediate form of action
in our era of instant feedback.
Second, while protests may be messy,
this is what makes them powerful.
Protests are contentious
and contested processes,
defined by contingent actions,
often devoid of clear messaging,
characterized by incomplete organization.
These dynamics are what makes it easy
to dismiss protests as riots
or to assume they are
of limited political utility.
But it also makes them easier to suppress.
Too often, governments do not view
protests as elementary to democracy.
Instead, they violently crush
social movements
or work to discredit their message.
Third, as I already hinted,
protest is the space from which
new political imaginations may emerge.
Protests are about coloring
outside the lines,
a way for ordinary people
to rewrite the rules of the game
that too many feel
are stacked against them.
Many young people in Africa
have grown up in societies
where a single ruler
has ruled their entire lives.
Protest is the space
for new possibilities to emerge,
as young people begin
to discover their own power.
Consider the situation
of my friend Linda Masarira,
a single mother of five,
who is leading protests
against the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
She has been beaten, arrested, harassed.
But Linda perseveres, because
as she told me a few months ago,
protest has given her a sense
of meaning and direction.
And though she knows the odds against her,
Linda perseveres.
Like Linda and other
young African activists,
we all must work to redefine democracy
as something more than just
elections and political parties.
Democracy is a creative process,
and protest has always been the vehicle
for expanding our political imaginations
beyond what we are told is possible.
(In Swahili) Thank you very much.
(Applause)