VOA标准英语2012--People Power Movements Rise in Sub-Saharan Africa

People Power Movements Rise in Sub-Saharan Africa

 In recent weeks, Senegal has had repeated protests, some of them deadly, in which demonstrators are denouncing incumbent 1 President Abdoulaye Wade 2 and his decision to run for a third term on February 26.

Walid Phares, an international relations expert in Washington who wrote a book predicting the so-called Arab Spring, thinks Africa's Sahel region from Sudan to Senegal will have more and more protests against autocratic governments and bad governance as social media develops.
Phares says civil society activists 4 as well as several radical 5 Islamic groups and a few ethnic 6 insurgencies in the region want change.
"With the rise of technology, where you are going to have Internet you are going to have similar uprisings because of the connectivity ability of these forces, so it is not going to be as massive as in Tunisia or in Egypt or even in Benghazi and Tripoli but it is going to find its way," said Phares.
Carl LeVan, an Africa expert from American University, says growing disappointment in the outcome of Africa's many elections is also playing a part.
"In many countries, Africans do not feel like democracy is consolidating 7, they in fact feel like autocracy 8 is consolidating," said LeVan. "And that is a volatile 9 combination for people who are otherwise used to going to the polls and who placed high hopes in democratic political reform."
Constitutions are routinely changed to allow for more mandates 10 and leaders who came to power through coups 11 or wars win elections often marred 12 by fear and fraud.
The longest serving leaders in Africa are both from oil-rich, but extremely impoverished 13 countries, Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema and Angola's Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
Both of them have been in power since 1979.
In a close third place, in terms of length of tenure 14, is Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, in power since 1980.
Even in extremely repressive environments, activist 3 Maurice Carney, from a group called Friends of the Congo, believes people power movements can make a difference.
He says the current convergence of these movements, which also includes the so-called Occupy trend in the United States, helps.
Carney points to a recent protest by Congolese women activists at the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa following botched elections which returned Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila to power.
"Strategically, if the opposition 15 were to get the women back at the embassy, and serve as a symbol to tap into the global, the greater Occupy movement, I think it can have some legs, without a doubt," said Carney.
Emira Woods from the Foreign Policy in Focus advocacy group in Washington says despite the challenges in facing formidable security and state structures, there is historical precedence in having African hardline leaders forced out through social pressure.
She points to a wave of such protests after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, when U.S or Soviet-backed leaders lost support.
"That was when the dictator from Mali, Moussa Traore, was kicked out because women and students organized demonstrations 16 and occupied, forcing him to leave office," said Woods.
This year, protests in sub-Saharan Africa have been successful, not to change a regime, but to force a government to review unpopular policies. This happened when Nigeria's government decided 17 to lower gasoline prices, after an earlier subsidy 18 slash 19 had caused them to more than double.
A young Nigerian engineer at a protest in Lagos last month, Adeboye Forowa, had this warning for leaders.
"They are not in tune 20 with the pulse of the environment," said Forowa. "They need to walk out of their offices onto the streets and just listen for a change."
Analysts 21 say that with more social media organizing these types of protests, a growing African middle class demanding better governance, as well as radical movements also seeking change in a context of widespread corruption 22, street demonstrations and regional insurrections are likely to escalate 23 across the continent.