Timely lessons for Africa from the Arab world

What is happening today in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen is a wake up call and good lesson to the rest of the world, particularly Africa, where in some countries democracy is absent or elections are rigged or stage managed or postponed or never held at all. Some incumbent Heads of State in such countries have even gone to the extent of using their influence and state machinery to extend their terms of leadership by getting the respective countries’ constitutions changed to say so. Some have even managed being declared life Presidents like it happened in the past, in one of the countries in Southern Africa, and is implicitly happening in Northern Africa. It is indeed more of a wake up call to the people of Africa as a whole, the African Union and the United Nations in particular, to exercise zero tolerance to Governments in their midst that fail to hold elections or announce election results immediately after they are held or whose incumbent Heads of State refuse to concede defeat after being won and even refuse to step down for the candidate that has won. Despite which, it unfortunate that AU, the United Nations and the European Union have stopped at persuading the particular leader to step down and threatening military action while the majority of people in that country continue to suffer. It is not very much different from how abdicative and irresponsible the international behaved in 1994 during the now much regretted genocide and Darfur case in Southern Sudan. It is time to remind each other that power belongs to the majority of the people of the particular countries who, through the ballot box, faithfully give mandate to the person they prefer to lead them. It does not belong to individuals no matter how educated or strong they are. None of them or any of us is indispensable. It is indeed time we remind each other that this is not Stone Age or Medieval Age when people where uneducated, using primitive tools, guess work, jungle law and ‘hit or miss’ methods to survive. It is an ICT age with many educated, disciplined, decent and widely exposed people to even do a better job than the dictators and “life Presidents”. With modern technology, coupled with a lot of awakening and inspiration, we are well placed to precisely know what is wrong and right, not to accept primitive leadership from anyone. We have also witnessed some very good leaders like Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania, Nelson Madiba Mandela of South Africa and Paul Kagame of Rwanda, from whom to take inspiration and have the audacity and good reason to know and reject bad leaders. It is therefore high time that the African Union and the United Nations take drastic steps to protect the innocent majority of the people of Africa from self imposing, dangerous leaders. Lessons The fact that through popular uprising the people of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen were somehow able to bring their Governments to their knees, which have ruled them improperly for decades, it is possible to do the same elsewhere in the rest of Africa, using the same non violent means. It is also high time, we learn to reject Civic, Parliamentary and Presidential candidates in our midst who bribe or attempt to bribe us to vote for them into power. Besides being a crime, bribery is a sin. We are commanded by God not to accept a bribe (Exodus 23:8). For it blinds the wise to start behaving unwisely (Deuteronomy 16:19) and brings a curse to anyone accepting it (Deuteronomy 27:25). It also blackmails a person into voting into power a person he/she has no confidence in, to represent or lead him/her. In this way, it makes such person a political prostitute or rogue for having no values or definite ideological stand. And it is always such leaders who get into power by fraud, without God’s blessings, who turn against their own people to the extent of terrorising and killing them.Arab World History The term “Arab World” refers to Arabic speaking countries, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the West to the Arabian Sea in the East, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the North to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the Southeast. It consists of 22 countries and territories with a combined population of over 360 million people, straddling North Africa and Western Asia. In fact, the Arab world is a subset of the Islamic world, which outside Arab countries it includes Muslim majority countries in the Turkish and Persian spheres, in West Africa, in South and Southeast Asia (Indonesia) and in the Balkans (Albania). The sentiment of Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalisms within the failing Ottoman Empire. In 1945 the Arab League was formed to represent the interests of Arabs, and particularly pursue political unification of Arabs, under a project known as Pan-Arabism. There were some short-lived attempts towards such unification in the mid-20th century, notably the United Arab Republic of 1958 to 1961. The headquarters of the Arab League are located in Cairo. However, it was moved temporarily to Tunis during the 1980s, after Egypt was expelled because of signing the Camp David Accords in 1978. However, Pan-Arabism has mostly been abandoned since the 1980s and replaced by Pan-Islamism on one hand, and individual nationalisms on the other.Today, Arab states are characterised by autocratic rulers and a lack of democracy. The popular protests of the late 2010 and early 2011 are therefore directed against such authoritarian and politically corrupt leaders. They are also meant to agitate for democracy and the right for citizens’ freedom to practise full democratic rights. According to the definition of the Arab League, an Arab is a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arab speaking people. DemographicsTherefore the Arabic language is a unifying factor of the Arab world. Though in some Arab countries different areas use different Arabic dialects, all accept the use of a standardised Arabic language, derived from Classical Arabic. However, this contrasts with the situation in the wider Islamic world, where in contiguous Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Arabic is used as a language of religion and theological scholarship, but not spoken as a vernacular. The majority of people in the Arab World adhere to Islam and the religion has an official status in most countries. Shariah law exists partially in the legal system in some countries, especially in the Arabian Peninsula. Others are secular. The majority of the Arab countries follow Sunni Islam. Iraq, however, is a Shia majority country (65%). On the contrary, Lebanon, Yemen, Kuwait and Bahrain have Shia minorities. In Saudi Arabia, the eastern province of Al-Hasa region has a Shia minority and the southern province city of Najran has an Ismalia Shiite minority too. Ibadi Islam is practised in Oman. Ibadis make up 75% the country’s population. There is also a sizable number of Christians, living primarily in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and Sudan. Formerly, there were significant minorities of Jews throughout the Arab World. However, the Partition of Palestine, and the establishment of Israel prompted their subsequent mass emigration and expulsion in the few decades ago. Today small Jewish communities remain, ranging anywhere from 10 in Bahrain, to more than 1,000 in Tunisia and 7,000 in Morocco. Overall, Arabs make up less than one quarter of the worlds 1.4 billion Muslims. According to UNESCO, the average rate of adult literacy (ages 15 and older) in the region is 76.9%. In Mauritania and Yemen, the rate is lower than the average, at barely over 50 %. On the other hand, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan record a high adult literacy rate of over 90%. The average rate of adult literacy shows steady improvement, and the absolute number of adult illiterates fell from 64 million to around 58 million between 1990 and 2000-2004. Overall, the gender disparity in adult literacy is high in this region, and of the illiteracy rate, women account for two-thirds, with only 69 literate women for every 100 literate men. The average GPI (Gender Parity Index) for adult literacy is 0.72, and gender disparity can be observed in Egypt, Morocco and Yemen. Above all, the GPI of Yemen is only 0.46 in a 53% adult literacy rate. According to a UN survey, in the Arab world, the average person reads four pages a year and one new title is published each year for every 12,000 people. The Arab Thought Foundation reports that just above 8% of people in Arab countries aspire to get an education. The literacy rate is higher among the youth than in adults. Youth literacy rate (ages 15–24) in the Arab region increased from 63.9 to 76.3 % during 1990 to 2002. The average rate of GCC States Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) was 94 %, followed by the Maghreb at 83.2% and the Mashriq at 73.6 %. However, more than one third of the youth remain illiterate in the Arab LDCs (Comoros, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen). The average population growth rate in Arab countries is slightly well over 2.3%.Unfortunately, women are still denied equality of opportunity and their disempowerment is a critical factor in crippling the Arab nations quest to return to the first rank of global leaders in commerce, learning and culture, according to a United Nations sponsored report of 2008. There are substantial populations, within the Arab world, who are not Arabs either by ethnic or linguistic affiliation, and who do not consider themselves Arabs but simply natives. Therefore they feel offended to be referred to as Arabs. This is because they were inhabitants of such areas long before the arrival of Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula when the spread of Islam started. Africa, especially Africa South of the Sahara, is well placed to do better, given the necessary political will of our leaders in our respective countries and at AU. dalemuta@yahoo.co.uk