Twelve years have passed since the Arab Spring, and both Egypt and Tunisia are facing a stark economic crisis. Both are currently under the mercy of extremely unfavorable structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund, relying heavily on food imports, mired in debt, and facing historical inflation rates with unprecedented hikes in food prices. This dire economic situation is made all the worse by a relentless escalation of authoritarian measures in both countries. The prevailing atmosphere indicates that the counterrevolution has prevailed and that avenues of emancipatory possibility have shrunk almost to the point of extinction.

Every year, however, as the anniversary of the January uprisings approaches, dread ensues, not only because it prompts us to reflect on the defeat, but also because of the steady barrage of analysis we are inundated with, grappling with the same questions every year, and revealing an unsatiated desire to answer questions that we already probably know the answers to. Questions abound about horizontalism or verticalism, leadership, or leaderlessness that date back to the break between Stalin and Trotsky, which have eternally divided those in the 1917 camp vs the 1968 camp. Spontaneity contra organization ad infinitum.

A book that stands out in this genre, however, is Asef Bayat’s Revolution Without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring. Published in 2017, it has become one of the most referenced in the field. In it, the Iranian-American sociologist grapples with the idea of what revolution means in a post-Cold War era. Bayat—correctly in my opinion—attributes the failure of the January uprisings, despite their extraordinary mobilization and resistance, to a lack of revolutionary vision, political organization, and a dearth of intellectual articulation by its leaders. He does so by comparing them to the revolutions of the 1970s when the concept of revolution was largely informed by socialism and anti-imperialism. Adversely, the January uprisings, affected by the NGOization of the world, seemed to be more concerned with democracy, human rights, and accountability.

Deviating away from the approach he took in Revolution Without Revolutionaries, Bayat—in his sixth and latest book, Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring, published in 2021—decides to focus on the granular rather than the structural by focusing on the “non-movements” as he refers to them, giving primacy to “what the revolution meant to ordinary people.” Focusing on Egypt and Tunisia, Bayat’s argument is that the events of 2011 set something in motion, and brought a different set of social relations in everyday life. The book is rich with examples of this everyday resistance from both countries, covering different categories.

With his starting point being the subaltern, Bayat attempts to investigate the relationship between the “ordinary” and the “extraordinary,” or the “mundane” and the “monumental.” Evoking Antonio Gramsci and American anthropologist and anarchist James C. Scott, his focus this time is civil society and everyday resistance as opposed to the macro approach he used in Revolution Without Revolutionaries, with the aim of finding the connection between both. He also aims to give the subaltern “agency” in relation to revolutionary moments. This is made manifest even in the naming of the chapters of the book (the poor and the plebian, women, children of the revolution, etc.), assigning a separate experience to every group. In doing so he tries to make us consider the meaning of revolution, providing us with an alternative narrative that doesn’t fall under the binary of “success” and “defeat.” Its strength lies in that it rejects the defeatist paradigm that has become the prevalent narrative of the uprisings.

“A ‘failed’ revolution may not be entirely failed if we consider significant transformations that may transpire at the level of the ‘social’,” Bayat contends. Arguably, one can attribute this approach to a sort of theoretical optimism that refuses to give in to defeat. However, it prompts us to think about the bleakness of the current post-counterrevolution reality that these everyday resistances—which one can argue are universal and present in all societies, not just societies that have undergone recent political transformations—are something to be celebrated.

Although the attempt to reframe the revolution from being seen through the lens of “failure” or “defeat” is notable, the premise of the book itself is indicative of the current impossibility of actual politics, be it in Egypt or Tunisia. The absence of which gives cause to the celebration of and the need to document the minutiae of these quotidian acts.

The book’s heavily researched chapters are divided thematically, each tackling a different demographic of the revolution. While these chapters are brimming with examples, the choice to divide them into categories that are arguably liberal watchwords is expressive of this absence of politics, defaulting to the reproduction of cultural subjects. Wouldn’t we rather develop class positions that traverse these social categories than have signifiers like “the poor” or “the children?”

In the chapter, Mothers and Daughters of the Revolution, Bayat references at least three different examples of women taking off their hijab as an example of changing social attitudes. One example was a woman who left her advertising job in the corporate sector to work in civil society and human rights and took off her hijab. Another example was a woman who took off her hijab and married a human rights advocate; another one obtained the courage to travel alone and also took off her hijab. While these examples do not make up the majority of examples of everyday resistance given in the book, they suggest an overreliance on anecdotal experience and cast what are extremely individualized acts of rebellion as resistance.

Nonetheless, Bayat explains that he understands that these categories are more complex than their titles and that they can be divided along class or racial lines. However, he is cautious of a “reductionist Marxism” that tends to “reduce the multilayered sources of subaltern dissent,” and emphasizes the importance of civil society formation, invoking Gramsci’s utilization of civil society as a way to counter Leninist vanguardism (understood as a small elite group leading the revolution on behalf of the working class). In the Gramscian sense, the method through which the working class can challenge this hegemonic dominance is through creating cultural institutions mired in broad-based, popular movements that would develop organically through civil society. However, I do not think this translates to the concept of civil society as it is used today.

As Adam Hanieh argues in Lineages of Revolt, the idea of civil society is mostly championed by international organizations and international financial institutions, linking it with free market economic policies as a bulwark against authoritarianism. For Hanieh, “the state/civil society dichotomy serves to ‘conceptualize away’ the problem of capitalism, by disaggregating society into fragments, with no overarching power structure, no totalizing unity, no systemic coercions—in other words, no capitalist system, with its expansionary drive and its capacity to penetrate every aspect of social life.” He posits instead for class to be used as the “key social category from which to comprehend the dynamics of any society, distinct from the catchall notion of civil society (as it is conventionally understood).”

Bayat also refers to the work of James C. Scott as a necessary departure from this Marxist “economism” when it comes to thinking about resistance, and attributes the concept of everyday resistance to him. However, Bayat maintains that there is a certain reductionism in Scott’s work through his sole focus on everyday resistance as the structure for change, and aims in this book to bridge the gap between the study of everyday resistance and the study of revolutions by using a combined approach to analyze the Arab Spring. Scott coined “everyday resistance” in his 1985 book Weapons of the Weak to describe everyday acts of resistance that are not as impactful or obvious as other forms of organized, collective articulations of resistance, such as revolutions. Everyday resistance or infrapolitics as he sometimes refers to it, is more dispersed and is not as visible to society or the state. While Scott conceives of resistance as an act or acts that could be taken by a collective, his conception of a collective is merely a group of unorganized individuals. In this conception of resistance as the lived experience of scattered individuals with specific grievances choosing to act outside of calculated collective action, it is unlikely that this resistance will grow into broader political dissent that can lead to more organized action.

While the “idea, the ideal and the memory of Revolution need to be maintained,” as Bayat mentioned in a December 2017 interview in Open Democracy, the idea of an unfinished revolution or an unfinished project is one that I largely agree with. However, these forms of resistance that Scott and in this case Bayat bring forth, challenge Marxist accounts of theories of revolution by insisting that political action can also happen on a smaller scale—that way giving up on the more material and structural factors. And while Bayat recognizes in the introduction that these structural and macro factors exist and that Revolution Without Revolutionaries was entirely devoted to them, an acknowledgment of the fact does not explain this Scott-like romanticization of the quotidian in Everyday Life. This horizontally determined view of politics is difficult to square with the more structural analysis he offers in Revolution Without Revolutionaries and offers little politically emancipatory potential for any revolutionary movements to emerge. It leads us to a depoliticized place, unable to conceptualize how political agency is exerted at a structural level.

We can even go as far as to argue that this everyday resistance is a knee-jerk reaction to the counterrevolutions that took place and are therefore defensive and reactive. It fails to offer a transformative political project and is more interested in asserting individual choice and autonomy than the assembling and channeling of collective capacity to act to produce political effects. Of course, that is not a failing on the individuals mentioned but is demonstrative of how grim political prospects currently are and have been since the counterrevolutions.

The spontaneity of everyday resistance can provide insight into how oppressive societies operate. However, in order to overturn these structures, it is unlikely that the separated and defensive actions of individuals would pose an actual threat to the status quo. Such resistance is too disparate and scattered, therefore unable to affect society in a material way. What we need to think about here, what we need to prioritize, is the project of building collectiveness—the radical restructuring of society rather than acts of individual agency.

Is there really a need to differentiate between “everyday life” and “the revolution?” If Bayat’s theory of change is that scattered acts of protest can have a multiplier effect, and accumulate into collective power, then surely the goal is to build the latter. Ultimately, there must be some degree of political organization that can mobilize disparate actors. To that end, everyday resistance in and of itself is ineffectual, and can only mitigate existing social conditions.

In the introduction, Bayat says he attempts to “establish an analytical link between the everyday and the revolution.” He argues that “subaltern everyday struggles came together in the Arab uprisings to forge a collective and contentious force coalescing with the political mobilizations that had been initiated largely by young activists.” However, we saw that this was not sufficient.

Bayat says, “A surprising revolutionary moment may emerge from the underside of societies that appear safe and secure.” Is there even a causal relationship between the macro and the grassroots? There is an assumption that the plurality of organizational forms is a given, and that this plurality of forms in and of itself has an inherent value. If anything, history has shown us that not all forms of resistance can form blocks to morph into macro resistance, especially during times of political thinness and the absence of real political organization.

If resistance is indeed found in everyday life—yet does not evolve or account for further political ramifications in terms of political organizing beyond its moralizing qualities—all it serves to imply is an individualistic conception of politics or an assertion of politics as identity or affirmation; one that showcases the thinning of political formation in the region rather than resistance that can amount to tangible political transformation. The combined vision Bayet thinks or does not exist. In fact, politics within this context can at best be a means of reconciling ourselves to our precarious conditions, rather than a way out of them.

Macro and revolutionary moments have their own micropolitical transformations that emerge in tandem. One does not have to seek the emergence of the latter on its own; in fact, the former often informs the latter. We do not need to pose a false choice between the micro and the macro or the structural. Wouldn’t it be better to seek a structural change that is informed by the possibilities of politics? Attention to the micro is helpful when embedded within a larger political project, and when it can be considered to be developing political consciousness and shifting orientation towards the collective.

While the resonance is great and the memory of 2011 remains, we need to be wary of supporting cautious and defensive reformism, cloaked in the guise of everyday resistance and lacking the antagonisms of political struggle and successful processes of social change.

–

Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring (2021) by Asef Bayat is available from Harvard University Press.

This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

Africa has recently been in the global news for the right reasons when the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, embarked on a week-long trip to Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia in late March 2023. Accompanied by her husband, Douglas Craig Emhoff, also known as the Second Gentleman of the US, Harris undertook a trip that was not only significant to Africa but also to the US, considering China’s growing influence on the continent in the last few decades. While visits by government officials to friendly or not too friendly nations are typical of the practice of diplomacy, VP Harris’ visit, as some have argued, is strategic and part of President Joe Biden’s commitment to his “all-in on Africa” strategy that he announced during the US-Africa Leaders Summit held in December 2022.

The visit is part of the series of visits by top officials of the Biden administration’s new engagement with Africa. From Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Ethiopia and Niger in March 2023 to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to Senegal, Zambia and South Africa, and to First Lady Jill Biden’s visit to Namibia and Kenya in February 2023. It is clear that these vital visits fall within the “strategic reframes” of Africa’s importance to US national interests as captured in a White House document titled “U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa”. Secretary Blinken notes, as captured in the strategic document, that “Africa will shape the future—and not just the future of the African people but of the world.” The document also underscores the importance of African agency and voices on consequential global conversations. The emphasis on African agency sounds interesting, but the question worth asking is whether or not Africa has received the recognition it deserves on the so-called consequential global conversations.

This question raises further questions about the timing of the recent visits by senior US government officials, including the visit by VP Harris to Africa. For some, US engagement with Africa in the past decades has been fluid, unduly security-driven, and generally, for the most part, inconsistent, while China has effectively demonstrated laser-sharp consistency regarding the development of trade relations. For instance, it has historically, sponsored massive infrastructure projects such as the 1976 Tan-Zam railway that runs from Dar es Salaam to Kapiri-Mposhi in Zambia, and more recently—even more ambitiously—China has been engaged in grand road-railway projects and other digital infrastructure projects on the continent. Although the Biden administration is unwilling to admit that its active re-engagement with Africa has to do with countering China’s rising influence on the continent, the evidence suggests otherwise. To understand the historical context of US-Africa relations vis-à-vis China’s rising and assertive influence in Africa, the next section discusses US-Africa relations and the apparent pre-eminence of Sino-Africa diplomatic and trade relations.

Overview of US-Africa relations and Sino-Africa engagement

Historical relations aside, for most of the 20th century, US-Africa relations were dictated—and calibrated—by Cold War considerations that were not always advantageous for African nations. For the past two decades, especially in the post-9/11 era, geopolitical strategic calculations have shaped, and continue to shape, US-Africa relations. Following the 9/11 attacks, under the presidency of George W. Bush the US was at the forefront of an international coalition against global terrorism, and specifically fighting two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its extended version to defeat the Islamic State (IS) in 2014.

Based on its strategic commitment to fight the so-called global war on terrorism, US-Africa relations have been largely confined to, and defined by, America’s national security priorities, which include making budgetary provisions to bolster security in various regions of Africa with manifestations of al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), IS, and loose affiliates such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Al Shabaab in Somalia and Kenya, and other militant Islamist groups in Mali and Burkina Faso. One of the geostrategic culminations of this national security-driven foreign policy or engagement in Africa was the establishment of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007. With the increasing “Cold War-like rivalry” between the US and China, how likely are we to see this Euro-American military presence in Africa morph into something more than just the containment of radical Islamic movements but also checkmating China on the continent?

While the US was rolling out its global security edge and presence around the globe, and in Africa in particular, the People’s Republic of China was reading from a different “global commercial presence rule book”. And so, during this same period, China has been playing a long-term game plan, namely the global strategic acquisition of vital resources such as minerals, metals, crude oil, and agricultural products. With this global strategic resources “game-plan” in mind, China quietly formed the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) that, as of 2022, featured the membership of all African nations, except Eswatini. President Hu Jintao treated the world to a rare spectacle when he hosted, in 2006, the first FOCAC Summit that brought a historic thirty-five heads of states and governments to Beijing, marking the entering of the high-water mark of multilateral and bilateral commercial relations and underpinning a new era of China-Africa relations.

One of the geostrategic culminations of this national security-driven foreign policy or engagement in Africa was the establishment of the United States Africa Command in 2007.

Later, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao would propose an accelerated trade program increasing China-Africa trade from its US$10 billion 2000 threshold to US$100 billion by 2010. To underscore the importance of Africa to China, and the latter’s role on the continent, President Jintao announced a US$20 billion pledge in credit at the Beijing-Africa Summit held in 2012 that was attended by 50 African leaders. With China’s increasingly aggressive role, and commercial manouevres across the continent, it comes as no surprise that the Africa-China trade volume reached an all-time high of US$254 billion in 2021, 35 per cent up from the previous year. Yet, all this represents only 4 per cent of China’s global trade. At this rate, therefore, the Africa-China trade volume can only be expected to grow in leaps and bounds. While the US has been upping its game and flexing its diplomatic commerce muscles by “following” China’s example of hosting the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit since 2014 under former President Barack Obama’s administration, the last one having been hosted between 13 and 15 December 2022, its exports to Africa in 2022 stood at US$30.7 billion compared to only China’s top five African export markets worth US$177 billion, including Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, and Kenya, to mention but those.

Moreover, nothing announces China’s behemothic looming commercial shadow in Africa more than the literally landmark East African component of its global Belt and Road Initiative, and its equally notable West African equivalent. In light of all this, the US needs to take a long and hard look at the “prosper Africa deal room” and recalibrate or rethink its national security-informed approach to its Africa policy. The US needs to retool by designing its African policy priorities with greater emphasis on “commercial diplomacy”—assiduously and aggressively fostering and growing deeper and wider business, trade and investment ties between Africa and the United States— if it is going to go toe to toe with China on the continent. This is where the US-Africa Leaders Summit, and the U.S.-Africa Business Forum need to be strengthened.

Indeed, the US cannot afford the kind of ice-cold neglect of the usually warm and special ties between itself and Africa as witnessed during the tenure of the immediate former president before Biden’s administration—evinced by the regrettable wholesale dismissal of the continent, and Haiti, as “shithole countries”. This idiosyncratic whim of a sitting American president created a gaping wedge of mistrust between the US and Africa.  The US can and should be seen to be doing much better in regard to nurturing mutually beneficial ties, and the enhancement of strategic commercial relations—and it has done so remarkably in the past, notably by initiating the historic US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) that planned to set aside US$30 billion inside five years after its inauguration for a cause that is as relevant now as it was 20 years ago. It is quite remarkable that since its inception in 2003 PEPFAR—“the largest-ever global health initiative dedicated to a single disease”—has spent a staggering US$100 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, saving over 25 million lives.  Other equally impressive US foreign policy commitments to Africa include the President’s Malaria Initiative and the recent global health security partnership to save lives and combat COVID19. In this respect, it is critical to reflect on the first Black woman US Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent visit to Africa.

Reflections on Vice President Harris’ Visit to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia 

VP Harris’ arrival in Accra, Ghana on 27 March 2023 was not only impressive from a historical and cultural standpoint, but it was also strategic for Ghana’s political image as one of Africa’s advancing democracies, and the new efforts by the US to re-engage with the continent. From a historical and cultural vantage point, VP Harris’ visit was especially significant as the first Black and South Asian woman VP of the United States to visit Ghana, one of the ancestral homelands of Africans in the diaspora. Speaking at Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle, a hub for the Atlantic slave trade in the 1600s, the emotional and tearful Harris spoke about the heinous crimes of the slave trade, the pains suffered by their ancestors in the dungeons, and at the “Door of No Return.” The horror of what happened during the slave trade, noted VP Harris, must always be remembered and taught in schools. This instructive history, she said, must be learned, and humanity must be guided by those who survived in the Americas, in the Caribbean, and in the rest of the African diaspora.

This idiosyncratic whim of a sitting American president created a gaping wedge of mistrust between the US and Africa.

From a political perspective, VP Harris’ speeches and the official bilateral meeting she held with Ghana’s President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, fit well with the “traditional U.S. policy priorities—democracy and governance, peace and security, trade and investment, and development—as pathways to bolster the region’s ability to solve global problems alongside the United States”. While praising Ghana for its role as a beacon of democracy in Africa and its efforts at regional/global peace and security, VP Harris also announced an aid package of US$100 million to help address security threats facing the region. She noted that the Biden administration is also requesting about US$139 million from Congress for economic and cultural development in Ghana and another US$1 billion to promote women’s economic empowerment in Africa.

Like her visit to Ghana in West Africa, Harris’ stop in Tanzania in East Africa was equally historic, especially for Black women. In a joint press conference held in Dar Es Salaam on 30 March 2023, the VP Harris met with Tanzania’s president Samia Suluhu Hassan, currently the only female head of state in Africa. The important political roles of both distinguished leaders send a powerful signal about the importance of women empowerment and political leadership. For some experts, the efforts by the US to foster stronger relations with Tanzania, a country of over 60 million people and the fifth largest country in Africa, will serve the best interests of both the US and East Africa. VP Harris praised President Hassan’s commitment to democratic values and announced that the US will provide about US$560 million in bilateral assistance to Tanzania in the next fiscal year. She also noted that the US-Tanzania commercial engagement will be extended while cooperation in areas of democratic development, women’s empowerment, and health projects will also be expanded.

The important political roles of both distinguished leaders send a powerful signal about the importance of women empowerment and political leadership.

After Tanzania, VP Harris landed in Lusaka, Zambia, on 31 March 2023 for the final leg of her weeklong African trip. As with Ghana and Tanzania, it is clear that her visit falls within the so-called “strategic reframes” or the renewed US engagement with Africa. President Hakainde Hichilema did not only welcome VP Harris to Zambia, but he also appealed to the US to help restructure the country’s national debt of about US$15 billion. Vice President Harris also announced a US$7 billion US commitment to support Zambia in climate resilience, adaptation, and mitigation. Harris’ visit also had a personal touch, as she recalled how she visited Zambia as a young girl when her grandfather was stationed there.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent visit to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia is not only a welcome step in the right direction in terms of efforts by the US to reengage with the continent after “losing momentum” for a few years, but it also came at a critical time when China’s influence in Africa continues to grow from strength to strength. Her visit, and those of other senior Biden-Harris administration officials, to the continent is a clear and strong demonstration of Biden’s “all-in on Africa” strategy”. At the same time, it is important to recognize that the “game is in Africa and the US knows it” well especially in the light of China’s long-term game plan, and its concomitant assertive influence on the continent. A common element of the Vice President’s trip also reveals the usual expected pledges of more donor aid as opposed to any radical pronouncement of mutually beneficial and expansive trade relations.

The trend of the “more aid syndrome” rather than more trade, is a disconcerting reminder of what others have noted on how the West has historically engaged with Africa through the prism of fixing Africa’s problems, while China is focused on trade and huge infrastructure projects across the continent. For others, President Biden’s expected visit to the continent later this year will be refreshing for US-Africa ties. For now, we can only wait and watch how future relations will look like. In the meantime, experts worry that Africa might once again become the battleground of great power politics in the next few decades. Yet other experts who study the continent, including the authors of this article, remain hopeful that Africa’s role as the largest group of the UN membership and its quest for permanent seats on the UN Security Council, when secured, might help position the continent very well in asserting its agency and voice in balancing the US and China in its backyard.

It is early 1979. Kenya doctors are on strike. University of Nairobi students hold a Kamukunji to announce they are joining their cause in solidarity. One day later university students march down River Road singing a luta continua, waving branches, and carrying placards with the usual radical left slogans, like Venceremos. Clenched fists and Power to the People! Two lorries stop next to the Odeon Cinema to discharge General Service Unit gendarmes armed with shields and clubs.

The two groups, hidden from each other’s view, proceed towards their rendezvous beneath my position on a balcony at the intersection of River Road and Latema.

When they collide, the students disperse into the mid-day crowds, shouting, “There’s no maize in Kenya, hakuna mahindi!” The pursuing GSU start clubbing people indiscriminately. The skirmishes spread across Tom Mboya, disrupting the city centre for the next several hours. This was the first in a cycle of Moi-era protests that were to climax in the mass action for restoration of multi-party politics twelve years later.

The protest cycle

Kenya’s latest round of street demos reminds us that protest is a reoccurring property of political systems. Protests arise in response to perceived opportunities in the political arena to mobilize supporters, presumably with a view towards launching social movements. It follows that culture and community complement the influence of political opportunism in the transition from protest to social movement.

Protest, including what may initially appear as isolated events like the doctors’ strike, form cycles that typically pass through four phases: mobilisation, coalescence, institutionalisation, and decline. IMF bread riots, for example, began as episodic events erupting in response to IMF conditionalities, but fed into actions leading to institutional reforms or increased repression prolonging the cycle. Long-term outcomes vary. A cycle may result in regime change or revolution; increased repression or reforms. Governments fear mass public action because they can trigger more prolonged opposition or lead to contagion with other issues. Sometimes examples of civil disobedience are used by the state to institute a more protest-proof status quo. The Tiananmen Square uprising, for example, placed the Chinese Communist Party on the path culminating in the country’s surveillance state and social credit system.

Protected as an extension of freedom of speech in democratic societies, protests and demonstrations provide an important safety valve for a population’s grievances, opposition to policies, or for releasing popular discontent with their government or specific actors.

In Kenya, political protest is a game played by calculating actors who almost always act true to common expectations. The most recent round of demonstrations conforms with Kenya’s political folk models. No one has defected from their fate-appointed role, at least so far. A familiar script unfolding in typical fashion, the population’s growing precarity and the convergence with other protests across the globe nevertheless feed the growing angst and uncertainty.

In Kenya, political protest is a game played by calculating actors who almost always act true to common expectations.

Because they are an inherently unstable and potentially volatile form of social organization, leadership is critical when protestors take to the street. Leaders’ calculations do not necessarily lead to the most optimum course of action, both in respect to their own interests and the greater public good. At the moment it remains to be seen if the Azimio demonstrations are a legitimate act of problem-solving agency or the latest extension of Kenya’s political samsara.

Voice and the exit option

By protest we refer to public actions including marches, demonstrations, sit-ins, strikes, boycotts, and other forms of group civil disobedience. Protests represent variations adopted to amplify the political exercise of voice, the central element in a triad of options the development economist Albert O. Hirschmann analysed in his exit, voice, loyalty model. Just as customer choices are fundamental to the workings of free markets, political voice provides critical system-correcting feedback in governance. Political legitimacy encourages loyalty; the exercise of voice reinforces the legitimacy governments need to govern effectively. When voice does not work, a credible exit threat can force states to act on citizens’ grievances.

Africa’s new rulers preferred silence. Their governments assumed power with the legitimacy generated by the campaign for liberation, but the pursuit of personal power saw many of them squander this goodwill. Suppression of voice accompanied by the demand for unconditional loyalty encouraged the exit option, which often took the form of the military coups and insurgencies that continue up to the present. State-controlled media plays a crucial role in conditions where protest provides a convenient pretext for seizing power. When their political voice is muzzled citizens find other avenues of coping. They seek solace in religion, support football teams with tribal passion, sustain their spirit through literature and music, get high, seek out sex, or join underground movements.

When political protest is non-productive the cycle gives rise to other less overtly political forms of dissent. Examples from this part of the world include torching field crops, land invasions, school riots, discrimination based on tribe and gender, witchcraft and sorcery, migration, civil service malfeasance, blocking roads, vandalism and small acts of sabotage, foot-dragging, hate language, and other weapons of the weak.

The noise returned with the post-1989 resurgence of democratisation. Voice made a comeback in Africa. Liberalisation and participatory methodologies promoted greater developmental inclusion. These changes and African Union diplomacy helped reduce the incidence of military coups, even though governments continue to repress opposition political parties. The post-electoral crises triggered by contested elections spread to other continents. The United States’ January 6 Capitol riot and the military response to Bolsonaro’s defeat in Brazil are examples challenging longstanding assumptions about the democratic norms and the governance of open societies everywhere.

The round of protests erupting in South Africa, Tunisia, Israel, Kenya, and elsewhere demonstrate how the exercise of voice still tends to be specific to different countries. Political cultures condition their own distinctive expressions of protest. In Kenya, civil disobedience and mass action have provided an alternative to violent civil conflict and the insurgencies that have plagued neighbouring countries. The country has come close to the brink on several occasions. Examples from the nation’s post-independence history provide an evolutionary backdrop for the latest round of brinkmanship.

From mobilization to coalescence

Unlike the blowback generated by previous assassinations including the riots triggered by the murder of Tom Mboya, the protests following the disappearance of J.M. Kariuki seriously rattled the Kenyatta government. The aging president warned the masses during a speech at Uhuru Park, then launched a commission of enquiry appointed to investigate the events of the parliamentarian’s disappearance. This effectively dissipated the discontent, and the Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry became the state’s go-to tool for dealing with regime-threatening protests.

Wangari Maathai spearheaded protests over government excisions in Uhuru Park and the Karura Forest, an act of defiance that opened the way for the Saba Saba demonstrations in 1990 that energized the movement for multi-party democracy. After Daniel arap Moi’s had won two elections, the opposition began agitating for constitutional limits on executive power. The post-electoral violence following the 2007 national elections turned into the nation’s most protracted political crisis, which finally set the nation on the path to constitutional reform.

The round of protests erupting in South Africa, Tunisia, Israel, Kenya, and elsewhere demonstrate how the exercise of voice still tends to be specific to different countries.

These incidents of mass action clearly advanced Kenya’s political development by challenging the impunity of the state, ending the period of de facto and de jure single-party rule, empowering the rise of civil society, and sustaining the long process of reform culminating in the 2008 ratification of Kenya’s new constitution.

As Article 37 of the new dispensation unambiguously reaffirmed, the right to assemble peacefully is essential for the nation’s capacity to meet future challenges. Not that this legal right or the state’s ability to suspend it in the name of public security was ever in question. Kenyans have developed a cautionary attitude towards mass action, in part because the intervention of Kenya’s police has always been more about protecting the state’s interests than public safety. The timing and location of their deployment is prejudicial, while their presence invariably increases the risk of human rights abuses and long-term radicalization.

State responses also depend on who is protesting what. The police clobbered Borana demonstrators gathering in Nairobi’s Central Business District to protest a series of extra-judicial killings. A few days later the same police stood aside when ruffians infiltrating multi-party demonstrators started looting and destroying property. The Mombasa Republican Council was a non-violent movement basing their “The Coast is not Kenya” campaign on legitimate historical sources; the provincial administration drove their leaders underground and the paramilitary GSU regularly crashed their peaceful assemblies. The atavistic Mungiki, in contrast, were allowed years of leeway to extort and kill before the inevitable crackdown happened. There are many other similar examples.

Protest cycles demand structural transitions. The dismantling of Kenyatta’s deep state marked the end of that era’s cycle. The new one that began with Moi’s restoration of KANU as Kenya’s ruling party ended with the implementation of the new constitution in 2010. Unfortunately, the transition to the new dispensation did not settle the problem of the country’s flawed national elections.

Institutionalisation and the Raila Conundrum  

The Odinga family, Jomo Kenyatta’s personal bête noire, has been the bane of every government that came after him. Since 1963, Kenya’s executive has alternately embraced, banned, revived, and stymied the Odingas’ efforts to participate in Kenya’s political arena and to vie for its highest office. Father and son have repaid this treatment by sucking it up and by staying the course of resistance under difficult circumstances.

Moi brought Oginga Odinga back into the KANU fold, frustrated his attempts to stand for office, then compensated by appointing him to head the Cotton and Lint Board parastatal.  Soon after, he used an obnoxious if innocuous public statement as pretext to banish Oginga Odinga to the political wilderness. Years of humiliating treatment by the state no doubt contributed to his son’s passive participation in the failed coup of 1 August 1982. The chaos and damage precipitated by the coup attempt worked to extend the regime’s grip, until the 1990 assassination of the government’s respected Foreign Minister, Robert Ouko. Raila’s passive association with the Air Force privates who launched the putsch earned him three years in detention, tainting his reputation among a large cross-section of the Kenyan public for years.

The Odinga family, Jomo Kenyatta’s personal bête noire, has been the bane of every government that came after him.

The subsequent arc of Raila’s political career spanned his role in upsetting Moi’s succession “project”, the Kibaki tosha endorsement, the makeover from disrupter to kingmaker, and two frustrated transitions from kingmaker to king. The blatant vote rigging in 2007 was designed to trigger mass protests that would justify a state of emergency prolonging the life of the incumbent government. Raila became Prime Minister in the coalition government that emerged from the wreckage, which should have ended the cycle.

In his seminal paper, Constitutions without constitutionalism: an African political paradox, Professor Okoth-Ogendo details how “power maps” explain weak adherence to the constitutional order in African countries. Unlike the power relations underpinning the exercise of governance, constitutions are easily amended, suspended, ignored, and discarded. The prominence given to constitutions by governments contrasts with the ruling elites’ weak commitment to constitutionalism, which dictates that those implementing the law be equally subject to its principles and limitations. In a commentary on the Okoth-Ogendo thesis, Kenya’s constitutional Zen Master, Yash Pal Ghai, observes that “most African ‘leaders’ have valued constitutions solely for their significance internationally: conferring sovereignty on the state and immunity for its head, not sovereignty of its citizens”.

This situation is reflected in popular Kenyan memes over the years, like KANU ina wenyewe, mwenye nguvu mpishe, and kuteleza siyo kuanguka. Or, don’t get in the owners’ way and you can earn the grace allowing you to get away with the murder of a fellow cabinet minister’s daughter, loosely translated.

The terrain covered by Kenya’s power map is rugged. It has its own language and unwritten rules. Transactional and entrepreneurial power map business is conducted in multiple currencies. Rivers of opportunism run through it. Raila has travelled its peaks and valleys more than any other Kenyan politician. He has weathered its storms and survived its wilderness, but he never earned the grace to ascend the power map’s summit.

Raila’s statesmanship in the face of three flawed post-second liberation elections made him a sympathetic candidate, and his non-violent reliance on constitutional methods helped deconstruct the myths constructed to demonise his political base. Raila Odinga has been the most consistent voice for Kenya’s democratic aspirations since the dark days of single-party rule. Seen as the best bet for curbing Kenya’s rampant corruption, he was also the power map’s most chimerical rainmaker.

Decline-phase decisions

If the Electoral Commission boondoggles in 2007 and 2012 were dumpster fires, the third act was Ground Hog Day. As Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” The electorate was fatigued and the opposition financially exhausted after the 2017 recall. Raila switched strategies. The Handshake was a new kind of exit that saw the veteran campaigner step out of the opposition and into the widening Uhuruto gap.

Embracing a constitutionally-failed presidency on the Zen Master’s scorecard diminished his hard-earned credentials. Championing the stage-managed Building Bridges Initiative was anti-constitutionalism in action. Marketed as a solution to the ethnic tensions exacerbated by electoral competition, BBI’s consociational template was designed to primarily benefit the political class. The Supreme Court rejected it as a top-down gambit designed to eviscerate the constitution. Justice Patrick Kiage’s ruling described the BBI amendments as “effectively dismembering the Constitution, blasting so huge a hole in it as to pulverize its foundations and essentially create a new constitutional order.”

The Handshake was a new kind of exit that saw the veteran campaigner step out of the opposition and into the widening Uhuruto gap.

While the Jubilee Party’s BBI roadshow was touring the counties, William Ruto was busy campaigning. Instead of the usual ethnic alliance-building, his strategy targeted the youth and working-class Kenyans, which he branded the hustler nation. Recasting the 2022 contest along class lines flipped the decades-old status quo. Raila and his ODM flagship, now relegated from movement to coalition partner, found themselves cast as an extension of incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta’s uthumaki dynasty.  Raila Odinga’s role in the BBI debacle faded into the background as he hit the campaign trail for a fifth time, this time in alliance with the powers at the top of the sitting government.

What could go wrong?

The cycle’s electoral endgame

Before the August elections, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published a report concluding that although the government of Kenya had avoided the backsliding witnessed in many other African countries, it was still “teetering between democratic deepening and regression”. True to form, the elections featured the usual tender scandals, institutional conspiracies, mischievous foreigners, abuse of incumbency, colourful political chancers, monetization and voter suppression, dead bodies, razor-thin margins of victory, and an aftermath extended by multiple court cases.

The threshold for political violence was low. The ACLED political violence database reported that the incidence of political disorder and conflict was higher during the run-up to the 2017 election. Everything pointed to the standard pattern, as the arrest of three Venezuelan technology consultants found at the airport with election materials in their luggage appeared to confirm. This provided the cue for Senator James Orengo to warn, “If the law won’t work then we will use force.”

But the elections ended up wrong-footing expectations conditioned by the previous three polls. Observers from diverse European and regional bodies all gave the polls high marks. Appeals for peace issued by Jakaya Kikwete, the head of the observers’ group, proved to be unnecessary. A live Twitter feed organized by one of Tanzania’s opposition activists waxed poetic in praise of “our” Kenyan neighbours “for showing us how to properly conduct an election.”

Marketed as a solution to the ethnic tensions exacerbated by electoral competition, BBI’s consociational template was designed to primarily benefit the political class.

Similar such sentiments echoed across the region as Kenya’s Supreme Court prepared to adjudicate the inevitable petitions. The parties to the presidential electoral petition declared they would abide by the court’s decision, the number of other cases contesting the results dropped from three hundred and eighty-eight in 2017 to one hundred twenty-three in 2022. Framed as a victory for the constitution, the polls signalled a shift from ethnic-based to issue-based politics according to some pundits, even though the pattern of votes cast settled into the familiar ethnic block configuration.

The polls were conducted peacefully. The suspicious Venezuelan election materials turned out to be bar code stickers for tracking documents transmitted from polling stations to the Electoral Commission central hub. the hard copy forms and electronic tallies matched. Orengo’s uprising did not materialize. Boda-Boda drivers questioned in the traditional epicentres of political violence told the reporters, “Tell the Commission to count the votes faster, we want to get back to work.”

Insider revelations later depicted an Azimio campaign that suffered from complacency and failure to escape the tag of being Uhuru’s “project”, a term that marred Kenyatta’s designation as Moi’s successor in 2002. Many of Raila Odinga’s close associates assumed their alliance with the “deep state” would guarantee the outcome that had so cruelly eluded them since 2007.  His minions in Kisumu who drank the Kool-Aid had already started celebrating. When the vote count was announced, Raila claimed that Commission Chairman Chebukati had presided over the most corrupt and openly flawed election in Kenya’s history.

Azimio failed to read the signs. Their electoral petitions were long on Electoral Commission’s past sins and short on evidence meeting the high bar set by the new Supreme Court. The court’s full judgement released on 26 September 2022 validated the legitimacy of the polls. But in the same article cited above, Ajwang and Lugano blamed the court for failing to adopt “an amiable judicial tone that offers reconciliation in a febrile political environment”. The condescending nature of some of the court’s language, they observed, left the door open for the coalition’s principals continuing complaints about the hijacked outcome and the degradation of Kenya’s democracy.

The outgoing government left the nation with a soaring cost of living, intensifying famine, a depleted Treasury, and not much to show for the four-fold growth in Kenya’s external debt. The new president’s response was to hit the ground running. His inaugural speech sought to reset the nation’s confrontational toxic political discourse while focusing on policies for relaunching the stagnating economy. In an impressive 75-minute Mashujaa Day address on 20 October, William Samoei Ruto outlined the equivalent of a five-year development plan, with specific methodologies for achieving its targets. He appointed an impressive team of technical advisors. The president followed up with an article published in The Guardian positioning Kenya in the front row of the climate change movement.

But the new government’s break-out momentum did not last. The MPs launched the 13th Parliament demanding increased allowances. Many politicians associated with the country’s endemic corruption won their elections; some found new niches in the counties. Others benefitted from the openly non-consociational appointments of cronies and loyalists. Court cases were dropped. A lawyer died. Payback time returned. The conduct of the new government appeared to be regressing back to the mean as the new year approached.

The outgoing government left the nation with a soaring cost of living, intensifying famine, a depleted Treasury, and not much to show for the four-fold growth in Kenya’s external debt.

In a review published in The Standard, Caleb Otieno documented how the weight of past behaviours and decisions invariably dims the new dawn promised by the succession of incoming Kenya governments. One of the president-elect’s young lawyers referred to the power map problem at the end of the hearings: “The problem is our politics and our political culture. Political culture cannot be legislated.” My own article following the 2017 elections, entitled Kenya’s Electoral Crisis and The Political Culture of Tricksters and Masks, tracked the continuing influence of the politics of deception, double entendre, and misdirection Daniel arap Moi perfected during his last two terms in office.

For Raila Odinga, after years of patience in the face of his opponents’ clumsy efforts to block his way to the presidency, the Electoral Commission’s new-found integrity may have been the cruellest trick of them all.

Not all cycles are cyclical 

The rains finally arrived. Consumer prices continued to rise. Driven by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the government’s mismanagement, Raila nevertheless exploited Kenyans simmering economic discontent to call for mass action. It was reminiscent of the doctors’ strike: when the Marxist message failed, the students started crying “no maize!”

“The demos will benefit Kenyans in the long run. I’m asking every citizen to come out on Mondays and Thursdays to protest against the high cost of living and an oppressive regime,” said Mr Odinga, who also claimed he won the 2022 election by two million votes.

Sometimes there comes a point when the application of a given socioeconomic model hits the wall. Empirical contradictions emerge, anomalies crop up. Kenya’s protest cycle is a case in point. The logic behind the mass action may be valid and its timing appropriate: Kenya needs a strong opposition, and the government’s efforts to weaken it demanded a response. But the content of the Monday and Thursday protests come over as eclectic and overstated, a belated end-of-cycle call for action.

Their raison d’être is out of synch with the economic forces at work, and many of the Azimio leaders’ demands are not actionable, even for a government open to discussing mitigations. The collateral damage and systemic stress caused are counterproductive. In the absence of a forward-looking agenda, the language of “long-run benefits” recalls the Sudan People’s Liberation Army’s rationalization for downing a plane carrying famine relief as “serving the long-term interests” of South Sudan’s starving civilians. Would the cost-of-living crisis have been different six months into an Azimio government? What would they have done differently?

The country is on the move. Demographic change and devolution are revising the power map, creating new concentrations of power while digital technology is reconfiguring feedback loops. The task of defending democracy has passed from the opposition to the judiciary. What Kenya does over the next twenty years will determine its potential to take its place among the front-line societies adapting to the changes sweeping over the planet.

Kenya has an active parliament. Too much in-the-street political theatre distracts attention from more cogent challenges confronting the nation’s progress.

But the content of the Monday and Thursday protests come over as eclectic and overstated, a belated end-of-cycle call for action.

There is no lack of issues for launching a new cycle, beginning with the constitutional mandate to address historical injustices in minority areas. The recommendations of the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission and the Ndungu Report are still collecting dust. The problems of the energy sector run much deeper than spiking electricity prices; ditto for the return to inefficient big water policies and tender corruption magnets like the Grand Falls Dam project. The opposition could call for building upon best practices like the National Counter Terrorism Centre’s CVE policy in place of counterproductive rangeland military interventions. Why isn’t the government recruiting bright young techies to map out the threats and benefits posed by the rise of artificial general intelligence?

Making sense of this cycle’s contradictions brings us to the real problem raised by the 2022 elections: the low turn-out of Kenya’s young voters. Under-35s make up 75 per cent of the country’s population but made up under 40 per cent of the total votes. There were early signs: only 3 million of the expected 6 million youth registered to vote during the run-up. Their vote declined by over 5 per cent despite the buzz created by the hustler meme—and without discounting the Roots Party Wajackoyah factor.

Both parties failed to slow the young voters’ exit from a governance system based on exclusionary elite coalitions and an economy sheltering corrupt cartels, or their search for alternate pathways for participation and expression of voice. According to one commentator writing after the elections:

[Young Kenyans] are developing new forms of politics that are intimately linked with everyday activities, kinship networks and popular culture. And while it is not clear whether these alternative forms of politics will spur meaningful change, what is clear is that the youth are not apathetic.

I believe history will validate Raila Odinga as patriot and as a force for democratic change, despite his transformation from hero to anomaly, a one-man protest cycle. He never mentored a successor nor did Raila cultivate a young “Pentagon” capable of sustaining the movement. But he can still draw the crowds; building bridges to the coming generational handing-over would be a better use of his unique talents.