Pambazuka News 191: Africa: Tsunamis sweeping the post-colonial state

AFRICA: SOCIO-POLITICAL UPHEAVALS AND HOPES FOR POLITICAL FREEDOMS
Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA)

Several major events occurred at the beginning of 2011 on the African continent, particularly from a global perspective. Already weakened by its unfavourable historical insertion into the world system, Africa has endured, in the past two most recent decades, the pangs of the implementation of neoliberal austerity measures, the plundering of resources and the logic of the privatisation of war. The continent is now more than ever at a crossroads because of the failure of the neoliberal model, the crisis of capitalism and the exhaustion of the neocolonial mode of growth.

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2011: ARAB SPRING?
Samir Amin

The year 2011 started with a series of crashing explosions of anger of the Arab people. Will this Arab spring start the second phase of ‘the awakening of the Arab world’? Or, will these revolts trample and finally fall through – as was the case of the first phase of this awakening evoked in my book ‘the awakening of the South’? In the first hypothesis, the developments of the Arab world will necessarily fit in the movement of going beyond capitalism/imperialism on a worldwide scale. The failure to do so would maintain the Arab world in its current status at the periphery of domination, prohibiting it from playing an active role in shaping the world.

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EGYPT AND THE STRATEGY OF THE UNITED STATES: THE PAKISTANI MODEL
Part 3: 2011: Arab spring?
Samir Amin

The three powers which dominated the Middle Eastern scene during the entire period of decline (1967–2011) are the United States – the master of the system – Saudi Arabia and Israel. Three close allies. The three share the same obsession for the emergence of a democratic Egypt. Because a democratic Egypt could only be a social anti-imperialist which would keep its distance with regard to globalised liberalism and would condemn Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to insignificance, while reanimating the solidarity of the Arab people and demanding the recognition of the Palestinian state by Israel.