Maravi

It’s not newspapers that cause revolts, it’s injustice

It’s not newspapers that cause revolts, it’s injustice
By The Post
Fri 25 Feb. 2011, 04:00 CAT

Realities do not arise in the world through someone’s whim. Revolutions, real revolutions, do not arise by the will of one man or one group. Revolutions are remedies – bitter remedies, yes. But at times revolution is the only remedy that can be applied to evils even more bitter.

The ongoing Egyptian revolution – and we are very right in calling what is going on in Egypt a revolution – is a reality in the world that cannot be ignored by anyone, including the Zambian people and their leaders.

The Egyptian revolution is already a reality for the history of the world.

The Egyptian revolution that we are today witnessing is a reality just as the people’s support of it is a reality, just as the lives that were lost in advancing and defending it are realities, just as the men and women – young and old – who were willing and are still willing to die for it are realities.

Equally, what is going on in Libya today and other parts of North Africa and indeed the Middle East are revolutions that cannot be ignored by anyone – whether one likes them or not.

Trivialising what is happening in North Africa and the Middle East, trying to reduce its importance through some misguided wishful thinking does not reduce the reality of what has happened.

We say wishful thinking because this is what Rupiah Banda was engaging in when he commented on those historically important events in the Northern hemisphere.

People have laid down their lives to make a statement, to change things for the better for themselves, for their children and their children’s children; they have died in defence of their dignity, humanity and in honour of their homelands.

These are cataclysmic events in the history of politics in the world. It is not usual for a whole region to erupt the way that North African and the Middle East have erupted. But there are lessons to be learnt.

It is an insult on the dignity and honour of those heroic men and women, young and old who have died in these revolutions unfolding in the northmost part of our continent for Rupiah to suggest that the Zambian people can be pushed by the press to emulate the pro-democracy demonstrations going on in Libya and other parts of the Middle East and what the Egyptian people have so far achieved.

It’s also sad for Rupiah to trivialise such important issues. We say this because we expect Rupiah, as a President, to watch those events very closely.

He needs to think very deeply what would cause a young person armed only with his fist to take on the might of a bullet.

What conditions exist in that part of the world that have led to such an angry revolt against the status quo?

It is cheap to think that a few newspaper articles, even many newspaper articles, can cause young people with a whole life ahead of them to jump in front of a bullet for nothing.

We can only explain this by borrowing from Fidel, we mean Fidel Castro, when he said that ideas do not generate crises and that it is crises that generate ideas.

In other words, we can apply that analogy in this way; newspaper articles do not generate crises but it crises that generate newspaper articles. We do not write things from our heads not anchored on the news taking place around us. We report what is going on and that is our duty.

It is helpful to stop and think what it is that has created the crisis that we are witnessing in North Africa. What is it that has turned the Libyan people who everyone for over 42 years thought were docile and could not rise up against Muammar Gadaffi?

What is it that made the Egyptian people, who had for over 30 years put up with Hosni Mubarak’s tyranny and sometimes fake democracy where elections are rigged all the time, rise up?

But before we look at what has caused this problem, it might help arrogant people like Rupiah to look at the spark that has lit this blaze of revolution that is engulfing North Africa and the Middle East today.

An educated young man who could not find a job in his homeland, in Tunis – the capital city of Tunisia, resorted to street vending, to selling vegetables on the street.

Insensitive government officials grabbed the man’s goods.

This is what stood between him and abject poverty, total helplessness. This is the man who represented a voiceless army of frustrated young people who could not look to their government for help.

Their government did not even allow them to demonstrate and vent their anger at the injustices that they saw.

When this man could not receive justice, he did not resort to violence against anybody, he did not burn any government property or attack anyone. He burnt himself in an act of utter helplessness and resignation to his plight.

He had nowhere to vent his anger.

All he could do was turn the anger inward. But the torch that his body lit has come to expose the injustice and unfairness that has covered a whole region if not the whole continent of Africa.

The fire from his body has been used to burn up injustices in other countries beyond the borders of his homeland of Tunisia. Today, many of us don’t know his name but we know his story.

But what is important about his story is not necessarily what he did. It is what he represents. It is that, that should make people like Rupiah stop.

The story of that Tunisian young man and, by extension the Tunisian young people, is the story of our young people here.

Many of our young people are living a hopeless life. The conditions that led that nameless young hero to do what he did exist here.

That hero is a nameless hero not because he has no name but because what he stood for, what he did is bigger than whatever name he was given or could be given.

The question that Rupiah and those that surround him should be asking is what is it that makes a person so angry at his government that he or she is ready to die rather than accept the status quo?

Those are the lessons that need to be drawn from what has happened in North Africa.

Cheap talk about how we have democracy and therefore do not need that kind of reaction is simply that, cheap talk – nonsense.

You cannot tell a person who is starving that he has eaten because he has democracy; you cannot tell a person who is drinking water from a contaminated shallow well that he is okay because he has democracy, which was delivered by Frederick Chiluba in 1991.

You cannot tell a citizen of a country where the great majority live on less than one dollar a day while those who are entrusted with the leadership of the country and the management of its resources are stealing almost everything with impunity not to emulate what the Africans who live on the Northern part of our continent are doing.

Rupiah should be serious. His arrogance won’t help him or the country.

This is a President who is presiding over a government that is prepared to ignore all the legitimate demands of our people on matters that they feel very strongly about.

As we write this comment, his government has taken a constitutional bill to Parliament that is ignoring all the principle things, the things that matter most to our people, the things they have clearly and consistently demanded. Rupiah and his friends know that our people do not want a minority government.

The 50 per cent plus 1 clause that Chiluba fraudulently removed from our constitution is something that our people have been demanding to be reinstated. But Rupiah will not listen to this.

Our people have been demanding a more credible and more representative Electoral Commission that would ensure that the results truly reflect the will of the electorate, but again Rupiah will not listen to this.

Many of our people are legitimately angry at the way their votes are disrespected.

There is a feeling among many of our people that the government is prepared to ignore them completely.

But Rupiah will do nothing to address these feelings of frustration.

We have a government that is refusing to relate with mining investors on an arms length basis to ensure that they collect all the revenue that is due to our nation and channel it to development.

Many of our people feel that there is unfair profiteering in the exploitation of our country’s natural resources. But Rupiah and his friends see no need to address this anger.

It is simmering and even boiling but they ignore it because according to them, that is what democracy means; they are the rulers and what matters is what they want.

Rupiah and his friends are underestimating the anger of our people. But when anger is coupled with frustration, no one should be surprised when we end up with an Egyptian style revolt.

Rupiah and his government have grown accustomed to ignoring the legitimate demands of our people and when they revolt, they expect them to revolt politely.

We think it’s important to look back at Rupiah’s short tenure in office and observe the number of things that have happened that show how arrogant and insensitive to public demands and basic decency this government is.

Rupiah and his friends know that our people are tired of corruption in the high places of government.

And yet it is now clear to everybody that they have no shame in embracing corruption and the corrupt.

This is what gives Chiluba the courage to stand up and tell our people that they are going to dribble them in the next election.

How can a decent government associate with such a person?

If our people revolt, will it be their fault or that of Rupiah and his arrogant friends?

Our people are still angry about Rupiah’s refusal to allow the appeal of Chiluba’s questionable acquittal.

But Rupiah sees nothing wrong with what he is doing.

He expects our people to accept this as a normal part of democracy.

Today, Rupiah’s government is working hard to try and give back to Chiluba everything he stole from our people.

As though what they have done on Chiluba is not enough insult to an already angry and frustrated population, Rupiah’s government has given its blessing to abuse of government resources and power by removing the abuse of office clause from the Anti-Corruption Commission Act.

Our people were angry about this but Rupiah did not care. Our people are not even allowed to demonstrate peacefully to express their constitutional right.

The only demonstrations that are allowed in this country are those in support of Rupiah. What is happening in Egypt is a lesson for Rupiah and those like him.

Our people are watching and learning.

You cannot stop people expressing their views in the way Rupiah did with the young people of Barotseland and expect them to accept that and glorify your government in return.

You cannot kill and maim unarmed young people demanding to exercise their freedom of expression and of assembly and expect them to love you and never fight back in defence of their rights and dignity.

The blood of those young people they spilt in Mongu will one day come to hound them.

Rupiah should listen to his own advice. He is right when he says “…governments must always listen to people.”

Rupiah’s government must learn to listen to the people.

If this is impossible, Rupiah must at least listen to this one simple advice of his, and we repeat: “…governments must always listen to people.”

It is not newspapers that cause people to revolt, it is injustice.

Labels: EGYPT

posted by MrK @ 10:50 AM