Routledge Contemporary Africa Series

POPULAR PROTEST,
POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES,
AND CHANGE IN AFRICA
Edited by Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
Popular Protest, Political
Opportunities, and Change in Africa

This book offers a fresh analysis of third wave popular protests in Africa, shed-
ding light on the complex dynamics between political change and continuity in
contemporary Africa.
The book argues that protests are simultaneously products and generators of
change in that they are triggered by micro-and-macrosocial changes, but they
also have the capacity to transform the nature of politics. By examining the trig-
gers, actors, political opportunities, resources, and framing strategies, the con-
tributors shed light onto tangible (e.g. policy implementation, liberal reforms,
political alternation) and intangible (e.g. perceptions, imagination, awareness)
forms of change elicited by protests. It reveals the relevant role of African protests
as engines of democracy, accountability, and collective knowledge.
Bringing popular protests in authoritarian and democratic settings into discus-
sion, this book will be of interest to scholars of African politics, democracy, and
protest movements.

Edalina Rodrigues Sanches is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social

Sciences – University of Lisbon.
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Popular Protest, Political Opportunities, and Change in Africa

Edited by Edalina Rodrigues Sanches

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Popular Protest, Political
Opportunities, and Change
in Africa

Edited by Edalina Rodrigues Sanches

First published 2022
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Names: Sanches, Edalina Rodrigues, editor.
Title: Popular protest, political opportunities, and change in Africa /
edited by Edalina Rodrigues Sanches.
Other titles: Routledge contemporary Africa series.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2022. | Series:
Routledge contemporary Africa | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021051499 (print) | LCCN 2021051500 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032011431 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032011462
(paperback) |ISBN 9781003177371 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Protest movements–Africa–History–21st century. |
Political participation–Africa–History–21st century.
Classification: LCC JQ1879.A15 P666 2022 (print) | LCC JQ1879.A15
(ebook) | DDC 322.4096–dc23/eng/20211019
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021051499
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ISBN: 978-1-032-01143-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-01146-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-17737-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371

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by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents

List of contributorsvii

1 Introduction: Zooming in on protest and change in Africa 1

EDALINA RODRIGUES SANCHES

2 Shaking up democracy from below: Protest and change

in Cabo Verde 19
EDALINA RODRIGUES SANCHES AND JOSÉ LOPES

3 Popular protest, resources, and political opportunities in Ghana:

Contextualising the case of Occupy Ghana 39
ANDREA NOLL AND JAN BUDNIOK

4 Y’en a marre: Catalyst for an indocility grammar in Senegal 56

MAMADOU DIMÉ

5 Nothing will be as before? The 2014 insurrection in Burkina

Faso and its political impact 73
ELOÏSE BERTRAND

6 Feminist demands, opportunities, and frames: Strategic

silencing within Morocco’s February 20 movement? 91
SAMMY ZEYAD BADRAN

7 Social movements in rural Africa: How and why mozambican

state closed the prosavana program 109
LUCA BUSSOTTI AND LAURA ANTÓNIO NHAUELEQUE
vi  Contents
8 We got a taste for protest! Leadership transition and political
opportunities for protest in Angola’s resilient authoritarian regime 128
CLAÚDIA GENEROSO DE ALMEIDA, ANA LÚCIA SÁ AND PAULO C. J. FARIA

9 How January 2015 protests influenced Joseph Kabila’s

strategy of “glissement” 146
FRANÇOIS POLET

10 From voting to walking: The 2011 walk-to-work protest

movement in Uganda 163
MICHAEL MUTYABA

11 Anatomies of protest and the trajectories of the actors

at play: Ethiopia 2015–2018 181
ALEXANDRA M. DIAS AND YARED DEBEBE YETENA

12 Pro-democracy protests in the Kingdom of Eswatini 2018–2019 200

MAXWELL VUSUMUZI MTHEMBU

13 Conclusion: Comparative implications and new directions 218

EDALINA RODRIGUES SANCHES

Index 232
List of contributors

Alexandra M. Dias is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political

Studies of NOVA/ FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and a Researcher at
the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI-NOVA). Her wider
research interests include Africa’s international relations in a changing global
order with a focus on the Horn of Africa.
Ana Lúcia Sá (PhD in Sociology) is an Assistant Professor in African Studies
at the Department of Political Science and Public Policy of Iscte – University
Institute of Lisbon. She collaborates with V-DEM as a country coordinator
(Equatorial Guinea). She serves as Book Review Editor at the African Studies
Review. Her research focuses on authoritarian regimes in Africa, especially
Angola and Equatorial Guinea, contexts on which she has published books,
chapters in books, and articles in journals.
Andrea Noll is a social anthropologist and currently works as a researcher at
the University of Mainz. Since 2006, she has worked in Ghana. Her main
fields of interest are family and kinship, middle class and elites, education,
transnationalism, social movements, and international academic cooperation.
Cláudia Generoso de Almeida (PhD in Political Science and International
Relations) is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences – University
of Lisbon. Former Guest Assistant Professor (Political Science and African
Studies) at the ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute, she collaborates with
V-DEM as a country expert and is a regular contributor of the  Presidential
Power blog. Her main research interests include transitional justice in post-war
societies, party politics, electoral violence, and protest, with a focus on Africa.
Edalina Rodrigues Sanches is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social
Sciences – University of Lisbon. Her research interests comprise
democratisation, elections, popular protest, political parties and party systems,
and constituency representation in Africa. She has published in journals such
as African Affairs and Journal of Contemporary African Studies. Her latest
book is Party Systems in Young Democracies: varieties of institutionalisation in
Sub-Saharan Africa (Routledge, 2018).
viii  List of contributors
Eloïse Bertrand is a Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth. Her
research explores party politics, institutions, and hybrid regimes in Africa,
with a focus on Burkina Faso and the broader Sahel region, as well as Uganda.
She co-authored A Dictionary of African Politics (OUP) in 2019.
François Polet is a researcher at the Centre tricontinental, Belgium (www.cetri.be).
He has directed two books on social movements in Africa: Etat des résistances
dans le Sud – Afrique 2011 and Etat des résistances dans le Sud – Afrique 2016
(Paris, Syllepse-CETRI). In 2021, he is finishing a thesis in sociology at the
University of Liège on the Emergence of «mouvements citoyens» in Congo
Kinshasa.
Jan Budniok obtained his PhD in social anthropology at the University of Mainz.
He has worked in Ghana since 2006. His fields of interest are anthropology
of law, social mobility and class formation, biographical research, and social
movements.
José Lopes is a UN National Consultant (FAO) in Cabo Verde, and a Lecturer
at ISCEE - Higher Institute of Business and Economic Sciences. His research
interests focus on civil society engagement, social movements, civil society
organisations, governance, and public policy processes. His recent PhD thesis
examines the participation of civil society organisations in the democratic
governance of Cabo Verde (ISCTE-IUL).
Laura António Nhaueleque is a Researcher at the CEMRI/Open University of
Lisbon (Portugal) and Professor at the Instituto Superior Monitor (Mozambique)
and at the Technical University of Mozambique.
Luca Bussotti is an Associate Visiting Professor at the Federal University of
Pernambuco (Brazil) and a Researcher at the International Studies Center of
ISCTE (Lisbon, Portugal).
Mamadou Dimé is currently lecturer in the Department of sociology at University
Gaston Berger (Saint-Louis-Senegal). Mr. Dime obtained his PhD in sociology
in 2005 at University of Montreal (Canada). He had several publications
on thematic like migrations, international development, public policies,
sociopolitical transformations, and youth. Dime leaded several research
projects in Canada and Senegal as main researcher or co-researcher on these
topics. He got a rich experience in management of research programs both in
Canada and Senegal.
Maxwell Vusumuzi Mthembu is a lecturer at the University of Eswatini
(UNESWA) and former head of the Department of Journalism and Mass
Communication. Mthembu is a PhD holder in digital media and development
which he obtained from the School of Journalism, Media and Culture
at Cardiff University, Wales. At UNESWA, he teaches new media, data
journalism, development communication, and history of media. Mthembu’s
 List of contributors ix
main research interest is the use of social media for transformation and
development communication.
Michael Mutyaba is a PhD candidate in International Development at SOAS
University of London, where he is researching about the politics of Uganda’s
refugee policy. He has previously researched about intra-party conflict in the
Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), formerly Uganda’s largest opposition
party, and continues to research broadly about authoritarianism, opposition
politics, and the struggle for democratic change in Uganda.
Paulo C. J. Faria is a Research Associate (SA UK Bilateral Chair in Political
Theory, University of the Witwatersrand), consultant, co-founder of the
Angolan Political Science Association and founder of think tank Ambuila –
Pesquisa e Produção Científica. He has taught BA, MA, and PhD courses in
Angola, and holds a PhD in Politics and Government from the University of
Kent. His research focuses on state reform, security studies, and foreign policy.
Sammy Zeyad Badran is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the
American University of Sharjah, UAE. His current research focuses on social
movement theory and demobilization, authoritarian upgrading/consolidation,
and MENA Politics.
Yared Debebe Yetena is a PhD Candidate of Peace and Security Studies at Addis
Ababa University, Ethiopia. His research interests include: ethnic conflict,
nationalism, social movement, peace-building, and post-conflict reconstruction
in Africa.
1 INTRODUCTION
ZOOMING IN ON PROTEST
AND CHANGE IN AFRICA
Edalina Rodrigues Sanches

Introduction
The first two decades of the 21st century have witnessed an extraordinary inten-
sification of mass demonstrations around the world. This has been particularly
visible since the 2007 global financial crisis which triggered protests against state
responses to economic hardships, the implementation of austerity measures, and
the perceived decline in the quality of representative democracy (Della Porta,
2015; Della Porta et al., 2018). Post-materialist issues, such as environmental rights
and the climate crisis, have gained new impetus with strikes and demonstrations
generating high turnouts and uniting millions of citizens across space, time, and
generations.1 Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic is causing extraordinary and
multidimensional challenges that have triggered further protests, despite govern-
ment restrictions on freedom of assembly (OECD, 2021). While Europe has been
the stage of most of the protests worldwide in the new millennium, there has also
been a marked increase in protest levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well other
regions (OECD, 2021).
As shown in Figure 1.1, protests have risen exponentially in Africa, notably
since 2010. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project
(ACLED), 90% of the 86486 protests and riots registered in the continent between
1997 and 2021 have taken place since 2010. Strikingly, the COVID-19 pandemic
did not demobilise protesters, as the number of events reached 13980 in 2020, the
highest since 1997, and there were about 9400 protests between 1 January and 3
September 2021.
About 67% of all the protests and riots since 1997 are concentrated in a handful
of countries, namely South Africa (16.2%), Algeria (9.6%), Tunisia (8.9%), Nigeria
(8.5%), Egypt (6.6%), Morocco (5.1%), Democratic Republic of Congo (4.3%),
Kenya (4.3%), and Sudan (4.3%). In contrast, less than 0.5% of the total protests
were in authoritarian countries such as Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda and
Djibouti, and the democratic Botswana (Figure 1.2). This data is illustrative of the
quantitative dimension of protest but hides its qualitative dimension, in particu-
lar, the protesters’ motivations and world views, and how micro- and meso-level
factors (e.g. identities, emotions, grievances, resources, networks) and macro-level
factors (e.g. the nature of the regime, the political culture, or the strength of civil

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-1
2  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches

Figure 1.1  Protests and riots in Africa between 1997 and 2021
Source: Author’s elaboration with data retrieved from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data
Project (ACLED). Accessed: 13 September 2021.

society) shape the emergence and outcomes of protest within and across countries
over time.
Extant research illuminates the constellation of material and non-material
issues that have taken African citizens to the streets in the new millennium, nota-
bly high cost of living, bad government performance, political and civil rights and
authoritarianism (Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Mueller, 2018; Mateos and Erro,
2020). Youth have been strongly mobilised into these causes (Honwana, 2012), as
have coalitions of different social groups, and they have used various resources
and networks (both online and offline) to maximise their reach and political
success (Loudon, 2010; Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Engels, 2015a; Bosch, 2017;

Figure 1.2  Protests and riots in Africa between 1997 and 2021 (per country)
Source: Author’s elaboration with data retrieved from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data
Project (ACLED). Accessed: 13 September 2021.
 Introduction 3
Luescher, Loader and Mugume, 2017; Mueller, 2018). While protests are a con-
spicuous element in African societies in the new millennium, the extent of their
influence is less evident; are they provoking any cracks in the status quo, or are
they just pointless (White, 2017)?
How transformative are protests? Do they really matter and, if so, how? How can
we explain varying outcomes of protests? These are the questions that animate the
collection of essays herein and, by examining them, this book makes a three-fold
contribution to scholarly and societal debates on the role of protest and collective
action for social and political change. First, it builds on an open-ended conception
of political change and transformation. It argues that protests are simultaneously
products and generators of change in that they are triggered by micro-and-mac-
rosocial changes, but they also have the capacity to transform the nature of social
and political life. Arguably, protests may or may not entail the significant short-
term changes desired by their entrepreneurs and participants – e.g. democratic
reforms, leadership, regime, or policy change – however, even when they fail to
attain these tangible but difficult-to-get goals, they can produce new emotional
and cognitive spaces. In other words, the protest experience can engender feelings
of empowerment, solidarities, new ways of thinking and imagining the future
which will continue to fuel protest. This echoes what Sheldrake (2006) defined
as morphic fields, which tend to repeat over time. According to this hypoth-
esis “once a new morphic field, a new pattern of organisation, has come into
being, through repetition the field becomes stronger. The same pattern becomes
more likely to happen again” (Sheldrake, 2006, p. 33). Thus, change can mean
attaining concrete political goals, as well as the formation of new morphic fields
composed of memories, identities, and shared experiences, that become available
over time and space and generate new protest waves. Building on this discussion,
here change is framed in an open-ended and multi-layered manner. More on this
follows below.
Second, the book contends that in order to ascertain the conditions under
which transformative outcomes are more likely to occur, it is paramount to con-
sider the political opportunity structures and how they intersect with the other
dimensions – frames, organisations, resources, networks, emotions, etc. – that
concur to affect the origin, development, and outcome of protests (Della Porta,
2014b). Political opportunity structures are breaches or openings in the social and
political environment that are perceived and exploited by movement actors to max-
imise their political goals (Tarrow, 1998; Giugni, 2009). As such, this concept is
diffuse by nature; it often refers to concrete institutional and political incentives
or constraints, but it has also been equated with cultural factors, such as discur-
sive opportunities that make certain frames resonate more with larger audiences
(Meyer, 2004; Giugni, 2009). The book builds on recent scholarship that advances
towards a more dynamic relational approach of collective action (Giugni, 2011),
and it surveys the explanatory relevance of political opportunity in conjunction
with other factors. The chapters in the book reveal both the potential and the
limits of the political opportunity approach to understand political change in
contemporary Africa.
4  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
Third, the book contributes to scholarly work that seeks to chart the importance
of political opportunity in protest, drawing on the experiences of 11 case studies
that range from democratic to autocratic on the political spectrum. Democratic
settings tend to offer more institutional incentives for protest because, in theory,
they provide greater access to the political system, political and civil rights are
protected, there is less control over the media and the internet, and less state
repression. However, in authoritarian regimes, citizens must transcend formida-
ble obstacles to engage in collective action as governments rely more often on
repression (Carey, 2006), internet connectivity restrictions (Shahbaz and Funk,
2021), and anti-nongovernmental organisation legislation to narrow the space of
civil society (Musila, 2019). Therefore, investigating protest dynamics in both
autocratic and democratic settings sheds light on variance in protest outcomes
within and across regime types; as well as on the factors that account for that
variance.

Protest waves in Africa

Protest waves or “cycles of protest occur when multiple social movements
or social groups engage in sustained protest clustered in time and spanning
across a wide geographical boundary” (Almeida, 2016). In this sense, a protest
wave contains many different kinds of collective action, from ephemeral pro-
test events to structured social movements.2 For some scholars with whom we
agree, it is not productive to define an a priori approach or to apply a western
conception of civic mobilisation in Africa, but rather to locate the meaning of
protest and social movements in concrete African experiences (Ellis and Kessel,
2009; Larmer, 2010; De Waal and Ibreck, 2013; Branch and Mampilly, 2015).
Thus, we avoided such delimitation and follow a more inductive path throughout
this book.
The protest wave that has been unfolding in Africa since the 2000s, known as
the “third wave” (Branch and Mampilly, 2015) or “fourth wave” depending on the
author (Larmer, 2010; Lodge, 2013) – has unique features when compared to the
preceding waves that hit the African continent.3 The first protest wave marked
the emergence of national political movements that brought independence to
most African countries between the 1950s and 1960s (Branch and Mampilly,
2015). However, in the post-colonial period, movements were either suppressed or
incorporated in the authoritarian regime when they contested the state develop-
mental model (Larmer, 2010). The second wave of protests resulted largely from
the global economic crisis triggered by the first oil crisis in the 1970s, and eventu-
ally led to the start of political liberalisation reforms in the late 1980s–early 1990s
(Bratton and van de Walle, 1997; Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Mueller, 2018).
The protesters were not only targeting the governments which adopted auster-
ity policies under structural adjustment plans, but also international financial
agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (Seddon
and Zeilig, 2005, p. 17). In countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, like Benin,
Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria,
 Introduction 5
and Zambia, citizens took to the streets to express discontent with economic
hardship, political repression, and to demand political rights (Bratton and van de
Walle, 1997, p. 286). Yet during this period, “bread riots” were present in virtually
all North Africa (Seddon and Zeilig, 2005, p. 17).
Protest was crucial for the start of political liberalisation and the introduction
of multiparty elections, even if only few countries transitioned to a fully fledged
democracy in the short and long term. In fact, a 30-year lag reveals that most coun-
tries fell into the hybrid or the authoritarian category which means democracy is
an unfinished business (Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Cheeseman, 2015; Sanches,
Macuane and Dendere, 2019). The third wave of protests unfolds in the 2000s
in a context underpinned by rapid urbanisation (Bertelsen, 2016), rising levels of
literacy among young people, decreasing costs of participation with the territo-
rial expansion of ICT and telecommunications (Ekine, 2010; Loudon, 2010), and
growing demands for democracy (Bratton and Houessou, 2014). However, unlike
the prior waves, these protests are less cohesive in terms of goals and ideologies
and also in the forms of contention (Branch and Mampilly, 2015).
Research on the third wave of protests has mainly revolved around three
questions: why do people protest? who protests? and what are the forms of protest?
In answer to the first question, why do people protest?, grievances towards con-
sumption/material issues and production/identity issues seem to be the key drivers
(Adam Habib and Opoku-Mensah, 2008; Branch and Mampilly, 2015). Following
the 2007 global financial crisis and the subsequent escalation of commodity
prices, “food riots” swept across countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Burkina Faso,
Senegal, Madagascar, and Mozambique (Maccatory, Oumarou and Poncelet, 2010;
Berazneva and Lee, 2013; Engels, 2015b; Bertelsen, 2016; Brito, 2017; Sánchez
and Namhata, 2019). While socio-economic grievances were prominent in many
of these protests, the goal was also to bring down the governments in some of
these countries and to establish more representative regimes (Seddon and Zeilig,
2005; Brandes and Engels, 2011). The Arab spring which led to the overthrow
of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, the protests in Sub-Saharan Africa against
authoritarian rule (e.g. in Gabon and Sudan), and presidents’ attempts to outstay
their mandates (e.g. in Senegal, Burkina Faso or Democratic Republic of Congo)
clearly exemplify the anti-regime/anti-government nature of protests (De Waal
and Ibreck, 2013; Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Yarwood, 2016; Mateos and Erro,
2020). Other non-material issues found in protesters’ agendas included women’s
rights (Leslie, 2006; Tripp, 2016) and LGBT rights which became a new source
of civil society and movement activity in several African contexts (Currier and
Cruz, 2014). While the current protest wave brought in new issues, there are some
continuities with the prior waves. In fact, the food riots experienced in the post-
2007 global economic crisis period are reminiscent of the “bread riots” and “IMF
riots” that erupted in the 1970s and 1980s (Seddon, 2021); and the pro-democratic
movements that remerged, particularly after the “Arab Spring” pick up from the
broken promises of the 1990s (Branch and Mampilly, 2015).
As for the second question, who protests?, young people have definitely played
a large role in politics (Honwana, 2012) as well as a multitude of social groups
6  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
(Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Engels, 2015a; Mueller, 2018; Seddon, 2021). Seddon
and Zeilig (2005, p. 25) argue that class struggles across protest waves have been
shaped by:

a permanently fluctuating configuration of different elements of the popular

classes combined on occasion with elements of the ‘middle classes’, including
students, public sector workers and members of the petty bourgeoisie working
in the informal economy.

Engels’ analysis of the protests triggered by the 2007–2008 food and fuel price
crisis in Burkina Faso reveals that an alliance of the trade unions, student groups,
human rights, and other organisations shaped the intensity and duration of
protest in the country (Engels, 2015a). Similarly, Mueller (2018) argues that it
was a coalition between the interests of the middle-class and those of the low-
er-class that gave rise to the third wave of popular protests. In Mueller’s view, the
middle-classes acted as protest initiators as they had the resources to pursue polit-
ical goals such as representation or democratic renewal, while the lower classes
were the suppliers, joining the protests on the bases of economic grievances.
Hence, by and large, protests involved all social strata and forms of inter-class
cooperation, which means that a specific protest event may represent different
demands. A shared anti-regime or anti-government sentiment seems to be the
necessary condition to trigger protest at a particular space/time, even if movement
actors “want” different things.
The answers to the final question, “what are the forms of protest?”, point to diverse
tools and types of action. A number of studies highlight the importance of ICTs,
internet, and mobile phones as devices for organising both online and offline
mass mobilisations (Ekine, 2010; Bosch, 2017; Luescher, Loader and Mugume,
2017). Using the case of Tunisia as an illustration, Ruijgrok (2017) argues that
internet has played a major role in protests in authoritarian settings because it
reduces the costs for participation, creates a fertile ground for the proliferation
of alternative views, decreases informational uncertainty on who and how many
protesters are involved, and gives access to powerful images and videos that can
have a strong mobilising effect. Nigeria’s #ENDSARS movement which emerged
in 2017 is also a clear exemplification of that. After a video of police brutality
against civilians was shared widely across the internet, Nigerians (particularly
the youth) began using social media to share their experiences at the hands of
the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), and to organise mass mobilisations.
Soon protests hit the streets, unifying citizens from all social quadrants.4 South
Africa’s hashtag student movements, which blossomed over the course of 2015 –
#RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall, and so forth – maximised their networks and
communication strategies through the use of several social media platforms
(Bosch, 2017; Luescher, Loader and Mugume, 2017).
Musicians, particularly hip hop artists, have used their charisma, popularity,
and pungent words to weave anti-regime activism in several contexts. Boum
(2021), for instance, observes that hip hop has been a form of contestation against
 Introduction 7
social and political authorities for North African youth since the 1990s; and
highlights the fact that the post-1990 generation of musicians is unique since
it benefited from satellite communication and the internet revolution, settling
on hip-hop and rap as global modes of expression (Boum, 2021). In Uganda,
popstar Bobi Wine became the face of anti-regime contestation. Elected to par-
liament in 2017, he then formed the People Power movement in mid-2018 with a
group of musicians to advocate for change. Later, the movement was transformed
into a political party (the National Unity Platform) to challenge the long-term
President Yoweri Museveni in the 2021 elections (Friesinger, 2021). Though Bobi
Wine lost the election, he gained international visibility and continued to call
protests against the regime.
Senegal’s Y’en a Marre (we’re fed up) and Burkina Faso’s Le Balai Citoyen (civic
broom) were largely formed by musicians (rappers, reggae artists), and gained
international projection after helping vote out their countries’ presidents –
Abdoulaye Wade, and Blaise Compaoré, respectively (Yarwood, 2016). In Cabo
Verde and Mozambique, to name just two additional examples, rappers have also
acquired an increasing role in protest, presenting themselves as heirs of the leg-
acy of the revolutionary leaders Amílcar Cabral and Samora Machel, respectively
(Rantala, 2016; Lima and Vicente, 2021). The bulk of these studies advance our
knowledge on the motivations, actors, and strategies of protest; however, they are
less informative of the transformative power of protests, and of the factors that
account for it. The main driver of this book is precisely to offer answers to these
hitherto little researched topics.

Zooming in on protest and change: Political

opportunities structures and beyond
The present book offers a fresh analysis of third wave popular protests in Africa.
The study of popular protests in this era is crucial to understand how citizens
react to critical events and, more broadly, the complex dynamics between politi-
cal change and continuity in contemporary Africa. The aim is to investigate and
explain how multiple social movements or social groups engage in protest and
how that impacts varying aspects of social and political life.
Investigating the outcomes of protests is a daunting task because change is
contingent on several factors, such as the issues at stake, the interactions between
those that benefit from the status quo and those proposing an alternative order,
existing power configurations or the state capacity to repress activists. In addition,
change comes at different degrees and levels, and this is not always easily identifi-
able or measured. To be more specific, a protest outcome can be understood along
a metric of change, for example, from “limited change” to “significant change”,
but also in terms of the type of change it provokes – if it is material changes (e.g.
shifts in public policies, in political leadership or in the nature of the regime)
or non-material changes (e.g. new identities, new visions, perceptions, imagina-
tions). With this said, the African continent offers plenty of variation allowing
for the analysis of different protest outcomes.
8  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
In North Africa, protest did help oust (or forced the resignation of) the
heads of states who had seized power for decades, namely Ben Ali in Tunisia,
and Mubarak in Egypt in 2011, Omar al-Bashir in Sudan 2018, and Abdelaziz
Bouteflika in Algeria (2019). However, with the exception of Tunisia, changes
in the executive leadership have not yet elicited the desired democratic reforms
(Haseeb, 2012). Similarly, protests helped block presidents’ third-term bids in
places like Niger (President Mamadou Tandja, 2009) and Burkina Faso (President
Blaise Compaoré, 2014) but were unable to obtain similar outcomes in Cameroon
(President Paul Biya, 2008); Burundi (President Pierre Nkurunziza, 2015); or
Guinea (President Alpha Condé, 2011), to name but a few examples. However,
not attaining the desired political goal does not mean that there was no change
at all. In fact, citizens in many of these places have transposed the barrier of fear
to engage in collective action and imagine new political futures (Haseeb, 2012;
Bertelsen, 2016; Branch and Mampilly, 2015). These emotions and sentiments are
important for the continuous engagement in political protest, beyond space and
time. As mentioned earlier, this reflection is evocative of what Sheldrake (2006)
defined as morphic fields. This biology-inspired hypothesis suggests that once a
new morphic field or pattern of organisation comes into being, it tends to become
recurrent because such fields “contain a kind of cumulative memory” (Sheldrake,
2006, p. 33). Furthermore, through morphic resonance, they are able to pass infor-
mation from a prior system to the subsequent system of the same kind “through
or across space and time from past to present” (Sheldrake, 2006, p. 33.). Thus, the
book explores the concrete meanings of change in Africa rather than thinking of
change and transformation in an a priori and fixed manner, or generalising from
definitions derived from the western societies.
The book takes a dynamic political opportunity structures approach to clar-
ify change in Africa. It questions whether or not protests affect the social and
political life of a country if they take place under favourable environmental cir-
cumstances. As previously mentioned, opportunities are openings or breaches in
the status quo that can help leverage actors’ options. They cover a wide set of
unstandardised factors such as the openness of – and access to the – political sys-
tem, intra-elite (in)stability, presence of elite allies, political turnover, or the state
propensity to repression (Kitschelt, 1986; McAdam, 1996; Meyer, 2004; Giugni,
2009). Though widely diffused, the political opportunity approach has been crit-
icised for being vague and applicable to nearly everything in the movement’s
context and for overlooking the role of agency, discourses, and frames (Goodwin
and Jasper, 1999; Fligstein and McAdam, 2011; Giugni, 2011). This book filiates
with recent scholarship that proposes more dynamic and relational uses of the
political opportunity approach. In this sense, three basic premises were taken
into consideration.
First, “the space in which movement actors operate is structured not only in
terms of political institutional design and power distributions, but also in terms
of predominant discourses of political culture and so on”, which means discur-
sive opportunities are also extremely important (Lindekilde, 2014, p. 209). The
cultural setting defines the visibility and resonance of the issues, but also the
 Introduction 9
legitimacy of certain actors, identities, and claims (Giugni, 2011, p. 275). Second,
opportunities may be provided by the political and cultural context, but they
may not be perceived by movement actors, which means incentives and con-
straints are contingent upon agency and reflexivity (Tarrow, 1998; Giugni, 2011).
Third, “political opportunities may vary from one political field to the other, from
one sector to the other. In other words, political opportunities are movement-
specific, field-specific, and issue-specific” (Giugni, 2011, p. 276). Fourth, opportuni-
ties are not fixed and they certainly do not act alone; they interact with activists’
resources, organisational capacity or framing strategies (Benford and Snow, 2000;
Ellis and Kessel, 2009; Della Porta, 2014a).
In sum, the authors in this book were invited to take a dynamic approach in
their analysis of protest and change in Africa, and to consider the role of oppor-
tunities, as well as other factors, in explaining protest outcome.

Plan of the book

The book examines Africa’s third wave of protests, which constitutes the liveli-
est protest period since the inception of the democratic experiments in the late
1980s and early 1990s. The introduction is followed by 11 chapters that cover the
experiences of protest in (semi) democratic regimes and in authoritarian regimes,
and a conclusion. It is an impressive collection of protest experiences and draws
on several types of data, including semi-structured interviews, press reviews, doc-
umental, and online analysis. This book was prepared at a time of unparalleled
challenges given the COVID-19 pandemic and the authors’ faced additional con-
straints (political conflict, strikes, and demonstrations in their countries) so, as
editor, I want to thank them all for their outstanding endeavours.
First, a set of studies focuses on (semi) democratic regimes and encompasses
three fully fledged democracies (Cabo Verde, Ghana, and Senegal) and two
hybrid regimes which combine both democratic and authoritarian principles and
practices (Burkina Faso, Morocco, and Mozambique). The cases herein exemplify
how protests can flourish and bring about significant change, benefiting from the
conjunction of favourable political opportunities alongside other dimensions such
as resources and framing strategies. Then, protest in authoritarian settings is ana-
lysed with the cases of Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Eswatini,
and Ethiopia. Investigating these authoritarian scenarios allows us to explore how
protesters take advantage of the arguably fewer opportunities to protest and build
on perceived threats to mobilise and send strong anti-regime messages. These
cases also reveal the government’s ability to co-opt opposition forces and to use
massive force against protesters.
In Chapter 2, Sanches and Lopes focus on Cabo Verde, a beacon of democ-
racy and stability but that has experienced uprisings in recent years. The chapter
investigates two case studies: the movement for regionalisation in Cabo Verde and
autonomy for São Vicente (MRCV), which emerged in 2010 and has been able to
push the agenda for decentralisation over the years; and the movement against
the approval of the new statute of political office holders (led by MAC#114),
10  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
which emerged in 2015 and brought about the withdrawal of the bill in just a
few months. To understand these different policy outcomes, the authors combine
political opportunity and framing approaches, and show how both movements
used instrumental framing and perceived openings to achieve their goals. On the
one hand, they drew on disruptive catchwords, metaphors, and provocative vis-
uals to diffuse and amplify their frames beyond national frontiers. On the other,
both movements took advantage of the proximity to elections to pressure the gov-
ernment and president, and to persuade political parties to include their demands
in the political debates. However, MAC#114 profited from more favourable media
coverage and public opinion and was able to capitalise on societal consensus and
the bill was ultimately withdrawn. Indeed, regionalisation was a more contested
issue and divided the political elites and the movement actors. So even when a
new bill made its way into the parliament, it did not get the necessary support.
Though with varying outcomes, both cases confirm the pivotal role of social
movements in advancing policies and change in African democracies.
In Chapter 3, Nollan and Budniok investigate the dynamics of Occupy Ghana,
a movement that emerged in 2014 in the context of rising contestation against
the government’s poor management of the economy, corruption, and soaring fuel
prices. The study reveals the importance of both resources and political opportu-
nities to understanding protest dynamics. The middle-class, the main movement
entrepreneur, employed its resources – e.g. expertise on how to organise demon-
strations, political knowledge and technical expertise, communication strategies,
and the power to put pressure on the government – to mobilise effectively.
Additionally, it benefited from existing opportunities, namely the openness of
the regime, free media, and discursive opportunities on the issue of corruption,
to maximise their political goals. Occupy Ghana contributed to increased public
accountability relying on several types of action, but most importantly, using the
courts to sue politicians involved in corruption or illegal activities. One of the
movement’s most important feats was the lobbying campaign for the introduction
of a special prosecutor, which it achieved in 2016. The authors’ findings reveal
the importance of the middle-class resources for both sustained social movement
activity and their transformative impact.
Chapter 4, by Dimé, is one of three chapters in the book focusing on pro-
tests against presidents’ third-term bids. Dimé looks at the paradigmatic case of
Senegal’s Y’en a marre (we’re fed up), a movement formed in January 2011 by a
group of Senegalese rappers and journalists that mobilised against Abdoulaye
Wade’s third candidacy and bad government performance. While the movement
did not impede the President from running in the presidential elections in 2012,
they were an active force in his defeat and the coming of the new President
Macky Sall. To achieve this goal, Y’en a marre used strategic framing and
exploited favourable opportunities. On the one hand, they amplified their
messages using innovative framing strategies, such as iconoclastic discursive posi-
tioning and the manipulation of dissonant, captivating, and mobilising slogans.
The movement also drew on the Wolof language for a good part of its striking
slogan formulas (which the author frames as wolofisation). On the other hand,
 Introduction 11
the movement’s actors benefited from structural opportunities, namely the coun-
try’s history of youth protest which provided discursive opportunities for protest
(namely resonance with a pro-democracy and good governance agenda), as well
as political openness, and favourable media coverage. This chapter is inter-
esting for its emphasis on framing and communication strategies, rather than
on political opportunities. Moreover, it points to the continuity in the protest
activity under Macky Sall’s government, as he too failed to meet protesters’
expectations.
Entering the cluster of hybrid democracies, Chapter 5, by Bertrand, sheds light
on the 2013–2014 uprising that ousted President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina
Faso. Blaise Compaoré attempted to modify the constitution to extend his stay
in power, and this prompted immediate opposition from parties to ordinary citi-
zens. The chapter advances three inter-related political opportunities that shaped
the outcome of the protest. First, an historical legacy of protests around issues
of impunity and socio-economic grievances which on the one hand helped cre-
ate network and entrenched the democratic principles that are instrumental in
making insurrection possible, and on the other provided discursive opportuni-
ties that nourished popular mobilisation. Second, opposition parties were able
to benefit from institutional incentives – notably an institutional status for the
political opposition and a less repressive environment – to cooperate and build
a common platform to work alongside civil society against Compaoré’s regime.
Finally, despite internal squabbles, opposition parties and civil society cooperated
on a single common objective – political alternation. This case study is illustra-
tive of the transformative impact of protests, as it not only led to the ousting of
President Compaoré but also to a more inclusive form of transition ahead of the
2015 elections. As Bertrand notes, the uprising revealed that protests can suc-
ceed, a sentiment that has continued to feed protests, even if they have not been
as successful as in the past.
Chapter 6, by Badran, engages political opportunity and social movement
framing literature in order to examine gender dynamics within the February 20
Movement (F20), the principal organiser of protests during the Arab Spring in
Morocco. The author’s main puzzle is how the F20 framing strategies were able to
strongly affect the degree of salience of feminist and gender issues. The analysis
shows that women benefited from political opportunities that had been ongo-
ing since the 1990s; specifically, many strides had been taken in the expansion
of women’s rights, the reform of the Moroccan family law (Mudawwana) and,
finally, the Arab Spring which led to increased protest for democratisation and
widened opportunities for feminist causes. However, women’s demands for gen-
der equality, along with other “sensitive topics”, were strategically downgraded
so as to maintain narrative fidelity, the internal consistency of the movement’s
justice frames and the overarching goal of a democratic parliamentary monarchy.
The findings illuminate a crucial paradox: while the F20 silenced gender issues,
it also facilitated brokerage among like-minded feminist-activists who eventually
formed their own separate movements which rejected the “old school” reformist
and institutionalised women’s movements. In this sense, political opportunities
12  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
generate movements which create new opportunities for protest (as proposed by
Tarrow, 1998).
Chapter 7, by Bussoti and Nhaueleque, explores the halting of the ProSavana
agriculture development programme in Northern Mozambique, after sustained
action by civil society groups. In a time marked by strong foreign investment in
intensive agricultural development programmes and rural protest in Africa, the
poor rural communities, considered passive and controllable by local institutions,
were able to stop what was perceived as a land-grabbing scheme. So how was this
possible? The chapter reveals that Mozambican organisations mobilised effec-
tively and attained this extraordinary result by their ability to exploit political
opportunities. On the one side, the presence of strong local and international net-
works allowed both access to information on the ProSavana programme and also
the spread of information to local communities. On the other side, international
allies played a crucial role in exerting incremental pressure on the Mozambican
government. Mozambican associations and nongovernmental organisations in
association with social movements in Japan and Brazil, paradoxically the two
major partners of the ProSavana programme, were able to influence the Japanese
Parliament, inducing it to interrupt the flow of finance to the ProSavana pro-
gramme. The halting of the programme was a major win and rural communities
succeeded where others had failed in the past. This case shows how rural commu-
nities (David) can leverage giant actors (Goliath).
Entering the realm of authoritarian countries, Chapter 8, by Almeida, Sá and
Faria, examine the case of Angola where the leadership change in 2017 and the
inauguration of President João Lourenço created new opportunities for protest.
The authors base their explanation of the surge on four conditions: the extent
of the new leader’s openness to protest, the unfulfilment of electoral pledges, the
degree of repression, and the change of perceptions by the protesters. The combi-
nation of these four conditions, the authors argue, contributed to the emergence
of a new cognitive frame where citizens “gained the taste for protest”. The findings
reveal that even though the president presented himself as a reformist and seemed
more open to dialogue with civil society than his predecessor, he did not fulfil
his promises to reform the regime, and this triggered anti-government contesta-
tion. To offset societal pressures, the regime became more repressive as the events
unfolded. Even though the protesters did not accomplish their goals, these events
operated important transformations; more specifically, the formation of a new
cognitive frame in which the movement actors’ perceptions of their role and their
capacity to engage in politics were transformed. This is an important change that
speaks of the non-material sources of change in autocratic settings.
Chapter 9, by Polet, revisits the issue of protest against presidents’ third-term
bids. It focuses on President Joseph Kabila’s move to extend his rule by employ-
ing political manoeuvres to delay the electoral calendar – a strategy known as
glissement or slippage – and the subsequent spiral of protest between 2015 and
2016. Kabila’s move created an opportunity for protest, as activists perceived
and framed his actions as a threat to democracy in the country. At the national
level, the political parties were the main movement entrepreneurs, they called
 Introduction 13
the demonstration, provided the resources and networks and the dominant
frames, and had access to national and international prime-time channels that
were decisive in disseminating their demands. But students, jobless, and citizens’
movements joined the protests at different stages. To neutralise political protest,
President Joseph Kabila used repression, co-optation, and “staged dialogues”.
However, amid strong international pressure, President Joseph Kabila decided
to step down and nominated a “dauphin” to succeed him as candidate in the
2018 elections. Polet argues that the protest and the political opportunities had
a limited impact on the unfolding of events: the international pressure was more
important to Kabila’s decision to step down as candidate in the 2018 elections.
Chapter 10, by Mutyaba, analyses the “Walk-to-Work” protests in Uganda,
which took place in the aftermath of the 2011 general elections. The protest-
ers complained about long-term authoritarianism and corruption by the ruling
National Resistance Movement (NRM), the sky-rocketing prices of fuel and daily
commodities, as well as the extravagant spending of state resources in the 2011
general election campaigns – considered the most expensive ever by international
observers. “Walk-to-Work” was mobilised by opposition parties and civic groups,
and it invited the people to boycott public transport and walk to their workplaces
instead – hence the name. Mutyaba shows the importance of both political oppor-
tunities and framing strategies. First, the structure of alliances between opposition
parties, and between them and civic groups was crucial for mobilisation. Plus, the
activists were able to count on a public opinion that supported the anti-regime
frames. Second, activists combined different framing strategies such as amplifica-
tion, bridging and transformation, to make their demands more salient, to connect
different frames – cost of living, corruption, poor quality elections, democracy, –
and to produce new understandings about the politics of opposition and protest
in the country, in which confrontation and uprisal seemed more effective than
elections. Though the protests were ephemeral and strongly repressed by the gov-
ernment, they emboldened popular demands for government accountability and
democratic reform in subsequent years, illustrating that even when protests do not
result in regime change, they can still contribute positively to democratisation.
In Chapter 11, Dias and Yetena zoom in on the case of Ethiopia which experi-
enced a new cycle of anti-regime protests between 2015 and 2018, involving the
Oromo youth (Qeerroo) and the Amhara youth (Fano). Qeerroo protests broke out
after the announcement in 2014 of the Addis Ababa Master Plan which planned
to evict Oromo farmers to create a new economic zone in the Oromia region. In
2016, the Fano joined the Oromo protest following the arrest of several members
of the Welkait Identity Restoration Committee, and the attempted arrest of the
Committee’s chairperson without a court order. The authors contend that three
political opportunity structures were crucial for protest emergence and (limited)
outcome. First, the death of Meles Zenawi in 2012 created a vacuum of power and
divisions within the incumbent party. The arrival of a new (and weaker) leader
with a collective style of leadership led to elite competition and inefficiency in
the exercise of power. Second, an unprecedented alliance between Qeerroo and
Fano groups represented a break with an historical legacy of ethnic rivalry and
14  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
united youth, who, despite their differences, shared an anti-regime sentiment.
Third, actors had easy access to the internet – at least initially – which allowed
them to mobilise large crowds and popularise hashtags such as #OromoProtest,
#AmharaResistance, and #OroMara. The protest outcomes were mixed. The gov-
ernment withdrew the Addis Ababa Master Plan in 2017, and there were hopes
of democratic reform in 2018 particularly after the election of the new Prime
Minister Abiy Ahmed. However, the momentum vanished and there was a return
to authoritarianism and conflict.
Chapter 12 by Mthembu, examines protest in Eswatini, an absolute monar-
chy that has been experiencing increasing societal contestation in the 2010s.
In Eswatini, parties have been banned since 1973 and citizens are virtually
excluded from power; however, civil society organisations – in particular trade
unions – have become the focal point of pro-democratic demands. Focusing on
the 2018–2019 pro-democracy protests in Eswatini, this chapter argues that both
organisational resources and political opportunity structures were important to
explain the emergence and the limited impact of protest in the country. First,
trade unions were able to build on their resources, organisational capacity, and
legitimacy to organise and sustain protest. Second, discursive opportunities, par-
ticularly the legacies of union activism throughout the 1990s and first decade
2000s helped create resonance with pro-democratic frames. Third, the presence
of allies – namely political parties and international actors – contributed to the
creation of further pressure for change. As change is not yet forthcoming, the
people of Eswatini continue to protest against the regime. The government has
been able to offset these pressures, albeit temporarily: in fact, since June 2021 pro-
democracy protests have broken out again across the country.
Finally, Chapter 13 concludes the book by summarising the main findings and
making a comparative analysis of the 11 case studies. The findings reveal that
protest matters in Africa beyond their tangible goals. They contribute to improv-
ing the material (laws, policies, institutions, etc.) and non-material (social capital,
perceptions, visions) buildings of democracy and good governance. Second, the
cultural and political settings in which protests unfold create favourable opportu-
nities for protest and determine their outcome. Yet other factors such as resources,
frames, level of state repression, international factors – cannot be ignored. The
findings inform future research agendas by highlighting the importance of ana-
lysing change beyond materialistic terms, and by suggesting the need to move
towards more dynamic protest analysis that combines the political opportunity
approach with other classical social movement theories. Finally, it stresses the
need for more comparative work, and for focus on protest in rural Africa.

Acknowledgements
The editor would like to thank all authors for persevering. The book started
being prepared in late 2020, amidst the unprecedented challenges posed by the
COVID-19 pandemic. The authors’ faced numerous trials among which lack
of kindergarten support, having to rethink field work activities, health issues,
 Introduction 15
political conflict, and a spiral of protest in their countries. As editor, I want to
thank them all for their endeavours, and for making this book possible. Further
thanks are also owed to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments
to the book proposal, to Routledge’s Editor Helena Hurd, Senior Commissioning
Editor Leanne Hinves, and Editorial Assistant Matt Shobbrook. Final thanks to
all those involved in the production of the book, and also to Rachel Evans who
has been proofreading my texts since 2017.
This work has been financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Technology – FCT under the framework of the project UIDB/03122/2020.

Notes
1. Climate crisis: 6 million people join latest wave of global protests, Guardian, 27
September 2019, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/
27/climate-crisis-6-million-people-join-latest-wave-of-worldwide-protests (Accessed:
1 September 2021).
2. Social movements are connected strings of events consisting of groups and organ-
isations that campaign for common goals and are linked in complex webs of
exchange (Della Porta and Diani, 2006).
3. For instance Larmer (2010) identifies a first wave during the African nationalist
struggles (1950s–1960s), a second wave in the first years after independence, when
movements opposed the states’ developmental agenda (1960–1975), a third wave
that led to political liberalisation (1975–1989), and a fourth wave shaped by pro-
democracy movements (1990–2010). While Lodge (2013, p. 147) saw the surge in
protest in North Africa as part of new phase in the global history of movements to
democracy.
4. EndSARS, workers’ power, and war, Africa is a Country, 10 June 2021, available
at: https://africasacountry.com/2021/10/endsars-workers-power-and-war (Accessed:
7 October 2021).

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2 SHAKING UP DEMOCRACY
FROM BELOW
PROTEST AND CHANGE
IN CABO VERDE
Edalina Rodrigues Sanches and José Lopes

Introduction
Descentralização já!1 – This was what a group of demonstrators from Sokols 2017
movement shouted as they barred the way of the government delegation, led
by Prime Minister Ulisses Correia, to the city of Mindelo on 5 September 2017.
Sokols 2017, a movement based on the island of São Vicente2, calls for political
autonomy and the implementation of regional governments in Cabo Verde. These
demands remain timely as a law proposal presented to parliament in 2018 failed to
get the necessary support. Despite the outcome, Sokols 2017 and other organisa-
tions exerted sufficient pressure for the issue to remain salient in the public agenda.
Cabo Verde is often hailed as a beacon of democracy in Africa, character-
ised by strong political institutions, free and fair elections and the alternation in
power of highly institutionalised political parties (Sanches, 2020). Democratic
politics has essentially been shaped from above with few uprisings in civil society.
However, the country has witnessed new forms of political contestation seeking
to influence policy decisions, particularly since the 2010s (Furtado, 2014; Lopes,
2017). So how effective have these protests been?
Linking agency and structural approaches, this chapter argues that the dif-
ferential outcomes result from framing strategies, i.e. activists’ ability to amplify
and diffuse their messages effectively, and political opportunity structures (POS),
i.e. activists’ ability to perceive and exploit breaches in the political and social
environment (Tarrow, 1998; Benford and Snow, 2000; Della Porta and Diani,
2006). These arguments are tested in the context of two cases in Cabo Verde.
The first is the Movimento para Regionalização em Cabo Verde e a Autonomia para
São Vicente (Movement for Regionalisation in Cabo Verde and Autonomy for São
Vicente – MRCV), which started in 2010 with civic groups in the diaspora but
gained new momentum in 2017 with the emergence of Sokols 2017. The second
is the Movimento para a Acção Cívica (Movement for Civic Action, abbreviated
to MAC#114), which burst onto the scene in 2015 to campaign against the immi-
nent approval of the Statute of Political Office Holders (SPOH). The Statute
anticipated outstanding privileges for the political elite and sparked an immedi-
ate backlash. Amidst growing popular pressure, and with the 2016 presidential

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-2
20  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches and José Lopes
elections on the horizon, the president vetoed the bill, and it soon disappeared
from the political agenda.
This study untangles the paths behind these trajectories using a process tracing
methodology that mixes different types of qualitative sources (interviews, printed
and online newspapers, social media post and blogs, manifestos). The empirical
analysis reveals that amplification and diffusion were key framing strategies used
by both movements to maximise their reach. Activists were also able to take
advantage of POS related to the political context (e.g. proximity of elections,
political allies) to achieve their goals. However, whereas MAC#114 benefited from
favourable media coverage and public opinion, regionalisation was a more con-
troversial issue. In fact, extreme party polarisation around the issue ultimately
prevented policy adoption. The findings contribute to a burgeoning discussion
on the varying impacts of collective action in Africa and highlight the relevance
of both agency and structure. Indeed, beyond the contextual and structural con-
ditions that can propel or hinder collective action, we find different degrees of
scheming and agency whereby movement actors voice discontent and alternatives
to the status quo.
After outlining the framework for analysis and describing the methods and
data, the chapter presents a brief overview of protests and movements in Cabo
Verde. The empirical section then analyses the framing strategies and POS of
relevance in each case. The conclusion discusses the study’s main findings and
implications.

Explaining the outcomes of social movements and collective

action: The role of framing and political opportunity structures
Explaining the emergence, endurance, and outcomes of movements and collective
action is both complex and fascinating. A plethora of factors such as resources,
political opportunities, framing strategies, networks, identities, and emotions
seem to matter at different stages of the process (Snow and Benford, 1999; Della
Porta and Diani, 2006; Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2009; Sanches 2022).
The research on these topics has been mainly driven by North Atlantic experi-
ences, yet Africa offers an excellent laboratory to test and refine extant theories.
Protests and movements brought about landmark political changes during the
fight for independence in the 1950s–1960s and political liberalisation in the late
1980s–early 1990s, and re-emerged strongly in the new millennium (Larmer,
2010; Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Mueller, 2018).
Since the 2000s, Africa has been facing the third wave of protests that
only partly aligns with the global cycle of anti-austerity protests follow-
ing the 2007 global financial crisis (Della Porta, 2012; Branch and Mampilly,
2015; Mueller, 2018). Whereas material issues fuelled foods riots in places like
Burkina Faso (Engels, 2015) and Mozambique (Brito, 2017), they did not com-
pletely dominate the protesters’ agendas. Demonstrations on identity issues
– e.g. rights, liberties, and democracy – were seen in Niger, Tunisia, and
 Shaking up democracy below 21
Senegal, to mention just a few examples (Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Yarwood,
2016; Mueller, 2018).
Classical social movement theories, e.g. those focusing on resources and mate-
rial deprivation, help explain the rise in protests levels as resourceful individuals
(urban, higher social strata, more educated and socially engaged) and those living
in countries hardest hit by the economic crisis or with more illiberal or oppressive
regimes have a greater tendency to protest (Berazneva and Lee, 2013; Mueller,
2018; Sánchez and Namhata, 2019). In terms of outcomes, while some scholars
argue that protests have been “amorphous and disorganised” and inconsequential
to political change (De Waal and Ibreck, 2013, p. 303), others highlight their
role in ousting autocrats and in the overall pursuit of democracy (Dulani, 2011;
Yarwood, 2016). Although both depictions have been confirmed with anecdo-
tal evidence, few studies offer a systematic analysis of the varying outcomes of
African protests. This study begins to address this gap by advancing an explana-
tory model that links framing and POS approaches to explain protest outcomes.
Framing is a socially interactive process by which activists signify issues or prob-
lems and construct meaning to guide their actions and achieve a specific purpose
(Benford and Snow, 2000). “It entails agency in the sense that what is evolving is
the work of social movement organisations or movement activists” (Benford and
Snow, 2000, p. 614). Frames are spread through a variety of disruptive and cre-
ative words and images; and framing strategies such as amplification (making an
issue salient), bridging (linking unconnected frames), transformation (challenging
the status quo, producing new understandings), extension (encompassing issues
beyond primary interests), and diffusion (transfer of frames over national borders)
help maximise the reach and outcomes of contestation (Snow and Benford, 1999;
Benford and Snow, 2000; Noakes and Johnston, 2005). Frames encompass both
a cognitive (as carriers of identities and symbols) and interactional dimension
related to the strategies used to attain political goals.
To analyse the instrumental use of frames, the study relies on the interpre-
tative package matrix which considers how different actors (the interpretative
entrepreneurs) put forward alternative policy packages to gain the sympathy of
the wider public and ultimately the attention of political actors (Gamson and
Lasch, 1981; Aukes, Lulofs, and Bressers, 2018). As presented in Table 2.1, the
analysis seeks to clarify how the issues were framed (core frame, position, meta-
phors and catch-phrases, roots and consequences) and which framing strategies
were employed (amplification, bridging, extension transformation, or diffusion)
in the selected case studies.
If framing strategies exemplify agency mechanisms, POS refer to the structural
causes for collective action. POS are openings in the status quo that movement
actors may use to enhance their chance of success (Tarrow, 1998; Della Porta
and Diani, 2006). POS may ensue from the political and/or the social context.
Examples of the former include the openness of the political system, ideologi-
cal shifts within ruling elites, electoral instability, and presence/absence of elite
allies (Tarrow, 1998; Meyer, 2004; Della Porta and Diani, 2006; Giugni, 2009;
Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2009). The social context may include discursive
22  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches and José Lopes
Table 2.1  Interpretive package matrix applied to the analyses of framing process

Core Frame The issue around which the message is framed

Core position The main argument in support of the policy position
Metaphors Depictions associated with the issue subject to “enhance our
understanding”
Catch-phrases, and Single theme statements, tag-lines, title, or slogan intended to
visual images suggest a general frame
Roots Characteristic analysis of the causal dynamics underlying the
series of events
Consequences A characteristic analysis of the consequences resulting from
different policies
Appeals to principle Characteristic moral appeals
Strategic framinga Which strategies were used? Amplification, bridging, extension,
transformation or diffusion?

Source: Adapted from Gamson and Lasch (1981).

aAdded by the authors, drawing on Benford and Snow (2000).

opportunities, namely cultural environments that facilitate the resonance of

movements’ demands, but also favourable media and public opinion (Mcadam
and Su, 2002; Della Porta and Diani, 2006). Hence, POS comprise a wide set of
unstandardised variables that are perceived and exploited by movement actors.
Since POS are context-dependent and vary within a country and over time, we
do not depart from a fixed set of pre-established variables. Instead, our goal is to
uncover which POS mattered in the selected case studies. As later shown, there
are similarities and differences in the amount and nature of POS available for
each case.
Arguably, framing and POS do not fully reflect the richness of current
debates on social movement and collective action but they allow us to reconcile
agency and structural approaches in a dynamic way and thus look for the mech-
anisms and processes that lead to different outcomes in different contexts
(Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2009).

Methods and data

The study uncovers the framing strategies and the POS in two distinct pro-
test movements in Cabo Verde. First, the MRCV, which clusters groups in the
diaspora and the islands that have been calling for the implementation of region-
alisation reforms since 2010. This movement exerted enough pressure for the issue
to remain salient in the public agenda and influenced bill formulation and discus-
sion. However, while the government bill proposal was appreciated in parliament
in 2018 it was withdrawn in 2019 due to lack of consensus between the major
parties. Secondly, the MAC#114 which appeared unexpectedly in 2015 to cam-
paign against the approval of the new SPOH that anticipated privileges for the
political elite. Pressure was so effective that the president was forced to veto the
bill. Shortly after, MAC#114 disappeared from the public sphere. The two cases
 Shaking up democracy below 23
exemplify the varying outcomes of protest in Cabo Verde, while underscoring
their role in shaping the political agenda (MRCV) and policy change (MAC#114).
The cases additionally reveal the trade-offs between sustained and endured social
movement activity (MRCV) and more ephemeral forms of protest (MAC#114).
The empirical analysis follows a process tracing methodology to untangle the
paths behind each outcome. The specific tests associated with process tracing
methods rely on the “straws in the wind” tests, providing evidence that strength-
ens our confidence in the validity of our arguments (Collier, 2011). Passing a “straw
in the wind” test means using empirical evidence to demonstrate that framing
strategies and POS were influential in protest outcomes. Although insufficient
to reject alternative hypotheses, this increases the plausibility of our arguments.
Since process tracing does not include particular steps, methods and data, the
study resorts to the normal range of tools and methods of data collection (Collier,
2011), thus combining interviews (held in 2017 in Cabo Verde), analysis of social
media (Facebook and blogs), electoral manifestos, and printed and online news-
papers. Three national newspapers with countrywide coverage were reviewed for
the period between 2010 and 2018: A Nação, Expresso das Ilhas and A Semana.
Online magazines consulted include Mindel Insite and Santiago Magazine. As
all this material was in Portuguese, all quotes included in the empirical part have
been translated into English by the authors. The data was qualitatively assessed
and used to produce descriptive inferences on the role of framing and POS in
protest outcomes. Our findings emerged iteratively, by moving back and forth
between theoretical categories and individual stories and experiences.

Protests and movements in Cabo Verde

Cabo Verde has a long history of protest and rebellion tracing back to the colo-
nial years (Mascarenhas, 2014; Pereira, 2014; Lima, 2020). Peasants in the island
of Santiago, mired in abject poverty and subjected to constant exploitative eco-
nomic and administrative control, congregated to collectively challenge, disobey
and revolt against local authorities. The revolts of Engenhos in 1822, Achada
Falcão in 1841 and Ribeirão Manuel in 1910 are often cited as illustrative cases of
people’s uprisings against the colonial regime (Pereira, 2014).
In the first decades of the 20th century, movements of intellectuals in urban
centres, such as nativists, began to germinate in the country, reaching their apo-
gee in the 1930s with the creation of a prominent literary movement known as
Movimento Claridoso. Other movements followed suit with their protests against
colonial hegemonic symbols and demanding better treatment of the natives
(Semedo, 2006) and respect for the Cabo Verdean roots. These demands fuelled
the birth of independence movements, which evolved into the Partido Africano
para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC), a party formed by Amílcar
Cabral, Luís Cabral, Aristides Pereira, and others in 1956 in Guinea Bissau. This
party fiercely challenged the Portuguese colonial regime by engaging in direct
military confrontation, namely in the soil of Guinea Bissau, to fight for the inde-
pendence of both Guinea Bissau and Cabo Verde.
24  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches and José Lopes
The independence of Cabo Verde in 1975 created favourable circumstances for
the incorporation of local demands in the policy-making process. The single party
regime – first the PAIGC, and from 1980 following a split, the Partido Africano da
Independência de Cabo Verde (PAICV) – proposed a platform for the “reconstruc-
tion of the nation” through popular democracy and political participation from
below (Foy, 1988, p. 3). Despite the regime being formally labelled as a “revolu-
tionary democracy” mass organisations were only permitted to help extend party
control over society; and those that opposed the regime faced repression (Furtado,
2016). It was only in the late 1980s that social movements against the regime
re-emerged, culminating with the formation of the Movimento Para a Democracia
(MPD) in 1990, which won the country’s first ever multi-party election held in
January 1991 (Sanches, 2018; Lopes, 2018).
The new POS arising from the inauguration of liberal democracy with the
1991 multi-party parliamentary elections, propelled the (re)emergence of numer-
ous social movements. On one hand, civic organisations grew quickly throughout
the country as the new liberal government and economic policies created social
vacuums due to the state’s inability to meet the increased demand for social
services (Furtado, 2016; Lopes, 2018). On the other hand, the growing discontent-
ment among youth and urban groups about ineffective and unresponsive public
institutions evolved quickly into social movements, notably in the urban centres
(Furtado, 2014; Borges, 2019; Lima, 2020). An interesting aspect of these pro-
tests is their mix of urban culture (rap) and counter-colonial narratives, inspired
by historical figures such as Amilcar Cabral (Lima, 2020). This is a trend that
has been observed in places like Mozambique (Brito, 2017), and Burkina Faso
(Bertrand, 2022).
In the early 2000s, Cabo Verde saw a surge of civic organisations and later, by
the 2010s, anti-government social movements, which became strong oppositional
forces capable of influencing the government agenda and shaking up politics from
below (Lopes, 2018). The following pages analyse two of the most recent examples
of civil society uprising: MRCV and MAC#114.

Movement for regionalisation in Cabo Verde

and autonomy for São Vicente (MRCV)
“I voted for [regionalisation] because the islands cannot continue as they are.
There is an urgent need to rebalance power and redistribute wealth”1. These
were the words of Filomena Martins, a parliamentarian from the PAICV (then
opposition party) to explain her support for the regionalisation bill on its general
approval in parliament on 26 October 2018. Coincidently or not, Filomena is
from São Vicente and defied her party discipline line to vote in favour of the bill.
A myriad of variables such as drought and uneven distribution of rainfall, an
inadequate transport system, among others, have led to the asymmetrical devel-
opment of Cabo Verde’s islands. The state’s and successive governments’ inability
to overcome this challenge has nurtured harsh criticisms and distrust in the cen-
tralised government structure. It is against this backdrop that the movement for
 Shaking up democracy below 25
regionalisation emerged in 2010, demanding a thorough reform of the state and
government structure. The movement actors soon framed their demand around
the decentralisation and autonomy of São Vicente in an attempt to extend their
demands to the entire country, and therefore gain the necessary support to
achieve their goals. As the leading movement actors were based in the island
of São Vicente, they were often labelled separatists and bairristas (parochial).
However, by using strategic framing and benefiting from occasional POS, they
succeeded in taking the regionalisation issue to the top of the country’s political
agenda despite being challenged by rising counter frames and narratives of state
unity.

Framing processes
The regionalisation movement was first launched by the diasporic civic group –
Grupo de Reflexão na Diáspora (GRD) in 2010, and soon diffused within the cultural
and political elites of São Vicente. Its visibility increased with its local appropria-
tion by the Grupo de Reflexão para a Regionalização de Cabo Verde (GRRCV) and
Sokols 2017, established in 2012 and 2017 respectively. While other groups and
prominent political figures joined the cause, including in other islands, the GRD,
GRRCV, and Sokols 2017 became the leading entrepreneurs behind the MRCV.
They are all based or have roots in the island of São Vicente, and since 2010 they
have been the leading advocators and sponsors of the regionalisation policy pack-
age, putting constant pressure on the government for its adoption.
The GRD blog had 117 entries between 2012 and 2019 featuring the move-
ment’s events (e.g. interviews in the media, holding of round tables), opinions
praising the political and cultural centrality of São Vicente, the benefits of region-
alisation and critiquing the government. Whereas GRD and GRRCV recruit on a
higher social stratum, made up of intellectuals and political elites, and use milder
intervention methods, the actions of Sokols 2017 are more heterogeneous and
disruptive, resorting more often to street demonstrations, provocative videos and
catch-words. Their Facebook page presents them as “heirs” of Sokols of Cabo Verde,
a youth movement created in 1932 by Júlio Bento de Oliveira inspired by a simi-
lar democratic movement in Czechoslovakia3. Sokols 2017 offered new dynamics
and further public visibility to the movement. On 5 July 2017, it organised one of
the biggest street demonstrations ever led by a civic movement in Cabo Verde,
denouncing the newly elected MPD government for having failed to keep its
promise on regionalisation policy and for being too apathetic about implementing
policies to boost socioeconomic development, notably in São Vicente.
Despite their differences, the GRD, GRRCV, and Sokols 2017 made intelligent
use of visual images, catch phrases, and metaphors to portray how the country’s
islands have been victims of government centralism (Table 2.2). Whereas the
island of São Vicente is depicted as being the greatest victim of this centralism,
the island of Santiago is seen as the main beneficiary. Onésimo Silveira, an emi-
nent GRRCV intellectual and politician from São Vicente, hurled harsh criticisms
at the country’s political and government elites, calling them “fundamentalists
26  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches and José Lopes
Table 2.2  Regionalisation vs. “Republic of Santiago”

Core Frame How to structure a decentralised government model as opposed

to the current over-centralised and bureaucratic government
based in Santiago island
Core position Central Government should be decentralised in regional
governments to bring power closer to the people, thus
promoting the equitable socio-economic development of the
islands
Metaphors Republic of Santiago vs. the other islands
Centre vs. periphery/ unity vs. state fragmentation
Catch-phrases, and Autonomy now! Regionalisation Now! “São Vicente is Cabo
visual images Verde too”; The Elite from Praia as Vampires
Roots Asymmetric development of the islands/The Cabo Verdean
government is over-centralised, Macrocephaly of the state
Appeals to Moral Regionalisation as an act of Constitutionalism and social justice
principle
Consequences Regionalisation would unleash resources and power for regional
governments to promote inclusive socio-economic development
as opposed to the reigning asymmetric development
Strategic framing Amplification and diffusion

of a utopic Republic of Santiago”. These fundamentalists, he argued, have been

astutely engaging themselves in promoting policies that had only benefited the
“Santiago tribe”, while pushing the other islands to the peripheries of the coun-
try’s development, and treating its people as less Cabo Verdeans4. This quote from
a Sokols 2017 activist is also illustrative:

We want more respect and dignity because at this moment Cabo Verde is
developing at two speeds: one for the island of Santiago and the other for the
rest of the country (Mindel Insite, 26 June 2017).

MRCV successfully managed to amplify the “regionalisation vs. Republic of

Santiago” frame by mobilising public sentiment in their support through the use
of pungent catch words and metaphors (Table 2.2). As this frame gained reso-
nance within the wider culture of the island of São Vicente and won sympathy
from some key figures from other islands and in the diaspora, it became evident
that the movement leaders and political elites were engaging in diffusion strategies
to take the issue of regionalisation to the top of political parties’ agendas. These
strategies were made possible through persistent social media activity (Facebook
and blogs), online media presence, and mobilisation events; and were crucial to
keep the issue of regionalisation salient over the years.

Political Opportunity Structures

The relative success and endurance of MRCV has been determined by three
streams of POS: the proximity of legislative elections (in 2011 and 2016), the
 Shaking up democracy below 27
political turnover in 2016, and the parties’ dispute over issue ownership. The
movement emerged in 2010 just months before the 2011 legislative elections,
benefiting therefore from the opportunity to influence political parties to raise
the issue of regionalisation in the campaigns. Smaller parties, such as the
União Caboverdiana Independente e Democrática (UCID), and the Partido do
Trabalho e Solidariedade (PTS) largely based in São Vicente5, included region-
alisation in their manifestos and campaign messages. Although the issue lost
some public attention after the election, as mentioned above, the movement
continued to amplify and diffuse its frames across the country and in the
diaspora.
In April 2015, the PAICV government organised a high-level conference to
debate the regionalisation policy. The conference brought together leaders of
local governments, academics, national and international experts as well as rep-
resentatives from civil society; however, some members from GDR and GRRCV
were critical of the underrepresentation of the latter segment6. The conference
had the ambitious objective of finding the required consensus on the best working
models for this reform. However, due to the fragmented nature of the issue, no
coherent and conclusive proposal was produced. Indeed, by 2015, regionalisation
was clearly a polarised issue, with members of Cabo Verdean intelligentsia, polit-
ical and civil society actors taking different stands.
With the 2016 legislative election just around the corner, the movement actors
intensified their campaign to influence the upcoming political events. Thus, the
two major political parties, PAICV and MPD, and the minority party UCID,
were well aware of the feeling in civil society, so they willingly stood as the main
sponsors of regionalisation. Despite their different positions on the issue, they
compromised to take measures conducive to state and government reforms, focus-
ing on power decentralisation in Cabo Verde. For example, PAICV stated in its
electoral platform that, if elected to be government, the party would “promote a
debate on regionalisation, free of taboos, to ascertain the true national interest
and gains” (PAICV, 2016). MPD went further, stating that if the party won the
election, it would approve and implement a regionalisation bill in its first year of
mandate. Thus, both the 2011 and 2016 legislative elections were approached and
successfully exploited to put the issue on the agenda and commit the parties to
reform.
The second POS was the triumph of MPD in the legislative election held on
20 March 2016. Given the promises made by the party during the campaign, the
movement actors believed they had won a strategic ally for the implementation of
regionalisation reforms and sought to explore this opening. However, the govern-
ment did not fulfil its promise to design and implement a regionalisation bill in
its first year of mandate. This fuelled more protest, being the most symbolic the
one held on 5 September 2018 in Mindelo – capital of São Vicente. On this day
a group of demonstrators led by the Sokols 2017 movement shouted, “Autonomy
now! Decentralisation! A Promise is a Debt!”, as they barred the way of the
government delegation led by the Prime Minister Ulisses Correia to the city of
Mindelo. On that occasion, one of the movement’s leaders stated:
28  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches and José Lopes
He [the Prime Minister] has deceived us by failing to move forward, treating
us as if we were children, and we cannot continue to accept such things. We
are fighting for decentralisation, a planned and scheduled regionalisation.
Yeah, it’s the lives of the people that are at stake.
(Santiago Magazine, 5 September 2017)

So, while the incoming government appeared to be a valuable ally of the protest-
ers cause, its sluggish moves propelled new demonstrations. A third POS was the
dispute over issue ownership by the two leading political parties in Cabo Verde,
PAICV and MPD. In fact, both parties drafted and presented their own bills
for regionalisation, which were widely publicised and debated across the country.
The civic groups involved in MRCV failed to draft and present their own bill,
but used all their pressure and advocacy to ensure its approval. Additionally, they
had hopes that the three parties in parliament would come up with a bill that
would meet their demands and interests. However, the parliament only tabled the
government (MPD) proposal for debate in the October 2018 session, infuriating
PAICV and UCID parliamentarians. The MPD bill received general approval
with votes from the MPD bench, three parliamentarians from UCID, and two
from PAICV, the latter breaching the party line of abstention. Although the
MPD and the government declared victory, they were counting their chickens
too soon, as the bill failed to be approved in the speciality debates in April 2019
due to lack of consensus between the two major parties. Unlike what happened
in the general approval, the PAICV parliamentary group all towed the party line.
Nevertheless, Parliament’s failure to pass the regionalisation bill did not mean
the end of the movements’ demands; on the contrary. The GRDC, GRRCV
and Sokols 2017 had successfully managed to influence the political agenda and
forced political parties to legislate on the topic, and they pledged not to let their
cause die: “It is a long and hard struggle but we will not give up because it is our
very existence and identity that is at stake. Long live Cabo Verde!” (Sokols 2017
Facebook post, 24 November 2018).

“Standing up to the vampires”: The people against

the new Statute of the Political Office Holders
In March 2015, the Cabo Verdean Parliament debated and unanimously approved
a new SPOH that would grant political office holders a wide range of special soci-
oeconomic privileges. The approval of the SPOH was the culmination of a long
debate over the remuneration of political office holders. Their wages had been
frozen since 1997, and attempts to update them had failed due to fear of public
discontent. However, with the approach of the 2016 legislative and presidential
election, the politicians felt it was the perfect timing to approve the SPOH, given
that some parliamentarians and other political officers would soon end their polit-
ical careers, and some were unsure about re-election. The SPOH would increase
politicians’ salaries by 64%, among other benefits. Therefore, there was a tacit
consensus among the political parties to move on with the bill.
 Shaking up democracy below 29
However, while the parliamentarians thought they were right about the
chances of approving the bill, they were unaware of the backlash they would
face. The new SPOH appeared at a moment of considerable political tension and
social stress. Several unions had been leading strikes and street protests, demand-
ing higher wages and better working conditions. Hence, the bill caused national
anger and parliamentarians and their parties were harshly criticised by all quad-
rants. The people felt betrayed by politicians and were determined to stand up
to the “Vampires” who “eat everything”. These words were from a song entitled
“Vampires” by José Afonso, a Portuguese musician whose songs gave voice to the
resistance against the Portuguese fascist regime.

Framing processes
The leading entrepreneur behind the frame “Standing up to the vampires” was
MAC#114. Rony Moreira, the most visible face of the movement, explained that
114 is the number of the article in the National Assembly Regiment that parlia-
mentarians can activate to react to offenses7. In an interview with the authors,
he added that the movement had no leadership but rather coordinators who vol-
unteered to take on certain tasks. MAC#114 made its first public appearance
on 20 January 2015, during the official ceremony of the 40th anniversary of
Amílcar Cabral’s death, when a small group of young people in their twenties
and mid-thirties marched silently towards the venue where the ceremony was
taking place. They followed all the ceremony without a word. This flash mob style
initiative created some buzz, but the objective of the participants was unclear.
Although active on social media8, MAC#114 was almost an unknown organisa-
tion and its cause unfamiliar to many. A Facebook post on 27 January shared José
Afonso’s music “Vampires” without any accompanying message, and another post
on 30 January stated vaguely: “MAC#114 is a youth organisation whose mission
is to awaken other young people to participate in the decisions of their country”.
With the start of debate on the SPOH bill in early 2015, MAC#114 came out
as the main representative of civil society to condemn and vehemently oppose
its approval. MAC#114 activists used social media campaigns to harshly criticise
the proposal, focusing their anger on the 64% increase in politicians’ salaries in
addition to other special benefits that no other professional class or segment of pop-
ulation enjoyed. The frame “Standing up to the vampires” evolved quickly on the
core argument that there should be no special privileges in Cabo Verde for politi-
cians, who already enjoy so many benefits while the population remains in poverty.
Soon after the Parliamentary approval of the SPOH, the frame spread but
gained momentum on 30 March when the MAC#114 organised island-wide pro-
tests that gathered thousands of mainly young people in the islands of Santiago
(Praia, the capital, and Assomada), Sal and São Vicente (Mindelo). According
to Ronny Moreira, the movement actors were able to recruit participants from
local civic associations to help spread the message, and also used the internet and
personal networks in diaspora to amplify their messages9. Thus, protest actions
sprang up across the diaspora, particularly in Portugal where, on the same day,
30  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches and José Lopes
dozens of Cabo Verdeans protested in front of the Cabo Verdean Embassy in
Lisbon, and in front of the School of Arts in Coimbra.
The participants in the protests were from all social quadrants, but mainly the
middle class and youth10. The MAC#114 Facebook page and media reports of
the events show pictures where participants held up posters depicting the three
parliamentary parties – PAICV, MPD, and UCID – as “The Beagle Boys”, and the
parliamentarians as “72 Thugs in the Parliament” “Alibaba and the 72 thieves”11.
Images and words of the historical pan-Africanist Amílcar Cabral were used on
several occasions as shown in social media posts, but also in other youth protests
held in the country around the same period (Lima, 2020).
The most repeated catch phrases uttered by the protesters and disseminated in
the media included: “we need leaders with heart”, “Je suis Povo criolo”, “Je suis
Pobre”, “we all have to tighten the belts”, and the “vampires who eat everything
and leave nothing” (Table 2.3). These catch phrases were an attempt to mobi-
lise cultural resonance and to appeal to collective public solidarity and actions
against the corrupt politicians.
MAC#114 combined additional framing strategies to achieve its political goal.
First, frame amplification through the organisation of protest events, intense
Facebook activity, interviews in the media and the creation of an online peti-
tion that was signed by over 5000 people12. Second, frame diffusion through the
transfer of claims over island-borders, and in the diaspora. The pursuit of these
strategies helped augment the reach of the demands, create popular resonance
and led to a successful outcome as the president eventually vetoed the bill in
April 2015. According to MAC#114 activist Lina Gonçalves:

The act [veto] itself represents a qualitative leap in strengthening democracy

in Cabo Verde and recognises the role of civil society as a viable and power-
ful actor in deepening and extending democratic culture
(A Nação, 10 April 2015)

Table 2.3  “Standing up to the vampires”

Core Frame How to stop politicians “stealing” from and impoverishing

the people
Core position There should be no special benefits for politicians while
the general population remains impoverished
Metaphors “The Beagle Boys”; “Thugs in the Parliament”
Catch-phrases, and visual “We need leaders with heart”, “We all have to tighten the
images belt”, “Je suis Povo criolo”, “Je suis Pobre”, “basta aos
políticos desta terra”
Roots The practice of dishonest and corrupt politicians, who act
in defence of their own self-interest rather looking out for
the population
Consequence The president veto of the bill
Appeals to moral principle Equality and fairness in wealth distribution, (The Unions),
Respect for the people
Strategic framing Amplification and diffusion
 Shaking up democracy below 31
To fully understand this unprecedented outcome which altered politicians’ and
citizens’ perceptions and interactions, it is essential to consider how movement
actors used POS to their advantage.

Political opportunity structures

The political context provided significant opportunities for a successful outcome.
The first was the proximity of elections. The presidential elections were to be
held in 2016, and the incumbent president was expected to run as candidate.
According to Rony Moreira, the President knew his re-election was at stake, and
they wanted to take advantage of this:

Never have so many people been out on the streets in Cabo Verde, so the
pressure was enormous. We hijacked the political game through Facebook
posts and images, we took advantage of any error in the system, commentary,
and speeches from the elites. (…) There was no room for the President to
choose otherwise. [The President knew this could cost his re-election]
(Personal Interview, 26 January 2017)

Second, MAC#114 had important political allies; its demands were sponsored
by some of the leading figures in civil society, such as the former President
António Mascarenhas, leaders of trade unions, religious figures, and academics.
Surprisingly, Janira Almada, who had been elected leader of PAICV in 2014, then
the ruling party, sponsored the demands to stop the bill, going against the posi-
tion of the then Prime Minister who had supported it13. However, as she was not
yet in control of her party agenda, she had little influence on the party’s parlia-
mentarians and so could not prevent them from approving the SPOH. MAC#114
encountered harsh opposition from parliamentary parties, mainly the opposition
party, MPD, whose key leaders had officially supported the bill. Counter narra-
tives from politicians treated the activists as mere “discontented kids” who are
simply looking for a “space” in the country’s political system.
Finally, activists took advantage of POS from the social context – namely
favourable public opinion and media coverage. An opinion poll published around
the time of the approval of the SPOH indicated that 70% of Cabo Verdeans
believed the large majority of local politicians were more concerned about serving
their personal interests than those of the country14. Additionally, the context of
crisis and the growing distrust in political elites created common ground to which
citizens from all quadrants could relate15. In an interview to A Nação, Corsino
Tolentino, a former minister of education, stated that the elites had underesti-
mated the people, that “nothing would be as before” and that the protests in
Cabo Verde represented a “spring” “an unprecedented awakening of civil society”
that would tilt the balance of power (A Nação, 5 April 2015). Headlines such as
“Jorge Carlos Fonseca between a rock and a hard place: Dissolution of Parliament
may be an alternative” (A Nação, 6 April 2015) and “MAC # 114, the movement
that made the Cabo Verdean political class tremble” (A Semana, 15 May 2015),
32  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches and José Lopes
and Rony Moreira’s strong media presence are revealing of the favourable social
environment surrounding MAC#114.
MAC#114 used political and social opportunities efficiently and achieved its
goals (withdrawal of the SPOH). Nevertheless, the movement has ever since faded
away and has not been able to lead any other significant protest initiatives. It has
practically vanished from the national public sphere, failing to channel further
social demands (Lima, 2020). MAC #114 emerged unexpectedly, disconnected
from other social structures, and lacked clear “action-oriented cultural frames”
and the effective structures that usually characterise social movements (Tarrow,
1998). In this sense it differs from MRCV, which displays the organizational and
ideological resources that allow movements to endure.

Discussion
The preceding analysis shows that both MRCV and MAC#114 used instrumental
framing to resonate with the wider public and capture the attention of the politi-
cal elite. Through disruptive catch words and metaphors, they were not only able
to provocatively present their messages to the world, but also to amplify and dis-
seminate them efficiently to enhance their chance of success (Table 2.4). Besides
gathering support across the islands, the movements also resorted to personal net-
works in the diaspora to spread their demands and recruit sympathisers. MRCV
originated in the diaspora but gained local ownership and brought together
several groups and organisations which used forms of pressure that ranged from
milder to more direct contentious actions. Through mass protests (albeit mainly
localised on the island of São Vicente), publications of studies, conferences, and
other focusing events held both in Cabo Verde and abroad, activists were able
to give their fight meaning, and therefore attracted public support. MAC#114
quickly emerged as the leading civil society movement arguing against the imple-
mentation of the SPOH. By interpreting the bill as an immoral assault on poor
Cabo Verdeans, it successfully mobilised the spirit of “we the people” against the
“unscrupulous, corrupt and greedy politicians”.
POS played different roles in each movement. In the case of the MRCV,
activists used the proximity of elections (2011 and 2016) to lobby in favour of

Table 2.4  Summary

MRCV MAC#114

Framing Disruptive catch words, and Disruptive catch words, and

strategies metaphors, amplification and metaphors, provocative visuals,
diffusion amplification and diffusion
POS Proximity of elections Proximity of elections
Power transfer/political allies Political allies
Party polarisation Favourable public opinion
Favourable media coverage
Outcomes Bill initiation Bill withdrawal
 Shaking up democracy below 33
regionalisation and persuade parties to include the issue on their agendas. While
the issue was vaguely presented in the electoral manifestos of the major par-
ties in 2011, more concrete and bold promises were made to the voters in 2016.
The MPD, in particular, promised to approve a bill within one year in cabinet.
Although the MPD’s election in 2016 was an important POS as the activists
now had an ally with power to help implement the reforms, its sluggish reaction
fuelled more protests. In face of this, the political elite had no alternative but to
accept the people’s demands to debate and enact policies conducive to the imple-
mentation of regional governments. However, the regionalisation bill was highly
polarised with the major parties (MPD and PAICV) racing to advance their own
proposals. The withdrawal of the draft law in 2019 from Parliament’s agenda does
not change the fact that the movement helped the issue to remain salient in the
public agenda.
MAC#114 benefited from more POS: proximity of elections, political allies,
favourable public opinion, and media coverage. MAC#114 activists were aware of
these incentives and how to make the most use of them. It was also clear that the
movement could also rely on more consensual public opinion than the regional-
isation movement, which was more divisive and originated counter-frames from
the outset. Yet excessive mediatisation and the personalisation of MAC#114
activists obscured more anonymous voices that also contributed to the outcomes;
moreover, MAC#114 was unable to effectively coordinate an agenda and bridge
with other groups in a sustainable way (Lima, 2020). Its “disappearance” left a
vacuum that failed to be filled by other movements (Ibid). In contrast, MRCV’s
longevity and relative success shows that long term policy development requires
protest to be rooted in civil society.

Conclusion
Even though Cabo Verde is an exemplary democracy where politics is essentially
shaped from above, it has been experiencing high protest levels since the 2010s.
But how effective have these protests been?
Drawing on two of the most recent examples of protest movements in the
country – MRCV and the MAC#114 – this chapter tested and demonstrated the
importance of two sets of factors to explain the outcome of protests. On the
one hand, instrumental framing, through which words were creatively amplified
and disseminated on the islands and beyond. MAC#114 made the most use of
provocative catch words, images, visuals, and street demonstrations, while the
MRCV – formed by a larger coalition of groups – combined multiple forms of
pressure, from books and conferences to protest actions. While the MAC#114
benefited from more favourable circumstances (in both the political and social
context) that made the President veto the SPOH about one month after its
parliamentary approval, MRCV managed to put the issue of regionalisation on
the political agenda after it emerged in 2010. Despite having distinct outcomes,
both movements have helped transform the interactions between the state and
civil society: citizens increasingly use the internet and other tools to voice their
34  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches and José Lopes
demands and shape politics from below. Exemplary cases that highlight the
transformation are the protests led by professional drivers’ union, cultural agents,
and Sokols 17 demanding state support and softening of lockdown restrictions
because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This study’s findings help nuance prior works characterising the Cabo Verdean
civil society as amorphous and lethargic (Costa, 2013) and adds to the blossoming
scholarship that charts the new forms of protest taking place in the country as
part of a global cycle of protest (Lima, 2020). The study also contributes to the
wider literature on movements and protest in Africa in four ways. First, it con-
firms the importance of framing strategies for understanding protest outcomes
in Africa – thus, adding to the cases of Morocco (Badran, 2022) and Senegal
(Dimé, 2022) also analysed in this book. Second, it reveals the importance of
youth and social coalitions to the emergence and success of protests. MAC#114
fits into the wave of youth urban protests in Africa that engage in more crea-
tive and disruptive forms of protest to advance democratic norms, as observed
in Tunisia, Egypt, and Senegal, among others (Lima, 2020; Maganga, 2020). The
MRCV emerged from a more established social class (social and political elite)
and later encompassed lower strata. It is illustrative of the class-coalitions model
discussed by Mueller (2018) in the case of Niger. According to Mueller, it is the
coalition between a politically motivated middle class and an economically moti-
vated lower class that brings popular protest to existence. This is crucial as it has
been argued that a movement’s level of inclusivity helps explain its endurance
and relative level of success (Faupel and Wojtanik, 2020), which clearly is the case
of MRCV.
Third, the analysis reveals that structure and agency are relevant to under-
stand the various outcomes of protests. Activists’ ability to use instrumental
framing and take advantage of POS helps them achieve their goals, particularly
when demands are more consensual (MAC#114). Even though, movements may
only succeed in keeping issues on the agenda when they are highly polarised
(MRCV), this remains a meaningful demonstration of public accountability and
responsiveness. Finally, the study demonstrates the importance of going beyond
materialistic approaches in order to observe how citizens are trying to improve
democratic governance and, in some countries, thwart autocratic drifts. It points
to intangible changes that result from the interactions between citizens and
the political elites, in which the former increasingly see themselves as agents of
change. Future studies should compare the outcomes of protest in democratic
African countries and explore their territorial diffusion and networks – both
online and offline. Other promising avenues include the way movements com-
bine formal and informal mechanisms to challenge the status quo; and how they
promote intangible changes.

Acknowledgements
This work has been financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Technology – FCT under the framework of the project UIDB/03122/2020.
 Shaking up democracy below 35
Notes
1. In English “Decentralization Now!”
2. One of the country’s ten islands, the second in population size.
3. Expresso das Ilhas, Esquina do Tempo: Os Sokols de Cabo Verde, 22/08/2016:
https://expressodasilhas.cv/cultura/2016/08/22/esquina-do-tempo-os-sokols-
de-cabo-verde/49863
4. Recado Para a República de Santiago, A Semana, 27/04/2012.
5. Eleições Cabo Verde: UCID quer constituir grupo parlamentar, Voa Notícias,
26/11/2011: https://www.voaportugues.com/a/eleicoes-cabo-verde—ucid-114645614/
1259426.html.
6. Movimento para a Regionalizaçâo em Cabo Verde (Diáspora) http://moviment
oparaaregionalizaoeautonomias.blogspot.com/2014/11/reaccao-do-grupo-de-
reflexao-sobre.html.
7. Mac # 114, o movimento que fez “tremer” a classe política caboverdiana, A semana,
20/07/2016.
8. Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MAC-114-1049093538439572/
9. Interview with Rony Moreira.
10. Interview with Rony Moreira.
11. See MAC #114 Facebook Page; Políticos “obrigados” a repensar consensos em Cabo
Verde, VOA, 31/03/2015: https://www.voaportugues.com/a/politicos-obrigados-a-
repensar-consensos-em-cabo-verde/2701549.html?f bclid=IwAR3yS7XNTc_J–
KgEEmUuezOUfccXtuS8s7BOu8cZNgLkHL7EJj2cpDGoIQ
12. Available at: https://peticaopublica.com/pview.aspx?pi=PT76658
13. Interview with Rony Moreira.
14. Não haverá nenhuma crise em Cabo Verde por causa do estatuto dos políticos,
Expresso das Ilhas, 07/04/2015: https://expressodasilhas.cv/politica/2015/04/07/
nao-havera-nenhuma-crise-em-cabo-verde-por-causa-do-estatuto-dos-politicos-
pr/44354
15. Interview with Rony Moreira.

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3 POPULAR PROTEST,
RESOURCES, AND POLITICAL
OPPORTUNITIES IN GHANA
CONTEXTUALISING THE
CASE OF OCCUPY GHANA
Andrea Noll and Jan Budniok

Introduction
Analysts often describe Ghana as a West African development success story,
based on its stable democracy since the mid-1990s and, since the 2000s, a fast-de-
veloping economy. However, the relatively long period of economic growth was
interjected by temporary crisis and International Monetary Fund (IMF) inter-
vention. In 2014, the country had already faced difficulties in expanding its
infrastructure for a few years and public disgust about rampant corruption was
widespread. Many Ghanaians were frustrated by the impact of severe currency
fluctuations on their daily life, a high rate of inflation, and a rapidly increasing
national debt. Rising fuel prices and constant power cuts, called dumsor (from
Twi, meaning on-off) were specific causes that triggered protests in 2014.
These grievances led in July 2014 to a protest event named #OccupyFlagstaff
House, from where the pressure group Occupy Ghana, consisting of established
middle-class women and men and tech-savvy young professionals from urban
Accra, emerged. With their actions, members of Occupy Ghana criticised cur-
rent economic policies and tried to put pressure on the incumbent National
Democratic Congress (NDC) government to improve life conditions for all
Ghanaians and abide to existing laws and regulations. The group that remains
active as of 2021 was able to amplify their frames by regularly publishing on social
media, and daily newspapers frequently reported their actions. Yet, one of Occupy
Ghana’s key tools in exerting pressure on the government was not protesting in
the streets of the capital Accra but going to court. What is more, the activists
developed a broader agenda: through their various actions, they wanted more
than just to criticise the government and express their frustrations about missed
development opportunities of the past fifty years and point to the failures of the
political class. In fact, Occupy Ghana’s transformative agenda went beyond a cri-
tique of neoliberalism practices and principles and exposed a fundamental crisis
of democracy and political culture, a general crisis of disenchantment with the
political life, and with its moral and ethical standards.
This chapter asks two fundamental questions: did Occupy Ghana help transform
the nature of politics in Ghana? And which factors explain the group’s dynamics
DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-3
40  Andrea Noll and Jan Budniok
and outcomes? We argue that both resource mobilisation and POS help to explain
the emergence and outcomes of Occupy Ghana. As later shown most partici-
pants of this group were middle-class people who possessed resources to sustain
protest activities, namely, office space, technical expertise, communication skills,
and legal and political knowledge. Moreover, some of them (older activists) had
already participated in the student protests in the 1970s and 1980s, which means
they had the knowledge on how to organise protests. The older activists worked
alongside a newer generation of activists who were mainly tech-savvy young profes-
sionals that disposed the necessary technical expertise to amplify the movement’s
claims. Adding to this, we argue that the POS in Ghana since re-democratisa-
tion is favourable for political protest by members of the middle class. Indeed,
democratisation brought about a rising number of civil society organisations, social
movements, and local actors of international NGOs. Freedom of expression, and
a well-developed legal system are among the features that provide ample opportu-
nity for activism and that are especially conducive for middle-class activism. Legal
opportunities and occasionally receptive judges further the causes and provide new
scope for activists and put pressure on the government. In this study, we find that
the openness of the political system, free media and discursive opportunities (pub-
lic concern with corruption) helped maximise the movement effectiveness.
The empirical analysis builds on ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana over the past
decade1, focusing primarily on material collected in 2015 and 2016. We combined
various approaches of ethnographic fieldwork, including biographic narratives,
informal conversations, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews
that we conducted in Accra. Moreover, we collected and analysed newspaper arti-
cles on Occupy Ghana that were published in the Ghanaian Newspapers Daily
Graphic and The Ghanaian Times, analysed Twitter and Facebook accounts,
and spoke with representatives of the NDC and the New Patriotic Party (NPP),
the two major political parties in Ghana. We decided to keep the identities of our
interviewees anonymous. The case of Ghana helps to understand how especially
middle-class members may successfully exploit POS to their advantage.
The chapter starts overviewing the connection between middle classes and social
movement studies and briefly discusses resource mobilisation and POS in social
movement studies. This discussion underpins our framework for analysis which
combines both aspects. The chapter describes how Occupy Ghana emerged, anal-
yses who its activists are and what actions they took. It also tackles the question
how political opportunities mattered for the outcome of popular protest, and how
popular protest may have affected political agendas. It also explores the relevance of
resources and POS. The conclusion summarises the study’s main findings and reflects
on its contributions to the studies on social classes and popular protest in Africa.

Middle class, social movements, resource mobilisation, and POS

In the past decade, the middle classes and their relevance for social change have
been a focus of new debates in African studies (Lentz, 2016, p. 17; Kodila-Tedika,
Asongu, and Kayembe, 2016; Kroeker, O’Kane and Scharrer, 2018; Melber, 2016;
 Popular protest, resources, and political opportunities 41
Southall, 2018, p. 467). Even though the boundaries of middle classes are blurred,
the term has become an important concept for people in many African countries
to describe their own position in society (Lentz, 2016, p. 17). Our own research
has shown that this heterogonous category shares specific characteristics, values,
and beliefs (Budniok and Noll, 2017). In Ghana, members of the middle-class
connect this concept to ideas of personal achievements, moral obligations as well
as to appropriate lifestyles and life courses (Budniok and Noll, 2017). Moreover,
middle-class men and women who are politically active often use the term as a
self-image and political self-legitimation to state their social responsibility within
society (Sumich 2016, p. 828). Building on Carola Lentz (2016, p. 46) we under-
stand middle class as “a multi-dimensional concept that refers to a socio-economic
category, a cultural world, and a political discourse”.
Studies on social movements underline the historical continuities of protest in
African countries (Ellis and van Kessel, 2009, p. 12; Branch and Mampilly, 2015).
Scholars note that movements similar to American and European old social move-
ments and new social movements, as widely documented in the literature (Della
Porta und Diani 2006, p. 55f, Eggert and Giugni 2015, p. 22), were also present
in in African history (Ellis and van Kessel, 2009; Branch and Mampilly, 2015).
However, it may be the case that some of these social manifestations were not
initially termed or treated as social movements. In fact, the concept of social move-
ments has hardly been applied to African realities, as Mamdani (1995, p. 3f) argues,
because civil society was the dominant concept to understand associational life in
Africa (1995, p. 3f). However, the notions of social movement and civil society,
while conceptually distinct, can often overlap, precisely because social movements
exist within the boundaries of civil society. In this sense both concepts can be
jointly utilised to describe and explain empirical realities (e.g. forms of activism,
societal demands), and the involvement of actors and organisations in the politi-
cal life of a community or country (Brandes and Engels, 2011, p. 6). Whereas the
notion of civil society in Africa often highlights cooperation and developmental
aspects, the notion of social movement emphasises confrontation. Today’s social
movements build upon a history of African protest that leads back to the anti-
colonial struggle (Branch and Mampilly, 2015, p. 3; Ellis and van Kessel, 2009, p. 13).
Research on African movements gained new momentum following the “Arab
spring” and the third wave of protest in the continent (Branch and Mampilly
2015). As Ellis and Van Kessel (2009, p. 15) note, movements in Africa “never did
fit into the sketch of a neat chronological succession from working-class to mid-
dle-class activism”. Seddon and Zeilig (2005) note that a variety of social groups
was usually involved in strikes and demonstrations in the wave of widespread
popular protest and resistance that sparked around the world, including Africa
from the late 1970s. These protests did not always encompass the working class
or working-class leadership. Lisa Mueller (2018) argues that the third wave of pro-
tests in Sub-Saharan Africa arises from coalitions between a politically motivated
middle class and an economically motivated lower class. She argues that middle-
class activists reacted to political shocks exploiting their resources to mobilise
lower-class men and women suffering from economic grievances.
42  Andrea Noll and Jan Budniok
Resources and POS are classical drivers for collective action (van Stekelenburg
and Klandermans, 2009, p. 17–43). They depend on structural circumstances,
but also on activists’ position in society. In principle, privileged groups will have
more resources (e.g. material stability, social networks, and political influence)
to devote to social movement activity. However, this does not mean that they
will eventually do so or that they will be better able to perceive and exploit POS
to engage in political action. In Ghana, there has recently been a debate about
the political apathy of the middle class in online commentaries and newspaper
articles (Lentz and Noll, 2021; Noll and Budniok, 2021). While some middle-class
women and men – like the activists of Occupy Ghana – decide to protest as an
investment in their own status, others come to an arrangement with the cir-
cumstances, using individualistic strategies of betterment like educating their
children in international schools and procuring private health insurance (Lentz
and Noll, 2021). As members of the urban middle class, the activists of Occupy
Ghana were able to build on various resources and POS (the level of the regime
openness, access to political power, and favourable media) to influence and ulti-
mately transform policies.
To answer this study’s research questions, we propose a theoretical framework
that combines both resource mobilisation and POS. The resource mobilisation
approach emphasises the significance of organisational structures and resource
accumulation for collective action (McCarthy and Zald 2001). Thus, the level
of organisation of a group and its capability of mobilising resources are decisive
for the course and the outcome of a movement (Kitschelt, 1991, p. 327). These
resources may include, e.g. sympathetic or solidaristic support by external organ-
isations, material resources, knowledge capital relevant to conducting collective
actions, knowledge about building and maintaining the organisation, and knowl-
edge about potential supporters (Cress and Snow, 1996).
Whereas this approach focuses on the actors of the movement, the approach
of POS concentrates on endogenous resources outside of a social movement that
may be relevant for its mobilisation (Hellmann, 1998, p. 25). This approach argues
that the political context is decisive for the emergence, the development and the
success or failure of social movements (Meyer, 2004, p. 126; Tarrow, 1994, p. 18f;
Sanches, 2022). According to Giugni (2009), four main dimensions of political
opportunity have been stressed in the literature: The relative openness or close-
ness of the institutionalised political system (Eisinger, 1973, p. 25), the presence
or absence of elite allies, the stability or instability of elite networks and the capa-
bility or readiness of the state for repression may play a major role (Rucht, 1998,
p. 113; McAdam, 1996).
Such political opportunities, succinctly discussed by Giugni (2009, p. 361), are
those aspects of a political system that affect the possibilities that challenging
groups have to mobilise effectively. “In this sense, opportunities are ‘options for
collective action, with chances and risks attached to them, which depend on fac-
tors outside the mobilizing group’ (Koopmans, 2004, p. 65)”. According to Giugni
(2009, p. 364), recent theorisations have stressed that opportunities for mobilisa-
tion have two sides: an institutional side referring to the access challengers have
 Popular protest, resources, and political opportunities 43
to the institutionalised political system, and a discursive side relating to the public
visibility and resonance as well as the political legitimacy of certain actors, iden-
tities, and claims (Koopmans et al, 2005). The “discursive opportunity” examines
the extent to which social movements’ claims and identities relate to prevailing
discourses in the public domain (Giugni 2009, p. 364). In our analysis, we will
show how the activists of Occupy Ghana made use of their resources and these
POS to attain their political goals.

#OccupyFlagstaffHouse and the emergence of Occupy Ghana

Ghana has a long history of civilian protest by students, workers, the middle
class, and members of different professions (Asante and Helbrecht, 2018; Noll
and Budniok, 2021; Eberlei and Pac, 2014, p. 192). According to Owusu (1989,
p. 374), nurtured by the impact of colonialism, there exists a strong tradition of
resistance, revolt, and rebellion against any form of injustice in African societies.
In Ghana, early and later forms of nationalism grew out of this tradition of pop-
ular consciousness, “at once combining communal and emergent class elements”
(Owusu 1989, p. 374). Members of the middle class were often key agents to exert
pressure on respective governments. Occupy Ghana somehow reflects this histor-
ical legacy, as the main actors defined themselves as members of the Ghanaian
middle class and, at the same time, claimed to represent all Ghanaians. Their
emergence in 2014 is noteworthy for its continuity with prior movements (some
participants had prior experience in student protests in the 1970s), but also its
distinctiveness (the utilisation of different frames, resources, and tools). However,
before addressing this in more detail, it is crucial to briefly depict the environment
that triggered the protest in 2014.
Ghana’s democratic elections, regular changes in the presidency, and the party
in government, with a rotation between the NPP and the NDC, as well as its high
level of freedom of expression draw observers’ attention. In the 2000s, income
grew in the private sector and in the public sector; the creation of differentiated
occupations brought about new employment opportunities for the middle class,
and even absolute poverty was reduced significantly. The discovery of oil in 2007
and the beginning of its extraction in late 2011 added to a double-digit growth
rate of Ghana’s GDP, which was for several years among the highest in the world.
However, in 2014 the country had faced difficulties in expanding its infrastruc-
ture for several years, and many Ghanaians were frustrated by the effects of severe
currency fluctuations, a high rate of inflation and a rapidly increasing national
debt. The government was also under public pressure for its increasing dependence
on revenues from natural resources (gold, oil, cocoa) and for doing too little to
expand the manufacturing sector where jobs ought to be generated for the grow-
ing and increasingly better educated work force. The Ghanaian manufacturing
sector was particularly affected by the power shortages, but also telecommunica-
tion companies, the media sector, and agriculture as well as commerce suffered
from insufficient power supply and water shortages. Moreover, government spent
a substantial part of state revenues on increasing wages of civil servants and on
44  Andrea Noll and Jan Budniok
creating new positions in the public service. Constant power cuts, fuel shortages,
and rising fuel prices triggered popular protests in 2014.
Contrary to the energy crisis in 2007, these power shortages were, according to the
Ministry of Energy, no longer predictable. Using the hashtag #OccupyFlagstaffHouse
on Twitter, a group of young activists called for a public protest on the 1 July 20142
in Ghana’s capital Accra. Among the various organisers of this protest was a
group called Concerned Ghanaians for Responsible Governance several gender
and civil rights activists as well as social media commentators. The Concerned
Ghanaians for Responsible Governance were solely founded for the purpose of this
demonstration by a group of tech-savvy young professionals. The demonstration
was to take place directly in front of Ghana’s presidential palace, the seat of the
Ghanaian government, the so-called Flagstaff House. Its aim was the handing over
of a petition to the then President John Dramani Mahama, from the National
Democratic Congress (NDC). The petition called for action against the power
cuts, the fuel shortage, the loss of purchasing power, the monetary crisis, the high
costs of living, the increasing unemployment, and social inequality. The petition
was also published on a website where supporters digitally signed it.3
The group of protesters was relatively small, yet the resonance in the Ghanaian
news as well as on social media was huge. According to media reports between 200
and 500 people participated in the protest march.4 Many of the protesters were
clad in black and red, using these colours to express their anger and frustration
as some of them explained to us later.5 The protesters met in the early morning
hours at Efua Sutherland Children’s Park in Accra, about three kilometres away
from the Flagstaff House, from where they started to march. The police prohib-
ited the protesters from demonstrating in front of the Flagstaff House and blocked
some of the ways leading there. The petition was finally handed over to the then
Deputy Chief of Staff, Valery Sawyer at the entrance of the Flagstaff House.
Overall, the demonstration was relatively peaceful, despite a few incidents:
the police forced protesters to take a different route to the Flagstaff House since
the initially intended route was prohibited by law. At one point, some protesters
had started a sit-in protest on their way to the Flagstaff House. The police also
made sure that only a small delegation entered the Flagstaff House to hand over
the petition. Some of the police officers wore riot suits and were equipped with
batons and water cannons. However, compared to many other protest events in
Ghana, they were relatively careful at dealing with the protesters and only one
person was arrested.6 This contrasts with other demonstrations in Ghana when
the police made use of water cannons and tear gas and seriously injured some of
the demonstrators. In our view, this careful handling of protesters at the Flagstaff
House demonstration can partly be attributed to the activists’ middle-class status.

The activists and the resources behind Occupy Ghana

#OccupyFlagstaffHouse was a one-day street protest event, but it quickly institu-
tionalised after the initial protest. In September 2014, just a few months after the
demonstration, Occupy Ghana registered as an NGO. Not all activists who later
 Popular protest, resources, and political opportunities 45
became active within Occupy Ghana were involved in #OccupyFlagstaffHouse
and not all of those who had participated in #OccupyFlagstaffHouse became
involved with Occupy Ghana. One of our interviewees, a young structural engi-
neer, explained how two different groups emerged from the initial protest:

So, there are two separate groups already, and some of us [those who took
part in the initial protest] joined Occupy Ghana. But Concerned Ghanaians
also metamorphosed into a new group so, we are two different groups, but we
have one common goal, you know, we all want good governance.

Many people engaged in #OccupyFlagstaffHouse and its spin-offs Occupy Ghana

and the Citizen Ghana Movement come from similar social backgrounds, some
of them have known each other for years and they cooperated with each other.
Many of the activists were from middle-class backgrounds. They did not only
dispose of the financial means but also had the necessary expertise to organise
demonstrations, they had legal and political knowledge as well as excellent com-
munication skills. What is more, the event #OccupyFlagstaffHouse already made
quite clear that this group of middle-class activists intimidated the police. The
police were rather irritated when they saw people arriving in big cars in the early
morning hours of the 1 July for the demonstration.
The core group of Occupy Ghana was intentionally kept small; it consisted
of only twelve activists who would discuss their strategies privately. Apart from
these private meetings of the core group however, anybody is free to join Occupy
Ghana as our interviewee continued to explain:

We don’t create a membership. So, you can’t join Occupy Ghana as a member
and get a membership form and pay membership dues. We don’t do that. But
anybody who believes strongly in what we do, is, it is open to come and join
us any time, and any time we have any sessions, you are willing, we love you
to come, and we publicize what we stand for and what we do all the time.

Two members of the core group worked as the movement’s secretary and coor-
dinator; the latter organised and coordinated all movement-related events.
Other key members included: a chartered accountant, a very eloquent person
who was present in many of the media reports about the movement; a prominent
Ghanaian lawyer who was also very much present in the media, and who rep-
resented Occupy Ghana’s causes in court; and finally, an investment banker, a
lawyer, an IT consultant, a digital media strategist, and journalists.
All core members were university graduates and had strong communication
skills. Basically, two groups worked hand in hand: one group included older and
the other younger activists. The older activists, in their mid-fifties to mid-sixties
were established members of the Ghanaian middle class. They were affluent and
disposed of vast political expertise. Some of them had already organised student
protests in the 1970s and 1980s. At Occupy Ghana, they worked hand in hand
with a second group of people: tech-savvy young professionals who were highly
46  Andrea Noll and Jan Budniok
active on social media. Some of the latter, a group of six friends, originally initi-
ated the event #OccupyFlagstaffHouse via their posts on Twitter and Facebook.
They disposed of the necessary technical expertise to reach many people through
mass media. As one of the older activists explained, the two groups were united
by their ideologies and came together based on their beliefs:

Occupy Ghana has evolved from a whole set of ideologies from individuals,
who were concerned about governance, concerned about corruption, con-
cerned about the key things that we thought were important in the society:
our education, our energy, our power problems, legal issues, and generally
governance. Governance was the key problem we wanted to attack and to
just change the way the country is being governed, so that there would be a
lot more equitable arrangements, and then everybody would do things in a
better way. So, we didn’t come together as a group of people within an age
group. We came together based rather on what we believed in, and it didn’t
matter whether you were young or middle-aged or old. I think I am the oldest
person.

Among the organisers of #OccupyFlagstaffHouse was a young civil and structural

engineer in his late twenties. He was also one of the first core members of Occupy
Ghana, being responsible for coordinating activities, handling media relations,
and acting as one of the group’s spokespersons. When we met in March 2016 at a
small Café opposite to the Ghana National Theatre, the engineer explained his
tremendous surprise in the early morning of the #OccupyFlagstaffHouse event,
when business owners, investment bankers, entrepreneurs, doctors, and journal-
ists showed up for the demonstration that he and his friends had initiated. Some
of them were nationwide known people, the young engineer had never met before
in person. These men and women had heard about #OccupyFlagstaffHouse
through social media, and later through regular media. Many of the older activ-
ists knew each other very well. In their inner circles, they had been discussing
for a very long time how to become publicly active to address the political short-
comings and economic grievances in the country. One of the younger activists
explained:

The idea was also there with [the group of established middle-class women
and men]. They said they had also been thinking about doing a movement
for some time now but with what we did it gave them the edge to actually
move into action. So, a few days later they called us to a meeting, you know,
got some people to talk to us, got some people to make us realize the kind
of damage we actually did cost the government (laughs), because I mean, we
were just doing our bit but, for some of them, they knew people in govern-
ment, so they actually knew the kind of damage it actually caused to gov-
ernment’s reputation. So, that was when they actually started bringing our
minds to it that, it’s something that we started, it’s gotten a life of its own,
you cannot allow it to die.
 Popular protest, resources, and political opportunities 47
So, when these established middle-class women and men heard about the
preparations for the demonstration #OccupyFlagstaffHouse, they decided to act.
The young engineer remembered the arrival of these influential people at Efua
Sutherland Children’s Park on the 1 July 2014:

[…]within the hour, people started trickling in, in their cars. They were
middle-class people, they weren’t the regular, ordinary guys who sell on
the streets, but they were business owners. So, I remember one policeman
remarked that, ‘Hey, what kind of bourgeoisie or rich people demonstra-
tion is this?’ Because, I mean, demonstration, people are coming in Jaguar’s,
Mercedes Benz, Nissan Patrol’s, Landcruisers, so what kind of demonstration
is this? So, that’s when the police realised that these were not the ordinary,
the usual people they are used to in demonstrating.7

This quote as well as other statements by members of Occupy Ghana on the group’s
activities express that the term middle class is indeed an important self-designa-
tion for members of Occupy Ghana and an important concept to position oneself
within society. It also demonstrates that the concept is blurred in its emic usage.
Our interviewee equates the middle class with “business owners”, “bourgeoisie”,
and “rich people”. At the same time, he differentiates the middle class from the
“regular, ordinary guys”. Indeed, some of the protesters could, measured by their
income, also be allocated to the Ghanaian upper class.
That the concept is used in emic language usage points out its appeal in Ghana.
Through this self-designation, the activists differentiate themselves from the rul-
ing elite and position themselves between this political elite and the “ordinary,
the usual people”. Using a middle-class discourse, the activists define themselves
as intermediaries fighting for the concerns of all Ghanaians. Contrary to this,
however, some representatives of the then party in power, the NDC argued that
#OccupyFlagstaffHouse was a staged event, and that Occupy Ghana was led by
members of the liberal-conservative opposition party at that time.
They alleged that protesters just pretended to be members of the middle class
but were in fact part of a lying and two-faced NPP elite. It is true that some mem-
bers of Occupy Ghana became politically active and were running for a seat in
parliament in 2016 on the NPP ticket. Other members of Occupy Ghana however
claimed to be impartial political activists. From their point of view, this meant
that they may occasionally share corresponding views with political parties, but
that they do not support one particular political party.
The older activists were quite affluent, had the necessary material resources,
money but also, e.g. office spaces, at their disposal. What is more, the activists of
Occupy Ghana disposed of the necessary knowledge capital to conduct collec-
tive actions. They knew how to build and maintain organisations and disposed
of legal knowledge. The older activists possessed political experience, financial
resources, and professional expertise to become active in a more sustained way,
but also had the power to exert pressure on the government. Some of them were
already politically active in the 1980s and some could even look back on a long
48  Andrea Noll and Jan Budniok
history of political activism within their families from the early 20th century on.
The younger generation was very skilled with social media and knew very well
how to get their protest public through social media. All activists within the
core group had excellent communication skills. We argued that the group’s level
of organisation and its capability of mobilising resources were decisive for the
outcome of their protest activities. As members of the Ghanaian middle class,
the activists’ political interest was however not to overthrow the current polit-
ical system. Through their protest, they rather intended to make the neoliberal
economic system work efficiently. By doing so, they hoped to secure their social
status and improve the means and mechanism for their social reproduction. Yet,
instead of being selfish, they claimed and believed to fight these grievances for the
betterment of the entire Ghanaian society.
By and large, and as mentioned earlier, the activists’ resources were crucial
for the movement’s public visibility, further organisation and endurance. Due to
their professional and political experience, the activists disposed of knowledge on
how to organise demonstrations and maximise the impact of internet activism.
Adding to this #OccupyFlagstaffHouse was followed by several other events, sem-
inars, and press conferences. An important mobilising event is the “Red Friday”
called through social media since 2014. On Red Fridays, Occupy Ghana calls
supporters to express their protest on specific current grievances by wearing any-
thing red, e.g. clothes or accessories, to work. Occupy Ghana also supports other
Ghanaians who are committed to political activism and tend towards anti-cor-
ruption and good governance but who do not dispose of the necessary resources
to act. In 2015, Occupy Ghana helped a group of students who considered the
National Service Secretariat’s selection mechanisms to be inaccurate and prob-
ably corrupt. The National Service Secretariat is an organisation that helps
school and university graduates to find a position for their obligatory civil service.
Occupy Ghana supports a whole range of such groups and activities. In 2016 and
2017, the group, e.g. supported a wide front of activists fighting illegal working in
the mines, using the hashtag #AntiGalamsey.
According to our interviewees, Occupy Ghana’s aim is to motivate all
Ghanaians to join the struggle for good governance. They argued that there is a
lot of political apathy and ignorance within the population:

We realise that there is a lot of apathy in Ghanaians. You know, people do

not like to test the laws, people do not like to challenge the current system as
it is. So, we want to Occupy their minds, make them aware that they actually
have a lot more power than these people who have been put in power.

Occupy Ghana intends to inform the population about how to become actively
engaged in fighting corruption, poor governance, and systematic errors of the
administration. Differently than expected, Occupy Ghana did not disappear after
the change of government following the elections in December 2016. Rather,
Occupy Ghana continued to exert pressure on the newly elected NPP govern-
ment and is still doing so after the NPPs re-election in December 2020.
 Popular protest, resources, and political opportunities 49
Occupy Ghana: How POS shaped the protest outcomes
So, what was the role of POS on the outcomes of Occupy Ghana’s activities? Were the
activists able to perceive and exploit them to their advantage? Building on McAdam
(1996) and Giugni (2009) we concentrate on three streams of POS: the relative
openness or closure of the political system; free media and discursive opportunities.
In Ghana, the state’s capacity and propensity for repression is certainly limited
within the rather open Ghanaian democracy with broad freedom of expression.
At the same time, Ghana is a two-party system with, e.g. primaries that are often
costly, and MPs with limited influence; politics is limited by political culture, the
patronage systems and a moral economy of corruption, and certain expectations
of the “big men” who become politicians. As mentioned above, the openness of
Ghana’s political system since redemocratisation is favourable for political pro-
test, especially by members of the middle class. As indicated, while protests by the
lower class may often elicit robust police reactions, members of the middle class
were not prone to be victims of police repression or violence. Despite the political
apathy of some members of the Ghanaian middle class, the activists of Occupy
Ghana – among others – decided to protest and to make use of this Ghanaian
POS. Against this background we identified two important opportunities within
the political system: a judicial and legal system that was open for a corruption
crusade via the courts; and a free media, including newspaper and radio stations,
that need to attract readers and listeners.
Political issues in Ghana were brought into court for decades. Access to the
legal system is but one example for the institutional landscape, one of the pub-
lic institutions members of Occupy Ghana could use for their activism, to stage
protest on a national level. In many cases, Occupy Ghana made sure that rules
and control mechanisms that already existed were indeed observed. So, in these
cases the activists did not intend to transform the nature of politics in Ghana but
rather to make sure that politicians abide by the existing laws.
After the #OccupyFlagstaffHouse event and the foundation of Occupy Ghana
as an NGO, the activists hardly used sit-ins and demonstrations in public as a
means of protest. The activists felt they could achieve more by bringing their
protest into the legal system. The group has used legal actions to exert pressure
on public officers and government institutions who did not act according to the
principles of ‘good governance’ and legal requirements. The group has, e.g. sued
a former Energy Minister for keeping for months a luxury vehicle the Ministry
bought for a rural electrification project.8 Occupy Ghana identified several areas
in the Ghanaian political system where according to their understanding prac-
tices strongly deviated from norms. At the same time, the group wanted to show
that not in all cases, legal gaps or missing rules of procedure should be claimed by
public officers as an excuse for inaction, but that in many cases, rules and control
mechanisms did already exist but were, for political reasons, not used. The group’s
aim was to get as many people arrested as possible who were proven guilty of fraud
or corruption. In this way, Occupy Ghana claimed to carry out duties that should
be undertaken by the public prosecutor’s office.
50  Andrea Noll and Jan Budniok
The public prosecutor’s office in Ghana was, however considered as highly
politicised and directly dependent on the government. Public prosecution is one
part of the ministry of justice, and the minister of justice is the attorney general
at the same time. For years, discussions went on about obstacles to a swift and
thorough fight against corruption, the independence of prosecution in Ghana and
the introduction of an independent special prosecutor. In 2018, Martin Amidu, a
lawyer and politician connected to the NDC, the party in opposition since 2016,
was appointed by the NPP government as the first special prosecutor9. Mr. Amidu
was a former public prosecutor, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice who had
become renowned as a private anti-corruption activist. Occupy Ghana regarded the
implementation of an autonomous special prosecutor, who was supposed to fight
corruption, bribery, and other criminal acts in the public and private sector inde-
pendently, as one of the group’s major achievements. The list of the movement’s
future projects is long. However, they touched upon the very core of the political
system. The activists are aware that their endeavours may be expensive and that it
may probably take them a long time to achieve some of their goals; but they ‘have
deep enough pockets and time to spend’. Occupy Ghana certainly benefits from
the interaction and cooperation with numerous other activists and institutions;
and from the personal social networks of the core activists of the group.
The legal system and its use (as a stage) for political activism and protest in
Ghana dates to the colonial era, but courtrooms were also a space for individual
and group protest in the various democratic, autocratic, and military governments
that followed since independence in 1957 (Israel, 1992). Also, today, many laws,
political and administrative decisions as well as the behaviour of public servants
are protested and “re-negotiated” in court. The activists of Occupy Ghana made
use of this POS, as one of them elucidated in an interview:

So, as much as possible, we use legal methods, legal mechanisms to change

things. We also look at regulations and procedures, for things that institu-
tions are supposed to do, which they are not doing, we insist that they should
do them.

As mentioned above, Occupy Ghana regarded the implementation of an auton-

omous special prosecutor, as one of the group’s major achievements, as a result of
Occupy Ghana’s work. Moreover, the activists made use of the POS of a relatively
free media landscape. As one of the activists explained to us, they made use of
the media to get known in other regions outside of the capital Accra. In this,
especially radio stations played a major role: “so far through the radio stations and
television stations we’re able to reach out to the other regions with our message.
So, I would say, basically we are getting far”.
As one of the activists further explained, radio stations regularly called the
activists of Occupy Ghana to get their opinion on current political issues, a proof
for the activists’ successful use of this POS:

That’s why most of the times, when an issue comes up, the radio stations
always seek to get the views of Occupy Ghana, what we think about. And
 Popular protest, resources, and political opportunities 51
even if we’ve not even written a statement on it, they want to hear what
Occupy Ghana thinks about it.

Radio stations, TV/and YouTube channels, and other new media became relia-
ble avenues to distribute the group’s protest. Thus, the group’s messages proved
communicable to other activists and institutions and led to further pressure. The
activists did analyse the opportunity structure and realised how to wield influence
most.
Concerning the presence or absence of elite allies, there exists in Ghana an
alleged ideological closure of the political elite (that is often recruited from within
the middle class). Occupy Ghana did not have allies within the political par-
ties, including the opposition party since politicians regarded Occupy Ghana and
their activities in a negative way. Politicians saw their middle-class protest, where
people tried to wield power from the sideline of party politics, as a kind of para-
chuting. However, the activists had plenty allies within the organised middle class
and cooperated with various institutions run by middle-class members.
The activists were involved in numerous political and professional networks
that they mobilised for their actions. In the past, they had worked with different
groups, associations, and NGOs. They had worked with other Ghanaian organisa-
tions like, e.g. the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, the Centre for Democratic
Development, the Ghana Institute for Public Policy, the African Centre for
Parliamentary Affairs, the Institute for Chartered Accountants, IMANI Ghana,
Oxfam Ghana, the Financial Accountability, and Transparency Africa and the
Ghana Integrity Initiative. In their endeavours, Occupy Ghana activists coop-
erated with and strengthened activities of likeminded actors, e.g. the highly
publicised corruption crusade of the investigation team Tiger Eye P.I., headed
by the journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas. So, as members of the middle class, the
activists were in a privileged position to manoeuvre within the Ghanaian politi-
cal system, to make use of opportunities, to connect and to voice protest, to make
proposals and to usher threats.
Finally, we argue that movement actors were able to take advantage of discur-
sive opportunities, namely the discourse about corruption, a theme that is popular
in the general populace and an issue dear to foreign donors, and the discourse
about the state’s shortcomings, in short bad governance. The activists claim that
Occupy Ghana is an anti-corruption group. While democratic structures have
been there for many years in Ghana, activists made use of the discursive opportu-
nity, the popularity of the anti-corruption discourse at the time of their protest.
Many Ghanaians were increasingly frustrated by the general impact of corruption
and acute power shortages at that point, as one of our interviewees explained:

I mean, they [the older group of protesters] realised that at that point in
time, the way that the country was going, it was being difficult running their
organisations and they had to let the government to be aware. So that makes
it very different from any other demonstration that happened in Ghana here.
Because you never find such a thing. I am an engineer myself, you wouldn’t
usually find me doing such a thing.
52  Andrea Noll and Jan Budniok
The discursive structure at the time contributed to the emergence of middle-class
protest, which is against political but ultimately societal structures, and not
against a regime.

Conclusion
Did Occupy Ghana help transform the nature of politics in Ghana? And which
factors explain the movement’s dynamics and outcomes? This chapter has argued
that both resource and POS mattered for the outcome of popular protest in
Ghana. This argument is demonstrated using a mix of qualitative data collected
in Ghana in 2015 and 2016.
In 2014, the Ghanaian population was already frustrated for years by the gov-
ernment’s mismanagement and a temporary economic crisis triggered the protest
discussed earlier. As one of our interviewees argued, usually, the middle class
would not protest in the streets. However, at this particular point in time, they
deemed it necessary to act.
Our material produced the following findings: In the case of Occupy Ghana,
the outcome of the protest was very much linked to the main actors’ middle-class
status and their resources. The activists did not only have the financial means
to engage in popular protest but also disposed of the expertise on how to organ-
ise demonstrations, had the necessary legal and political knowledge, technical
expertise as well as communication skills and the power to exert pressure on the
government.
In 2014, Ghana’s POS was very favourable for the emergence of popular protest.
The country had a stable democracy since the mid-1990s with mostly peaceful
democratic elections and changes of government, as well as a mostly fast devel-
oping economy since the 2000s. This openness of the political system created
a favourable environment for political activism, especially by members of the
middle class. Ghana has a long history of popular protest and of middle-class
actors who make use of the legal system. The activists of Occupy Ghana were
able to make use of a legal system that was open for a corruption crusade and took
advantage of a relatively free media landscape. The activists of Occupy Ghana
were involved in numerous middle-class networks that could be activated for their
activities. Finally, the activists took advantage of the current discourse about cor-
ruption. Yet, activists did agree, that while the social structure is not easy to
change, political and policy goals could be changed, and might have long-term
effects. We therefore argued to combine the two approaches of POS and resource
mobilisation to evaluate the successful outcome of the protest and the capability
of the movement’s leaders to affect political agendas.
This analysis has important implications for research of protest in Africa. First
it shows the importance of the middle-class for protest in Africa, by featuring
their resources as key drivers for the engaging in collective action, and for the
institutionalisation and endurance of protests. This resonates with other cases
studies in this book, such as Cabo Verde (Sanches and Lopes, 2022) where the
middle-class has played a large role in recent protests (for the implementation
 Popular protest, resources, and political opportunities 53
of regionalisation policy), and to a wider literature that highlights social class
theories of mobilising (Seddon and Zeilig, 2005; Mueller, 2018) class-coalition.
Second, Occupy Ghana reveals how the institutional and democratic credentials
of the regime are relevant for protest and allow the use of a broad range of tools
and forms of pressure – from internet to the courts.
Future research should try to better understand feedback (positive and neg-
ative) between protests’ impact on POS and effects on further mobilisation or
demobilisation within protest and broader movement alliances.

Notes
1. Before working on Occupy Ghana, we conducted ethnographic research on the
middle class in several urban spaces in southern Ghana. Since 2006, Jan Budniok
has conducted research on the biographies of Ghanaian judges and lawyers
(Budniok 2014). Andrea Noll has been working on social differentiation and inte-
gration of extended families since 2011 (Noll 2016; Noll 2019).
2. On the 1 July 1960, Kwame Nkrumah proclaimed Ghana a republic and became its
first president.
3. https://www.modernghana.com/news/553063/occupy-f lagstaff-house-full-
petition-to-president.html, 20 May 2021.
4. See, e.g. https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/occupy-flagstaff-house-
demo-rocks-accra.html and https://www.okayafrica.com/ghana-occupy-flagstaff-
house-movement-republic-day/, both 21 May 2021.
5. On the ritual significance of red and black in Akan funerals see, e.g. Breidenbach
(1976).
6. E.g. in June 2015, the police have used tear gas on residents demonstrating against
the demolition of their slum in Accra, see https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-
33226618, 20 May 2021.
7. Interview, 16 March 2016.
8. https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/occupy-ghana-sues-dr-oteng-adjei-
for-keeping-luxury-cars.html, 21 May 2021.
9. Mr. Amidu stepped down in November 2020.

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4 Y’EN A MARRE
CATALYST FOR AN INDOCILITY
GRAMMAR IN SENEGAL
Mamadou Dimé

Introduction
The current decade is marked, in many African countries, by the irruption on
the socio-political scene of citizen movements. Their novelty, the singularity
of their modes of action and influence, the scope of their demands, and the figures
that gave birth to them have attracted the media spotlight but also the atten-
tion of researchers (Siméant, 2013; Dimé, 2017; Gellar, 2013; Haeringer, 2012;
Havard, 2013). Citizens’ movements are becoming increasingly relevant in epi-
sodes of socio-political protest and mobilisation. As collective organisations, they
are defined by the way they articulate and denounce social, cultural, and political
issues. They demand greater freedom and the advent of public policies that are
better articulated with the aspirations of the people. They demand governance
models that preserve the economic interests of African populations by breaking
with the neo-colonial logic of resource predation (UPEC, 2018). Young people
are the initiators of these new social movements (Kelly, 2012; Gellar, 2013; Dimé,
2018; Dieng, 2015; Dalberto, 2011).
Faced with the emergence of new forms of collective action, the response of the
authorities has oscillated between violent repression, bribing, infiltration within
the movements, demonisation, instrumentalisation, and ostracisation of activists
(Dimé, Kapagama, Soré and Touré, 2020). But these movements are inventive
being distinguished by their ability to use the opportunities offered by informa-
tion and communication technologies to bypass the political authorities. Their
mobilisation strategies, their influence, the dissemination of their slogans, and
their territorial organisation are fully based on the strategic use of social net-
works. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the strategies regimes use to
repress social action is precisely to cut off the Internet in the hope of blocking any
attempt at contestation through social networks (Jacquemot, 2020; Linzer, 2019).
With these citizen movements, African youth seem to be taking yet another
step in the long tradition of dissent and indocility whose roots go back to the colo-
nial period (Mamdani and Wamba Dia Wamba, 1995; Mbembe, 1986; Siméant,
2013). The dynamics of contestation gained momentum during the reign of single
parties, in the early 1990s with demand for the establishment of democracy but
also more recently, since 2000s, with demands for further democratisation across

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-4
 Y’en a marre 57
Africa more recently in protest (Larmer, 2010). In Senegal, these past struggles
served as the basis for the formation of citizens’ movements with the emergence,
from 2011 onwards, of a new generation of activists with diverse socio-professional
profiles but united by their desire to find an ideological anchorage in pan-African-
ism, the “Sankarist” utopia and the revitalisation of the dreams of the founding
fathers (Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral,
Cheikh Anta Diop, etc.) as well as their desire to build a trans-African network
of political activism (UPEC, 2018).
The trans-African dynamic of indocility and dissidence is primarily driven by
Y’en a marre (we’re fed up), which boasts a major socio-political role in Senegal
since its birth in 2011 (Dimé, 2017; Dieng, 2015). The movement strongly opposed
the incumbent President Abdoulaye Wade third-term bid, and had a decisive
political role in Senegal’s second political changeover in March 2012 with the
election of Macky Sall. As a movement that contests the socio-political order,
Y’en a marre is part of a long tradition of citizen mobilisation and political partic-
ipation of young people in Senegal. As later shown, the Y’en a marre movement
perpetuates a tradition of political contestation by young people whose past goes
back a long way in the colonial period and the early years of the postcolonial era,
but also through the many student movements (Mbembe, 1986; Diouf, 2002).
This study examines the origins, outcomes, and trajectories of the Y’en a marre
building on qualitative sources (statements in social media, press reviews) and
interviews held with some leaders and members of the movement in 2019. The
analysis combines framing and political opportunity approaches to account for
both the structural and relational dimensions of social movements and show how
the Y’en a marre movement was able to develop an effective contestation strat-
egy by managing to channel the anger expressed by Senegalese youth. It argues
that movement actors took advantage of political opportunity structures (politi-
cal openness, favourable media coverage, discursive opportunities resulting from
a long tradition of youth protest in the country) to engage in collective action
and achieve their goals. Second, that they relied on innovative framing strategies
(grammar of indocility, slogans, and wolofisation of the vocabulary) to amplify,
and create resonance with, their key messages.
The chapter starts by advancing the framework for analysis, which brings
together opportunities and framing strategies to understand protest in Senegal.
Then it explores Y’en a marre dominant frames, that is the meanings and impli-
cations of what we label a grammar of indocility in Senegal. Then the political
opportunity structures (discursive opportunities resulting from a long tradition of
youth protest, political openness and favourable media coverage) that helped the
movement influence political outcomes, in particular President Wade defeat in
2012, are discussed. Lastly, we investigate how Y’en a marre trajectory illustrates
the tensions, permanence and ruptures in the dynamics of socio-political mobi-
lisation among young people in Senegal. After several years of existence, Y’en a
marre is at a crossroads in terms of its meaning and future directions. The study
presents Senegal as a relevant case study to understand the transformative power
of protest in Africa and explore new avenues for the relationship between young
58  Mamadou Dimé
people and politics. It also contributes to broader discussions on the implications
of protests for political turnover at the executive level in Africa.

Framing the analysis of protest in Senegal

Across of Africa, there have been multiple protests against presidents. In West
Africa, the last second years were full of socio-political turbulence. Whether in
Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Togo, Nigeria, Niger, or Guinea, the news is generally domi-
nated by socio-political tensions, electoral disputes, demonstrations that lead to
violence (Sakor and Soko, 2020). In Burkina Faso perhaps the most paradigmatic
case the Balai Citoyen were crucial in preventing President Blaise Compaoré from
pursuing a third term (Bertrand, 2022); in DRC they influenced President Joseph
Kabila’s strategies, and contributed to his withdraw from the presidential race,
even if international pressures played a larger role (Polet, 2022). Whether protests
succeed in blocking presidents third-term bid has been a subject of discussion,
and the evidence is mixed (Dulani, 2011; Tull and Simons, 2017; Yarwood,
2016). In fact, while in some countries, the protests helped block the President’s
attempt to change the constitution, in other countries they were unsuccessful –
e.g. Cameroon (Paul Biya, 2008); Burundi (Pierre Nkurunziza in 2015), Guinea
(Alpha Condé in 2011), Djibouti (Ismaïl Omar Guellah in 2010) and Republic of
Congo (Denis Sa Sou Nguesso in 2015). The varying scenarios across Africa sug-
gest that there are several factors that come into play and that affect presidents’
endeavours to extend their hold on power. Power balances within the executive
and the ruling party, the strength of the parliamentary majority (particularly in
cases of coalition cabinets), the role of the military, and the pressures from the
international community and from the civil society all have a bearing on whether
a president succeeds or fails (Dulani, 2011; Tull and Simons, 2017; Yarwood, 2016;
Posner and Young, 2018).
Research is clearly needed to identify the frames, resources, and political
opportunity structures that contribute to enhance the success of pro-democracy
movements. Senegal is a relevant case for such an endeavour. It is one of Africa’s
few liberal democracies until recently, and is part of the larger continental trend
of protest against presidential third-bid. Furthermore, it is a case worthy of study
given its long tradition of mobilisation youth political participation. Indeed, the
socio-political history of Senegal is marked by episodes of youth protests against
how various president since independence have handled public policies, and
major political and social crisis (Diouf and Fredericks, 2013; Diop, 2013a, 2013b;
Dahou and Foucher, 2004).
This was the case with the student movement of May 1968, during which the
foundations of President Léopold Sédar Senghor’s regime were strongly shaken.
His successor, President Abdou Diouf, faced several major social and political crises
during his 19 years as head of state, notably in 1988, 1989, 1993, and culminating
in 2000 with his electoral defeat that marked the first democratic changeover
in Senegal. For example, the set setal phenomenon1 followed the tragic events
arising from the Senegalese-Mauritanian dispute of 1989, when there was a need
 Y’en a marre 59
to somehow “cleanse the Senegalese space” that had been soiled by the killings
(Diouf, 2002; Diouf and Fredericks, 2013). This period was marked by dynamics
of contestation and mistrust of political powers, a latent form of criticism, of sen-
sitisation through the language of rap in the context of the bul faale (don’t worry)
years (1990s) and through a more direct and active engagement in reaction to a
clearer rejection of political power, in the image of the “unhealthy youth” that
seriously shook the foundations of Abdou Diouf’s power in the elections of 1988
and of 1993, before overthrowing them in 2000. Young people played a leading
role in all the episodes of contestation against Abdou Diouf’s regime. His years
in power can be described as the “years of fire”, so strong was the protest of young
people against him in a context of generalised economic crisis accentuated by the
application of structural adjustment policies.
During his long conquest of power, Abdoulaye Wade always presented himself
as the “candidate of the youth”. In 2000, after a long period of protest and mobi-
lisation in which pupils, students and urban youth paid a heavy price, Wade was
elected by the youth (Dimé, 2018). It is therefore not surprising that his acces-
sion to power raised high hopes among students, the unemployed, young people
working in the informal sector, unemployed graduates, etc. Yet, after two terms
in office during which a flourishing of programmes and structures targeting youth
were created with disappointing results, the rupture quickly set in and culminated
in the strong opposition to his candidacy for a third term in 2011. Wade’s inability
to respond to the huge social demand from young people was one of the elements
that generated a strong sense of disillusionment and exasperation among this
segment of his historical and loyal electorate. He was therefore “defeated” in 2012
by young people whose anger and disenchantment with his regime were captured,
channelled, and amplified by the Y’en a marre movement.
In this context, the emergence of Y’en a marre is part of a long tradition of citi-
zen’s mobilisation and youth political involvement in politics. The protest they led
against Wade administration were extremely important, and had a deep impact in
the course of events including the relationship between the state and young peo-
ple, modes of political engagement, and civic mobilisation among young people.
This chapter combines framing and political opportunity approaches to better
understand the emergence and outcome of the Y’en a marre. Framing refers to the
way movement actors present their message to the world and create resonance
to attain their political goals (Benford and Snow, 2000). In this sense movement
actors may engage in strategic framing actions such as making an issue more sali-
ent (amplification), connecting issues that were previously unrelated (bridging),
producing new world views (transformation), or embracing new agendas (exten-
sion) to attain their political goals (Benford and Snow, 2000).
Political opportunity structures refer to a broad range of conditions that may
encourage or discourage collective and thus, they affect the repertoires of action,
the level of mobilisation, and the outcomes of social movements (Tarrow, 1998;
Meyer, 2004; Giugni, 2009). Some examples include degree of openness or closure
of the political system, the state of alliances within the political field, the relays
available to the protesting groups within the political-administrative system, and
60  Mamadou Dimé
the type of response provided by the political system (Neveu, 2015; Sanches,
2022).
Building on these two approaches our argument is two-fold. First, Y’en a marre
benefited from the political opportunities resulting from political openness,
favourable media coverage, a legacy of institutionalised pro-democracy move-
ments that created discursive opportunities that is cultural resonance, with the
activist demands. Second, we argue that framing strategies, in particular the
grammar of indocility, the slogans, and the wolofisaton of the vocabulary helped
amplify and create resonance with the movement’s goals.
To test this claim, we rely on qualitative data and methods. It was based on
direct observation during various activities of the Y’en a marre since 2011 (public
demonstrations, meetings, awareness campaigns, mobilisations at the time of elec-
tions, etc.). Another source of data is the written production of Y’en a marre (press
releases, proceedings of the popular university of citizen engagement) as well as
its “digital footprint” (tweets, Facebook messages, YouTube videos). However, the
bulk of the material comes from a series of individual semi-structured interviews
with leaders and members of the Y’en a marre movement over a period from 2018
to 2020. The interviews were held in French and Wolof and translated by the
author.

Y’en a marre, a catalyst for socio-political protest in Senegal

23 June 2011 is a landmark date in Senegal’s young and tumultuous socio-political
history. On this day, violent urban riots set fire to Dakar as well as inland cities
such as Thiès, Mbour, Saint-Louis, Kaolack, or Louga. They forced the ruling
power to back down on a constitutional reform project rejected by its detractors
because it was designed to pave the way for what the media, opposition parties,
and a fringe of civil society have described as a “monarchical devolution of power
scheme”. This violent protest took the Wade regime by surprise because of its
suddenness, its scale, and its mode of organisation. It served as an outlet for the
frustration that was widely expressed on websites devoted to Senegalese news. A
group of rappers and journalists who called themselves the Y’en a marre move-
ment emerged in January 2011 (Demarest, 2016; Veilleux, 2021) and quickly took
centre stage to capture the anger that the people wanted to express through this
mobilisation against Abdoulaye Wade’s third candidacy. Y’en a marre is a collec-
tive of young rappers, most of whom were at the foundation of the movement,
which had given itself the mandate to be the catalyst of the youth revolt against
the power of Abdoulaye Wade and eventually his departure from power because,
in their opinion, he was constitutionally disqualified from participating in the
presidential election scheduled in February 2012.
A powerful cry of anger and revolt has thus risen from June 2011 among the
urban youth to decline its disillusionment with President Wade on whom it had
placed a lot of hope at the time of his election after several decades of socialist
management of power. This youthful feeling of being “fed up” was also expressed
in order to express the frustration of being forced to work in a perpetual galley
 Y’en a marre 61
(Diop, 2013a, 2013b) but also to declare their struggle for the birth of what the
rappers Keur Gui, Fou Malade and Simon, the movement’s flag-bearers, call the
New Type of Senegalese (NTS), the New National Order (NON), in short, the
emergence of a new and strong citizen consciousness among young Senegalese.
The riots were repeated a week later in reaction to the unbearable power cuts
in what the Dakar press dubbed “electricity riots”. These popular uprisings, which
caused fears of the worst during the end of June 2011, were only the beginning of
a socio-political protest whose violent character only faded after the proclamation
of the results of the first round. The election campaign for the first round was
marked by a climate of tension and scenes of violence, especially in Dakar. This
had a strong influence on the results of the first round, which showed a disavowal
of President Wade and the transfer of hopes for change to candidate Macky Sall.
The latter was to face President Wade in a second round that was largely won by
Macky Sall. Rather than a vote for change, it was above all a vote of rejection of
a system and of not respecting one’s word.
The young people of Y’en a marre have assumed a decisive responsibility in the
occurrence of this second alternation in Senegal even if we can already point
out the “absence of chemistry” between them and the new president Macky Sall.
It must be noted that the intrusion of Y’en a marre in the political game and its
desire to play a major role in it, symbolise for the current Senegalese youth its
desire to be the catalyst of social, political and generational changes, especially
in the mode of governance, especially in a context of the double failure of the
traditional elites – political and maraboutic (Diop and Diouf, 1999) – and the
inefficiency of development programmes to overcome the many challenges facing
young people: the persistent problem of unemployment, recurrent disruptions in
the education system, especially in universities (numerous strikes, student vio-
lence, etc.), and the lack of a clear vision of the future of the country (Kassé,
2011).
Y’a en a marre was a reaction born of an awareness that has arisen in an urban
context marked by electricity cuts and a series of land and financial scandals.
The founders of the movement highlight these elements when they retrace the
events of its birth. Fadel Barro, a journalist by profession and one of the founding
members of Y’a en a marre, recounts the conditions, at first sight banal, in which
the movement was founded:

One evening in January 2011, […]. I was with Thiat and Kilifeu, the rappers
from Keur Gui with other friends, drinking tea and discussing things of life…
when suddenly we found ourselves in the dark because the electricity had
just been cut off. It was another one of those many power cuts at SENELEC
[the national electricity company of Senegal]. Nobody could work in Dakar
any more. Everyone was fed up. Even the imams, elderly people, mobilized
against these cuts. Our discussions soon turned to the cuts and what needed
to be done to put an end to them. I reproached the rappers for doing nothing
but singing and for not getting involved to make things change. My rapper
friends fought back and the discussion was very passionate. We came to the
62  Mamadou Dimé
conclusion that it is the power in place that is responsible for this situa-
tion and that something had to be done to change things. We told ourselves
that we were fed up with sitting on our hands. That’s how Y’en a marre was
born. When the electricity came back around 4 in the morning, we sent our
first communiqué by email as the Y’en a marre collective. I knew how things
worked with the media.

Following its birth in January 2011, it is the urban riots of June that will pro-
vide the collective Y’en a marre with the opportunity to make itself known to
the Senegalese, to pose as “intrepid opponents” of the Wade regime and the
intention that is then lent to him to transfer power to his son, Karim Wade, but
also the opportunity to broaden its recruitment bases for their movement and to
decline the “new citizen consciousness” (interview with a leader of Y’en a marre in
September 2018 in Dakar) of which they claim to be the bearers.
The conditions in which Y’en a marre was born and the clear objectives of
political and citizen demands that its founders set themselves, put it in a position
of clear break with the bul faale generation2 (Havard, 2001) in which the rappers
associated with it were more in a position of social criticism and awareness of
young people through their lyrics. With Y’en marre, we are faced with organised
initiatives of political demand which, very quickly, find allies in certain parts of
Dakar civil society mobilised against a third candidacy of Abdoulaye Wade.
Wade’s power, aware of the threat posed by Y’en a marre, tried to thwart it very
early on by unsuccessful attempts at recovery (attempts at corruption), by the
strategy of intimidation (arrests, beating up leaders in police stations, accusations
of disturbing public order, etc.) but above all by the creation of a movement of
young people favourable to the president called Y’en a envie (we feel like it) and
the promotion of rappers such as Pacotille to counter the protest speech of Y’en
a marre. The infiltration within Y’en a marre and the strategies to discredit it
did not give the expected results: Y’en a envie never succeeded in creating a real
mobilising impact despite the financial means allocated to young people, rappers,
and musicians chosen to carry this discourse of interference by Y’en a marrists. On
the contrary, the tense context of the presidential election will provide him with
the opportunity to radicalise it and to arouse greater support among urban youth.
The Y’en marre movement did not prevent Wade from running in the 2012
elections, it profoundly shaped the election outcomes and contributed to his
defeat by Macky Sall. The following section explores the framing strategies and
POS that help explain this outcome.

Wrong! Not forced! Lu ëpp turu3! Pareel4: Idioms and

mobilisation practices of the Y’en a marre movement
Based on an analysis of the trajectory of Y’en a marre in Senegal, we analyse its
linguistic practices, framing, and mobilisation strategies in the field through the
prism of crossbreeding and hybridity. These two categories represent a kind of
expression in Dakar which is territorially marked and which spreads to other
 Y’en a marre 63
Senegalese urban centres, thus creating an urban culture of dissent based on two
levers: the young people who are its actors and the Wolof language which is its
tool of expression.

Declensions of a grammar of indocility

Y’en a marre’s vocabulary of indocility, as expressed by its eponymous slogan, is
perceived as revealing the mutations underway among urban youth in the sense
of a cosmopolitanism that can be explained by a multiplicity of identities and the
plurality of their referential schemas. Therefore, going beyond the slogan, what
does the vocalisation of Y’en a marre. Casting and exploring this question are a
way of emphasising the modes of declination and the verbalisation praxis of cit-
izen engagement by paying attention to the linguistic practices of the movement
through its linguistic alternation, its communication strategy, the content of its
speeches, and the choice of its slogans. The idioms of contestation are articulated
with street practices based on the art of staging and the search for the “buzz
effect”.
The double mastery of the art of staging and verbal truculence by the Y’en a
marre movement undoubtedly comes from the profile of the core of its found-
ing members, mainly journalists, artists, and rappers. Moreover, Y’en a marre is
seen as a dynamic of affirmation of the socio-political role of rappers. This pos-
ture of contestation crystallises in an art of “spectacularization” as well as in an
anti-conformist discursive positioning and a rejection of the “system” and the
“establishment”. Y’en a marre has opted for a strategy of systematic media pres-
ence, with a propensity to create a “buzz effect” around its slogans, its critical
discourse and its acts of defiance towards the ruling power. The media are thus
used to relay the demands and positions of the movement and guarantee it a
notoriety that may not reflect its real political representation. An illustration of
this situation can be found in the mobilisation activity organised by Y’en a marre
on Friday 7 April 2017 which targeted the gathering of one million Senegalese
dressed in black to express their anger towards the policies of President Macky
Sall’s regime. The demonstration also aimed to castigate the use of justice for par-
tisan purposes because yoon angi jèng (justice is no longer impartial) and finally to
forcefully underline that lu ëppe tuuru (too much is too much).
In the end, the demonstration did not reach the figure of one million, with the
most realistic estimates putting the number of demonstrators in Obelisk Square at
one hundred thousand, but the desired media effect had been achieved since the
movement was able to occupy the front pages of most newspapers and broadcast
media. In this way, it seeks to pose as a figure of “counter-power, as opponents of
principle, opponents of conscience aiming to conquer and safeguard democratic
gains” in the words of a leader of the movement during an interview in August
2018 in Dakar.
As a mode of citizen protest, Y’en a marre has distinguished itself by its ability
to create idioms of dissent and citizen affirmation drawn from the French and
Wolof languages. The most popular is certainly its eponymous slogan Y’en a marre.
64  Mamadou Dimé
The slogans launched by the movement also flourish, especially at the height of
the protest against President Wade’s candidacy, which was the spark plug of the
movement: Faux! Not forced! My card, my weapon! New Type of Senegalese (NTS),
Don’t touch the Constitution, Citizen’s Worksites, Esprit Y’a en a marre (members of
the movement), Dafa doy (Enough!), Gor ca wax ja (Keep your word).
The art of staging was expressed through campaigns designed to move public
opinion. This is for example the case of the campaign called “Complaint against
the Government of Senegal” through which the movement wanted to express
and denounce vigorously the evils that afflict the Senegalese people. At the same
time, the movement is broad enough to include the different social strata on
whose behalf the movement justifies its citizen involvement: street vendors, the
unemployed, young people, housewives, students and pupils, farmers, families
who are victims of floods, etc. The movement is also active in the field of educa-
tion and training. These are field projects carried out by the professional structure
set up within Y’en a marre to implement development projects in partnership with
NGOs thanks to funding from the European Union or NGOs such as OXFAM.
One of the movement’s flagship projects was the one entitled Sunu Gox (my com-
munity in Wolof) which was implemented from 2016 to 2019 in neighbourhoods
in the suburbs of Pikine and Guediawaye. The main objective of this project
was to support the Y’en a marre movement in its capacity to contribute to the
strengthening of citizenship, by mobilising the population of the Dakar suburbs,
particularly young people to improve the living environment, enhance public
spaces, and raise awareness on the environment thanks to the use of social media
and urban cultures (street art, hip-hop).

“Wolofising” the vocabulary of civic engagement

Most of the slogans of the Y’en a marre movement are in Wolof: Dox ak sa gox (to
be in tune with one’s city); Sama askan, sama bakkan (my people, my life); Lu ëpp
tuuru (too much is too much); Daas fanaanal (to make weapons ready); Fanaane
daas (to make sure weapons are ready); Jaay sa carte jaay sa ngor la (to mint one’s
card, to sell one’s conscience); Gor sa wax ja, dige bor la (to keep one’s word), Leul
(foundation of the movement), Baatu askan wi (the voice of the people), Wallu
askan wi (the people’s share); and so on.
The movement has drawn on the Wolof language for a good part of its strik-
ing formulas to certainly stick to the linguistic mutations under way in Senegal,
which show a decline in French and a growing dynamic of wolofisation. However,
it is an urban Wolof which, in addition to its abundant lexical creativity, alter-
nates and borrows from French, English, Arabic and other local languages in
varying structures. All these parameters speak volumes about the reception
instance targeted by Y’en a marre. Through its choice of Wolof expressions, Y’en
a marre undoubtedly wanted to establish a kind of complicity and convergence
with young people from working-class backgrounds, suburban dwellers, resource-
ful people, etc. The latter undoubtedly wanted to establish a kind of complicity
and convergence with young people from working-class backgrounds, suburban
 Y’en a marre 65
dwellers, resourceful people, etc. It is also a question of distancing oneself from
the elite “system”. This symbolic break is completed by the choice of clothing
around Amilcar Cabral’s cap, ostensibly worn by the movement’s coordinator,
who even made it his distinctive attire.
The linguistic practices adopted by Y’en a marre show the testing logic of
hybridity, crossbreeding, and cosmopolitanism. The vocabulary of Y’en a marre’s
dissent can be read as a marker of the mutations in the linguistic practices of
urban youth in the sense of a linguistic cosmopolitanism which can be explained
by a piling up of their belongings, a superimposition of their identities, and an
entanglement of their referential schemas.
Y’en a marre is mainly made up of rappers whose fascination with “world cul-
ture” and the expression of their ideas in English is well known. However, this
movement did not use idioms drawn from the English language. This contrasts
with the language of young urban people and the compositions of some Senegalese
rappers who do not hesitate to fill their texts and speeches with English expres-
sions. This is perhaps a dividing line between this movement and the hip-hop
movement. Contrary to the latter, Y’en a marre is aimed at a sought-after audience
which, in this case, is rather made up of the politicised social stratum, the more or
less politically aware middle class, and the Senegalese social class whose precari-
ous living conditions divert attention from political life.
Y’en a marre has always endeavoured to launch short, imaginative, and punchy
formulas that facilitate the conditions for their revival and circulation in the public
space. In its mobilisation strategies, Y’en a marre values the creative and interac-
tive involvement of the public. This is done through participatory events such as
Problem Fair and Solutions Fair. This event is based on generally allegorical stag-
ing and speeches by corporations, groups, and individuals who expose the social
and professional problems they encounter and the possible solutions they propose.
The activity thus serves as a symbolic outlet to denounce the responsibility of
public authorities for these problems and their inertia in finding lasting solutions.

Political opportunity structures: Discursive opportunities,

political openness, and favourable media coverage
Y’en a marre is a movement that has taken advantage of political opportunities to
express and defend political demands.
First, an historical analysis allows us to observe discursive political opportuni-
ties, generated by prior pro-democracy movements. As previously shown Senegal
has a track record of protest against the incumbent president, which the move-
ment inherited. Additionally, we find that prevailing notions of citizenship and
national identity created discursive opportunities to increase the public res-
onance with the movements’ key messages. These activist movements tried to
find an ideological anchor in pan-Africanism, the utopia embodied by Thomas
Sankara and the revitalisation of the dreams of the founding fathers and heralds
of pan-Africanism: Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Amilcar
Cabral, Cheikh Anta Diop, etc. (Dimé, Kapagama, Soré and Touré, 2021).
66  Mamadou Dimé
Second, the political openness was also crucial: freedom of expression, a tra-
dition of protest, the democratic regime, freedom of the press created a friendlier
environment for protest when compared to authoritarian regimes. This combined
with youth fatigue with the political offer, and the wear and tear of political par-
ties created favourable circumstance for protesters aspirations. Movement leaders
have been able to capture this anger in an attempt to transform the ways in which
young people are engaged through spaces other than political parties in order to
organise a “moral economy of protest” (Fassin, 2015).
Finally, we observe that a typical form of urban mobilisation, Y’en a marre
based its mobilisation on an unbridled use of information and communication
technologies and on its ability to seize the awareness and mobilisation oppor-
tunities provided by social networks (Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube).
The movement has also relied on a thunderous presence in the so-called “tradi-
tional” media (radio, television). This has provided it with media coverage that
has greatly contributed to its popularity even beyond the Senegalese borders5.
Y’en a marre continues to arouse the curiosity of the media, even the interna-
tional media, as many reports are devoted to it by the foreign press for what was
originally presented as an unprecedented experience of citizen engagement on
the African continent. This contributes to the notoriety of the movement on the
international scene.
Thus, citizen engagement can then be analysed as a means of social and politi-
cal ascension that confers media visibility and international fame. Some critics of
Y’en a marre consider its citizen mobilisation has never been totally disinterested
because, in a context of scarce jobs, they appear to be a means of access to social
success, which has enabled some members to gain notoriety, travel abroad, and
even hold lucrative professional positions so as not to remain confined to the
status of “eternal penniless activists”.

Y’en a marre: From protest to institutionalised movement

Since 2019 the movement has been a regular presence in civil society. For instance,
resorting to their repertoire of action (e.g. staging) during the campaign for the
presidential election of 27 February 2019. But here Y’en a marre utilised a more
conventional approach, mimicking other civil society organisations. It invited the
five presidential candidates to discuss their position on issues such as agriculture,
gender mainstreaming, or education. With a lot of publicity because of the noto-
riety of its leaders and their mediatic exposure, Y’en a marre has for a long time
presented its programme called Wallu askan wi (the people’s share) as a key moment
in the 2019’s election campaign. The five candidates were thus expected to come
and engage in a citizen dialogue with the participants in this event. In the end,
only two of the candidates stood, namely Ousmane Sonko and Madické Niang.
The activity had been programmed at the Obelisk Square, which had become the
Place de la Nation before being relocated to the Douta Seck House of Culture.
A constant in Y’en a marre’s strategies of action is to tactically occupy sym-
bolic sites such as Obelisk Square, Independence Square, Soweto Square, African
 Y’en a marre 67
Remembrance Square, while at the same time being territorially anchored in the
suburbs. In addition to this spatial investment, another break in the emergence
of the new type of Senegalese that the movement wants to bring about is the
appropriation of national symbols such as the national flag. It is noteworthy that
it was at the very moment when politicians seemed to renounce patriotic rhetoric
that the protest activists of Y’en a marre multiplied the displays in the public space
with the national flag and the national anthem.
All of this may ultimately lead one to think that the movement emerged by
secreting a “counter-culture” that holds to this: with Y’en a marre, the spectacle
of protest is inseparable from protest, as highlighted by the musically-charged
processions that have been deployed to incite young people to massively withdraw
their electoral cards. Entitled pareel (be ready), this campaign was organised on
the eve of the start of the electoral campaign before it was quickly banned by the
authorities.
After several years that have enabled it to establish itself as a leading player on
the Senegalese socio-political scene and to contribute to the consolidation of a
dynamic of citizen affirmation in Africa, Y’en a marre is currently at crossroads.
The movement gives the impression that it is undergoing a backlash from the
waves of its protest positioning. It seems that it has to fight against the perverse
effects of a trivialisation and professionalisation of its action. The movement cur-
rently gives the impression that it is moving in a dynamic of NGOization6 and
in a role as a broker of citizen engagement. Y’en a marre continues to reap the
rewards of its investment in protest through the mobilisation of funding from
international NGOs and programmes to promote democracy and citizenship in
Africa. Some of the movement’s critics draw their arguments from this position
of financial resource capture. With the accumulation of fund-raising and redis-
tribution operations, the leaders of Y’en a marre are less and less perceived as
legitimate indignant but rather as rentiers of citizen engagement. When inter-
viewed, a leader of Y’en a marre stated:

Today, our generation is facing with the same problems and we must invent
our own answers. How can we formulate and articulate a project capable of
leading African peoples towards fulfilment in a daily life that does not allow
them to dream? How can African youth, who are underemployed and uned-
ucated, who are hungry and thirsty, and who do not have access to medical
care, formulate anything other than a protest against the unjust order in
which they are kept by their own governments in complicity with imperialist
powers of all kinds?

A spontaneous reaction following an awareness, then a cry of protest against a

regime and its excesses, Y’en a marre inaugurates a new chapter in its short history,
that of institutionalisation as a structure of civil society, with its burdens, the risks
that a massification of its bases inexorably engenders in terms of internal power
struggles. Conflicting logics as to the meanings and expectations linked to this
citizen engagement, not to mention the risks linked to attempts to reclaim it by
68  Mamadou Dimé
the new power and the appetites that the funds allocated to support this experi-
ence of citizen organisation may arise.
The collective currently seems to be in the good graces of donors and NGOs
supporting African civil society and is increasingly arousing the curiosity of
outsiders (embassies of Western countries, media, human rights organisations,
researchers, African activists, etc.). Y’en a marre officials are thus proud to have
had the current French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabius, moved to
their premises located in the popular district named Parcelles assainies in Dakar.
They are also proud to have had audiences with personalities such as the bil-
lionaire Georges Soros but above all to have been part of the short list of civil
society actors to have met President Obama during his visit to Senegal in June
2013. The leaders of the movement are also regularly consulted by the media to
express themselves on current socio-political issues. Recent events in Dakar, such
as the water shortage and the controversies arising from the decision to authorise
the construction of the Turkish embassy on the Western Corniche, have led the
movement to break out of the silence in which its leaders were walled in and to
return to the posture of criticism of government action.
This criticism focuses on President Sall’s failure to keep his promises and the
feeling that “things have not really changed” since Wade’s departure. Having lost,
with the fall of Wade, what was the quintessence of its mobilisation dynamic, Y’en
a marre finds itself in a posture of procrastination, of updating its demands, but
above all in a phase of reactivating its protest strategy in the face of the difficulty
of identifying a unifying and mobilising theme while disillusionment and frus-
tration seem to be winning over most of its members. In history, popular youth
initiatives aimed at changing behaviour, such as set setal, did not last long despite
the ambitious objectives associated with their birth.
Y’en a marre seemed to find at the beginning of 2020 the protest flame that made
its popularity thanks to the mobilisations against the increase in the cost of elec-
tricity that affected the majority of Senegalese households in early December 2019
despite the promises of public authorities against such an increase. These mobili-
sations gave birth to a struggle collective called Nio lank (we say no) nio bagne (we
refuse) of which Y’en a marre is an active member. The weekly marches to denounce
the rise provided Y’en a marre with an opportunity to come out of its “torpor”,
to rediscover the virulence of its critical discourse and thus to revive activism on
the ground. These mobilisations, as well as the denunciations of the scandals sur-
rounding the oil and gas exploitation contracts within the framework of a civil
society platform called Aar li ñu bokk (preserving our common goods), offered Y’en
a marre a marvellous opportunity for its new coordinator, Aliou Sané7, to return
to the logic of protest at the heart of the movement’s history, identity, and strategy.

Conclusion
Y’en a marre powerful revolt against Abdoulaye Wade eventually influenced his
departure from power and reshaped the relationship between the youth and pol-
itics. Taking into account the movement’s popularity and the originality of its
 Y’en a marre 69
action, it must be recognised that it became a major actor in Senegal and even
beyond thanks to its capacity to be the catalyst of a trans-African dynamic of
citizen mobilisation. Y’en a marre form of mobilisation and the background of its
members contributed to arousing the sympathy and support of different sections
of the population. This, in turn, has increased its capacity for mobilisation. The
fear that the movement inspires other countries is quite revealing of the nuisance
capacities that are rightly or wrongly attributed to it.
Adding to these factors we found that political opportunity structures and
framing strategies were crucial in their political endeavours. Those in charge of
Y’en a marre explored political opening, discursive opportunities, and media cover
to their advantage and used iconoclastic discursive positioning, the manipulation
of dissonant, captivating, and mobilising slogans to further amplify their message.
After 2011 the movement would face divergent developments. On the one side,
external support was crucial for their institutionalisation as an organisation. Y’en
a marre members managed to mobilise significant international support and/or
attention from world leaders such as Barak Obama, or billionaire George Soros.
The multiplication of research on Y’en a marre and the financial resources that its
leaders manage to attract from NGOs and donors seduced by, in particular, the
originality of its modes and repertoire of collective action, are other indicators of
the movement’s success.
On the other side, Y’en a marre seems to be looking for a new lease of life. The
movement thus seems to be exposed to the repercussions of a trivialisation and
institutionalisation of its action. It gives the impression of moving in a position of
“rentier of citizen engagement” as well as in a process of NGOization. This trend
is particularly embodied by the Y’en a marre movement, which has succeeded in
positioning itself as a prime contractor for social mobilisation projects for young
people in the framework of partnerships with NGOs such as GRET, OXFAM,
and LEAD Africa.
At the beginning of March 2021, Senegal experienced unprecedented riots that
surprised by their violence and suddenness. A cry of anger has thus arisen from
young people exasperated by both the restrictive measures and the multidimen-
sional hardship to which they are exposed. As in the episodes of socio-political
crisis that Senegal has experienced since the birth of the movement, the members
of Y’en a marre have been at the forefront. Its leaders showed great visibility at
the time of the riots in order to decipher the message sent by the demonstrators,
as if to show that Y’en a marre has lost none of its virulence and its capacity to
mobilise and cause socio-political harm. The upcoming elections in 2022 and
2023 and particularly the presidential election of 2024 will constitute other deci-
sive moments in the evolution of the movement and in the socio-political roles it
seeks to play on the Senegalese socio-political scene.
The case of Senegal offers important lessons to understand the dynamics of
protests against president’s third-term bid in Africa. It reveals the importance
of creative communication strategies –buzz words, mix of languages, permanent
media presence, and use of social media – for effective mobilisation. Arguably
activists also benefited from conditions that favour collective action, such as a
70  Mamadou Dimé
long history of youth activism, political openness, and media pluralism. If Macky
Sall decides to run for a third-term in 2024, this would once again represent a
serious test for Senegalese democracy but also for the mobilisation and action
capacities of political parties: Y’en a marre and other movements have clearly
expressed their opposition to his candidature in 2024. Everything seems to be in
place to relive the scenario of 2012.

Notes
1. Set setal literally means “to be clean and make clean” in Wolof. The expression refers
to community activities of street cleaning and neighbourhood beautification. The
phenomenon was particularly widespread in 1989 and 1990. During this period,
young people, especially in Dakar, were in a spirit of competition to initiate clean-
liness activities in their neighbourhood.
2. In Wolof bul faale can be literally translated as “let it be” or “don’t worry”.
3. Lu ëpp turu: Proverb from the Wolof language meaning “too much is too much”.
4. Pareel: Wolof word which means: “be ready”.
5. ‘Au Sénégal, les rappeurs de “Y’en a marre” se veulent les porte-parole de la contes-
tation’, Le Monde, 4 July 2011. Available at: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/
article/2011/07/04/au-senegal-les-rappeurs-de-y-en-a-marre-se-veulent-les-porte-paroles-
de-la-contestation_1543169_3210.html (Accessed: 2 October 2021). ‘Y’en a marre, le
Balai Citoyen et Lucha primés’, BBC News, 4 May 2016. Available at: https://www.
bbc.com/afrique/region/2016/05/160504_consience_awards_amnesty_international
(Accessed: 2 October 2021).
6. By this term, we seek to designate the process of institutionalisation that leads cit-
izen movements to become a professional structure oriented towards the capture of
resources, especially financial resources, circulating in the development market.
7. Aliou Sané became the new coordinator of Y’en a marre in place of Fadel Barro
on the occasion of the leul (assizes) of the movement that took place on 23 and
24 March 2019. Barro has been the best-known face of the movement since its
birth in 2011. Before being elected as coordinator of Y’en a marre, Aliou Sané was
the movement’s executive secretary. He was therefore in charge of the professional
structure that dealt with development actions in collaboration with NGOs.

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5 NOTHING WILL BE AS BEFORE?
THE 2014 INSURRECTION
IN BURKINA FASO AND
ITS POLITICAL IMPACT
Eloïse Bertrand

Introduction
In the early morning of 30 October 2014, a crowd of protestors marched on the
National Assembly of Burkina Faso and set it on fire. That day, legislators were
due to vote on a bill amending the Constitution’s Article 37 – setting presidential
term limits – to allow Blaise Compaoré to run for re-election the following year.
Compaoré’s attempt to tamper with term limits was not uncommon: between
1990 and 2010, fifteen African presidents made similar attempts, with only three
failing to get the legislation through (Dulani, 2011). In stark contrast, Compaoré’s
move not only failed – it significantly backfired. After nearly three decades in
power, a popular uprising forced him to resign on 31 October 2014, paving the
way for a political transition.
This chapter analyses the 2014 insurrection in Burkina Faso and answers
three key questions: how did these protests overthrow Compaoré’s regime? How
transformative has this insurrection been? What does that tell us about popular
protests and their transformative power more broadly? My contribution focuses
on three inter-connected factors, which I analyse following a political opportu-
nity approach. Political opportunity structures cover a wide range of formal and
informal factors – cultural, political, historical, etc. – which are perceived and
exploited by movement actors, therefore opening a “window of opportunity” in
which protest stakeholders act to achieve their political goals (see Sanches, 2022,
in this volume).
The first political opportunity structure I identify is the historical legacy of past
social movements. Previous anti-Compaoré protests – starting in the late 1990s –
contributed to cumulative learning and alliances, and created political openings,
while more ancient experiences provided discursive political opportunity struc-
tures that were seized by protestors in 2014. The second political opportunity
structure I analyse is the increased cooperation among opposition parties and
between them and new civil society groups. This was facilitated by historical leg-
acies, but also by the establishment of an institutional framework for the political
opposition: the Chef de File de l’Opposition Politique (CFOP). The third political
opportunity structure I address is the emergence of a consensual agenda, building
upon broad grievances but spear-headed by a single issue: preventing Compaoré

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-5
74  Eloïse Bertrand
from extending his rule again. The combination of these three dynamics fostered
cooperation along a strong anti-incumbent cleavage simultaneously grounded in
long-standing grievances and powerful ideals, and catalysed in a single-issue: pro-
tecting the term limits blocking Compaoré’s way. Ultimately, this chapter argues
that the 2014 insurrection allowed significant, if incremental, strides towards
more democratic and inclusive politics, and can provide valuable lessons for polit-
ical protests elsewhere in Africa and beyond.
This contribution draws from extensive qualitative fieldwork in Burkina Faso.
It involved over sixty semi-structured interviews conducted between 2017 and
2020 in Ouagadougou and by phone with opposition politicians and civil soci-
ety activists. This was complemented by a review of media coverage and written
accounts of the events before, during, and after the 2014 insurrection. Quotes
from interviews were translated from French by the author and anonymised.
The chapter is structured as follows. First, I briefly recount the events that
led to the Burkinabè insurrection, and place these events within the context
of term limit protests across the continent. The second section identifies three
political opportunity structures that best explain how the uprising prevented
the constitutional revision, and forced Compaoré to resign. I then look at the
longer-term impact of the insurrection, focusing on what the subsequent political
transition was able to achieve (or not) and its legacies on political dynamics and
institutions. The chapter’s conclusion briefly places the case of Burkina Faso in
comparative perspective.

From term limit protests to an insurrection

Term limits became a common feature across Africa in the early 1990s as new
constitutions were adopted, in order to tackle the presidentialism and incum-
bency advantage that had prevented democratic consolidation in many countries
(Dulani, 2011). Since then, many incumbents have attempted – with more or less
success – to alter these provisions and extend their tenure. This trend is far from
unique to Africa, though it is particularly prevalent on the continent (Baturo
and Elgie, 2019). A first generation of incumbents repealed term limits in the
early 2000s, including Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Omar Bongo in Gabon,
or attempted to do so (e.g. Frederick Chiluba in Malawi and Olusegun Obasanjo
in Nigeria).
A decade later, a new cohort of presidents considered, attempted, and (in some
cases) succeeded in altering or bypassing this provision in a number of coun-
tries, generally triggering popular protests (Yarwood, 2016; Mangala, 2020). The
Burkinabè protests were successful in preventing Compaoré from seeking another
term – contrary to the cases of Rwanda, Burundi, and Côte d’Ivoire, where
incumbents were re-elected, and Senegal and (at least on paper) the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) where they were defeated at the polls (on the particular
case of DRC, see Berwouts and Reyntjens, 2019, and Polet, 2022, in this volume).
In Burkina Faso, debates over the term limit issues started long before the
2014 insurrection. The modification of the Constitution’s Article 37 was already
 Nothing will be as before? 75
discussed even before Compaoré was re-elected for his fourth – and legally last –
term in 2010, prompting opposition parties and civil society activists to organise
against these plans (Eizenga and Villalón, 2020, pp. 155–156). Earnest popular
mobilisation was triggered in June 2013 when the government announced the
creation of a senate (Harsch, 2017, p. 196). This senate was, at best, seen as a costly
and superfluous institution in a context of stark economic disparities and pressing
development needs. At worst, it was considered a ploy by Compaoré to extend his
presidential tenure yet again, through securing a legislative path to amend the
Constitution (as his control over the nomination of senators, either appointed by
Compaoré or indirectly elected, would guarantee him a parliamentary super-ma-
jority) or positioning his unpopular brother as President of the Senate, making
him his institutional successor (Jeune Afrique, 2013).
At that rally, two musicians stood on a podium, brandished brooms, and
called upon protestors to rise up and clean the country of corruption. These were
Serge Bambara (better known as Smockey) and Karim Sama (Sams’K Le Jah).
Their action prefaced the creation of Balai Citoyen (literally “Citizen’s Broom”)
a new movement mobilising young people in the capital and across the country
against Compaoré’s regime (Wienkoop, 2020, p. 7). Though Balai Citoyen was
the most prominent anti-Compaoré movement, in large part due to the popu-
larity and international visibility of its founders, other civil society movements
and coalitions emerged with a similar agenda, including the Comité Anti-
Référendum (CAR), the Mouvement du 21 Avril (M21), and the Front de Résistance
Citoyenne (FRC).
Over the following year, opposition parties and civil society activists held a
series of protest against the creation of a senate, the organisation of a constitu-
tional referendum, and the modification of term limits. Despite their differences,
they agreed on one thing: Compaoré had overstayed his welcome and had to
leave power. Some of his long-term allies concurred. Roch Marc Christian Kaboré
and several other key figures from the ruling Congrès pour la Démocratie et le
Progrès (CDP) defected, created the Mouvement du Peuple pour le Progrès (MPP),
and joined the opposition in January 2014.
On 21 October 2014, the government tabled a vote to revise the Constitution’s
Article 37 setting presidential term limits. The Alliance pour la Démocratie et la
Fédération/Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (ADF/RDA), a moderate party
allied with Compaoré that had until then opposed the constitutional amend-
ment, announced they would be supporting the bill. This guaranteed the
two-third majority Compaoré needed to alter term limits, without a referendum.
This prompted an escalation of protests, which culminated on 30 October 2014
in the seizure and ransacking of the National Assembly, the CDP headquarters,
and other buildings associated with the regime.
That day, Compaoré announced he was pulling the bill, and promised to step
down at the end of his term. This proved to be too little, too late. Emboldened by
their success and hardened by the death of several “martyrs” shot by the presiden-
tial guard, protestors kept pushing until Compaoré resigned on 31 October 2014.
Having lost the support of the army, he fled to neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire. This
76  Eloïse Bertrand
opened the door to a political transition, which made inroads into Compaoré’s
flawed regime, resisted a reactionary coup attempt in September 2015, and organ-
ised free elections in November 2015.
The case of Burkina Faso provides an opportunity to unpack how protests
can be successful and lead to regime change. Recent research on these events
has highlighted the role of several explanatory factors. Ernest Harsch (2016) and
Nina-Kathrin Wienkoop (2020) have argued that strategic alliances between
opposition parties and social movements were instrumental in allowing this
outcome. Sarah Andrews and Lauren Honig (2019) focused on elite defec-
tion within the ruling CDP and how it precipitated Compaoré’s fall. Vincent
Bonnecase (2015), Stan Hagberg and his colleagues (2015), and Peter Brett (2021)
highlighted the contradictions between the moral registers of legitimacy and
legality that fuelled popular mobilisation. Augustin Loada (2020) showed that
democratic institutions were incrementally strengthened, allowing popular resist-
ance to grow against Compaoré’s constitutional meddling. These authors shed
significant light on these events from different angles. In this chapter, I make
a further contribution by analysing what allowed the insurrection to occur –
using a political opportunity approach – but also by discussing its longer-term
political consequences.

A successful insurrection driven by three

key political opportunity structures

An uprising rooted in historical social movements

The occurrence and outcome of the 2014 uprising cannot be fully understood
without considering Burkina Faso’s historical legacy of activism dating back
years, even decades. Previous social movements nurtured networks of activists,
entrenched democratic principles, and set up institutional safeguards. All these
were instrumental in making the insurrection possible. These legacies were of
two sorts. On the one hand, the insurrection was really the culmination of a
longer series of protests against Compaoré’s regime starting with the assassina-
tion of a journalist, Norbert Zongo, in 1998. These past protests allowed the
creation of political openings and the organisational strengthening of the anti-
Compaoré movement. On the other hand, more ancient events – notably the
general strike of January 1966 that ousted the country’s first president, and the
revolutionary regime of Thomas Sankara (1983–1987) – provided symbols, values,
and lessons that nourished the popular mobilisation of 2013–2014. These can be
seen as discursive opportunities that increased the movement’s chance of success
(Giugni, 2009, p. 364).
The protests leading to the 2014 insurrection were not the first significant
movement against Compaoré’s regime. In fact, an analysis of the insurrec-
tion must take previous episodes of popular mobilisation into account. As an
international analyst argued, “it is a long crisis that ended in 2014, but started on
13 December 1998 with the death of Norbert Zongo”, a well-known investigative
 Nothing will be as before? 77
journalist assassinated by the regime.1 The founder and managing editor of a
reputable newspaper, L’Indépendant, Zongo had been investigating Compaoré’s
brother and adviser, François.
Zongo’s assassination triggered an unprecedented wave of protests led by a coa-
lition of civil society organisations and opposition parties known as the Collectif
d’Organisations Démocratiques de Masse et de Partis Politiques (CODMPP). This
coalition launched a series of protests demanding the truth in the “Zongo affair”
and the end of impunity for the regime’s crimes (Loada, 1999; Hilgers and
Mazzocchetti, 2006). Even though it did not bring justice for Zongo, this move-
ment dramatically shifted the political ground in Burkina Faso. For the first time,
civil society and opposition parties were working together. Zongo’s assassination
shed light on the repressive face of the regime, forcing so-called apolitical organ-
isations working on democracy promotion to become more engaged. It also led
the more radical organisations to agree to work with political parties they did not
really trust (Loada 1999).
During the 1990s, opposition parties remained weak and fragmented. They
faced severe repression from the regime, illustrated by a human rights activist
who stated that “there was no space for the opposition during the first ten years”
of Compaoré’s regime.2 The regime also used co-optation, bribes, and infiltra-
tors to foster divisions and discredit opposition politicians. The social movement
triggered by Zongo’s death gave the political opposition an opportunity to
bounce back (Loada, 1999; Sanou, 2010). An activist from a small opposition
party explained that “the popular contestation forced the regime to step back, it
allowed the opposition to come forward, alongside civil society”.3
These protests and their aftermath significantly laid the ground for the 2014
events. The movement triggered by the Zongo affair forced Compaoré to under-
take some liberalising reforms. This constituted political opening by introducing
institutional constraints on the regime and allowing dissenters to organise and
operate more effectively. A reform package, negotiated to appease social unrest,
modified the proportional representation rules used to allocate parliamentary
seats in order to provide a fairer representation of smaller parties, which ben-
efitted the opposition. It also restored the limit of presidential terms to two, a
provision which had been included in the 1991 Constitution but removed in 1997
by the CDP-dominated legislature.
Admittedly, Compaoré was soon able to back-track on some of these reforms.
As soon as he regained the upper hand, the electoral reform – which had allowed
opposition parties to make unprecedented gains in the National Assembly in 2002
and to threaten Compaoré’s absolute majority – was quickly reversed (Santiso and
Loada, 2003). Yet, the provision of term limits which had been reinstated in the
Constitution in 2001 remained untouched. This bought time for Compaoré, who
was able to run for a third and fourth term in 2005 and 2010 – on the basis that
the 2001 constitutional revision could not apply retroactively. However, the term
limits inscribed in the Constitution’s Article 37 set a major hurdle to overcome
on the longer run, laying the ground for the events unfolding in 2014 (Eizenga
and Villalón, 2020).
78  Eloïse Bertrand
The Zongo affair also created an opening in the political space, which allowed
new actors to come forward. New civil society actors emerged among the urban
intellectual and liberal professions, including journalists, scholars, and lawyers.
While their tactics were less confrontational than those of older unions and
movements, they played an important part in promoting attachment to demo-
cratic norms and processes among the population, and making use of existing
institutions. The entry of many opposition parties in the National Assembly
following the 2002 elections also energised political activity. By the end of the
decade, the opposition had secured an institutional status – the CFOP – which
provided resources and fostered some degree of united action.
The 2000s were marked by frequent strikes and protests against the rising cost
of living, mainly driven by a powerful trade union movement (Engels, 2015). Yet
the second real test for Compaoré’s regime was the disparate wave of protests and
mutinies that broke out in 2011, implicating a wide range of social sectors, includ-
ing students, magistrates, petty traders, and soldiers (Chouli, 2012). Without
coordination or a common platform of demands, protests were disorganised
riots at first, then union marches, and finally mutinies within military barracks.
Triggers were diverse, but revolved around impunity and economic grievances.
This echoed the protests that followed Norbert Zongo’s assassination, and built
upon the discursive opportunities that had emerged at that time. Compaoré’s
regime was briefly shaken when his presidential guard started a mutiny, but he
ultimately restored his grasp on power through a mix of coercion and co-optation.
Opposition parties played only a minor role in this mobilisation, even though
they were accused – by the government and protest activists alike – of taking
advantage of the crisis to promote themselves. Illustratively, a rally called by the
CFOP in Ouagadougou in April 2011 to link up these disparate grievances into a
call for Compaoré’s resignation only gathered a few hundred people.
Despite this failure, the 2011 crisis can still be considered as a key event fore-
telling the 2014 uprising. It laid bare the necessity for opposition parties to create
synergies with other movements with a high mobilisation capacity, and to connect
their political demands to the social and economic grievances running deep among
the population. The 2011 crisis also led the regime to open a political dialogue.
The government presented this dialogue as a way to ease tensions following the
social crisis, but its real purpose appeared to push through a set of political reforms
favouring Compaoré, including the creation of a senate and the revision of the
Constitution’s Article 37. These debates – boycotted by the political parties affil-
iated with the CFOP – triggered the chain of events leading to the 2014 uprising.
The 2014 insurrection was also shaped by older legacies of uprisings, activism,
and revolution at the heart of Burkina Faso’s history as a nation. Young activists
taking to the streets in 2013–2014 wore T-shirts bearing pictures of former presi-
dent Thomas Sankara, and Balai Citoyen leaders regularly borrowed slogans and
imagery from his register (Soré, 2018). Sankara was a young captain that led the
Burkinabè Revolution (1983–1987) until he was killed in the coup that brought
Compaoré to power (Englebert, 1986; Peterson, 2021). The values of hard work,
integrity, and patriotism embodied by the revolutionary leader, and transmitted
 Nothing will be as before? 79
through his inflamed speeches (recorded on tape) and the recollection of his
numerous initiatives in favour of Burkina Faso’s self-development and dignity,
were embraced by a new generation of activists, too young to have lived through
the revolution but inspired by its ideals (Dragstra, 2018).
Other activists drew parallels with the country’s first insurrection, decades ear-
lier: on 3 January 1966, a general strike and massive union-led protests toppled the
corrupt regime of Maurice Yaméogo, the first president of what was then Upper
Volta (Guirma, 2004; Phelan, 2016). The general strike of 1966 was a key moment
in the Burkinabè labour movement’s collective memory, and is commemorated by
trade unions each year. Though labour organisations were mostly sceptical of the
anti-Compaoré protests about the term limits’ issue – they advocated for a more
radical overhaul of the regime in line with their revolutionary credentials – their
parallel mobilisation increased pressure on Compaoré. For example, a union-led
general strike over educational reform on 29 October 2014 – scheduled weeks
earlier, before the parliamentary vote was tabled for the next day – saw protestors
call for Compaoré’s resignation. More significantly, unions played a key role in
mobilising against a military take-over after the uprising. They had learned the
lesson from 1966: when Yaméogo was ousted, the army stepped in to fill the polit-
ical void – with support from the streets – and never stepped back. In 2014, unions
and other civil society organisations rejected the army’s attempt to usurp the peo-
ple’s insurrection, and fought off the reactionary coup d’état the following year.
The 2014 insurrection was therefore shaped by historical legacies, which created
discursive opportunities, from the revival of Thomas Sankara’s historical ideals
to the mobilisation of long-standing grievances around impunity and corruption.
These legacies also triggered political openings, by setting up institutional con-
straints to Compaoré’s regime, but also by strengthening the movements facing
him and fostering cooperation among various forces.

Political allies: Opposition coordination and cooperation

A second political opportunity structure that facilitated the 2014 uprising is the
increased coordination and collaboration of disparate opposition forces. In par-
ticular, opposition parties were able to leverage a newly established institution,
the CFOP, to build a common platform and work alongside new civil society
movements against Compaoré’s regime.
As previously stated, Burkinabè opposition parties were extremely divided
and prone to internal splits. These divisions ran along ideological lines, personal
enmities, and strategic disagreements (Harsch, 2017, p. 137). Few electoral coali-
tions were attempted, and none was able to pose a real challenge to Compaoré’s
dominance. Personal ambitions and leadership disputes regularly caused party
splits, fuelling a proliferation of political parties (CGD, 2009). As a Burkinabè
saying goes, “one would rather be the head of a rat, than the tail of a lion”: politi-
cians prefer to create and lead their own party, however small it may be, than to
be a lower figure in a larger party – a dynamic openly fuelled by the ruling elite
through the co-optation of politicians into the government and the distribution
80  Eloïse Bertrand
of money to opposition parties (Loada, 2010). Even parties describing themselves
as sankarist – borrowing from the political legacy of Thomas Sankara – have
proven unable to unite despite supposedly sharing common values and objec-
tives. An official from the Union pour la Renaissance – Parti Sankariste (UNIR-PS)
despaired that among opposition parties, “there wasn’t one month, two months
without a split with the creation of a new party”.4 Another acknowledged that
this led them to “neutralise each other on the ground”.5
These divisions did not disappear in the lead up to the 2014 uprising. However,
the establishment of the CFOP provided a platform to foster a certain degree of
unity, allowing parties to coordinate around a common agenda despite their con-
flicting interests and internal divisions. The CFOP designates both an institution
and a person. The institution regroups all registered political parties – with or
without a parliamentary representation – who declare to be opposed to the ruling
majority. The person is the opposition’s designated spokesperson, a role attributed
to the head of the opposition party with the most seats in the National Assembly.
This position was occupied by Bénéwendé Sankara, leader of the UNIR-PS,
between 2009 and 2012; then by Zéphirin Diabré of the Union pour le Progrès
et le Changement (UPC) from January 2013 to the insurrection of October 2014.
At the time of its creation, analysts argued that “it [was] useless to institute an
opposition’s head of rank when the opposition is spread out” (CGD, 2008, p. 37).
Yet, I find that the CFOP served as a palliative for the opposition’s fragmenta-
tion. It did so by increasing polarisation between the majority and the opposition
and by amplifying the opposition’s voice and reach. It proved to be an important
framework for these various parties to come together, coordinate strategies, and
build a united front on key issues. As a sankarist politician explained, “it was a
setting where the opposition, regardless of their political leanings, came together
and could talk about how Blaise [Compaoré] was going to leave”.6 The CFOP also
removed individual ambitions and electoral considerations from the equation by
laying out clear rules on who should serve as CFOP, rather than leaving it to
inter-party negotiations, and by constraining this role as that of a spokesperson
and facilitator, rather than a leader.
This institutionalised framework was also able to accommodate new parties
formed by CDP defectors, such as the MPP. The resignation of key CDP figures
and the creation of the MPP was a “tipping point” (Andrews and Honig, 2019,
p. 627) that shook Compaoré’s base, signalled to the opposition that victory was
possible, and provided increased resources to the movement. A UNIR-PS official
acknowledged that “if the MPP hadn’t come to exist, there wouldn’t have been an
insurrection”.7 Elite defection is widely considered a relevant political opportunity
structure that can explain the success of social movements and the fall of auto-
cratic regimes (Meyer, 2004). Yet, this defection alone does not account for the
uprising, and in fact would likely not have occurred if there had not already been
a movement underway that made it strategically sound for these cadres to jump
ship. As Andrews and Honig (2019) argue, broad popular support for democratic
principles shifted the cost-benefit analysis of CDP figures, for whom defection had
become a better bet for their future electoral prospects.
 Nothing will be as before? 81
The CFOP also fostered cooperation with civil society organisations, who
would have otherwise been wary of aligning themselves with the political inter-
ests of individual parties. The old guard within civil society, which had been at
the forefront of the mobilisation that followed the death of Norbert Zongo, have
often shown contempt for opposition parties. Their mistrust grew when opposi-
tion parties decided to discard the boycott strategy adopted by the CODMPP at
the time, and to run in the legislative elections of 2002. Newer movements, such
as Balai Citoyen and the FRC, also wanted to remain independent and distin-
guishable from the political opposition, though other organisations were more
closely associated with the CFOP or individual parties. Thanks to the collective
nature of the CFOP’s institution, civil society stakeholders were able to work with
political parties and mobilise their ranks to heed the CFOP’s calls for action,
without being associated with a particular party (which could discredit them).
An activist from the FRC explained that they refused to have a formal agreement
with opposition parties because they “did not know how long the struggle against
the modification of Article 37 was going to last, so people thought it was risky
to get involved in such a process and to lose our independence”.8 This collabora-
tion among opposition parties and between them and civil society organisations
proved key in mobilising the population, because it established a credible oppor-
tunity to resist Compaoré’s plans, and to remove him from office.

A single-issue agenda
Cooperation among opposition parties and between them and civil society was
made easier by a third political opportunity structure: a single common objective
that took precedence over their internal squabbles and mutual mistrust. Indeed,
impunity and economic injustices had been powerful mobilisation triggers in the
past, but debates over the senate issue and the modification of Article 37 allowed
activists to link these issues with political demands, a good recipe to create a
strong anti-incumbent cleavage (Mueller, 2018).
Term limits became a catalysing issue drawing technical and moral arguments
over the legality and legitimacy of Compaoré’s attempt to modify their provision
(Moestrup, 2019). Yet, this focus on a technical aspect – the limitation of pres-
idential terms to two – tends to obscure a broader, more significant aspiration:
that of political alternance. Meaning “turnover” or “rotation”, alternance refers to
the transfer of power from one party to another. It became an important politi-
cal issue across francophone West Africa within the context of entrenched, and
seemingly immovable presidents such as Abdou Diouf in Senegal or Compaoré in
Burkina Faso (Cheeseman et al, 2019).
After the 2002 legislative elections in Burkina Faso – which saw unprecedented
gains for the opposition – Loada and Santiso (2002, p. 5) believed that politi-
cal alternance had become “not only possible, but also feasible as a strategy for
conducting opposition politics and, eventually, conquering power”. Yet in 2006,
a year after Compaoré successfully ran for his third term, the French journal
Politique Africaine published a special issue entitled “Burkina Faso: the impossible
82  Eloïse Bertrand
alternance”. In 2009, Diabré, a former figure of the ruling party who had gone
on to have a successful international career, came back to Burkina Faso and
organised a public forum about alternance, bringing together civil society activists
and political actors in Ouagadougou. In his opening speech, Diabré stated: “Any
democracy remains incomplete as long as it has not produced a transfer of power.
Our democracy belongs in that category” (L’Observateur Paalga, 2009). Following
this forum, the UPC was founded in March 2010 to directly engage the fight for
alternance and the conquest of power. A women’s leader from the party explained:
“the first time we talked about alternance was in 2009. People didn’t believe in it,
they thought we were kidding, or that we were bought-off”.9
This struggle for alternance made the issues of the senate and Article 37 rally-
ing points for activists. The provision of term limits was seen as the only thing
preventing Compaoré from becoming a president-for-life: it appeared unavoida-
ble that he would win should he be allowed to stand for re-election. Presidential
elections had never been competitive, and as such never represented a relevant
political opportunity for opponents – be it in the ballot box or in the streets.
Illustratively, the two largest episodes of social unrest during the Compaoré era
(the protests triggered by Norbert Zongo’s assassination in December 1998, and
the wave of protests and mutinies in 2011) each started not long after Compaoré
had been re-elected with over 80% of the vote (in 1998 and 2010). The con-
stitutional revision was therefore a key moment for mobilisation because it
represented the last obstacle blocking Compaoré’s path to extending his rule
indefinitely.
Though the struggle for alternance brought together a large section of the
political opposition and civil society, it should be noted that the radical leftist
organisations – including the powerful trade unions – did not associate with this
particular fight. They claimed to be seeking an alternative, a real systemic change,
rather than alternance, a mere change of guards. Accordingly, trade unions never
called their members to join the protests organised by the CFOP, but held their
own marches around sectorial grievances in parallel (Wienkoop, 2020). We should
also be wary of taking for granted that alternance was truly driving the participa-
tion of individual protestors (“foot soldiers”): it is likely that, as Lisa Mueller (2018)
convincingly argued, demand for democracy was rather a chief consideration for
the middle-class leaders and spokespeople of the movement, who capitalised on
economic grievances among lower classes to mobilise support. Still, according to
Afrobarometer data collected in 2012, 64% of Burkinabè citizens were in favour
of presidential term limits – and this figure grew to a staggering 91% in 2015,
following the insurrection – clearly demonstrating the salience of this question
at the time.

The transformative impact of the 2014 uprising

The protests against the creation of a senate and the alteration of term limits in
Burkina Faso ultimately led to Compaoré’s ousting. Some proclaimed the country
had just experienced its second “revolution”. Others, seeing the army’s taking
 Nothing will be as before? 83
control of the state, dismissed it as “just another coup d’état” (Hagberg et al.,
2015). When the dust settled, what was the longer-term political impact of the
2014 insurrection?
In themselves, the nature and short-term successes of the transition are signif-
icant post-insurrection achievements that should not be minimised. The army,
which at first had stepped in to fill the void left by Compaoré’s resignation, was
forced to step back and to agree to an inclusive, civilian-led transition due to
pressure from domestic forces and foreign partners. This contrasts sharply with
more recent events in Mali. The successful push-back against a reactionary coup
attempt in 2015 preserved the gains made during the uprising and subsequent
transition (Saidou, 2018a), contrary to how the Sudanese revolution unfolded.
The elections organised within a year proved to be the freest and most transpar-
ent in the country (Ariotti, 2016), even though the newly elected political elite
were not starkly different from the old one. Roch Kaboré, elected as President in
November 2015, had been a key figure of Compaoré’s regime, having presided over
the CDP and the National Assembly. His party, the MPP, employed the CDP’s old
local networks and clientelist strategies to mobilise support. The UPC’s Diabré,
despite his pivotal role as the CFOP, was beaten in the first round. Sankarist
parties made disappointing scores and had to come to terms with the fact they
were not as representative of the insurgents and their aspirations as they believed.
The political transition that opened in November 2015 was a window of oppor-
tunity to push through substantial reforms to redress the most pressing wrongs
of Compaoré’s regime, and to establish safeguards constraining future elites
(Dakuyo, 2019; Saidou, 2020b). According to an activist from Balai Citoyen, “the
transition was the best period to implement in-depth reforms, and to impose them
on the ruling class”.10 An ex-member of the transition government explained that
civil society’s ambition was to “clean up before going to the elections”, tackling
deep-rooted democratic defects such as corruption and impunity. Though some
organisations, such as Balai Citoyen, stayed out of the transition’s decision-making
institutions to monitor their work from the outside, others joined the transition
government and legislature to influence change from within. Under the proactive
leadership of its President, Cheriff Sy – a journalist and prominent activist –
the Conseil National de la Transition (CNT) embraced its legislative prerogatives,
adopting 108 laws in a year – more than any previous Burkinabè legislature
(Saidou, 2020b).
These reforms addressed popular demands that had transpired during the upris-
ing, and responded to a diagnostic established by civil society stakeholders who
wanted to lay the ground for democratic consolidation. The transition authorities
drew legitimacy from the insurrection and persistent popular mobilisation, which
made them both better able and more willing to achieve important changes than
either past or future elected governments (Bertrand, 2021). Substantial reforms
were adopted to strengthen the anti-corruption institution and improve judici-
ary independence (Saidou, 2020b). An emergency plan for youth employment
was launched. Important legal cases that had been ignored or closed during the
Compaoré era, and symbolised the former regime’s impunity, were re-opened,
84  Eloïse Bertrand
including those related to the deaths of Thomas Sankara and Norbert Zongo
(Dakuyo, 2019).
Another key area in need of reform was the army, which had had a hold on
Burkinabè politics since 1966. In particular, civil society pushed for the disso-
lution of the presidential guard, the Régiment de Sécurité Présidentielle (RSP)
and the reintegration of its troops within the regular army. Often described as
“an army within the army”, the RSP was particularly loyal to Compaoré, and
received better pay, training, and equipment than other soldiers (Balima, 2019).
The unit was also infamous among the population due to its implication in
the assassination of Norbert Zongo in 1998, and the death of protestors during
the 2014 insurrection. Attempts to dissolve the unit during the transition were
systematically met with violent reactions of the RSP, culminating in the coup
d’état of September 2015 (Dakuyo, 2019). Following renewed popular mobilisa-
tion across the country fuelled by civil society organisations, a failed mediation
attempt by the West African regional organisation – the Economic Community
of West African States (ECOWAS) – and ultimately, an ultimatum given by
the rest of the army, the coup was folded after a week (Saidou, 2018a) – paving
the way for an unprecedented trial in 2019 (Balima, 2019). Once restored, the
transition authorities disbanded the RSP – an important step in reforming the
security forces. However, despite the recognition that substantial changes within
the army were necessary in order to “demilitarise” political power (Sampana,
2015) and in the face of the unprecedented security threat posed by jihadist
groups (Eizenga, 2019), these reforms have been limited and incremental at best
(Saidou, 2020a).
The transition adopted substantial reforms, but what it achieved was heav-
ily dependent on negotiations between the various forces involved, and on the
mobilisation power of activists and protestors. Illustratively, the promise of a new
constitution, paving the way for a more balanced division of power and safeguards
against democratic backsliding, has not come to fruition. Civil society actors’
initial ambition was to adopt a new constitution during the transition, in order to
make a clean break from Compaoré’s regime and address the institutional defects
blocking democratic consolidation. This was resisted by political parties, who
hoped to come to power in the following elections and control the process. In
the end, the transition conducted a minimal revision of the existing constitution
which “locked” the Article 37, making it impossible to alter presidential term
limits, and authorised independent candidates to take part in elections. After the
2015 elections, an inclusive and representative commission drafted a new consti-
tution (Saidou, 2018b). Despite an apparent consensus over its content, political
parties have failed to agree on the ratification process, and appeared to have
dropped this issue from the political agenda. Another expected reform which has
not been implemented is that aiming at depoliticising the administration. These
shortcomings have led some stakeholders to tamper the transformational impact
of the transition. For example, a figure from the CAR argued that “old defects are
starting to creep back, because the institutions we built are not solid enough”.11
 Nothing will be as before? 85
Popular mobilisation played a huge part in the uprising and throughout the
transition, which, according to a Balai Citoyen activist, left behind “a lesson
that when the People mobilises, it can succeed”.12 During the transition, persis-
tent mobilisation steered what the authorities achieved and how they behaved
(Bertrand, 2021). For example, protests erupted over the nomination of con-
troversial figures in the transition government (who were forced to resign), or
against the high salaries given to legislators (which were subsequently reduced
by half). Popular mobilisation greatly contributed to defeating the coup d’état
in September 2015, as crowds gathered in front of military barracks across the
country to demand that soldiers marched on Ouagadougou to depose the RSP
(Bertrand, 2015; Saidou, 2018a). Yet, as an FRC activist observed, “paradoxically,
in terms of civic monitoring, the legacy is very poor. […]. [It] continues, but really
below what we could have expected”.13 Since the end of the transition, trade
unions and civil society organisations have mobilised around sectorial grievances
and against the government’s poor handling of the security crisis, but they have
been much less successful than they were during the transition.
A number of prominent civil society figures, encouraged by their participation
in the transition institutions, set up political parties or joined the government
after the 2015 election – highlighting the necessity for new figures to take over
as independent counter-powers. The young and active movements that emerged
around the issue of term limits have had difficulties re-inventing themselves
around new objectives, or have become more institutionalised and less grassroots
(Touré, 2017, p. 69). After 2015, the new ruling elite contributed to eroding the
civil society’s mobilisation capacity, notably by throwing corruption accusations
at figures of the transition to weaken these potential opponents. An M21 activist
argued that the new government “saw the strength of civil society organisations
[and] started to contest the transition’s management and to discredit civil soci-
ety”, which played a part in “cooling down” mobilisation.14
In the post-transition elections of November 2015, the party system was also
reshuffled. The MPP – made up of former cadres of Compaoré’s regime who
defected to the opposition in January 2014 – became the head of a ruling coalition
including a number of small parties which had consistently been in Compaoré’s
opposition. Meanwhile, in the CFOP, the UPC had to coexist with the CDP
and its former allies, creating an internal polarisation within the CFOP – which
lost its ability to serve as a uniting platform for the opposition. This institution
was further damaged when, following the 2020 elections, the UPC and other
parties opted to join Kaboré’s majority for his second term. Ultimately, the factors
explaining this party system configuration remain clientelist in nature, leading
Natielse (2020, p. 26) to conclude that “the basic characteristics of political par-
ties have not changed following the popular insurrection and the fall of Blaise
Compaoré”.
Still, the insurrection and transition have left a mark on the Burkinabè insti-
tutions. This period contributed to strengthening the democratic roots that had
been nurtured during Compaoré’s regime, from the principle of alternance to
anti-corruption legislation. Term limits for the presidency finally appear set in
86  Eloïse Bertrand
stone, putting an end to what was a major obstacle to democratic consolidation
during the Compaoré era. This opens the door to a first peaceful transfer of power
between two democratically elected leaders in 2025. While turnovers themselves
do not make a democracy, they do promote a healthy circulation of elites and
equalise the political playing field (Moehler and Lindberg, 2009).
Meanwhile, the rich legislation passed during the transition is a crucial legacy.
A striking example is the impact of the anti-corruption bill and the judiciary
reforms, which are being implemented now – illustrated, for example, by the
unprecedented incarceration of a former government official on corruption
charges (Jeune Afrique, 2020). Such reforms were impossible to imagine during
the Compaoré era and may not have been achieved in another setting.

Conclusion
This chapter highlighted a series of political opportunity structures that allowed
the anti-regime protests in Burkina Faso in 2013–2014 to turn into a fully-fledged
insurrection, toppling Compaoré, and opening the door to a political transition.
These inter-connected factors are three-fold: a historical legacy of social move-
ments that created discursive opportunities, boosted organisational strength,
and opened the political space, while setting up some institutional constraints
on Compaoré’s long-term prospects; increased collaboration among opposition
parties and between them and civil society organisations, facilitated by informal
networks and formal institutions, notably the CFOP; and a common short-term
objective which provided a reason to rally forces and an ultimatum: preventing
Compaoré from lifting term limits in order to force him out.
Yet this shared objective hid important divergences in terms of the stake-
holders’ longer-term agenda, making the insurrection a rather “catch-all” event
(Saidou, 2020a). A section of civil society led by intellectuals wanted to uproot
the authoritarian legacies of Compaoré’s regime and set up institutional safe-
guards to ensure democratic consolidation could take hold. Another, including
grassroots movements such as Balai Citoyen, was hoping that the social and eco-
nomic lives of Burkinabè people would be improved. Political parties were focused
on the upcoming elections, wishing to finally obtain power for themselves. The
unity and collaboration which made the insurrection possible in 2014 did not last
after Compaoré was gone, and made it difficult to achieve deep, transformative
reforms during the transition.
Yet, the 2014 insurrection in Burkina Faso and its shortcomings must be ana-
lysed in comparative perspective. In other countries, social movements against
the alteration of term limits either failed (Rwanda), or descended into deadly
electoral violence and civil conflicts (Burundi). Broader anti-incumbent protests
elsewhere either met violent repression (e.g. Uganda, Ethiopia) or were circum-
vented by palace coups that removed old autocrats but merely reorganised the
ruling clique (Zimbabwe, Algeria).
The Burkinabè uprising sheds some light on how anti-incumbent protests
can succeed. In particular, it demonstrates the relevance of domestic political
 Nothing will be as before? 87
opportunity structures for political change, as opposed to international alliances
highlighted in other cases such as that of the DRC (Polet, 2022, in this volume).
International actors, including bilateral partners such as France and the United
States, and regional organisations, certainly contributed to shaping the insurrec-
tion and its aftermath. Yet domestic stakeholders were the main drivers of the
contestation – illustrated by the popular rejection of the ECOWAS mediation
team’s approach during the 2015 coup (Saidou, 2018a). The case of Burkina Faso
also resonates with the case of Senegal (Dimé, 2022, in this volume) where domes-
tic activists played paid a huge contribution to the ousting of Abdoulaye Wade.
Just like the insurrection should not be analysed in isolation but rather placed
in historical perspective, its effects should be assessed with nuance and on the
long run. Its qualification as a “revolution” by many Burkinabè appears to have
been an over-statement, but the incremental changes it brought – both in terms
of formal legislation and informal norms and practices – must be seen as part of a
trajectory towards a more open, inclusive, and democratic future for the country.

Notes
1. Interview, international analyst, by phone, 23 March 2017.
2. Interview, human rights activist, Ouagadougou, 28 March 2017.
3. Interview, PDS-Metba activist, Ouagadougou, 26 April 2017.
4. Interview, UNIR-PS official, Ouagadougou, 17 April 2018.
5. Interview, UNIR-PS official, Ouagadougou, 9 February 2018.
6. Interview, FFS official, Ouagadougou, 2 July 2018.
7. Interview, UNIR-PS official, Ouagadougou, 9 February 2018.
8. Interview, FRC activist, Ouagadougou, 5 April 2017.
9. Interview, UPC official, Ouagadougou, 14 December 2018.
10. Interview, Balai Citoyen activist, by phone, 19 August 2020.
11. Interview, CAR activist, by phone, 20 August 2020.
12. Interview, Balai Citoyen activist, by phone, 19 August 2020.
13. Interview, FRC activist, by phone, 06 July 2020.
14. Interview, M21 activist, by phone, 27 August 2020.

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6 FEMINIST DEMANDS,
OPPORTUNITIES, AND FRAMES
STRATEGIC SILENCING WITHIN
MOROCCO’S FEBRUARY 20 MOVEMENT?
Sammy Zeyad Badran

Introduction
Morocco, like many other Middle East and North African (MENA) countries,
witnessed a surge of mass protests during the so called “Arab Spring”. In Morocco,
the February 20 Movement (F20) started with a successful online campaign that
promoted protests for a variety of reasons ranging from calls for more freedoms
to more minority rights. The F20 typically held weekly peaceful demonstrations
throughout Morocco, but as we will see, many diverse political organisations
were represented in the movement. Some activists called for gender equality,
but the movement primarily focused on fighting for devolution of power from
King Mohammed VI. Specifically, the F20 tended to focus demands on reform-
ing the constitution, including a transition from an executive monarchy to a
democratic parliamentary monarchy. The movement was supported by an array
of political parties and organisations, including many left-wing parties like the
United Socialist Party (USP), the Marxist Democratic Way Party (DWP), and the
Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP). Islamist organisations were critical to
the movement as well. The Justice and Spirituality Organization (JCO) was the
largest Islamist organisation to join F20 and worked with leftists to organise mass
protests in over 50 cities throughout Morocco. Similarly, women and independent
feminist-activists were integral to this movement from the beginning.1 Members
of the pro-personal liberties feminist movement, Le Mouvement alternatif pour
les libertés individuelles (MALI), were perhaps the most outspoken proponents of
explicitly calling for gender equality, among other demands. Activists from MALI,
along with other women I interviewed, felt that their demands were not repre-
sented, and often silenced, within the F20. In the words of the MALI’s co-founder2:

I had a lot of problems with F20 because the movement called for freedom,
dignity, and social justice, but it was false. Because the movement had
another definition of liberty and freedom. For me human rights are univer-
sal. So, when we talk about liberty and dignity etc., it’s a universal thing
and about all human rights and all individual liberties and equality between
women and men. So, it was very complicated and it still is now, because a lot
of activists in Morocco – male and female – don’t think about universality.3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-6
92  Sammy Zeyad Badran
Despite direct calls for gender equality on social media by the F20, activists
on the ground claimed that feminist demands were absent from the movement.
Combining framing and political opportunity structure approaches, this chapter
will shed light on how certain demands within the F20 were silenced in order to
better resonate with a conservative public.4 The chapter will demonstrate that
women’s demand for gender equality, along with other “culturally sensitive top-
ics”, were strategically relegated to the broad demand of freedom. In essence, the
F20’s human rights and justice frame included these culturally sensitive issues.5
The findings for this chapter are informed by semi-structured interviews with
participants from the F20 – primarily independent feminist activists and women
from MALI, USP, DWP, and the USFP.6 The findings shed light on the trans-
formative impact of protests in North Africa’s semi-authoritarian regimes from an
innovative angle. Instead of focusing only on the external impact of protests, the
present case study focuses on the inner and more hidden logic of transformation –
how certain issues are prioritised vis-à-vis others. This emphasis on internal social
movement dynamics will open avenues for further research in the field.
The chapter will start by outlining why focusing solely on political opportunity
structures may overlook critical internal dynamics within social movements. I
will make the case that focusing on narrative fidelity and internal consistency of
frames is important for understanding which voices are silenced and why. The
chapter will then cover the institutional strives towards gender equality prior to
2011 and show how the Arab Spring widened political opportunities for new fem-
inist causes that explicitly demanded gender equality, among other things. The
rest of the chapter will use interview data to focus on women within the F20
and how their voices were often silenced and how they challenged this strategic
silencing within the F20.

Researching feminist protest in Morocco: Moving

from political opportunity structures to framing
Social movement studies adhering to the structural approach focus on how polit-
ical opportunity structures may either facilitate or suppress social movements
(Aminzade, McAdam, et al., 2001; McAdam, 1983; Tarrow, 2011; Meyer and
Minkoff, 2004; Meyer, 2004; Iyekekpolo, 2016). Structural perspectives focus on
environmental drivers that facilitate or suppress social movements (Aminzade,
McAdam, et al., 2001, p. 14). For instance, McCarthy and Zald (1977) argue that
incentives, structures, and cost-reducing mechanisms all play a role in social
movement formations. Resources here imply money and labour from constitu-
ents and organisations, other than the “aggrieved”. In essence, other actors have
control of resources like legitimacy, facilities, labour, as well as money, which play
a crucial role in the development and success of social movements. McCarthy
and Zald use a supply and demand model to study the flow of resources “toward
and away from specific social movements (1977, p. 1216)”. Therefore, constitu-
ents give resources to those that have social change preferences (adherents) in
hopes of changing bystanders into adherents and constituents. In essence, social
 Feminist demands, opportunities, and frames 93
mobilisation theorists believe that social movements mobilise resources (often
from elites) in their favour.
Political process and opportunity theories don’t completely discount the effects
of resource mobilisation, but rather add another layer of analysis by shifting focus
to more environmental factors in which movements operate. Political process
theorists argue that an advantageous or disadvantageous political environ-
ment (openness or closure of political system, presence of elite allies, or a state’s
capacity for repression, among others) along with organisational strength are
better predictors of successful social movements (McAdam, 1983; Tarrow, 2011;
Meyer and Minkoff, 2004; Sanches, 2022). The main argument can be found
in Tarrow’s Power in Movement (2011), which argues that political opportunities
lead to the creation of social movements and that these movements create future
opportunities.
Similarly, McAdam claims that institutions like the Black Church aided the
“indigenous organizational strength” of the Civil Rights Movement (McAdam,
1983). There is an element of rationality to political process and opportunity the-
ories as they claim that recognition and perception play a vital role in the personal
decision to join a movement: “people rise in contention under the most discour-
aging circumstances, as long as they recognize collective interests, join others like
themselves, and think there is a chance their protests will succeed (Tarrow, 2011,
p. 198)”. Nevertheless, despite their groundbreaking findings, McCarthy’s and
Zald’s resource mobilisation theory, along with political process and opportunity
theories, all overlook important internal dynamics of social movements. Some of
these approaches have been utilised to understand the dynamics of protest during
the Arab Spring (Dupont and Passy, 2011; Alimi and Meyer, 2011; Badran, 2014).
In essence, these studies overlook how the cultural environment (not just the
state/resources) internally affects movement framing.
An important observation within social movements is that while some
demands are heard, others are not. Social movement framing offers us a lens to
investigate why movements may – strategically – silence certain voices within a
movement.7 Cultural approaches argue that frames are created to better resonate
within the context they are deployed. Benford and Snow (2000) argue that suc-
cessful motivational framing attracts bystanders to participate. Benford (1993)
finds that internal conflicts about how to portray the movement often occur.
As Gamson (2004, p. 242) makes clear, social movements know that “bystand-
ers don’t necessarily stay bystanders” and paying attention to how movements
are portrayed in the media and public perceptions of movements is important
to understanding what movement’s demand and how they frame their demands.
Framing can also deter bystanders from joining and this was a concern for many
within the F20 (Badran, 2020). Benford and Snow (2000) claim, that movements
highlight frames that suggest an urgency to act in light of perceived threat and
as an empowering duty. Berbrier (2002) finds how three district movements stra-
tegically try to distance their movements from stigmatised statuses and frame
their causes in ways that resonate with the U.S. public. For instance, Berbrier
finds that members from the Deaf Culture Movement adopt a “minority status”
94  Sammy Zeyad Badran
frame and assert similarity to the Civil Rights Movement. These claims allow
such movements to “claim legitimacy” and assert “normalcy” with the U.S. public
(Berbrier, 2002, p. 553). Holzhacker (2014) also finds that framing gay rights as
human rights led to a broader appeal and ultimately made the movement more
successful. Williams (2004, p. 101) effectively outlines the relationship between
movement framing and cultural resonance:

The salience and applicability of the various symbolic elements will vary.
Some cultural elements will be more important and held more dearly. Even
within the boundaries of the legitimate, cultural effectiveness will vary. The
variation will occur across groups within the general population, across issue
areas or arenas of social life, and over time, depending on events. In social
movement terms, some cultural resources – such as frames, or symbols, or
ideologies – will resonate and others will not. When and where this is so
involves resonance.

In relation to “culturally sensitive” issues, the F20 was concerned with what
Benford and Snow (2000) term narrative fidelity and internal consistency of frames.
Narrative fidelity refers to the “extent to which a frame fits within existing cul-
tural narratives and meanings”, while internal consistency refers to whether the
movement’s framing is consistent (Williams, 2004, p. 105). Framing literature
tends to overlook why and when certain frames and voices within movements are
silenced and excised. In other words, past cultural approaches tend to overlook
why certain voices are strategically silenced within social movements.8
This chapter focuses on framing strategies, while also engaging with political
opportunity structures, to understand the role of women in Morocco’s uprising.
While extant literature focuses on grievances and tools (social media) lead-
ing to mobilisation, much less attention has been devoted to understanding
the functioning of social movements from within. This analysis will show that
some political opportunities existed leading up to 2011. These political openings
include a wave of feminists within civil society that focused on reforming the
family code law and the Arab Spring. However, as we will see, some controversial
elements within the F20 were silenced to be more culturally compatible with the
Moroccan public.

Opportunities for a new feminism: From

the institutional realm to the streets
Morocco has made strides in expanding women’s rights since the early 1990s.
Women’s rights in Morocco are often tied to a family law that encompasses
marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody. As may be clear, legislation
regarding women’s rights applies overwhelmingly to married women. Said dif-
ferently, women’s rights, freedoms, and identities are tied to the family.9 The
societal view of women and their ties to the family is evident in both feminist dis-
courses and legal reforms aimed at expanding women’s rights and freedoms. Most
 Feminist demands, opportunities, and frames 95
discourse surrounding women’s rights have focused on reforming the Moroccan
family law code, the Mudawwana. Feminist organisations have traditionally
focused on reforming the Mudawwana, and in 1992, “Western-leaning Muslim
Feminist” associations, primarily the leftist/Socialist oriented Union de l’Action
Feminine (UAF), organised a “One Million Signature Campaign” to promote
gender equality and eventually forced the government to revise the law and “pro-
moted women’s inclusion in the national Economy (Feather, 2014, p. 22)”. Despite
the increased feminist activism, no clause mentioned gender equality, and the
law maintains that within marriage authority remains solely with men and that a
married woman must obey their spouse. Colligan (2000, p. 22) outlines the short-
comings of the new Mudawwana: “Women are expected to be obedient to their
husbands; fathers still have a say in their daughters’ marriages; males and females
are subject to a different minimum age for marriages, 18 and 15 respectively; and
only widowed women (as opposed to divorced ones) are granted both physical and
legal guardianship of their children”. As may be clear, the law frames women’s
rights as a family issue and feminist organisations worked within this institutional
framework by repeatedly demanding reforms to the Mudawwana. King Hassan’s
speech following the passing of the reform of the family code refers to women
activists that fought for change as daughters and “gave a speech that resembled
that of a father teaching his daughter life-lessons (Zvan, 2009, p. 60)”.
The familial link to women’s rights continued and culminated in more reforms
to the Mudawwana in 2004. Shortly after the 1993 reform, secular women’s asso-
ciations worked with socialist and leftist political parties and demanded a rise
in the age of marriage for women to 18, the abolition of polygamy, and the offi-
cial registration of children born out of wedlock, among other demands. Secular
women’s rights organisations continued to focus their efforts on reforming the
family law. In 2000, “more than 60 women’s groups organized demonstrations
in Rabat calling for reforms to women’s legal status, especially within the fam-
ily code”, while Islamist organisation held rallies opposing such reform (Feather,
2014, p. 22). The 2004 Mudawwana was proposed to parliament by King Hassan’s
son and successor, King Mohammed VI. The passing of the new family law was
praised by the international community and is the result of more than “20 years
of struggle by feminists and women’s NGOs (Ennaji and Sadiqi, 2011, p. 85)”.
The new code heeded to key demands like raising the age of marriage to 18 for
both sexes, allowing polygamy only with the first wife’s consent, allowing women
to file for divorce, officially recognising and registering children born outside of
wedlock, and allowing both spouses to be responsible for the family. However,
the law still encompassed all women’s issues and rights within the umbrella of
the family. As the law makes clear: “the Mudawwana is a not law for the women
only, but a Mudawwana for the entire family – father, mother and children – and
further ensures that this Mudawwana eliminates discrimination against women,
protects the rights of children and preserves men’s dignity (Human Rights
Education Associates, 2004, p. 5)”. In essence, the new Mudawwana has paved
the path towards more gender equality and is one of the most progressive exam-
ples of women’s rights legislation in the region.
96  Sammy Zeyad Badran
As may be clear, the aforementioned examples of reform are strictly institu-
tional strives towards gender equality, and Moroccan feminist organisations have
traditionally focused on this institutional realm of women’s rights. The spike in
protests and contentious politics in Morocco following the Tunisian Jasmine
Revolution of 2010 has not only led to increased protests for further democrati-
sation, but also widened political opportunities for feminist causes. Within the
F20, these were represented by feminist organisations along with independent
feminist activists.
As we will see, since the Arab Spring there has been the shift away from
feminist demands of merely institutional reforms of family laws and towards
changing societal norms complicates the Moroccan gendered framework by no
longer focusing on just familial issues, but rather focusing on societal norms
and traditions that pertain to unmarried and married women alike. A report by
the United Nations Committee Against Torture prepared by three Moroccan
human rights organisations, including the influential Democratic Association of
Moroccan Women (ADFM) seems to advocate that there indeed should be a shift
of focus from solely fighting for change within the juridical realm. In response
to the latest Mudawwana reform, they seem to indicate that juridical reforms
are a positive step forward and that the underlying problem lies within societal
norms:

All of these concrete developments will certainly improve the status of

Moroccan women. However, there are several laws that still discriminate
against women. Every day, women are deprived of their rights under the
weight of traditions and customs that go against non-discriminatory legisla-
tion in effect and lead to violence against them.
(World Organization Against Torture, 2004, p. 44)

We will see that within the F20, a “new wave” of feminists shifted demands away
from reforms and challenged societal norms by directly calling for gender equality
and addressing other “culturally sensitive issues”.10

Strategies of framing: Silence and talking back

On 21 February 2011, Fadoua Laroui gave a passionate narrative of her struggles
and the discrimination that single mothers face in front of a government building
of Souq Sebt – a rural village about two hours from Marrakech. After Laroui’s
home was demolished, the local government denied public housing due to her
single mother status.11 Prior to her self-immolation, Laroui tells her story: “How
can I give away my children, because I have nowhere to live with them? They call
me crazy. Have you ever seen a crazy person fighting to keep her children? Where
do I go now? I have no one but God (Salime, 2014, p. 17)”. Louri’s self-immolation
has symbolised the ordeals of women which fall outside the realm of institutional
feminist politics. According to Salime (2014), Louri’s self-immolation helped spur
“protests opposing religion-based state regulation of women’s bodies that has
 Feminist demands, opportunities, and frames 97
“revitalized old feminist claims about full citizenship rights for single mothers
(p. 17)”.
Laroui, as a single mother not living with her parents or family, fell outside the
state’s social safety net since authorities do not recognise children out of wed-
lock.12 The town’s mayor shed light on the subaltern position of Laroui by stating
that “divorced and single women and single mothers live with their parents” and
that she did not qualify for social services in part due to her single mother sta-
tus.13,14 The F20’s official Facebook page, within the same week of Laroui’s death,
posted messages of support for Laroui. One post read:

What kind of change are we asking for? The change that makes a positive
difference in every Moroccan’s life. The kind of change that would have
allowed Fadoua Laroui to feed and shelter her children. Change that would
have earned Fadoua people’s respect for being a hard working single mom,
rather than their despise for being unlucky…. Change is desperately needed.15

In spite of these initial signs from the F20 that the movement would provide an
opportunity for women to directly demand gender equality for all women, the F20
was notably silent to these issues. In essence, despite the political opportunities
for women to demand change, primarily through new political enfranchisement
within an ongoing social movement, feminist demands tended to be silenced
within the F20.
The F20 strategically utilised specific frames and symbols that resonated with
Moroccans, while excising those that did not. Badran (2020) finds that the F20
believed that Islamist symbols, like Islamic attire and gender-divided protests,
would not be culturally resonant with Moroccans.16 In other words, although the
public was conservative and in favour of upholding Islamic traditions and values,
they were not supportive of Islamism.17 Even Islamists within the F20 recognised
this and remained less visible within the F20 during the first three months of
demonstrations (Badran, 2020).
As previously discussed, despite the political opportunities of alliance forma-
tion within the F20, activists did not want to openly address culturally sensitive
issues since, it not only threatened the internal consistency of frames, but pri-
marily since there would have been a lack of narrative fidelity. Leftist and Islamist
activists believed that the movement should not have officially demanded gen-
der-equality or called for the decriminalisation of homosexuality since these
issues would have been used to delegitimise and demobilise the F20.

Silencing
The F20 adopted a human rights and justice frame which called for an array
of constitutional reforms. Interviewees revealed that activists within committees
agreed on the slogans of “Freedom, Dignity, and Social Justice” since it encom-
passed many of the specific demands of the movement. However, other slogans
and banners concerning the release of political prisoners, ending corruption,
98  Sammy Zeyad Badran
recognising the Amazigh language18, and even demanding the ouster of specific
politicians were commonly raised in demonstrations (Badran, 2020). Activists
repeatedly expressed that culturally sensitive issues like gender equality, freedom
of religion, and LGBT rights were actively silenced within the movement since
according to activists they fall within the broad frame of freedom or human rights
(Badran, 2020). The General Secretary of the JCO made clear that the Islamist
organisation would not explicitly say that the organisation was against slogans for
gender equality, but rather that the topic “was better left alone for a later time”.19
Another Islamist F20 activist had a visceral response to why the movement did
not explicitly address “culturally sensitive” issues like LGBT rights: “Do all of
Americans agree with gay marriage? No! Not all of them! There are groups and
organisations that refuse homosexuality (In the West) – like in France. The differ-
ence in Morocco is that we can’t discuss a marginal issue when larger democracy
is not present”.20 According to many Islamists, gender equality and LGBT rights
were marginal issues that were better left alone until full democratic reforms were
adopted in Morocco. Some Islamists believed that the state itself implanted these
discussions concerning sensitive issues within the F20 in order to weaken it. In
the words of one JCO member, “the Moroccan state raised this question in order
to weaken the movement. They would say in the media that they (F20) are homo-
sexuals and eat during Ramadan etc. – knowing that the public is Muslim and do
not accept these things”.21 A member of the Islamist organisation, Hizb-al-umma,
illustrates the divide with the movement and echoes the Islamist sentiment that
such issues can only be addressed after democratisation:

Some people defended personal liberties as their main demand. Personal

freedoms refer to gender equality and homosexuals and freedom of religion.
These demands, within Hizb-al-Umma, are considered secondary. Which
means that they are not primary, the main demand is changing the power
(distribution) and democratizing and having democratic elections, but these
other issues are not the primary goals. The day we have a democratic state we
can talk about these things.22

Many leftists agreed with Islamists that addressing sensitive issues surrounding
gender equality and LGBT rights should not have occurred. One leftist activist
asserted that “people who believed in real human rights had no problem with
the LGBT community”, but also recognised that if the movement would have
explicitly addressed culturally sensitive issues, then “people will run away from
the movement” and the regime would “take advantage” of this to weaken the
movement.23 Williams and Blackburn (1996) find a similar dynamic occurring
within the United States Anti-Abortion Movement that was forced to adopt a
form of liberalism that many within the movement disagreed with. Said differ-
ently, sometimes movements hide their “true colors” in order to resonate with the
public. This was certainly the case for many liberals and leftists within the F20.
A prominent F20 co-founder lamented that some within the F20 movement tried
to address such issues since this played into the regime’s goal of delegitimising
 Feminist demands, opportunities, and frames 99
the movement: “What we wanted was a new constitution with new rights and
individual rights…They hijacked this cause, and for me…So, some from the left
fell in this trap because now they talk a lot about this”.24
The previous director of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH),
a human rights organisation that has a long history of fighting for addressing
women’s rights, recognised that:

if the February 20 Movement talked about these topics then it would have
to deal with the public, and not just the Islamists, but the general Moroccan
public. So, they (F20) preferred to delay talking about this and we met youth
that were known in the movements concerning personal freedoms and sex-
ual freedoms, they would say ‘we won’t talk about these topics right now….
When the movement receded, these topics were brought back again.25

Similarly, a member of the DWP, a radical Marxist political party, suggested that
the issue of gender equality and LGBT rights were not even allowed to be dis-
cussed in rural areas of the country:

In Mr’rt we did not talk about this topic because it’s a region with a strong
Amazigh and Islamic culture…In Meknes, however, the brothers that were
part of the JCO would separate men from women (in demonstrations).26

The same interviewee distanced himself from groups advocating gender equality
and expanded personal liberties: “I don’t have a direct relationship with these
guys (MALI) and the same thing goes for the homosexuals”.27 A USFP party
leader from Agadir echoed similar sentiments when asked if the movement dis-
cussed demanding gender equality or LGBT rights. She claimed that moderate
leftist parties, like the USFP, were especially hesitant to take on these issues. In
her words:

As classic leftist parties, we see those demands as liberal claims that are not
really interesting. We feel like if we get to solve the big issues, then these
other issues will be solved in time. If we get to have jobs for everyone and we
get justice for everyone, then even women will be included. So, these (gender
equality and LGBT rights) were not in our discussions.28

Said differently, moderate leftist parties tended to agree with their Islamist rivals
that the F20’s overarching demand of “Freedom, Dignity, and Social Justice”
encompassed culturally sensitive issues that, according to this activist, were sec-
ondary issues. The same USFP activist asserted that “when you say freedom, it
includes everyone. When you say dignity, it includes everyone” and that “women’s
issues” within the USFP focus not on equality between sexes, but on fighting for
“good education, good health, and justice”.29 This is representative of the “old
school” feminist belief that change should occur through reforms and by adhering
to, not challenging, cultural norms. A journalist who covered the F20 movement
100  Sammy Zeyad Badran
and participated with the movement summarises the divide within the F20 con-
cerning directly addressing gender equality and personal liberties:

There was an official slogan of “dignity, freedom, and social justice”. There
were some leftists, especially feminists or women’s movements, who would
say that there needs to be gender-equality within this slogan as well: dig-
nity, freedom, social justice, and gender equality…So there were discussions
and differences…Personal liberties (referring to LGBT rights) created a lot
of problems too, even among those that believed in defending personal liber-
ties. Some would say that personal liberties were a marginal battle and that
even if it is an official demand, the conditions for achieving and defending
personal freedoms are not present in Morocco. Also, the state would use
events to weaken the movement and hurt it and reverse the public opinion
against it. When they talked about leftists, they [the state] would say that
they are a group of atheists that want to rid [the country] of religion and
the Moroccan identity. So, there were justifications to attack some groups
within F20 that defended gender equality and religious freedom and freedom
to eat during Ramadan. I mean, you (the movement) are in front of a public
that is uneducated. Many in the general public are not educated enough to
form independent opinions not affiliated with that of the state…So, unfor-
tunately, citizens believed that this movement was foreign to them or it was
not democratic and would lead to failure, like what happened in Libya and
Syria.30

As we see activists within the F20, regardless of what their stance on gender
equality or LGBT rights are, strategically felt that such issues should not visibly be
demanded within the movement. Overwhelmingly, activists believed that silenc-
ing divisive voices would effectively garner support from bystanders and create
a winning coalition that focused on the F20’s overarching goals. For Islamists,
silencing demands tended to be based on ideology and the belief that these issues
were inherently incompatible with Islamic values. However, leftists strategi-
cally tried to silence voices that called for gender equality and more personal
liberties.31
Therefore, we see that narrative fidelity and internal consistency were important
for the F20. In other words, it is clear that activists were aware that the movement
needed public support to succeed. In turn, this convinced many leftists to not
openly address culturally sensitive issues in and adhere to the justice frame of
“Freedom, Dignity, and Social Justice”, which is compatible with existing cultural
narratives. Similarly, as Badran (2020) outlines, many F20 activists were also cog-
nizant of the need for internal consistency of F20’s justice frames, and therefore,
tried to focus on the overarching goal, transitioning the country to a democratic
parliamentary monarchy. This strategic recognition by many in the movement
essentially led to the aforementioned silencing of women. Moreover, women were
even told not to smoke during protests as this conflicted with Moroccan cultural
norms.32 As we see, the movement silenced controversial voices within the F20
 Feminist demands, opportunities, and frames 101
in order to resonate with the public, while framing the movement as moderate,
reformist, and culturally compatible with the Moroccan public.

Talking Back
Women within the F20 challenged the movement’s official stance of not including
gender equality in the movement’s slogans, banners, and official list of demands.
One feminist activist indicated that some women would explicitly demand gender
equality: “we would say freedom, dignity, and social justice, and the women would
say and gender equality. But this was not an official demand”.33 Members of MALI
were at the forefront of the battle over including gender equality to the F20’s main
demands. The co-founder of MALI revealed that Islamists and leftist allies tried
to silence these demands:

In Morocco there is a lot of cultural relativism and I am against this. Human

rights are the same everywhere in the world, so it was very complicated when
we talked raising slogans of equality between men and women, for secular-
ism, or for individual liberties, or for freedom of religion….There was a lot
of misogyny and sexism and the craziest thing is that it was from moderate
activists and not Islamists.34

Another MALI activist indicated that for many leftist allies, “the question of
women is not a priority”.35 In May 2011, women recognised that their demands
were not being addressed within the F20, and began creating new factions within
the movement. The leaderless and horizontally organised structure of the F20
allowed for this.36 In the words of one independent feminist F20 member:

We created a group in the F20 Movement called Ashreeneyiat (the Women of

F20)… There were always conflicts in the committees about gender equality
and that it should be present in the movement (demands). So Ashreeneyiat
of Casablanca went out first and we (in Agadir) did the same. We women
would go out with our demands for gender equality and chant against sexual
harassment.37

Many women lamented that “old wave” feminists were noticeably absent from F20
demonstrations and some believed that the “old wave feminists” were no longer
effective: “The old school, in the beginning they were dynamic and changed a
lot of things-this is true. You cannot deny it. But it’s like the trade unions here in
Morocco. Most of them are dependent on political parties and feminist organisa-
tions are dependent on them too”.38
The absence of old wave and reformist-oriented women’s rights groups provided
a political opportunity for new wave feminists, like MALI. These new move-
ments were not tied to political parties or international-NGOs. These new-wave
feminists, on other hand, tended to focus on bottom-up change by forming new
women’s movements within the F20:
102  Sammy Zeyad Badran
Due to their [old-wave women’s rights groups] absence, the F20 movement
allowed networks of radical feminists to become active. For example, there
was a group called, The Arriving Women [Al Nisah Al-Kademat]. There was
now a network that called AL-Femme or Red-Femme which are emerging
in Rabat and Marrakech too. There is another initiative called Be Haly Be
Halek [Like me, like you] that defends women’s rights to be in public spaces
and to push back against the violence against women and discriminative
behaviors based on social gender.39

By the end of 2012, the F20 demobilised and protests subsided (Badran, 2020).
However, the brokerage that the F20 facilitated for women, led to many new fem-
inist mobilisations that no longer limited their struggles for women’s rights within
existing institutions. In March 2012, demonstrations demanded justice for the
suicide of 16-year-old Amina al Filani. Filani took her life after her rapist invoked
article 475 – a law that allows the rapist to marry his victim. Women quickly
mobilised to demand a repeal of article 475 (Flock, 2011). A demonstration in
front of the parliament in Rabat was organised by F20 activists and “new wave”
feminist organisations.40
Similarly, in 2012, Woman Choufouch, a Moroccan off-shoot of the Canadian
SlutWalk movement was formed.41 The movement focuses on combating sexist
societal views towards women and primarily fights against blaming victims for
rape.42 The movement’s co-founder, Majdoline Lyazidi, decided not to take an
offensive stance to women’s rights and work for change through state institutions.
In her own words, Majdoline states that:

Growing up I never really understood why society kept teaching us the “don’t
get raped” mentality instead of a “don’t rape” one, anchoring in that way
a never ending victim blaming process of “she was asking/looking for it”. I
think it’s time to change this mentality, we’ve got to give a chance to the
next generations to walk the Moroccan streets feeling safe and respected.
(Skalli, 2014, p. 122)

A secularist-feminist from the F20 believes that these new-wave feminist mobili-
sations were facilitated by the brokerage within the F20 and “what the F20 started
in 2011”.43
Unlike past efforts by established feminist organisations (i.e. ADFM), the dis-
course for change is aimed at society and not solely the government and its laws.
More specifically, the “mentality” of men is often mentioned, with one post allud-
ing to SlutWalk international’s original goal of fighting against blaming women’s
attire for explaining or justifying rape/sexual assaults.44 One of their first posts
reads: “Society teaches don’t get raped rather than don’t rape, it’s time to change
this mentality”.45 As we see, feminist movements that followed the F20 mark a
break from strictly focusing on institutional change to societal change.
Specifically, since 2012 we have seen various mobilisations by women sur-
rounding issues stemming from a new body politic that no longer applies solely to
 Feminist demands, opportunities, and frames 103
married women. Many of my interviewees claim these new wave feminist move-
ments are a result of the brokerage the F20 provided.46 Moreover, as discussed,
many feminists felt that the absence of the institutionalised old wave feminist
organisation paved the way for new movements, like woman Choufouch, to form.
In the words of one independent F20 activist: “This movement (F20) will live in
a different way through different organizations”.47

Conclusion
This chapter outlines how women’s demands for gender equality, along with other
culturally sensitive issues, were strategically silenced within the F20. This chapter
also outlines some political openings before 2011, mainly a wave of reformist-fem-
inists, helped pave the way for new wave feminists that were no longer constricted
to the institutional realm of reforming the Moroccan family code. Islamist and
leftist activists alike silenced voices that openly demanded gender equality and
LGBT rights. Interviewees tended to classify both demands as “culturally sensitive
issues” that were already addressed within the justice frame of “Freedom, Dignity,
and Social Justice”. Activists tended to focus on the cultural incompatibility of
addressing these issues – even if they personally believed in gender equality and
decriminalising homosexuality. In essence, activists believed that making explicit
demands for gender equality, specifically, would have led to a lack of narrative
fidelity, while simultaneously threatened the internal consistency of F20’s justice
frames and goal of a democratic parliamentary monarchy.
Another finding of the chapter is that the F20 facilitated brokerage among like-
minded feminist-activists who eventually formed their own separate movements
that rejected the “old school” reformist and institutionalised women’s movements.
In essence, despite the internal silencing that occurred within the F20, brokerage
was facilitated within the F20 among women and new and creative movements
were created. Since the advent of the F20, there have been various mobilisations
by feminists that no longer focus solely on the rights of just married women.
There has been a shift away from traditional feminist demands of demanding
reforms of family laws and towards changing societal norms. This complicates the
gendered framework of equating women’s rights with familial issues. Feminists are
now focusing on expanding rights to unmarried and married women alike. Zakia
Salime (2012, p. 2) argues that “the new feminist subjectivities in the February 20
(Movement) present us with a counter-topography that disturbs first, the NGO-
ization of feminist activism, second, the confinement of this activism to women’s
spaces, and third, the state’s regulation of the NGOs sector”. My interviews
reflected this same sentiment by women within the F20.
The trend away from women’s issues outside a strictly institutional realm is
important since it tells us where Moroccan feminism may be headed. Indeed,
the online activism of women following the Arab Spring has led to new dis-
courses about how to better fight for change outside the traditional juridical realm
of “family laws” and penal codes. Indeed, as destitute-unmarried women from
rural Morocco, neither Laroui nor Filali had much to expect from the established
104  Sammy Zeyad Badran
women’s rights groups or the state. Their performative suicides were perhaps the
only way their voices could be heard.
The trend of increased discourse surrounding the question of self-agency
over the female body continues in Morocco. On 16 June 2015 two women were
arrested on “public obscenity” charges for wearing skirts in Agadir, Morocco. The
arrest of the two women sparked national outrage in the form of demonstrations,
sit-ins, and online petitions with over 14,000 signatures by Moroccan women.48
Many women wore skirts and some held up signs denouncing the “public obscen-
ity law”. Eventually the women were cleared of any charges and released. The
creation of a Facebook page titled “wearing dresses is not a crime” again sparked
discourse surrounding the female body and featured various women posting pic-
tures of themselves in skirts.49 This is indicative of a more common trend to shift
discourse from strictly the language of reforms and into a realm of body politic.
Therefore, this analysis of the trend away from women’s issues outside a strictly
institutional realm is important since it tells us where Moroccan feminism may be
headed. Indeed, since the F20 and the creation of Woman Choufouch, we have
seen various mobilisations by women surrounding issues stemming from a new
body politic that no longer applies solely to married women, but to unmarried
women as well.
Despite the internal silencing that occurred within the F20, the images of
Arab women engaging in contentious politics against societal norms does decon-
struct “the perception of the Arab women as powerless, invisible, and voiceless”
and as Houda Abadi notes, “through their active online and offline participation,
they showed that these orientalist representations of the Arab women are only
imagined (Abadi 2014)”. The long and dynamic history of feminism in Morocco
attests to this deconstruction of the “submissive Arab woman” and the more
recent examples of contentious politics outlined in this paper demonstrate that
women can exploit the political opportunities in order to gain enhance their
networks and mobilise in new and creative ways.50
This study’s findings contribute to the blossoming research on feminist activ-
ism in North Africa. It also opens avenues for further research that illustrates
the importance of studying movements from within. This approach highlights
internal power dynamics that may hinder the visibility of certain elements within
social movements. This is especially important for women and feminist activists
within conservative environments. As outlined in this chapter, a movement’s
aim for cultural resonance can clash with certain demands, like gender equal-
ity. Focusing both on framing and political opportunity structures can highlight
which voices are heard and silenced within social movements.

Notes
1. Women within the F20, like Nidal Hamadache, are credited with popularizing the
movement. Nidal Hamadache’s Facebook posts concerning Morocco’s socioeco-
nomic problems were widely viewed and shared leading up the group’s first protest.
2. To protect interviewees, identities of activists will remain anonymous throughout.
 Feminist demands, opportunities, and frames 105
3. Interview on 05/06/17 with MALI Co-Founder.
4. The term resonance will be used to mean “the ‘fit’ between frames and audiences’
previous beliefs, worldviews, and life experiences (Williams, 2000, p. 105)”.
5. According to interviewees, culturally sensitive issues in Morocco primarily focused
on gender equality, LBGT rights and sexual freedoms, and freedom of religion.
6. Interviews were conducted in Rabat, Casablanca, Tangiers, and Agadir. The con-
clusions for this chapter were based on interviews with seven women participants
of the F20 – all of which identify as leftist or liberal, five male Islamist activists,
four male leftist activists, and one independent journalist. Most interviews were
conducted in Arabic and translated / transcribed into English; however, some were
conducted in English and Spanish too.
7. Benford and Snow (2000) find that “collective action frames are constructed in
part as movement adherents negotiate a shared understanding of some problematic
condition or situation they define as in need of change, make attributions regarding
who or what is to blame, articulate an alternative set of arrangements, and urge
others to act in concert to affect change (615)”.
8. In the case of the F20, many activists silenced controversial voices and demands,
despite privately being supportive of these same demands.
9. Salime (2014) suggests that single mothers illustrate this best since being a single
mother reduces women to a “marginal location from which one cannot make valid
feminist claims (p. 17)”.
10. I use the term “old school feminists” refer to feminist organisations that strived for
change through institutional reforms to the Mudawwana. The term “new school /
new wave feminists” refers to feminists that no longer work strictly within the insti-
tutional realm and are not affiliated with traditional feminist organisations.
11. ‘Fadoua Laroui: The Moroccan Mohamed Bouazizi’, The Nation, 27 February 2011.
Available at: http://www.thenation.com/article/fadoua-laroui-moroccan-mohamed-
bouazizi/ (Accessed: April 26, 2021).
12. ‘Moroccan single mother burns herself in protest’, Reuters, 23 February 2011. Available
at: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-morocco-protest-idUSTRE71M4ZF20110223#
ulX0HgV03RI8T7l5.97 (Accessed: 26 April 2021).
13. IBID.
14. The term “subaltern” is coined by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who tells us that
“the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more
deeply in the shadow (Spivak 1988: 83)”. Indeed, Filali came from small impover-
ished-rural villages, often neglected by the state, and their subaltern position within
that context as not only inferior woman, but more critically invisible unmarried
women, regulates them to the lowest crusts of the subaltern periphery. Zakia Salime
(2014) suggests that “Laroui’s death invites us instead to consider politics and resist-
ance from the standpoint of subalternity (p. 17)”.
15. Moroccans For Change Faceboook page. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/
MoroccansForChange/posts/206562199358114 (Accessed: 26 April 2021).
16. Badran (2019) also finds that framing conflicts forces movements to change diag-
nostic frames and prognostic frames, which can ultimately demobilise a movement.
17. This is a claim made many F20 activists and supported by survey results. The 2018
Arab barometer found that 72% of respondents disagreed that women’s share of
inheritance should be equal to men, while 47% believed that a husband should have
the final say in all decisions concerning the family. 82% of respondents considered
themselves religious, while just 36% of respondents were in favor of “religious peo-
ple” holding public office.
18. The Amazigh community are the indigenous inhabitants of pre-Arab Morocco.
19. Interview on 10/31/16 with JCO General Secretary in Rabat.
20. Interview with Islamist F20 activist in Casablanca.
106  Sammy Zeyad Badran
21. Interview on 11/04/16 with JCO member.
22. Interview on 11/05/16 with an Hizb-Al-Umma Activist.
23. Interview on 01/19/17 with independent activist in Rabat.
24. Interview on 10/06/16 with Leftist F20 Co-Founder.
25. Interview on 10/05/16 in Rabat with Ex-President of AMDH.
26. Interview on 10/13/16 with DWP Leader in Mr’rt.
27. IBID.
28. Interview on 12/13/16 in Agadir with USFP Regional Leader.
29. IBID.
30. Interview on 12/23/16 with Journalist in Rabat.
31. Most leftists I interviewed personally believed in expanding personal liberties and
gender equality.
32. Interview on 05/06/17 with MALI Co-Founder.
33. Interview on 01/04/17 with independent F20 Activist in Marrakech.
34. Interview on 05/06/17 with MALI Co-Founder.
35. Interview on 03/13/17 with MALI Member in Rabat.
36. The F20 is what Zeynep Tufekci (2017) labels a horizontalist social movement. This
means that the movement does not have official leaders and is not organised in a
hierarchal fashion with clear leadership and decision-making structures. Decisions
were made within loosely-organised committees based on a general consensus.
37. Interview on 12/12/16 in Agadir.
38. IBID.
39. Interview on 01/04/17 with F20 Leader in Marrakech.
40. We are Amina page found here: https://www.facebook.com/We-Are-All-Amina-
Filali-392757007401977/
41. The word Choufouch is a sexual invitation used by men in Morocco and can also
mean “why don’t we see you (Sadiqi, 2014: 15).”
42. Lahdidi, Mehdi. 2012 “Maghress : Woman Choufouch, Une Marche Contre Le
Harcèlement Sexuel Dans Nos Rues.” N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2015.
43. Interview on 12/12/16 in Agadir.
44. Woman Choufouch Facebook page. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/Wom-
an-Choufouch-105487879580033 (Accessed: 26 April 2021).
45. IBID.
46. Brokerage refers to new connections between previously unconnected or weakly
connected activists.
47. Interview on 01/04/17 with F20 Leader in Marrakech.
48. ‘Sit-in in Casablanca in Solidarity with Two Women Arrested for Wear-
ing Miniskirts’, Morocco World News, 29 June 2015. Available at: http://www.
moroccoworldnews.com/2015/06/161982/sit-in-in-casablanca-in-solidarity-
with-two-women-arrested-for-wearing-miniskirts/ (Accessed: 26 April 2021).
49. IBID.
50. Some of these new forms of contention have been incendiary and inspired by rad-
ical western feminists, like FEMEN. For instance, Tunisian feminist Amina Sboui
posted bare-chested photos of herself online with the words “my body belongs to
me, it’s not the source of anyone’s honor” written in Arabic on her body. Similarity,
Egyptian feminist, Alia Magda Elmahdy, posted a nude photo of herself online to
protest societal sexism and violence. Amina’s and Elmahdy’s actions stirred contro-
versy throughout the Arab world and protests in Tunisia and Egypt. Like Woman
Choufouch, their body politics and political motives focused on sovereignty of wom-
en’s bodies in spite of breaking cultural honors.
 Feminist demands, opportunities, and frames 107
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7 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
IN RURAL AFRICA
HOW AND WHY MOZAMBICAN STATE
CLOSED THE PROSAVANA PROGRAM
Luca Bussotti and Laura António Nhaueleque

Introduction
Protest and social movements are an integral part of political and social life
in Africa. While most research gives prominence to the role of urban forms of
collective action for political change, only recently there has been a growing
interest in rural protests. A first moment which attracted the attention of some
scholars regarding the agrarian question was in South Africa with respect to the
constitution of the Landless People’s Movement in 2001, whose peak was the
organisation of the 2005 National Land Summit (SAHO, 2019). The Landless
People’s Movement was affiliated to La Via Campesina1 and spread its influence
to various countries of Southern Africa, such as Namibia and Zimbabwe. In
2008, together with other actors, the Landless People’s Movement formed the
Poor People’s Alliance; a network of radical South African grassroots movements
and communities that boycotted electoral processes in the country. Today, this
network has expanded its interests, as in the case of campaigns for a sustainable
agriculture or for gender equity in South Africa.
Similar rural movements of opposition to national governments as well as to
international neoliberal policies were constituted all over the world, especially in
developing countries of Asia, Latin America, and Africa, adhering to an explicit
anti-capitalist ideology (Moyo and Yeros, 2005). Although with local differenti-
ations, the question of land acquired a meaning beyond its material importance:
the notion immaterial or symbolic “territories” informed the development of new
ideologies to oppose neoliberalism (Fernandes, 2009). “A different model of devel-
opment and way of life” were the important issues contended between rural social
movements and neoliberal policies (Rosset and Martínez-Torres, 2012, p. 2).
This was the international atmosphere which characterised the rural issues
when Mozambique became involved in a huge agrarian development pro-
gramme, ProSavana, carried out through neoliberal principles, at the beginning
of the 2010s. The Mozambican government lead by Frelimo, and in particular by
President Guebuza (2004–2014) created a strong incentive for foreign investments
as well as megaprojects, involving the resettlement of the people living on the
lands involved (Lamas, 2018).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-7
110  Luca Bussotti and Laura António Nhaueleque
However, the Mozambican government and the international partners of the
ProSavana, Brazil and Japan, did not anticipate the political and social risk of
implementing this programme. There was an illusory optimism that it would not
face fierce opposition, given the country’s weak political opposition and absence of
rural protests (Bussotti, 2014). Strikingly, the movements that opposed ProSavana
were able to define clear goals and forms of struggle, claiming a different, more
equitable and sustainable form of rural development. Starting from these actions,
they seized political opportunities to force the Mozambican government to close
this ambitious program; and indeed, their actions culminated in a halt to the
ProSavana program (Koomans, 2004, p. 65).
Through the lenses of political opportunities theories, it can be observed that
rural social movements against the ProSavana, were able to redefine “the ground”
of mobilisation and leverage the promoters of this program. Rural movements
could draw on a political opportunity for a struggle that their adversaries had not
calculated. This was possible for two reasons: first, rural movements had acquired
an unexpected political maturity in a short time, thanks to the development of
continuous horizontal contacts, capacity building programs, and a network of
alliances carried out sub rosa and with modest financial resources; and second,
the process surprised the mentors of ProSavana program, preventing them from
recognising the risk to their intentions that this program would offer. Overall,
our analysis reveals the importance of two political opportunity structures – local
allies and international allies.
This study seeks to clarify how organisations, such as UNAC (National Union
of Peasants) or FM (Women Forum), which seemed politically close to Frelimo’s
positions, were able to provoke a radical change in Mozambican state policy as
well as in the position of the local social movements, obtaining, as their final
result, the end of the ProSavana program. To this end, a qualitative methodology
was adopted, combining bibliographical and documental analysis and interviews
with privileged witnesses who took part in the campaign against the ProSavana
program.
The relevance of this study is twofold. First political changes, in Mozambique,
have historically occurred through top-down initiatives, systematically excluding
local populations. Second Frelimo is the dominant party in a semi-authoritarian
regime that limits both opposition parties and citizen participation in politics.
ProSavana program is a thus a paradigmatic case as it made clear the relevant role
of citizens in politics, against the expectations/calculations of the elites.
This chapter is organised as follows. Following a discussion on the rush for land
in Africa, and international pressure for implementation of neoliberal policies,
we present an overview of rural protests in Africa. Next the framework for the
analysis of ProSavana in Mozambique is presented, highlighting the social pro-
tests in Mozambique. The methods and data are also described. After illustrating
how political opportunity structures represent a fundamental tool to interpret the
strategies adopted by rural social movements in Mozambique, the next sections
conduct a case study analysis of ProSavana. They aim to show the chronological
evolution of ProSavana program and opposition to it by social rural movements.
 Social movements in rural Africa 111
In these sections we demonstrate how decisive the domestic as well the inter-
national alliances were. These were established by the mentors of the “No to
ProSavana” campaign, having as ultimate goal the end of the program. The con-
clusion summarises the results of this research.

The economic and political presuppositions for the rush

for land in Africa: Awakening the sleeping giant
The 2007–2008 period marks a new phase of agricultural investments in rural
Africa, with the so-called food crisis (De Brito, 2017). In a quite unexpected way,
the world woke up to discover a scarcity in basic commodities, such as rice or soy-
beans, provoking a rapid rise in their market prices. These trends in food shortage
and price increases developed parallel to the increase of prices in other important
items, such as energy, which directly affected the urban middle classes.
The food crisis affected most developing countries and in Sub-Saharan Africa
witness an increase in food import bills of 74% between 2007–2008; (Mittal, 2009).
African States, which in 2003 had signed, the African Union Comprehensive
Africa Agriculture Development Programme for increasing public investments in
agriculture for the following five years (with the commitment to allocate at least
10% of national budgetary resources), did not fully commit to this goal (Mengoub,
2018). As most states failed to address the challenges of the Agricultural sector,
the solution came from the outside, with the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) and World Bank (WB) taking the lead. In a document released in 2009,
both institutions highlighted the main avenue for African agricultural devel-
opment and the world in general: a rapid increase of productivity in African
agriculture, which would contribute to worldwide food self-sufficiency. African
lands (supposedly underexplored) would have to be submitted to a process of
intensive agriculture, under the aegis of an attractive political program, based on
the principle of food security for all (FAO and WB, 2009). A similar perspective
was shared by the most powerful countries in the world. In a meeting held in 2009
in L’Aquila (Italy), the G8 issued a Joint Statement on Global Food Security that
agreed on the investment of 20 billion dollars on the agricultural sector, with a
special attention to Africa.
The ideology that informed the G8’s Joint Statement, as well as FAO and WB
documents, underlined important common characteristics of all: they were mar-
ket-oriented and against all forms of protectionism, and perceived the increase in
price of food as an opportunity for Africa. To confront hunger and crop scarcity,
it was necessary to transform the sleeping agricultural sector of Africa into a
competitive commercial tool to guarantee a “rapid development” (FAO and WB,
2009, p. 2). Specific crops attractive to the international market, such as cassava,
cotton, maize, soybeans, rice, and sugar, had to be privileged.
Three countries served as case-studies in the study conducted by the FAO and
WB (2009); Mozambique, Nigeria and Zambia; and two paradigmatic models
of rural development success were considered as points of departure for these
countries: the PRODECER project in the Brazilian region of Cerrado, and a
112  Luca Bussotti and Laura António Nhaueleque
project in the Northeast Region of Thailand. Both regions had unfavourable cli-
mate conditions for significant agricultural production but thanks to significant
infra-structural investment, and intensive programs of agricultural development,
heavily dependent on agrochemical fertilizers, they were able to experience
agricultural transformation and boost the production of certain products. The
question then was how to apply the same methodology to Africa, reproducing,
with few adaptations, the two aforementioned models of success.
FAO and WB study suggested measures to be applied to a country such as
Mozambique for future programs of agricultural development. The main idea was
that the land had to be available for market-oriented production, “allowing land
to change hands over time to those who can use it most productively” (FAO and
WB, 2009, p. 16). Such program of privatisation should have led to an intensive
exploitation of land, enabling the commercialisation of agricultural commodities
for exportation. The catch was that this program could provoke the expropriation
of many small peasants, and subject them to a condition of being simply subordi-
nated workers. This issue, had to be tackled politically, and so were the proposals
to extend the land in a “vibrant commercial farm system” (FAO and WB, 2009,
p. 20), to the detriment of forests and pastoral lands, considered as unproductive.
Some African researchers stated at the time that this process of a capital-inten-
sive agricultural modernisation was not adequate for the local productive systems,
both from an economic and a social point of view (Mosca, 2017).
Despite concerns about programmes of privatisation and modernisation of
African agriculture, African states were ready to implement policies coherent
with the attractive format of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition.
This Alliance was launched in 2012, under the auspices of the G8 in the 2013
Summit in the United Kingdom. The pivotal idea was that of modernisation of
rural African society, “implicitly or explicitly suggesting that ‘traditional’ socie-
ties must develop or progress into ‘modern’ ones”, with very little space for small
peasants (McKeon, 2014, p. 8). This Alliance aimed to propose an integrated and
apparently attractive pattern of growth.
Immediate adherents to this Alliance were the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, together with many chemical multina-
tionals, interested in helping international organisations in their effort to increase
African land productivity, companies such as Yara, Syngenta, and Monsanto.
This involvement of multinational corporations in a crusade against poverty in
Africa made it possible to transform the ideas of New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD), officially launched in 2011, into a concrete program,
despite many criticisms (Odésiná, 2012). Kofi Hannan, in a famous discourse held
in Addis Ababa in 2004, appealed to the African States to adhere to an African
Green Revolution (AGRA, officially launched in 2006), which Yara sponsored at
the 2006 African Fertilizer Summit in Nigeria (McKeon, 2014).
The role of agrochemical corporations was fundamental for implementing the
program of the New Alliance in Africa. The Pan African Chemistry Network,
in 2012, offered a precise model for a “sustainable intensification” of agricul-
tural productivity, having as its specific target the small landholders (The Pan
 Social movements in rural Africa 113
African, 2012, p. 3). An integration of organic and inorganic fertilizers, known
as Integrated Pest Management, was promoted. This approach received many
criticisms because of its environmental impact and financial constraints, forcing
peasants to buy new seeds every year, increasing their debts with the banks.

Rural protests in Africa

Social movements, protests, and manifestations are an integral part of African
politics and society (Bussotti and Mutzenberg, 2016). For instance, Larmer
clustered African social movement activity into four periods including social
movements related to African nationalisms (1950–1960), to the first post-colonial
period (1960–1975), to the politics of structural adjustment (1975–1989), and to
the pro-democracy demands (1990–2010 and after) (Larmer, 2010). While other
scholars have proposed different chronological phases (Brandes and Engels, 2011),
it is interesting to note the prevalence of urban protests in the study of African
social movements (Mamdami and Wamba-Dia-Wamba, 1995). Rural movements
did not play a significant role in the four phases identified by Larmer, with a par-
tial exception of the last one. This statement is confirmed by specific research:
Bratton and Van de Walle (1992) stressed that, at the beginning of the 1990s, a
sample of 30 African countries did not give any evidence of rural protests. Asante
(2018), who studied the case of Ghana, confirmed that post-colonial protests in
Africa have been largely urban. According to Wantchekon and García-Ponce
(2014), rural classes could have played an important role in African social and
political protests only in some countries before their independence, and always
in strict alliance with urban classes. Immediately after, especially in the long sea-
son of one-party regimes (approximately from the 1960s to the beginning of the
1990s), rural populations were more the victims than the protagonists of social
transformations, resulting from failed agricultural policies (the State cooperative
in Mozambique or the Ujamaa in Tanzania), or from explicit violence against
them by many African regimes, as in the cases of Angola and Mozambique
(Mkandawire, 2002). In fact, it was only with the liberalisation process that
occurred in Africa in the late 1980s–early 1990s that rural movements became
more prominent. For instance, in many countries, women’s associations played a
leading role, as for instance in South Africa, with the foundation, in 1986, of the
Rural Women’s Movement, of Mali and Tanzania (Tripp, 2003).
Although the pro-democracy protests, since the 1990s had their main expres-
sion in African urban centres, rural protests assumed a significant role, especially
from 2007–2008 onwards, when the programs of agricultural development started
being implemented. As a matter of fact, if the agenda for urban African was
focused on the expansion of civil and political rights, in the countryside the
struggle aimed to protect the right to land and, thus, the material and symbolic
patrimony of local communities.
All over the continent movements of opposition manifested their opposition
to the new wave of land privatisation, intensive exploitation, and use of inorganic
seeds. This occurred in the 2019 meeting held in Burkina Faso, when peasant
114  Luca Bussotti and Laura António Nhaueleque
organisations from nine different West African countries refuted the use of GMOs
or hybrid seeds (FIAN INTERNATIONAL, 2019), as well as in the 2013 meeting
in Harare (Zimbabwe) (LA VIA CAMPESINA, 2013). Despite such widespread
opposition, the adoption of Integrated Pest Management and the process of priva-
tisation of land were implemented all over the continent. Mozambique offered all
the best conditions to receive this model: the institutional availability, a supposed
limited opposition by local peasants, as well as favourable climatic and geolog-
ical conditions, especially in the North of the country. As later shown, these
and other models of agricultural development faced strong societal opposition in
Africa, and particularly in Mozambique, contradicting the optimistic previsions
of the government about the success of an initiative such as ProSavana.

Researching protest in Mozambique

Political changes, in Mozambique, have historically occurred through top-down
initiatives, systematically excluding local populations. This was the case in the
choice for a socialist regime in 1975, immediately after the obtaining of political
independence, as well as for the shift towards a liberal political and economic sys-
tem at the end of the 1980s, which opened the avenue for a new Constitution (1990)
and a General Peace Agreement after a 16-year civil war (1992) (Ngoenha, 2004).
For years, Mozambique was hailed post-war success story (Paris, 2004; Macedo
and Pereira, 2010), however it has recently faced political instability (Muchemwa
and Harris, 2019 while authoritarian practices remain pervasive, as various
democracy indexes, human rights reports and political analysts demonstrate
(Levitsky and Way, 2002; Amnesty International, 2008; Freedom House, 2020).
Across these different historical periods, Mozambican has experienced four waves
of protest as proposed by Larmer (2010).
The first wave started in the 1960s with the struggle against colonialism and
ended in 1975, with the country’s independence. The second wave occurred dur-
ing the socialist experience, known as “First Republic” (1975–1990). From the
outset of independence in 1975, Frelimo, the sole legal party, created many collat-
eral organisations which served as transmission belts within civil society namely:
trade unions, women’s associations (as the Organization of Mozambican Woman
OMM, or the Women Forum Mulher, FM), and peasant movements, such as the
National Union of the Peasants (UNAC). However, civil society was completely
controlled by the regime, and elections served only to confirm the power of the
incumbent party; there was no opposition (Victorino and Silva Sousa, 2018).
Nevertheless, Frelimo underestimated at least two phenomena: the historical
opposition which had developed among local populations, especially in the Centre
and in the North of the country, and the transformations civil society was under-
going, starting from those organisations which Frelimo had created, but that were
becoming more independent and mature (as for instance the UNAC). During
this period there were three forms of struggle against the Frelimo government: the
civil war carried out by Renamo (National Resistance of Mozambique), especially
in the Centre and North of the country (Temudo, 2005); the opposition by rural
 Social movements in rural Africa 115
classes against the policies of villagisation carried out by Frelimo (Monjane and
Bruna, 2019); finally, localised demonstrations organised by urban workers espe-
cially in Maputo, as in the case of railways workers or students of the University
of Eduardo Mondlane in the 1980s. In general, these demonstrations resulted in
the tightening of the measures of repression by Mozambican institutions, leaving
no space for social or political changes.
In the third period (1990–2008), in an apparent atmosphere of peace, social pro-
tests registered a modest intensification. The authoritarian nature of Mozambican
state, with a strict control of popular masses as well as popular organisations, did
not leave many spaces for protests and public demonstrations. The moves towards
political and economic liberalisation had little societal input (Bessa Ribeiro,
2015), even though humanitarian organisations and the church played an impor-
tant role in the peace negotiations that led to the signature of the peace accords
in 1992. During this period, where peace and democracy were still unfolding,
public demonstrations were rare and did not have the desired effect, and the
state often resorted to repression to contain them. An example of such protests
is the Madjermane case, a consistent group of former Mozambican workers in
East Germany, claiming for their lawful pensions. Mozambican State has always
denied the payment of Madjermane’s pensions, despite their weekly protests in
Maputo city (Oppenheimer, 2004).
The last period of protests registered two large and violent demonstrations in
2008, September, and in 2010, February, in Maputo. Protesters were able to build
on social media to amplify their frames and spread the message. However, about
20 people died, and important concessions were made to alleviate an increase in
the price of bread and oil. As Luís de Brito wrote, the most important result was
that the Mozambican state began to fear these demonstrations, reversing a long
tradition of pure repression (De Brito, 2017). Force and violence were the means
used in these demonstrations which were able to obtain some significant but
limited successes. Nevertheless, after the last demonstration of 2010, the urban
context became highly controlled by Mozambican police forces, and violent pro-
tests were never to be repeated.

Political opportunity structures for protest in the countryside

Starting from the end of the 2000s, the Mozambican rural context was the thea-
tre of three great protest movements in response to mega-projects: the coal project
in Tete carried out by the Brazilian Vale, the protests against eucalyptus planta-
tions in the Centre of Mozambique, and finally the opposition to ProSavana.
In the first case, a group of potters, in its majority former soldiers, used violent
means, such as blockage of roads and railways, to obtain a specific objective, an
adequate indemnification to compensate the expropriation by Vale. In the other
two cases the results obtained followed a different, new pattern of social struggle:
a shift from localised claims to a broader perspective embedded in the defence of
land rights by local rural communities. For example, in Manica and Zambezia,
where Portucel, a Portuguese company invested in eucalyptus plantations for the
116  Luca Bussotti and Laura António Nhaueleque
production of pulp and paper etc., the movements were able to renegotiate the
conditions of the original investment. Resistance was even stronger in the case of
ProSavana, as follows. We argue that political opportunity structures were rele-
vant for the success of these protests. Nevertheless, ProSavana offered a different
pattern of exploitation of political opportunities in relation to the traditional
social and political movements we mentioned earlier. For instance, different from
the Tete’s potters, ProSavana opponents did not use violence, but tried to build an
articulated network of alliances based on a common program and ideology. The
surprise-effect in relation to the Mozambican government was that violence was
not used, with the game played on a pure political field. This, as well as pressure
from the other international partners, was also decisive for the success of the “No
to ProSavana” campaign. Our explanatory approach highlights the role of polit-
ical opportunities, that is the various factors that helped the movement attain
their political goals (Meyer, 2004; Sanches, 2022). For the case of Mozambique,
we reveal that local and international alliances and networks played a crucial role
in bringing about the end of the ProSavana.

Methodology
ProSavana is a program of rural development carried out by a coalition of the
Brazilian ABC, the Japanese JICA and the Mozambican government, involving
11 million hectares in the Nacala Corridor, an area composed of 19 districts dis-
tributed among the provinces of Niassa, Nampula, and Zambezia.
Our research question aims to understand how rural populations of the North
of Mozambique were able to close down one of the most important programmes
of agricultural and integrated development in Africa. To this end we employed a
qualitative methodology, using a documental analysis of the available material,
semi-structured interviews with privileged witnesses, namely some of the leaders
of the national organisations engaged in the struggle against ProSavana, com-
plemented by some visits to local communities involved directly in the program,
especially in Nampula province. The privileged witnesses were selected among
the civil society representatives engaged in opposition to the ProSavana. They
all agreed to speak with the team of researchers, although one of them asked for
anonymity, due to his peculiar professional situation. The mosaic of information
obtained was processed through a qualitative methodology, through a discourse
analysis which pointed out the different perspectives of our interviewees about
the various phases of their struggle. The data used confirmed that the decisive
element for the success of the “No to ProSavana” campaign was the close rela-
tionships established among the different actors of this initiative, who were able to
find a common ideology, strongly oriented towards an anti-capitalistic approach.
Our interviews showed that, despite the great differences among the various
components of this campaign, there were a common objective and a shared under-
standing of collective relations in the countryside: they all wanted to protect small
landholders from the ProSavana mega-project, which was interpreted as a menace
to their rights, which had to be overcome through collective action. From our
 Social movements in rural Africa 117
interviews this interpretative framework emerged clearly, as well as the different
roles and approaches of the various entities (and interviewees), as following.

An unpredictable risk: Awakening rural

social resistance against ProSavana
This section presents a short reconstruction of the phases of the movement,
introduces the actors and the political opportunity structures that mattered.

Start: Collecting information and raising awareness

The triangular deal among JICA, ABC, and the Mozambican government in
2009 was shrouded in secrecy; rural organisations were able to capture some
information through unofficial channels, namely international press (Aragão
and Kraychete, 2018) and through direct relations with foreign rural movements,
especially between UNAC and La Via Campesina of Brazil since UNAC was a
member of La Via Campesina. This relation had been possible thanks to previous
contacts between UNAC and the Brazilian Movement of the Peasants Without
Land (MST). MST visited UNAC in 1998 and UNAC became aware of La Via
Campesina and its programs through MST. Besides these sources, Mozambican
public media, i.e. Rádio Moçambique, also began to broadcast news about
ProSavana in 2011. According to Pedro, a member of a local NGO in Nampula,
who participated in all the phases of the campaign against ProSavana, local insti-
tutions had not yet passed on any official information at that time.2
The first Mozambican organisation which asked for information about
ProSavana was ORAM (Rural Association of Mutual Help), but it did not have
as solid an international network as UNAC. For this reason, UNAC activated
its relations with its Brazilian partners. In November 2012, La Via Campesina
organised, together with other Brazilian organisations, such as the Movement of
the Small Producers and the Federation of Organs for Social and Educational
Assistance (FASE), a first visit of UNAC to Brazil. As a result, UNAC returned
to Mozambique with a video which reproduced and explained what the program
PRODECER – which constituted the model for ProSavana – represented for
Brazilian peasants. According to Adriano Vicente, at the time an influent mem-
ber of UNAC, this video was projected in villages in the Nacala Corridor, and it
had a noticeable effect on local populations3. The UNAC, under the leadership
of Augusto Mafigo, was responsible for raising the first alarm about risk related to
ProSavana with respect to the local rural populations. One of the first slogans pro-
moted by UNAC, as Adriano Vicente remembers, was “No peasant without land!”

Local alliances – building shared frameworks

and reaching wider audiences
After having received clearer understanding of the ProSavana programme, many
other associations joined ORAM and UNAC to develop a solid opposition to
118  Luca Bussotti and Laura António Nhaueleque
ProSavana. According to Adriano Vicente, this process was very swift. In about
two months – between November and December 2012, 48 Mozambican associa-
tions had joined the front against ProSavana, starting from the two (ORAM and
UNAC) which formed the first nucleus of opposition. The philosophy of struggle
developed by ORAM and UNAC was shared by the other organisations. The first
idea was that no peasant had to remain without land; the second was a call for
transparency, regular access to information about the program; finally, ProSavana
had to guarantee above all the alimentary needs of the local populations before
food export.
A bottom-up approach was adopted, contrary to what the ProSavana insti-
tutional actors were doing. This bottom-up approach was possible thanks to
UNAC’s, and in part, ORAM’s, local networks. Two meetings were called to
share information with local populations. The first one was held in Nampula, in
2011, at Quinta Naja, and the second one in Inhambane (Quiva). Here, the oppo-
sition against ProSavana was officially formalised, despite differences of opinions
among the various players, as Adriano Vicente confirmed. So, all the civil soci-
ety organisations which had participated in this meeting decided to carry out
an intense campaign known as “No to ProSavana”. Local alliances allowed the
amplification and resonance within this framework and gathered networks and
resources to help achieve the protesters’ political aims (Benford and Snow, 2020).

International alliances
International actors were perceived as crucial POS for accessing information
about the ProSavana, and to create effective bridging and cooperation strategies
so as to maximise the protesters political impact and public visibility (Meyer,
2004).
Adriano Vicente, as well as Jeremias Vunjanhe, the leader of ADECRU,4
confirmed that nobody thought that it would be possible to win such a difficult
battle resorting only to domestic alliances. The battlefront had to be enlarged.
A specific strategy was elaborated, consisting of two stages. “In Mozambique”,
remembers Adriano Vicente:

you cannot think to win such important struggles against the government
without international alliances. In the case of ProSavana, paradoxically the
fact that the government implemented this program thanks to two other
state institutions, Japanese and Brazilian, gave us this opportunity, since
UNAC had already established good relations with rural social movements
in Brazil, which could be used as our partners in the struggle against this
enormous program of land grabbing.

In the first stage, each organisation had to activate its own international chan-
nels. As Vicente noted, UNAC was the forerunner, but other new organisations
joined this strategy. ADECRU, for example, was able to build on its interna-
tional network to establish more meaningful ways of penetrating the rural areas.
 Social movements in rural Africa 119
ADECRU was a partner of important rural and academic organisations in Africa
as well as all over the world, in particular in Latin America. Its main allies
were the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies of the University of
Western Cape (PLAAS), the Pan-Africanism Today Movement and, in Brazil,
the Movement Without Land (MST), the Institute of Alternative Policies for the
South Cone (PACS), in Rio de Janeiro part of La Via Campesina.
These relations had direct as well as indirect consequences on the organisation
of rural protests in Mozambique: they showed that Mozambique was not isolated
in the struggle against land-grabbing, since all over the world, in particular in
the Global South, they were occurring. At the same time, these alliances pro-
vided a common, ideological base to carry out actions at the national level, which
can be summarised as anti-capitalist. Quoting, one of our interviewees Jeremias
Vunjanhe,

We learnt many things from our international allies, starting from our South
African partners and thus enlarging our processes of training and exchange
of experiences to Brazil and Latin American in general. We saw that our
struggles were their struggles too, so it was not difficult to understand that
there was a common, international front which has the same objectives. This
message was transmitted to our rural local communities all over the country,
and this process gave them an ideological base and a force which we our-
selves could not imagine.

Thanks to such alliances, ADECRU grew in terms of human capital, training,

and specific knowledge concerning the general policies of agricultural develop-
ment by multinational enterprises. This knowledge became a fundamental tool
when ADECRU began to be part of a network among local rural communities,
showing them the great potential for an important political change.
In the second stage, specific alliances were promoted to sustain the “No to
ProSavana” campaign. Japanese organisations were involved what was a decisive
option for the success of the movement. In little within a short time, since after
2013, 20 Japanese organisations had joined the “No to ProSavana” campaign,
under the umbrella of the Japanese International Voluntary Centre (JVC), a
network of local NGOs. JVC obtained information about ProSavana from the
Japanese parliament, which discussed ProSavana in various sessions. The mem-
bers of JVC immediately noted that a serious action was necessary to halt Japanese
support for the ProSavana in Mozambique and affirm the principles of global jus-
tice and citizenship that this program was violating. For this reason, still in 2013,
a team of JVC visited the Nacala Corridor, establishing direct relationships with
the mentors of the “No to ProSavana” campaign. The Mozambican government
disclaimed the promoters of the “No to ProSavana” campaign as unpatriotic and
treating them as opponents of development and progress (Monjane and Bruna,
2019).
Given the predictable reaction by the Mozambican government, the opposi-
tion front looked for new allies, outside their traditional partners in the Global
120  Luca Bussotti and Laura António Nhaueleque
South. Among them, the Pastoral Commission of Land (CPT) of the Catholic
Church in Brazil, the Siemenpuu Foundation of Finland, as well as the Aid of
Norwegian People in Mozambique. The Mozambican Catholic Church also
indirectly supported this campaign, through its Nampula Commission of Peace
and Justice, offering spaces for meetings and training, thus providing a discrete
but very important aid.5 Pedro, one of our interviews, also confirmed that the
Catholic Church made its network of contacts available to the most remote com-
munities in Nampula to explain the risk of land grabbing by Pro Savana.

“No to ProSavana” campaign

All the work developed by the local organisations which protested against
ProSavana culminated in the launching of a vast campaign, the “No to
ProSavana”, which had a significant impact on national as well as international
public opinion.
The first manifestations of this front were represented by a public letter6,
directed to the Japanese, Brazilian, and Mozambican governments, written in
2013. This letter expressed severe opposition to ProSavana, demanding a halt
to this program. It was delivered by Augusto Mafigo to Shinzo Abe at the 2013
TICAD in Tokyo, where, according to Adriano Vicente, who was there, President
Guebuza expressed total surprise in discovering that 23 Mozambican organisa-
tions together with 43 international organisations had signed it.
A second protest form, emanated from the ideological struggle that unfolded
in parallel to the fight against the program itself. The promoters of ProSavana
presented their project as a good example of South-South cooperation, which
Lula had emphasised since the beginning of his mandate as a Brazilian President.
Nevertheless, many observers noted that the ProSavana program had more
similarities to the model used for Brazilian Cerrado than with South-South
cooperation. (Paiva Toledo, 2016; Fingerman, 2013). The logic of ProSavana was
clearly top-down, putting Japanese and Brazilian needs ahead of Mozambican
(Funada Classen, 2013), and disregarding the interests of Mozambican
peasants.
In response to the above-mentioned letter and to the significant protests car-
ried out by peasant communities and organisations, the three main State actors
adopted a strategy to try to persuade the opposition front of the good intentions
of ProSavana, as well as to change some marginal aspects of the program. The
analysis and recommendations of Majol, a consultancy company contracted by
the ProSavana program, helps to understand how this program tried to overcome
the unexpected resistance from the local communities in the Nacala Corridor.
Majol pointed out that, in many cases, the transactions of land from the hands of
peasants to those of the ProSavana investors did not respect the criterion of free
consent, which had raised negative feelings about the program. In addition, Majol
suggested organising meetings so as to involve local civil society, elaborating a
“stakeholders mapping” to break the resistance front from within (Aragão and
Kraychete, 2018).
 Social movements in rural Africa 121
It was clear that this underestimation of the “capacity of resistance and partici-
pation of the peasants and of the groups which amplified their voices” constituted
one of the main elements that provoked partial changes in the strategy of the
ProSavana programme (Aragão and Kraychete, 2018, p. 488). To their surprise, the
ProSavana promoters discovered that many members of the “No to ProSavana”
campaign were incorruptible; they also disposed of a vast and efficient network
of allies, inside and outside Mozambique, with capacity to raise funds and with
a robust experience in the struggle against ProSavana (Aragão and Kraychete,
2018).

Overcoming internal divisions

Unlike they had anticipated, the Mozambican government and its two inter-
national partners faced significant opposition by Northern Mozambican rural
masses in relation to the ProSavana. As in the past, the Mozambican gov-
ernment imposed its authoritarian developmental agenda without trying to
understand the reasons behind local NGOs and rural communities’ opposition
to the ProSavana. To offset opposition, the government first tactic was to break
apart the opposition front. This was successful: a group of civil society organisa-
tions favourable to ProSavana was constituted in 2016 (called the Mechanism of
Coordination of Civil Society for the Development of the Nacala Corridor), com-
posed of the Provincial Platform das NGO of Nampula (PPOSC-N), the Forum of
Niassa Province Associations (FONAGNI) and the Forum of Zambezia Province
Associations (FONGZA). According to Vicente Adriano, this was the most dif-
ficult moment for the “No to ProSavana” campaign supporters: “We had to face
a new situation now, the most difficult one since the beginning of our struggle”,
he remembers.

Many of our comrades were thinking of facing another defeat against our
overbearing government. Nevertheless, we decided to maintain our positions
of opposition to the program, starting a new campaign with local populations
in order to explain to them that what the new Coordinating Mechanism for
the area was doing was wrong. But this meant, of course, a regression of our
struggle.

The two opposition fronts assumed irreconcilable positions, whose consequences

are visible until today. As the movement faced internal division, the imple-
mentation of the ProSavana program became increasingly authoritarian: the
three entities which were carrying out this program envisioned a new political
opportunity for affirming their projects. According to witnesses, the meetings
held between 2017 and 2019 were like electoral rallies of Frelimo than to open
meetings with local rural associations (Japan pushes, 2020). These meetings were
called in accordance with the Mozambican land law, which established that
investment could only be made after consultation with the local community.
In the case of ProSavana, these meetings became purely formal, as our witness,

BK-TandF-SANCHES_9781032011431-211562-Chp07.indd 121 03/02/22 9:52 AM

122  Luca Bussotti and Laura António Nhaueleque
Pedro, confirmed: “it was impossible to attend these meetings without a formal
invitation and nobody could criticize ProSavana”. The continuous attempts
by JICA to influence, with every means, the organisations which were carry-
ing out the campaign “No to ProSavana” combined with continuing threats
from local authorities was demonstrated in a letter to the president of JICA (14
February 2017), Shinichi Kitaoka. This letter demanded respect for human rights
and environmental standards which the same JICA was supposed to promote
(Funada Classen, 2019). The Mozambican lawyers’ order upheld the cause of
“No to ProSavana” campaign and even the Administrative Tribunal of Maputo
condemned the program due to its lack of information and transparency in com-
munication with the populations involved.
Despite internal division in among the NGOs forming the front, the “No to
ProSavana” campaign continued. At the same time, the new Brazilian govern-
ment decreased its interest in Africa and, consequently, in the ProSavana too.
Only JICA continued to sustain and fund this program (JICA MOZAMBIQUE
NEWSLETTER, 2014).

The end of ProSavana

The official end of ProSavana, was announced by the Mozambican government in
2020. This was a surprising decision for their opponents but came after ten years
of persistent struggle. The change, in 2014, of the Chief of State, from Guebuza
to Nyusi, did not seem to represent a significant transformation for programs of
agricultural development such as ProSavana. What must be considered as the
major win for a social movement of protest in Mozambique, the end of ProSavana,
can be explained through a strategic alliance between Mozambican associations
and the international network that they were able to establish, especially in rela-
tion to Japan where very serious criticisms was carried out against ProSavana. In
May 2017, a meeting of the JVC and its leader, Naoko Watanabe, with the general
director of MOFA (the Japanese Foreign Office), Yamada, revealed the strategy
of communication of JICA in Mozambique. Yamada assumed the commitment to
change the approach of JICA in Mozambique and began to raise doubts about
the management of this important program. Later, a delegation of Japanese dep-
uties visited Mozambique, and they too advanced the idea that the program be
ended or radically changed. The deputy Satoshi Inoue questioned the approach
of JICA towards local populations in Mozambique in a meeting of ODA (Official
Development Assistance), the public Japanese agency which supervises JICA,
accentuating the above-mentioned doubts (Funada Classen, 2019). Finally, the pres-
sure of the Japanese lobby which had sustained the “No to Pro Savana” campaign
was so strong and well organised that the Japanese government decided to stop
financing this program, forcing the Mozambican government to declare its closure.
As Mozambican researchers have stated, it was not the ProSavana programme
that woke up a supposed sleeping land, but rather the rural local social movements,
in particular UNAC (Monjane and Bruna, 2019). Thus, this awakening of rural
protests and issues became one of the most relevant impacts of the ProSavana.
 Social movements in rural Africa 123
Conclusion
The ProSavana program represented an attempt to carry out an ambitious pro-
gram of integrated development in Africa. Its failure is a milestone in the social
rural struggles in Africa, given the pacific means used by the movement actors.
The Mozambican state generally repressed such protests, to contain the risk of
an expansion of the various claims, except for extreme forms of violence, urban
riots, or similar demonstrations. The ProSavana case opened new opportunities
for a significant political transformation. At least three elements can be identi-
fied: firstly, a non-violent approach; secondly, a bottom-up strategy, with a deep
involvement of local communities as well as peasants’ organisations; finally, a
strong international network which had been created before ProSavana, under
the led of UNAC or ADECRU, and which further developed in the “No to
ProSavana” campaign. Adding to this, was the fact that ProSavana promoters
underestimated the mobilisation potential of the “No to ProSavana” organisa-
tions. This was surprising, as rural communities had experienced similar situations
of land grabbing in Malema (Nampula Province), with soybeans and cotton culti-
vations by Mozaco, in Lioma (Gurué, Province of Zambezia), with soybeans, corn,
and kidney bean cultivation by a joint venture of Amorim Group from Portugal
and Intelec by the Mozambican Salimo Abdula; but in all these instances local
communities were not so effective in their struggles, due to the isolation of their
actions and the state capacity to repress them.
What seems to have played a decisive role in the “No to ProSavana” cam-
paign was the political empowerment of local organisations, and even more the
international alliances they established. This hypothesis is confirmed by other
similar cases of rural African struggles against mega-projects. It is the case of
Ethiopia, where the strategy of land acquisition by external investors has been
on a large-scale as in Mozambique, and where the alliance with international
civil society organisations played a fundamental role. Even more, in Ghana,
faced with an investment in biofuel by the Norwegian ScanFuel, a strict alliance
between the local FoodSpan civil society coalition and some Norwegian youth
organisations forced the external investor to negotiate better conditions for the
peasants subjected to the process of land dispossession. In this case, the emphasis
on human rights played a very significant role in the strategy of resistance against
the ScanFuel investment.
These cases demonstrate that forms of resistance against the global process
of land-grabbing in Africa must be adapted to the different local contexts; they
also show that new political opportunities for significant changes cannot avoid
a close relationship with civil society organisations of those countries which are
carrying out the investment in a specific African country. Given that popular
pressure in many African contexts can result in more repression by the state, in
the countries of origin of the investing company the situation is, in general, dif-
ferent. And it is exactly thanks to the pressure of civil society organisations and
mass media in these countries, interested in maintaining a positive public image
which respects democracy and human rights, those new political opportunities
124  Luca Bussotti and Laura António Nhaueleque
can result in significant changes in rural Africa. In the case of Mozambique this
mechanism was effective since the principal investor of ProSavana program was
the Japanese government. When the investor is a private company, the success
of the protests generally faces greater difficulties. Nevertheless, in this case too,
a strict alliance with civil society organisations belonging to the country where
the investment comes from represents, today, a pivotal factor for new political
changes in rural Africa.

Acknowledgements
The English text of this paper has been revised by Sidney Pratt, Canadian, MAT
(The Johns Hopkins University), RSAdip – TESL (Cambridge University).

Notes
1. La Via Campesina is an international organisation of peasants and their different
associations, whose main aim is to promote an articulation of rural social move-
ments in defence of their rights to land.
2. Pedro is a nickname here used to protect the identity of this interviewee, who
agreed to speak with the authors of this research under the condition of anonymity.
The interview occurred in Nampula, 23 December 2020.
3. Adriano Vicente was interviewed in Maputo, 10 December 2020. The interview
given by Mr Pedro also confirmed this.
4. Jeremias Vuhnjane is the leader of ADECRU (Academic Action for the Develop-
ment of Rural Communities), which was founded in 2008 by university students
under his leadership. He was interviewed in various meetings in Maputo, in June-
July, 2018.
5. This information was obtained thanks to an interview made in Nampula with Sis-
ter Rita, the person formerly responsible of the Peace and Justice Commission of
Nampula, August, 2018.
6. The whole text of this letter can be found at: http://contag.org.br/arquivos/portal/
file/Carta%20Aberta%20Programa%20ProSavana.pdf (Accessed: 3 February 2020).

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8 WE GOT A TASTE FOR
PROTEST! LEADERSHIP
TRANSITION AND POLITICAL
OPPORTUNITIES FOR PROTEST
IN ANGOLA’S RESILIENT
AUTHORITARIAN REGIME
Claúdia Generoso de Almeida,
Ana Lúcia Sá and Paulo C. J. Faria

Introduction
“Our stomachs are empty; we can’t take it anymore. This is not what the young
people of Angola dreamed of. João Lourenço, you can leave, the nation doesn’t
need you. Are we troublemakers?”1 Protesters echoed this message during a public
demonstration in the capital of Luanda on the 45th anniversary of Angola’s inde-
pendence on 11 November 2020. The anti-government demonstrators demanded
jobs, better living conditions, local elections, and the end of the People’s
Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government, which had been
in power since the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975. A university
student, Inocêncio Matos was killed in the protest and others sustained severe
injuries. The authorities’ violent response signalled the authoritarian nature of
the MPLA regime and a reversal of president Lourenço’s initial pledges to embrace
a more democratic state.
João Lourenço succeeded José Eduardo dos Santos as Angola’s third head of
state in 2017. His election was initially met with optimism for more than just sym-
bolic reasons: his reformist agenda, fight against corruption and proximity to the
people distinguished him from the preceding president who had been in power
since 1979 (Roque, 2017; Schubert, 2018). Lourenço was praised for his “new
paradigm of governance”, and his desire to improve the country’s human rights
performance and respect freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. He would
create a more favourable environment that welcomed civil society initiatives and
voices of discontent. Remarkably, the number of popular protests2 has increased
significantly since Lourenço took office. In just four years of presidency, the new
leadership has faced more episodes of protests than the 15 years of Dos Santos’
post-war presidency. What can explain the increased levels of protest during João
Lourenço’s presidency? And how impactful have these protests been?
This chapter answers these questions by exploring the political opportunities
arising from leadership change. Our analysis focuses on four variables of political
DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-8
 We got a taste for protest!  129
opportunity structures (POS) to assess how new opportunities brought by a new
leadership can lead to an increase in protests in authoritarian states, namely:
1) the extent of the new leader’s openness to protest (Meyer, 2004); 2) electoral
pledges and policy implementation (Costain, 1992; Meyer et al., 2005); 3) the new
government’s use of repression (Meyer, 2004); and 4) protesters’ perceptions of the
political environment (Gamson and Meyer, 1996; Kurzman, 1996). These varia-
bles will allow us to look simultaneously at the political context and the agency
of protesters within it and perceive how protesters react to the regime’s responses.
We argue that the election of a new President in 2017 changed political oppor-
tunities for protest. The initial openness to demonstrations and criticism by
Lourenço’s presidency set a cognitive mechanism in motion or, as Tilly (2001,
p. 24) theorised, an alteration in individual and collective perception that encour-
aged individual and collective actors to protest and engage different people in
these actions. The increased intensity of protests under Lourenço’s presidency
reveals a change in citizens’ perception of their ability to engage in protest actions:
less fear of protesting and a growing “taste for protest”, to use the words of Luaty
Beirão, a well-known Angolan activist.3 Regardless of the government’s repressive
response, this new cognitive frame, together with worsening socio-economic con-
ditions and the government’s inability to deliver on electoral pledges, influenced
protesters’ capacity to mobilise.
Our approach offers important contributions. First, it reveals the importance
but also the shortcomings of political opportunities brought by leadership tran-
sition as triggers of change in autocratic regimes. The initial optimism about
Lourenço’s office gave way to widespread discontent because the regime’s status
quo remained as authoritarian and was incapable of improving good governance
and living conditions. Second, it shows that it is worth exploring the impact of
popular protests in authoritarian regimes from a different angle, i.e. cognitive.
The literature tends to focus on more tangible changes such as political reforms
but we can capture intangible, but quintessential, aspects of change by explor-
ing alterations in the perception of protesters that encourage popular uprisings
(Bratton and Walle, 1997; Branch and Mampilly, 2015).
The empirical analysis covers protests from the start of Lourenço’s presidency
(September 2017) until early February 2021. The quantitative data on protests was
mainly collected from the ACLED dataset to depict the frequency, intensity, and
type of protest.4 To explore the changes in political opportunities after Lourenço took
office and to identify the cognitive mechanism, we build on evidence from semi-struc-
tured interviews conducted in Luanda, Cacuaco (Angola), and Lisbon (Portugal),
between 2020 and 2021 with young Angolan protesters, activists, and experts. All
interviews were conducted in Portuguese and translated to English by the authors.
This chapter comprises four sections. The first outlines the main characteristics
of protests and the opportunities for protest in authoritarian regimes, specifically
addressing the “third wave of protests” in Africa. The following section explains
Angola’s relevance in the context of protests in Africa’s authoritarian regimes.
Section three focuses on the changes brought by the new president to four POS
variables. The concluding section looks at what the Angolan case tells us about
130  Claúdia Generoso de Almeida, Ana Lúcia Sá and Paulo C. J. Faria
political opportunities that enable protest and their transformative power in
Africa’s resilient authoritarian regimes.

Opportunities for protest in African authoritarian regimes

Protest is a form of political participation that complements others such as voting
or civic activism (Thyen and Gerschewski, 2018, pp. 39–40), and it is particularly
important when more direct forms of influence are absent (Meyer, 2004, p. 128).
This is the case of African autocracies where political life has been dominated by
elites with ever-diminishing commitment to the democratic project, resulting in
difficulties in implementing reforms after elections, state dominium over the econ-
omy and an “authoritarian political culture” (Gyimah-Boadi, 2015, pp. 101 and
107). Political elites failed to deliver the promises of social and political inclusion
made at two fundamental moments of transition: from colonial rule to independ-
ence and from single-party or military dictatorships to multipartyism. The first was
expected to bring colonial rule and its inequalities to an end, while the second
paved the way for multipartyism. The ongoing third wave of popular protests across
Africa represents a third moment of transition that spans all regime types and
calls for better governance and living conditions (Branch and Mampilly, 2015).
Protesters demand improved socioeconomic conditions, access to public ser-
vices, constitutional change, political freedom, and good governance (Branch and
Mampilly, 2015; Mueller, 2018; Mateos and Erro, 2021). Although mobilising griev-
ances might be context-dependent and address economic or political conditions
of a certain state, the literature suggests that protesters express various grievances
at the same protest event, which can be summarised as governance related issues.
Therefore, the political context will determine the grievances that mobilise pro-
testers. These include economic exclusion and political dissatisfaction, as was the
case of popular protests in Mozambique in 2008–2012 (Brito, 2017). Following the
inauguration of Niger’s first oil refinery in 2011, protests mobilised civil society
and political opponents who demonstrated against unemployment and economic
instability (Schritt, 2019). Meanwhile, in 2016 Zimbabwe saw protests against cor-
ruption, bad governance, and the government’s failure to tackle unemployment
(Gukurume, 2017). Educated young people from Oromia not only protest against
land grabbing by the government, unemployment, and other socioeconomic griev-
ances but also demand democracy (Abebe, 2020). But this third wave encompasses
other movements and protests in democracies and autocracies against changes
to the constitution that allow for third terms, as in the case of Senegalese Y’en
a Marre in 2011 (Dimé, 2022) and Burkinabé Balai Citoyen in 2014 (Touré,
2017; Bertrand, 2022), or call for regime change, as in the case of Sudan where
protests in 2019 resulted in the ousting of Omar al-Bashir (Hassanain, 2020).
This brief snapshot of protests depicts different actors, grievances, outcomes
and regime types. Protesting in authoritarian regimes carries higher costs and may
even put the lives of protesters in danger; so what makes people take to the streets
in these regimes? There are a number of explanations for collective action but,
from the political opportunity perspective, the likelihood of protests taking place
depends on the context (Meyer, 2004, p. 124; Dahlum and Wig, 2019; Sanches,
 We got a taste for protest!  131
2022). Political opportunities for protest are scarcer in authoritarian regimes than
in democracies (Almeida, 2003), which means the possibilities of different forms
of political participation are more limited. Nevertheless, despite fewer political
opportunities for protest in authoritarian regimes, empirical evidence, and anec-
dotal data show that they are recurrent phenomena (Barría, 2018).
Protests can be triggered by an enabling political environment resulting from
turning point events within the political regime, such as leadership transition.
Leadership change has been an important issue in contemporary African politics
and a topic of concern in several authoritarian regimes (Brownlee, 2007) given
that a long list of African presidents have managed to extend their time in office
with the help of much international collusion (Cheeseman and Fisher, 2021). For
example, the former Angolan president, Dos Santos, was among the five long-
est-serving presidents in Africa until September 2017, when power was transferred
through elections to João Lourenço.
Leadership change in authoritarian regimes constitutes a moment of uncer-
tainty and is therefore a time when political opportunities for protest can alter.
POS in non-democratic states are more limited than in democracies due to a lack
of independent institutions and fragile communication channels between citizens
and the state. Theoretical contributions to the debate on POS in authoritarian
regimes are also scarce as this theoretical framework is more focused on conten-
tious episodes in democracies (Alimi, 2009). Hence, it is necessary to explore
how the alteration in the political context impacts political actors’ and activists’
perceptions of the rules of the autocratic game and affects their agency to protest.
If a new leader shows he/she is more open to dialogue, activists can see this
change in leadership as an opportunity. The leader’s openness to protests is
therefore a variable of POS (Meyer, 2004). A new leader is also expected to fulfil
electoral promises of long-awaited changes in economic and political conditions.
The fulfilment of promises and the government’s response to demands also consti-
tute a variable of POS (Costain, 1992; Meyer et al., 2005). However, competitive
authoritarianism is the type of authoritarian regime that offers some space for pop-
ular protest and, where protests can change the policies of elites (Vladisavljević,
2014). This contrasts with the situation in more centralised and oil-rich author-
itarian regimes (Girod, Stewart and Walters, 2018), which rely upon repression.
Individuals and groups using peaceful means to contend with the government are
often the target of this repression (Davenport, 2007), which raises the costs of col-
lective action when power holders see it as a threat. Repression can come in many
different shapes and forms, from controlling the media, banning associations, infil-
trating movements, to physical violence and intimidation (Osa and Schock, 2007).
For instance, state responses to recent popular protests in African authoritarian
states such as Rwanda and Ethiopia were brutal and included jailing, different
forms of harassment and the killing of demonstrators (Mueller, 2020, p. 65).
Due to this political culture, “contentious participation” has a higher cost in
authoritarian regimes than in democracies, though both regime types usually
respond with a “repressive backlash” (Albrecht and Koehler, 2020, pp. 138–139).
Repression tends to reduce threats and is used along with other strategies of social
and political control, such as co-optation, to allow the regime to negotiate with
132  Claúdia Generoso de Almeida, Ana Lúcia Sá and Paulo C. J. Faria
protesters by accommodating some of their demands or distributing economic and
political benefits (Geha, 2019). Repression and co-optation are key mechanisms of
autocratic control and stability (Gerschewski, 2013; Sá and Sanches, 2021), less-
ening the chances of popular protest. Therefore, the reduction of state repression
is a variable of political opportunity for protest in authoritarian regimes, making
contentious politics less risky for protesters. However, people also take to streets
when repression increases (Osa and Schock, 2007), due to the urgency of their
grievances and to the perception that promises and long-waited changes are not
being addressed.
Lastly, the protesters’ perceptions of the authoritarian status quo and the abil-
ity to demand better living conditions, democratic institutions, and political
openness will be determinant to set a cognitive frame of individual and social
mobilisation in motion (Gamson and Meyer, 1996; Kurzman, 1996). Protesters’
perception of how the authoritarian regime works and how to handle repression
and other forms of social and political control is a relevant outcome arising from
the political opportunities in authoritarian regimes.
POS raised in authoritarian settings by leadership changes are key to explain-
ing contentious actions and the transformative impact that protests have in
the mind-set of protesters, who feel they have gained voice in the streets and
expressed their dissatisfaction.

Why Angola matters

If we look at the evolution of protest in Africa in the 21st century, we note that
the number of popular protests has increased exponentially in most Sub-Saharan
countries since 2011. This steady rise followed revolutions in the North of Africa
where long-serving dictators were ousted, as well as general uprisings in other
African countries with an anti-incumbency agenda have shaped the third wave
of protests in the continent.
When the two decades of this century are compared, we observe a greater
increase in protests in countries considered Not Free by the Freedom House
index (Figure 8.1). This trend confirms Barría’s (2018, p. 140) claim that protest
in authoritarian contexts is not only possible but also recurrent. In fact, the five
African countries that experienced the biggest increase in protests from the first
to second decade of this century are Mali, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of
Congo, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania. The first three of these are classified as
Not Free, which raises important questions about windows of opportunities for
protest and the transformative power of protests in autocratic regimes.
On closer examination, we find there is another important pattern in the num-
ber of protests in Not Free countries: on average, the increase in authoritarian
regimes that went through a leadership transition in this last decade is higher
than in regimes with no leadership change (Figure 8.2).
Angola belongs to a cluster of nine resilient authoritarian countries in Africa.5
It stands out in this group for three main reasons that shed light on the dynamics
of protest brought by leadership change. First, it has been governed by the same
 We got a taste for protest!  133

Figure 8.1  Total number of protests between 2000–2010 and 2011–2020

Source: ACLED dataset and Freedom in the World 2020 (Freedom House).

ruling party (MPLA) since independence, despite the transition to multipartyism

in 1992. Angola has a dominant party system given that the ruling party has
won every single post-war election (2008, 2012, and 2017) with more than 60% of
the votes. Unlike their counterpart countries, and after a constitutional revision
in 2010, the head of state is no longer directly elected; instead, it is the person
heading the list of the party or coalition of parties receiving the most votes in the

Figure 8.2  Mean increase in protests and leadership transition in not free states between
2000–2010 and 2011–2020
Source: ACLED dataset and African Leadership Transitions Tracker (ALTT).
134  Claúdia Generoso de Almeida, Ana Lúcia Sá and Paulo C. J. Faria
general election that is elected. Second, this country experienced a protracted
civil war (1975–1991; 1993–2002), which was brought to an end with the MPLA’s
military victory over The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
(UNITA). The war outcome meant a new “democratic” hegemony of the MPLA
and the party consolidation as a party-state (Oliveira, 2015; Mabeko-Tali, 2016).
Finally, the rise in popular protest from 2015 became more marked in 2017 when
Lourenço succeeded Dos Santos’ 38-year rule as president.
The transition of Dos Santos’ leadership to Lourenço occurred first at the
state level (with the national elections of August 2017), and then at the party
level. The MPLA’s Extraordinary Congress in September 2018 elected Lourenço
as the party’s new chairman. As a result, the new leader gained full control of
two main sources of political power: the presidency and the ruling party. This
unprecedented leadership change represents a case of electoral succession, i.e. the
new head of state comes from the same party (MPLA) as the outgoing president.
However, this leadership change had a striking effect on the intensity of protest.
Whereas, there were about 100 episodes of protest in the 15 years of Dos Santos’
presidency after the war (2002–2017), Lourenço’s presidency saw a total of 157
protests in just three years in office.6
The following section will analyse the selected POS variables – leader’s open-
ness to protest, the non-fulfilment of electoral pledges, the government’s use of
repression, and the protesters’ perceptions of the political regime – that resulted
from the transition of leadership. The findings are used to explain the increase in
protest levels and the impact of protests, by focusing on the shift in the protesters’
mind-set towards action.

New president, new opportunities for protest?

The new president’s initial openness to protest

The 2008 global financial crisis and the wave of pro-democracy uprisings in the
Middle-East and Africa in early 2011 challenged the view that stable authori-
tarian regimes could forever withstand and block any pressures for change. In
countries such as Tunisia and Egypt “entrenched authoritarian rulers were jetti-
soned from office” by “popular protest” (Bellin, 2012, p. 127).
Angola witnessed an upsurge of popular protest against the Dos Santos’ regime
in 2011. Protesters demanded better living conditions, employment, and good
governance (Morais, 2012). Additionally, protesters urged Dos Santos to resign
because they thought that “32 years in power was too much”, like other cases
in the third wave of protests in Africa. The first street protest demanding Dos
Santos’ departure, on 7 March 2011, was organised by the New Revolution of the
Angolan People (MRPLA)7, but activists were harassed, arrested, and some even
killed (Siegert, 2018, pp. 48–49).8 Dos Santos did not tolerate dissent and those
who dared to protest often faced a repressive response from the regime (Pestana,
2003). Moreover, protests in Angola “signal an attempt to break away from exclu-
sionary, corrupt and elite-dominated politics” (Faria, 2013, p. 305).
 We got a taste for protest!  135
The deepening global crisis and the decline in oil revenues highlighted the
perils of the country’s economic dependency on a single commodity. Social vul-
nerability grew out of endemic corruption, nepotism, and youth unemployment.
The Dos Santos regime was also the source of discontent within the MPLA due
to his family’s economic and political monopolies as well as the strategic alliances
with top-rank military and party elites (Verde, 2021).
The transition to a new political leadership took place in this context of
internal discontent in 2017. The new president was seen as a “reformer” and our
interviewees had high hopes that he would fight the rotten system.9 President
Lourenço heralded a new Angola. He was not shy to tell his party: “corruption
is going to end, even though the first to fall were the ranked cadres and officials,
who committed crimes and tarnished the good name of the party”.10 This strategy
was behind the MPLA’s 2017 electoral motto “to improve what’s good, correct
what’s bad”. Lourenço repeated this anti-corruption discourse in various inter-
views11 and public speeches both at home and abroad.
Lourenço presented himself as someone that was aware of the “very corrupt
system” and was ready to get rid of the Dos Santos regime. A handful of party offi-
cials linked to Dos Santos were either dismissed or brought to justice. However,
the clean-up appeared to be more of a vendetta aimed at some rather than a
balanced process to fix the rotten system. Lourenço used the word “marimbon-
dos” (wasps),12 a metaphor to describe those responsible for a nest of corruption
and malpractices in both the state and the party. He distinguished between
the “marimbondos”, the Dos Santos inner circle, and the supporters of his own
anti-corruption fight. This strategy gave the impression of dislodging the status
quo but, in fact, it was misleading because corruption, bad governance, and lack
of transparency still overshadow the MPLA government today. Lourenço went to
great pains to show off his reformist and tolerant attributes, receiving well-known
activists and critics formerly persecuted by the Dos Santos regime, such as Luaty
Beirão and Rafael Marques, at the presidential palace.13
According to Meyer, political openness is a core element of political opportu-
nity for protest (Meyer, 2004, p. 137). Lourenço signalled a posture of dialogue
with civil society and made out he was a protester-in-chief that was keen to take on
board the critics’ reasons for protesting against him. But despite the timid gains
made under João Lourenço’s presidency in fighting corruption and dialoguing
with civil society (Sanches et al., 2020), Angola remains a resilient authoritarian
state. The limited progress gave way to a collective consciousness among activists
that the president was part of the system of unfulfilled promises they were ready
to denounce. However, as the activist José Gomes Hata admitted, “nobody took
to the streets to see how far João Lourenço would keep his electoral promises”.14

The president’s unfulfilled promises

The MPLA went on campaigning in 2017, acknowledging the dissatisfaction felt
while promoting a new leader, a promise of change (Pearce, Péclard and Soares
de Oliveira, 2018, p. 155). Lourenço then projected himself as a reformer who
136  Claúdia Generoso de Almeida, Ana Lúcia Sá and Paulo C. J. Faria
offered a new paradigm of governance to build a “different” Angola. The para-
digm hinged on significant axes: separation of power between the executive and
legislative branches; growing autonomy of the judiciary system; strengthening the
role of civil society; greater independence of the media; combating impunity and
corruption; inclusion and social well-being; and implementing local governance
through local elections. One specific goal was to “create at least 500,000 new
jobs” to tackle youth unemployment.
These pledges were constantly reiterated by Lourenço’s government and trig-
gered a cautious optimism among the protesters we interviewed.15 However, the
fight against corruption, the biggest electoral promise, has not yet translated
into change in the regime, nor have people’s social and economic conditions
improved. Moreover, corruption proved to be more structural and two types of
corruption were the main sources of grievance, namely, elite corruption (abuses
of power, embezzlement), and police corruption (kickbacks) (Lewis, 2020, p. 2).
It soon became clear to the protesters that the president was unable to fulfil his
electoral promises and deal with the “marimbondos”.
The perception of Lourenço as a reformer changed drastically as he failed to
make good on his promises. Hata noted that “there was a moment of silence and
peace. The street stayed quiet for a while, but the mass protests began as hopes
were dashed”.16 Protesters broke the silence of the streets as the hopes of thou-
sands of jobs for young Angolans, of local elections and institutional reforms
faded away. The first massive demonstrations were held in Luanda and other cities
on 21 July 2018.
The ACLED dataset and our compilation of protests show many different
episodes in 2018 and 2019 addressing a variety of long-standing grievances. For
instance, students protested against the increase in university admission fees and
examination conditions. Employees demanded better wages. Women protested
against domestic violence. Urban and rural communities demanded electric-
ity and clean water. Protests addressing bad governance and nepotism of local
authorities were organised in all the capital cities. Food price spikes and the wors-
ening of living standards brought together different social strata of protesters. Our
interviewees pointed out that the high cost of essential goods is a cross-cutting
issue, affecting most of the population and ultimately leading to a comparison of
food prices under the Dos Santos regime and now.17
In addition, restrictive measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic after
March 2020, such as social distancing and the curfew, prompted protests by street
traders and others affected by the state of emergency.18 Police used violent meth-
ods to contain protests and to force people to comply with the government decree.
The death of the Angolan doctor, Silvio Dala, on 1 September 2020 at the hands
of the police19 was a turning point in Angola’s recent protests marred by policy
violence. The death was an emotional trigger, i.e. a strong emotional reaction
that makes people protest (Bellin, 2012, p. 136). Driven by anger and injustice,
civil society activists, health-care professionals and opposition politicians gath-
ered all over the country on 12 September to demonstrate against police brutality
and the government’s disregard of citizens’ lives.20
 We got a taste for protest!  137
Socio-economic grievances and demands for the long-waited local elections,
due in 2020, continued to bring people onto the streets. However, the local
electoral process had been held up due to discussions about a gradual approach
and constant delays caused by the ruling party (Orre and Pestana, 2014). On
13 August 2019 and again on 23 January 202021 protesters gathered in front of
the National Parliament to demand local elections across the whole country. The
activist Tânia de Carvalho22 claimed that the “urgent need for autarquias (local
governance)” was the most relevant issue for protesters in the demonstrations of
24 October, 11 November, and 10 December 2020. She believed that decentrali-
sation would mitigate socio-economic problems and improve governance.
Our interviewees reported there was anger because the MPLA “had been in
power too long”,23 and they were sure João Lourenço would not be able to solve
the problems of the Angolans.24 The political openness experienced in the early
years of Lourenço’s presidency and his new paradigm of governance became a
deceitful distraction as the electoral promises remained unfulfilled and protesters
saw Lourenço’s increasingly repressive response to protest.

Repression under Lourenço’s presidency

The reduction of state repression is a variable of political opportunity for protest
(Meyer, 2004). Activists expected the new leader’s initial openness to protest and
to listening to dissenting voices meant he would be less repressive than his pre-
decessor. But the evolution of the type of protests during Lourenço’s presidency
(Figure 8.3) reveals that there was an increasingly repressive response to popular
demonstrations from 2018, i.e. after Lourenço was elected chairman of the rul-
ing party. The activist Hitler Samussuku pointed out that when Lourenço first

Figure 8.3  Type of protests per year during João Lourenço’s presidency
Source: ACLED dataset and authors’ compilation.
138  Claúdia Generoso de Almeida, Ana Lúcia Sá and Paulo C. J. Faria
became President of the Republic, he only needed “to win the sympathy of civil
society, the opposition and the international community through some openness.
But, afterwards, the problems started”.25
As protests escalated, the government response to widespread protest during
the Lourenço presidency became more repressive. Indeed, the disaggregated data
reveal a rising number of protests with intervention and excessive force by the
authorities, especially in 2020 and 2021; the number of protests also increased
during this period.
Episodes of excessive use of force by the Angolan authorities gave Lourenço’s
presidency a more repressive tone. Police repression was more common in demon-
strations near political institutions, such as the parliament or the presidential
palace in Cidade Alta.26 However, new patterns of youth resistance emerged in
recent protests. We analyse three of these protests below, namely the protests of
24 October 2020, 11 November 2020, and 10 December 2020.
On 24 October 2020, different actors and activists took to the streets of Luanda
to express a wide range of socioeconomic and political grievances; this was the
first of a number of massive demonstrations towards the end of 2020 with a clearer
pro-democracy demand and calling for the end of MPLA rule. Protesters voiced
their anger at unreliable institutions and the MPLA’s kleptocratic system and they
demanded local elections.27 This protest is relevant due both to its size and the
repressive response by authorities.28 Well-known activists of the Revolutionary
Movement of Angola (MRA) politicians of opposition parties and ordinary citi-
zens took to the streets to voice their common grievances. There were episodes of
violence with the burning of rubber tyres, and the police arrested 103 protesters
and harassed the UNITA politicians attending the demonstration.
The anniversary of Angola’s independence, 11 November 2020, saw yet another
demonstration 29 where protest posters could be seen denouncing “João Lourenço,
you ungrateful one, where are the 500,000 jobs?”30 Although the authorities had
forbidden the demonstration,31 people went en masse and again police responded
with brutality. Inocêncio Matos, a 23-year-old engineering student, was killed
and became a symbol of Lourenço’s repression. This tragic event underscores the
regime’s unease as it dealt with civic unrest amid the growing domestic crisis.
Activist José Gomes Hata notes that the chances of repression are greater when
the demonstration is political and indirectly affects people who belong to the
state apparatus of the current regime.32
According to Mwana Ngola, these protests had an impact because they brought
large numbers of citizens onto the street for the first time despite the repression.
They would no longer allow the government to put their grievances on hold:
“The people had no alternative but to protest”.33 The president was faced with
two options to salvage his tarnishing image: he could either intensify the crack-
down on peaceful demonstrations or resort to techniques of co-optation or signs
of openness. He chose to calm critical voices and signal integration and dialogue
when he set up a meeting with Angolan youths on 24 November 2020.34
However, on 10 December,35 the official anniversary of the MPLA’s founda-
tion, another protest was organised against the same socioeconomic and political
 We got a taste for protest!  139
grievances: unemployment, living conditions, corruption, and decentralisation.
Protesters demanded the end of MPLA rule and, as a symbolic act, the picture
of Inocêncio Matos was placed on the iconic statue of Angola’s first president,
Agostinho Neto, in Luanda. Unlike previous protests, there was no sign of
police brutality or violence this time. Indeed, authoritarian regimes have various
tools at their disposal to defuse the threat of protests (Sato and Wahman, 2019,
p. 1422).
Despite the president’s apparent commitment to drive the country on the
path of the rule of law and respect for fundamental rights, he showed a greater
propensity to repression, thus demonstrating that repression is context-depend-
ent and can decrease or increase dissent (Osa and Schock, 2007, p. 133). This is
clearly the case in Angola where the use of repression did not reduce the levels of
protest.

Protesters’ perceptions and the emergence of a new cognitive frame

As Gamson and Meyer (1996) and Kurzman (1996) stated, the protesters’ per-
ceptions are influenced by opportunities arising from the political context. In
Angola, Lourenço’s presidency raised hopes of a new country that could better
accommodate civil society’s demands. Citizens perceived this as an opportunity
for protest. According to international Humans Rights organisations, there was
“progress in respecting the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,
and several protests and marches were allowed across the country” (HWR 2020).
As seen in the previous sections, citizens could now take to the streets or voice
their demands. Despite Lourenço’s repressive tone, a new protest dynamic had
been created and there was no turning back. As the activist Luaty Beirão told us,
with João Lourenço:

The omnipresence of the state-party started to diminish and with that the
taste for being able to speak more freely and for more freedom of assem-
bly in public spaces without police intervention, which was something new
and once unthinkable. It will be difficult for the regime to close the door
to that.36

On the other hand, nobody believed that political change could be generated from
a set of bold institutional reforms any longer. The unfulfilled promises of the new
president along with repressive responses to protest consolidated the perception
among protesters that the stakes were higher. The interviews we conducted with
activists illustrate this. Dilson Branco Itchama stated, “we have discovered that
he [João Lourenço] is so compromised that we realise that the problem was not
Zé Dú [Dos Santos], but the system!”.37 For Dito Dali, “today society is demanding
more because of dashed expectations”.38 Finally, Olívio Kilumbo noted that polit-
ical parties offered no sustainable political and social answers to the protesters’
demands.39
140  Claúdia Generoso de Almeida, Ana Lúcia Sá and Paulo C. J. Faria
The new political environment brought by Lourenço set a collective conscious-
ness in motion despite the risks of repression and/or co-optation by the regime.
As Dito Dali declares:

We do not necessarily conceive protest in authoritarian Angola in terms of

what it can generate as policy changes, but as a progressive process where
actively committed protagonists have the deep and personal conviction that
it is the cause that is most important; because whereas a person can give in to
co-optation, a cause never does so. (…) We must continue fighting, regardless
of some people’s decision to surrender to the MPLA.40

Branco Itchama also points out that the president’s fight against corruption was
recognition of the fact that MPLA is failing as a ruling party and that protests are
a necessary tool to express discontent and “to raise the level of awareness of the
population”.41 Samussuku highlights the more lasting effects of protests as a “pro-
cess of constructing a collective consciousness”;42 he added that Angolan activists
had begun to create points of contact in provinces where other activists had been
arrested, so the “process of building collective consciousness has begun”.43 Key
to this consciousness is the notion that better living conditions are not only a
right but can be achieved and, therefore, the appalling inequalities and exclusion
should be publicly denounced, resisted, and dismantled; in the absence of real
political transformation and other channels of communication between the state
and the people, this could be done through protests.
This was evident during the emergency measures to contain the COVID-19
pandemic. When not protesting, “people stayed at home, they were confined,
there was a marked increase in the use of the internet, and the exchange of ideas
became commonplace”.44 There was no turning back for the new cognitive frame
among protesters set in motion by the transition of leadership in Angola. Even
though the incumbent party’s responses to citizens’ demands essentially remained
unchanged, people now had the perception of the power of protest to express
their discontent.

Concluding remarks
Opportunities for protest are particularly scarce in authoritarian regimes and
contentious politics in these regimes is costly. Notwithstanding, there is an ongo-
ing wave of protests spanning the African continent, raising questions about the
explanation for people taking to the streets and the impact of protests in author-
itarian settings.
The four POS variables analysed herein allowed us to perceive the dynam-
ics between the regime’s responses and the protesters’ actions by looking at the
political context of a leadership change and the related agency of protesters. The
analysis of protest in Angola’s authoritarian regime shows us that the leadership
transition in 2017 changed political opportunities for protest, setting a new cog-
nitive frame in motion that has led to relentless protests under the new president.
 We got a taste for protest!  141
This finding is especially important since data shows that authoritarian regimes
have faced more protest in this third wave of protests, and the increase was par-
ticularly marked where there had been a change in leadership.
Different actors in Angola saw this change in leadership as an opportunity to
engage in collective action. The new president’s initial openness to dialogue and
reform raised expectations, particularly among the young, of a more democratic
environment in the country with more inclusion and employment, and away from
the quagmire of corruption and impunity. The president’s initial less repressive
response to discontent also had an impact on the protesters’ perception.
When it became clear that Lourenço would not fulfil his electoral promises,
dashed expectations led to more protests not only against socio-economic griev-
ances but also pushing for political change. The new presidency’s repressive
response was unable to slow the protests, thus showing that the impact of repres-
sion depends on other variables of political opportunities, like those considered
herein. Overall, the protesters believe their relentless resistance has helped foster
a collective consciousness, which epitomises a “growing taste for protest”, that
made protest a prime channel of revindication for the Angolan activists in this
new political environment. Whether collective consciousness alone can lead to
a broad national protest movement against the regime is something that needs
further critical appraisal.
The analysis of protest in Angola highlights the importance of tracing cogni-
tive mechanisms to assess the transformative impact of protests in authoritarian
regimes through more intangible signals of change; this is relevant given that so
many protests in Africa have demanded the removal of political leaders and polit-
ical change, and longstanding African rulers have actually been removed after
street protests. This raises the following questions, which could certainly inspire
further studies: how can the collective consciousness of protesters translate into
collective action that enables the rise of a cross-national and continental network
aimed at bringing authoritarian regimes to an end through pressure “from below”,
and how do these movements relate to formal actors of the political opposition?

Notes
1. Authors’ translation.
2. We use ACLED’s definition of protest, as “a public demonstration in which the
participants do not engage in violence, though violence may be used against them”
(ACLED 2019, p. 12).
3. Authors’ interview, 17 February 2020.
4. According to this dataset, protest can be subdivided into: 1) Peaceful Protest, “when
demonstrators are engaged in a protest while not engaging in violence or other
forms of rioting behaviour and are not faced with any sort of force or engagement;
2) Protest with intervention, “when individuals are engaged in a peaceful protest
during which there is an attempt to disperse or suppress the protest without serious/
lethal injuries being reported or the targeting of protesters with lethal weapons;
3) Excessive force against protesters, “when individuals are engaged in a peaceful
protest and are targeted with violence by an actor leading to (or if it could lead to)
serious/lethal injuries.” (ACLED 2019, p. 13).
142  Claúdia Generoso de Almeida, Ana Lúcia Sá and Paulo C. J. Faria
5. Along with Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon,
Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan.
6. Collected data from ACLED dataset and authors’ compilation from April 2002 (end
of the civil war) to February 2021.
7. This anonymous movement demanded a more democratic country and the end
of corruption and socioeconomic inequality, using social media and rap music as
means of communication (Yarwood, 2016, pp. 215–216).
8. The most blatant response was the imprisonment and trial in 2015 and 2016 of
15+2 activists who wanted Dos Santos to leave office. They were accused of plotting
a coup by the provincial court of Luanda. In June 2016, they were put under house
arrest and were granted amnesty in September. Today, these protesters contend they
helped damage the external and internal image of Dos Santos.
9. This reformist profile of João Lourenço was raised by Mário de Carvalho and Dito
Dali, among others. Authors’ interview, 22 January and 5 February 2021.
10. Authors’ translation from “MPLA prioriza combate à corrupção e bajulação”,
ANGOP, 9 September 2018.
11. See the interview with the German journalist Andrien Kriesch days before the
official visit of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Luanda. Adrian Kri-
esch, “João Lourenço quebra o silêncio e fala à DW sobre Isabel dos Santos”, DW,
3 February 2020.
12. VOA Português, “É preciso destruir o ninho do marimbondo”, diz João Lourenço
sobre o combate à corrupção”, 22 November 2018.
13. GCS, Agência Lusa, Borralho Ndomba, “Presidente angolano reúne-se com ativis-
tas, Rafael Marques será recebido quarta-feira”, DW, 4 December 2018.
14. Authors’ interview, 1 February 2021.
15. Many of whom either were directly involved in the early protests – 10 years ago – or
were part of the group of 15+2 who were prosecuted and imprisoned in 2015 for the
alleged coup d’état attempt against the Dos Santos regime.
16. José Gomes Hata, Authors’ interview, 1 February 2021.
17. Lisandro Benguela, a young man living in the outskirts of Luanda, made this point
very tangible when he compared food prices in the two presidencies: “In JES’ [José
Eduardo dos Santos] days, pasta cost 700 [kwanzas], and with João Lourenço it is
3000.” Authors’ interview, 23 January 2021.
18. For example, on 17 April 2020, more than 500 vendors protesting against the clo-
sure of a local market in Caluquembe, Huila, were dispersed by police.
19. Amnesty International. “Doctor Sílvio Dala”, 9 October 2020.
20. Manuel Luamba, “Eu sou Sílvio Dala’: Sociedade civil angolana protesta contra a
morte do médico”, DW, 12 September 2020.
21. Data on the protest events retrieved from the ACLED dataset.
22. Authors’ interview, 27 April 2021.
23. Mário de Carvalho, authors’ interview, 22 January 2021.
24. Olívio Kilumbo, authors’ interview, 21 January 2021.
25. Authors’ interview, 1 February 2021.
26. José Gomes Hata, authors’ interview, 1 February 2021.
27. On 3 October 2020, the Angolan Revolutionary Movement organised a demon-
stration in Luanda specifically demanding Costa’s exoneration. In the interviews,
activists stressed it was one of the most relevant demonstration during the Lourenço
presidency. See Coque Mukuta, “‘Revús’ manifestam-se sábado em Luanda para
pedir demissão de chefe de gabinete do PR”, Voa, 1 October 2020.
28. Borralho Ndomba, “Luanda: Manifestantes relatam brutalidade policial para conter
protesto”, DW, 24 October 2020.
29. Rafael Marques Morais, “Manifestações, Desgaste e Descrédito”, Maka Angola, 12
November 2020; Pedro Bastos Reis, “Polícia reprime protestos em Angola: ‘Vivemos
um ambiente de terror’”, Público, 11 November 2020.
 We got a taste for protest!  143
30. Authors’ translation from Simão Hossi, “Polícia angolana reprime manifestação no
Dia da Independência”, Global Voices, 17 November 2020.
31. João Manuel dos Santos “Mwana Ngola”, Authors’ interview, 3 February 2021.
32. Authors’ interview, 1 February 2021.
33. João Manuel dos Santos “Mwana Ngola”, Authors’ interview, 3 February 2021.
34. Manuel Luamba, “Angola: ‘Diálogo’ de João Lourenço com jovens foi manobra
dilatória?”, DW, 26 November 2020.
35. Borralho Ndomba, “Luanda: Centenas de jovens em protesto contra corrupção e
desemprego”, DW, 10 December 2020.
36. Authors’ interview, 17 February 2020.
37. Authors’ interview, 1 February 2021.
38. Authors’ interview, 5 February 2021.
39. Authors’ interview, 21 January 2021.
40. Authors’ interview, 5 February 2021.
41. Authors’ interview, 1 February 2021.
42. Hitler Samussuku, Authors’ interview, 1 February 2021.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.

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9 HOW JANUARY 2015 PROTESTS
INFLUENCED JOSEPH KABILA’S
STRATEGY OF “GLISSEMENT”
François Polet

Introduction
Between 19 and 21 January 2015 Kinshasa was shaken by political protests of
unprecedented scale and duration. There were no mass gatherings, but rather
scattered acts of rebellion that spread across most Kinshasa’s 24 communes,
which became the stage of confrontations between groups of young people
and the armed forces, giving the protests a riot-like character. Police stations,
legislators’ houses, municipal buses – the symbols of power in the broadest sense –
were destroyed, and the security apparatus seemed to have lost its footing. The
cause of this unrest was the imminent parliament approval of a draft electoral
law that would link the holding of presidential elections to the realisation of a
national census. The opposition perceived this law as a strategy to allow President
Joseph Kabila’s to remain in power beyond his second and last term that expired
in December 2016. Under the threat of renewed protests, a version of the law that
obliterated the controversial provision was finally adopted by parliament.
Beyond this immediate outcome, the possibility that Kinshasans (or Kinois)
would rise again on a large scale and oust Kabila “like Compaoré was ousted in
Burkina Faso” has influenced Joseph Kabila’s strategy of glissement (slippage), that
is, his calculated decision to stay in office by delaying the organisation of the
electoral process. From January 2015 to the holding of the elections, in December
2018, the prospect of a popular uprising became a main element of the political
game, for the authorities as well as for the opposition and the external actors.
During this period Kabila main strategy to offset the opposing voices was to
increase the level of repression and to co-opt members of the opposition. Despite
international calls to preserve the “democratic space”, the government actions
contributed to gradually reduce the direct threat posed by the “street” to the sur-
vival of the regime. As later demonstrated in more detail, foreign pressures and
patronage politics were eventually the factors that shaped the political outcome
of the glissement.
Popular mobilisation against the third-term bid has been an important fea-
ture of Sub-Saharan “third wave” of protests (Branch and Mampilly, 2015;
Dulani, 2011; Yarwood, 2016; Tull and Simon, 2017). In many countries since
the beginning of the 21st century, people have taken the street to oppose what

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-9
 Joseph Kabila’s strategy of “Glissement” 147
was widely perceived as a blatant breach of the rules of the game by rulers who,
in most cases, had themselves unequivocally adopted constitutions that had at
their core the principle of alternation of power. The frequency of the attempts
to revise the fundamental law in order to stay in power is the ultimate evidence
of the formal dimension of the democratisation processes of the 1990s –
personalisation of power in the benefit of patronage networks remains a standard
practice. This political unrest must be analysed against a common socioeconomic
background of growing inequalities, huge unemployment rate among the youth,
absence of public services and rampant corruption. Formal multiparty democ-
racy has not delivered in terms of wellbeing for many Africans (Branch and
Mampilly, 2015).
Despite these broad shared conditions – social despair and distrust for the
political class – constitutional revision attempts have caused very diverse reac-
tions in terms of social protest throughout the continent, and these uneven
popular reactions in the streets have themselves produced very different political
outcomes (Posner and Young, 2018). At one extreme, the large-scale demonstra-
tions of October 2014 in Burkina Faso have caused the fall of Blaise Compaoré
and a regime change (Bertrand, 2022), at the other, Paul Kagame succeeded in
organising a referendum that resulted in a constitutional change without any
public dissent (Tull and Simon, 2017). Senegal in 2011 offers another example of
failure of a constitutional amendment initiative under the pressure of the crowd
(Demarest, 2016; Dimé, 2022). In many countries however, activists in the streets
could not really prevent what they framed as “constitutional coups”. Overall, “the
ability of these pro-democracy movements to safeguard tenure limitations has
been mixed” (Dulani, 2011).
One of ways to make sense of the great variance in mobilisations against
third term bid and in political outcome is to look at the political opportunity
structures that encourage protest. This classical social movement approach
focuses on the political opportunities that emanate from the political and the
social environment and then facilitate collective action – e.g. intra-regime divi-
sions, diminishing state repression, political allies, favourable public opinion, or
media coverage etc. In other words, all that activists perceive as an opportunity
to amplify their frames and achieve their political outcomes (Sanches, 2022).
However, one should also consider “threat and constricting institutional opportu-
nities as conditions for extra-institutional mobilization” (Meyer, 2004). Almeida
(2003) considers that, especially in authoritarian settings threat is an effective
source of mobilisation. Following Tilly (1978), he defines opportunity as “the like-
lihood that challengers will enhance their interests or extend existing benefits if
they act collectively” and threat as “the probability that existing benefits will be
taken away or new harms inflicted if challenging groups fail to act collectively”.
In other words, the fear of losing some public goods can be a trigger for collective
action as effective as the opening of a political opportunity to push forward new
demands. In the case of third term bids, what is at stake is the perceived threat
by activists of a democratic regression through the breach of the main rule of the
political game.
148  François Polet
Whether one is examining the role of opportunities or threats, the interplay
between political environment and protest in Africa should be considered in its
international context. As de Waal and Ibreck put it, “[t]he context of globali-
sation shapes the possibilities and the strategies of African social movement”
(2013). The importance of foreign support (resources, training, protection) for
the existence and effectiveness of African activism is well known (Pommerolle,
2010; Siméant, 2014). More significant for our concern is the way the “interna-
tional community” influences the relation between states and constituencies
through the diffusion of norms in the sphere of governance, pluralism, and civic
rights. The dependency of African governments to foreign actors obliges them
to, at least, give the impression they do tolerate critical non-violent actors. Other
important variables of the political opportunity structure – intra-regime division
and political alignment – are also particularly sensitive to international interfer-
ence in African context.
But as the margin of autonomy of African governments towards western demo-
cratic conditionality vary greatly from one country to another; likewise, vary the
extent to which international influences shape the national political environ-
ment of movements. Coming back to the Congolese setting, our main argument
is that the international context and the involvement of foreign stakeholders
had a major influence both on the emergence of the demonstration of January
2015 and their outcome, that is the glissement strategy used by Kabila. The inter-
national context shaped the perception of political opportunities and threat by
protesters. Then foreign actors contributed somehow to lower the costs of the
mobilisation by increasing the cost of the repression for state actors. Above all,
they weighed on the political process around the modalities and the duration of
the prolongation of Kabila’s last mandate.
This chapter investigates the determinants of January 2015 protests as well
as its consequences for the Congolese political process up to the end of Kabila’s
presidency. It starts depicting the main characteristics of the Congolese political
system and how it creates opportunities and constraints for protest mobilisation.
It subsequently outlines the context that led Kinshasans to the streets in January
2015, namely the tensions around President Kabila’s will to engage in constitu-
tional revision. Some other factors behind the triggering and the development of
the protests are also reviewed, in particular the role of political opponents. It is
also shown how the political parties, the main protest-entrepreneurs, used their
resources, networks, and framing strategies to amplify their anti-Kabila agenda
and contributed to mobilise other sections of the population – e.g. students and
jobless people – to participate in the demonstrations. The effects of the January
2015 demonstrations on the Congolese political events are then highlighted and
discussed. The threat of new popular uprising led to political reconfiguration and
a strengthening of the security apparatus. A special attention is given to the influ-
ence of international actors on the conditions for mobilisation as well as on the
political outcome of the protest. Ultimately, we conclude that causes as well as
consequences of protest in DRC remain deeply intertwined with neo-patrimonial
politics and international strategies.
 Joseph Kabila’s strategy of “Glissement” 149
Hybridity and extraversion
In order to identify the political opportunity structure that favoured the emer-
gence and outcome of the January 2015 demonstrations, let us first consider
the stable aspects of the Congolese political system under Joseph Kabila. As in
other African countries, it can be considered as an “hybrid” regime (de Waal and
Ibreck, 2013). In the Congolese case, the system results of the encounter between
a neo-patrimonial state trajectory inherited from thirty years of Mobutism and a
set of democratic institutions and formulas driven by foreign actors.1 In practice,
the functioning of institutions is undermined by personalised power networks,
where loyalty to the “big men” prevails over formal mechanisms of accountability
(Carayannis et al., 2018; Englebert and Tull, 2013; De Goede, 2012).
This neo-patrimonial system is influenced by foreign political institutions and
their representatives in the country. Since independence (and even before), great
powers have had special interest in Congo due to the size of the country, its loca-
tion and its natural wealth. This attention has increased with the Congolese wars
and its spill over effects in the region, as well as a renewed interest in strategic
mineral resources. Since 2000, Congo has been home of one of the largest post
conflict United Nations (UN) missions. So foreign political actors of high level,
both, national and international have been actively engaged in Congolese poli-
tics. This poses a series of constraints for local political actors, notably a pressure
to respect, even if only formally, certain rules of democratic governance. However,
reliance on “extraversion” strategies is just as much a producer of resources as it is
a constraint on leaders (Bayart, 2006). In local political representations, it is not
possible to govern sustainably without the support of the mundele (the whites).
Since Westerners are considered to be “kingmakers”, their support, even if only
apparent, is a central issue in Congolese political endeavours. However, this rela-
tionship of dependence is not one-way. Congolese political actors astutely use the
fear ambassadors have that political competition degenerate into violent conflict
to defend their interest.
This hybrid political environment generates complex and shifting oppor-
tunities for mobilisation. State reactions to protest mobilisations are indeed
characterised by uncertainty. Formally, the political system is open to
demonstrations – the new constitution of 2006 provides for a liberal regime in
this respect, with the organisers’ sole duty to inform the competent authorities
in advance. The right to demonstrate is also regularly reaffirmed by the many
international actors present in Congo, many of whom do not hesitate to call on
the authorities during the most repressive episodes. However, in practice, public
demonstrations are selectively authorised and mobilisations that constitute a politi-
cal challenge in the eyes of those in power are subject to repressive and often violent
treatment, as was the case in 2005 with the repression of opposition marches, 2006
in clashes with Jean-Pierre Bemba’s militias and in 2009 when political-religious
movement Bundu dia Kongo was crushed by the regime (Polet, 2017; Tull, 2010).
At the same time, Congolese political order is characterised by the quasi-auto-
matic partisan politicisation of social protest. Political elites use popular protest
150  François Polet
as a tactic to challenge existing arrangements within the political field. This phe-
nomenon, although real, is exaggerated by authorities in order to discredit all
popular grievances in advance. This context of political manipulation contrib-
utes to popular distrust of movement entrepreneurs.
The weak institutionalisation of the repertoire of street protests as a legitimate
mode of political action explains the recurrence of turbulent forms of protest in
Congolese cities. The hybridisation of the regime – both open and closed – is
reflected in the hybridisation of the “politics of conflict”, in which organised and
codified forms of expression of dissatisfaction – “peaceful marches” – coexist in
various modalities with spontaneous and violent forms of expression of popular
anger – “making a mess” (Tilly and Tarrow, 2006; Ben Néfissa, 2011).

From the draft constitutional revision to the glissement

It is also important to identify the more volatile aspects of the political opportu-
nities that gave rise to the demonstrations of January 2015, that is, the context of
a largely delegitimised presidency seeking to stay in office by changing the rules
of the game. Joseph Kabila began his first term (2007–2011) as popularly elected
president2 in a favourable political configuration. With support of the interna-
tional community and a large part of the Congolese population, he had managed
to profile himself as a man of peace, promoter of the reunification of the coun-
try. Moreover, the coalition that supported him, the Alliance for a Presidential
Majority (AMP), had a majority of seats in the National Assembly.3 But the pres-
ident’s popularity waned during his first term. On the one hand the hopes that
the promises of development had generated were largely disappointed, and on
the other hand the persistence of insecurity in the Eastern part of the country
degraded his image as a restorer of peace, particularly among Kivu inhabitants.
Kabila’s popularity loss was further accentuated when several big men from the
East defected the AMP, the most notable being Vital Kamerhe who was very pow-
erful in South Kivu. Frustrations within the presidential alliance continued to
grow, as reaction to preferential treatment of the clienteles from Katangese region
networks which benefited from the spoils of strategic state sectors.4 At the same
time, Western partners became increasingly critical of the Kabila administration,
for deviating from the commitments made in terms of “good governance”, espe-
cially in the context of the mining contracts with China and the decentralisation
programme. Kabila’s internal and international political legitimacy was eroding
but still he managed to get re-elected in the 2011 elections, against Étienne
Tshisekedi, the leader of the UDPS5. These results were widely questioned for not
being credible, but in the face of a fait accompli, and unable to measure the extent
of the fraud, the Western leaders resigned themselves to record the re-election
(Pourtier, 2012).
Kabila’s major challenge facing his second term (2011–2016) was to broaden
and strengthen his political support base with a view to reforming the consti-
tutional article (article 220) that limits the number of consecutive presidential
terms to two. The first attempt to co-opt the opposition in the framework of
 Joseph Kabila’s strategy of “Glissement” 151
the Concertations nationales of 2013, which was officially convened to “consol-
idate national cohesion”, was a failure. The most relevant parties – the UDPS,
Jean-Pierre Bemba’s MLC6 and Vital Kamerhe’s UNC7 – boycotted the meet-
ing. The possibility of a constitutional revision polarised the political system
and contributed to a convergence of opposition parties, a scenario that the
presidential faction wanted to avoid. During 2014, the voices of the Catholic
bishops and civil society mingled with those of opposing parties to disqualify
the hypothesis of a third mandate. The explicit stance of the United States
against the constitutional amendment weighed in the decision of the opposi-
tion parties to resist invitations from the government. It further contributed to
deepening the rift within the presidential majority between the hardliners and
those who believed that “we want to stay in power, but we must stay in tune
with the people and those beyond our borders”.8 Yet a surprising political event
in a foreign country would help change the president’s strategy: on 30 October
2014, a popular uprising against a constitutional revision would lead to the fall
of the president of Burkina Faso (Bertrand, 2022). Kabila’s advisers intended to
use the Burkinabe example to refine their strategy and legitimise the revision
of the Congolese constitution.9 The Burkinabe scenario, which the Congolese
opposition seized upon to spread the idea of an imminent popular uprising in
Congo, led the Kabila camp to abandon the strategy of constitutional revision,
now considered too risky. This was replaced by another manoeuvre: inserting
into the electoral law a provision making the holding of elections conditional
on a census of voters, an operation that can take several years in a country like
Congo, thus implying a postponement of the presidential election scheduled for
late 2016.
The opposition parties then immediately began a campaign against what they
described from that moment on as a strategy of glissement of the electoral calen-
dar. This did not prevent the majority from tabling a bill to amend the electoral
law. The vote on the bill was officially scheduled for Monday 19 January. In order
to take the opposition by surprise, the majority decided to advance the vote to
Saturday 17 January and to have the law endorsed by the Senate on Monday 19
January. In reaction, the opponents called on the Congolese to demonstrate and
occupy the parliament to prevent the adoption of the electoral law.

Resources, framing strategies, and identities

To fully understand the emergence of the Janvier 2015 demonstrations, one must
link the contextual analysis with other variables reflecting the agency of pro-
testers. The organisational resources of opposition parties were crucial in the
conversion of the resentment of the people against Kabila into collective action.
Above all, opponents acted as framing agents of the electoral law as a “threat” for
the nation, instilled a sense of urgency in the public opinion and made a link with
the events in Burkina Faso. Another factor that contributed to the extent of the
uprising is collective identity, as reputations of specific groups are at play during
the protest (Polet, 2016).
152  François Polet
Parties as movement entrepreneurs
As in other African countries, opposition parties played a key role in trigger-
ing the demonstrations.10 Their action corresponds to that of the movement
entrepreneurs described by McCarthy and Zald (1977). They not only “called for
demonstrations”, but provided some of the resources without which the shift to
collective action would not have taken place. These are on one hand organisa-
tional resources: the “cells” and the “bases” of the militant networks circulated
the call in the neighbourhoods of Kinshasa and leaflets were thrown at several
important crossroads on the evening of 18 January. The financial resources
invested by opposition parties in the demonstrations appear to have been limited.
Small sums were distributed to young activists to cover the costs of printing leaf-
lets and buying appeal credits, tyres, and petrol, but not enough to cover the costs
of mobilisation, including transport, let alone to pay participants, a practice that
the AMP systematically resorted to.
The most decisive resources that opposition parties brought into the mobilisa-
tion are of a cognitive nature, through the activity of framing aiming at linking
“institutional manoeuvres of the majority” and “maintaining Joseph Kabila in
power” (Snow et al., 1986). As an opponent told us:

We were on the ground, telling that Kabila wants to stay, because there it
was revising the Constitution, blowing up the 220 and all that. And now it’s
hitting. You see the population… what we call in English the trigger element,
when we tell them that Kabila wants to stay, they say “no!”.

In other words, politicians actively contributed to shape the meaning of the law
amendment as an urgent threat for the nation (with slogans as “Il faut sauver le
Congo”11) in order to convince people to march. “We were telling people that
there was a desire to cheat, to amend the Constitution. But there had to be some-
thing that triggered this perception of cheating among the population, among
the masses. And that’s what happened”.
Last but not least, the media resources of the opponents, namely their access
to national and international prime-time channels, were decisive in the dis-
semination of this mobilising discourse. The majority of the demonstrators we
interviewed relied on the statements of opposition politicians, heard on radio or
television, to read the strategies of the majority and see the threat that the draft
electoral law represented.

Students – coming out as “an elite”

Several hundred students from the University of Kinshasa (Unikin), the historic
bastion of student activism in Congo, gathered outside the university housing
on the morning of 19 January to head to the parliament, located ten kilometres
from the campus. The violence of the confrontation with the police at the main
crossroads of the capital claimed several victims in the student ranks, but this did
 Joseph Kabila’s strategy of “Glissement” 153
not prevent them from re-mobilising on 20 and 21 January, in smaller numbers, to
make another attempt to break through the police roadblocks.
As elsewhere in the world, this student mobilisation was the result of the high
level of politicisation of students and greater biographical availability (McAdam,
1988). This process of politicisation is nevertheless highly dependent on the
action and discourses of the opposition parties. On the one hand, the clandestine
branches of these parties are active on campus, in order to disseminate the catch-
words of the opposition leaders, and on the other hand, the students attentively
followed the speeches of the opposition politicians.
In our exchanges with students, we also realised that the Burkinabè protests
that occurred less than three months earlier had modified their perception of
what mobilisation could deliver in Congo. This quote from one of our inter-
viewees is illustrative: “We wanted to do like in Burkina Faso. When they went
to their parliament. We had the same goal. If they succeeded, why can’t we?”.
Many students of the Unikin had followed these events through the international
television channels. But some “professors-politicians”12 had also explicitly used
Burkina Faso to motivate students to mobilise. They did so by exploiting social
representations of the students as a group, insinuating that it was the responsibil-
ity of “their generation” to “save the nation” by marching on the Parliament, “as
they did in Burkina Faso”. So, the January demonstrations were an opportunity
for many students to restore a positive image of themselves as a social group with
distinctive intellectual and political qualities: “We came out as an elite with an
understanding of political danger” said one of them.

Jobless young people and the reputation of the neighbourhood

Beside students, jobless young people from poor neighbourhoods took part in large
numbers in the protest. However, their participation was unorganised and spon-
taneous. Most of them acted as “followers”: they only decided to mobilise on the
very morning of the first day of the demonstration, as they saw political activists
and students marching in the streets and defying the police. They then joined
together in small groups with friends from the same streets to try to reach the
parliament. Police roadblocks forced many of them to return to their neighbour-
hoods, where they burned tyres, set up roadblocks, destroyed symbols of power and
looted Chinese businesses. Burkina Faso had also had an impact on the imaginary
of some of these disenfranchised youth, as one of them told us spontaneously:

I saw that in Burkina Faso, or Ivory Coast: if people have no job, they always
march in the street. But here, if we march in the street, there is the military,
the tear gas… But that day, we as Congolese people, said “too much is too
much”.

Identity issues are also at stake in the mobilisation of these young people: it was
a question of showing that their neighbourhood, their commune, is among the
most combative and “courageous” in the capital. It was important to know what
154  François Polet
was happening elsewhere in other communes, but also “to let known” or being
known for “faire le désordre” (“making a mess”). This interview with a young man
from Ndjili (Thsangu district) is illustrative:

We were waiting for the reaction of the others, from the campus, to see
what was happening. But on Monday we see the governor on TV, who says,
“Tshangu, I congratulate you because you don’t make a mess, you’ll get
bonuses”. Now the other communes say that we Tshangu are lazy. […] So we
got together and we said to each other, “What we’re going to do will be very
strong”.

The consequences of the January 2015 demonstrations

The strength and duration of the protest surprised all the actors and observers of
Congolese political life. Despite the denials of the ministers, who tried to reduce
the protest to vandalism and present the withdrawal of the controversial provision
as an act of responsibility of the authorities, the narrative that prevailed in public
opinion was that power had retreated in face of the people. In other words, the
population had burst into the political arena. What until then had been mainly
a rhetorical resource of the opposition has been translated into reality. For the
government, the survival of the regime required from then on that it pays close
attention to the potential reactions of the street and adapts its political strategies
accordingly. At the beginning of 2015, the possibility of a Burkinabé-style insur-
gency scenario, made credible by the January demonstrations, conditioned the
Congolese political game in the short term.

Political reconfiguration
As stated by Meyer, “development of movements reflects, responds to and some-
times alters the realities of politics and policy” (2004). The demonstrations of
January had indeed a real influence on Congolese politics during some time. It
first forced the Kabila camp to reorient its strategy. On the one hand, it opted
for a less visible glissement strategy, by artificially creating obstacles to the work
of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), which is under his
influence. On the other hand, it re-engaged in co-optation attempts of opposition
forces, through the announcement of a new “dialogue”.13 Popular discontent has,
however, contributed to the hardening of the opposition within Kabila’s coali-
tion. These tensions led to the exclusion in September 2015 of a group of seven
major parties from the AMP.14 A week later, wealthy businessman Moïse Katumbi,
the president’s main competitor within the AMP, left the presidential party and
resigned as governor of Katanga. The alliance between the seven excluded parties
(the G7) and Katumbi constituted from that moment a new and major political
force within the opposition against the “dialogue”.
The Kabila camp then placed its hopes in a rapprochement with the UDPS.
This is a party with symbolic weight within the opposition, which could make
 Joseph Kabila’s strategy of “Glissement” 155
Kabila’s dialogue sound more inclusive and thus provide internal and external
political legitimacy. Negotiations were conducted between July and September
2015, but they did not lead to an agreement, as the two parties did not agree
on the modalities of the dialogue and, more substantially, on the power-sharing
between the PPRD and the UDPS, which it should lead to.
The January demonstrations also contributed to the rise of a new type of mil-
itant organisation in Congo: the mouvements citoyens (citizens’ movements). In
March 2015, several youth organisations met in Kinshasa to launch a civic youth
movement focused on the demand for rights, with the support of Senegalese and
Burkinabe organisations with an international reputation. The meeting was
funded by the United States embassy. Seeing this initiative as a foreign-backed
attempt to blow on the embers of January and raise young people against the
regime, security forces violently intervened. The international media coverage of
the repression gave public visibility and political existence to the newly created
Congolese youth groups, especially Filimbi and La Lucha.
The mouvements citoyens had some influence on political actors during several
months. Their new objective became to prevent the co-optation process of politi-
cians initiated by Joseph Kabila through his proposal for “dialogue”. Strengthened
by their status as spokespersons for committed Congolese youth, Filimbi obtained
external financial support and succeeded in inviting the main leaders of the
Congolese opposition to a seminar in Dakar in December 2015, whose unofficial
objective was the creation of a broad coalition uniting the opposition and civil
society, against the glissement. The Front citoyen (FC) for the respect of the con-
stitution and alternation was made official on 9 January 2016.
The appearance of the FC accentuated the fears of the Kabila camp of a
Burkinabe-style scenario, that is to say, a larger scale repetition of January 2015
events. According to intelligence sources, the FC was the result of a Western
conspiracy to use politicians and civil society and “push Congolese youth into
insurrection” (ANR, 2015). This perception of an imminent threat to its political
survival led the government to strengthen its anti-demonstration policy at the
beginning of 2016, by incorporating into the national police force the Republican
Guard units most loyal to the presidency, improving the anti-riot capabilities of
the security forces, increasing surveillance of opponents and strengthening police
control of urban space, notably through the acquisition of surveillance cameras
(Polet, 2017).
The strengthening of the repressive apparatus led the FC to avoid mobilisa-
tion in the public space during the first five months of 2016, instead opting for
non-confrontational collective actions. A day of prayer in memory of the vic-
tims of January 2015 was organised on 19 January 2016, and the demonstration
planned for 16 February was converted into a journée ville morte.15 But the cross-
ing of a crucial threshold in the glissement strategy – the Constitutional Court
ruling of 11 May 201616 – led the opponents to organise protest marches on 26
May. Authorised by the authorities, the demonstration in Kinshasa brought
together thousands of citizens, who marched peacefully before being dispersed
by the police. The restraint of the latter is undoubtedly the result of diplomatic
156  François Polet
démarches behind the organisation of the protests, including a call to moderation
of the General Secretary of the United Nations Ban Ki Moon. However, the May
2016 demonstrations did not have the same political effect as the January 2015
protest. The Constitutional Court did not reverse its decision.
In addition, rivalry between the opposition leaders quickly undermined the
cohesion of the FC. The UDPS had not confirmed its commitment to the Front,
as the Tshisekedi faction had not closed the door to dialogue with the PPRD.
Katumbi’s flight on 19 May 2016, on which repression had intensified following
the announcement of his presidential candidacy, created the political, and finan-
cial conditions for the UDPS to change over to a more outspoken opposition
to Kabila. The rapprochement between Tshisekedi and the former governor of
Katanga led to the formation on 11 June 2016 in Genval (Belgium) of a mega-co-
alition of opposition parties, the “Rassemblement des forces sociales et politiques
pour le changement”17 (hereafter Rassemblement), which required the holding of
the presidential election as scheduled, in December 2016.
Being marginalised by the Tshisekedi-Katumbi club, Vital Kamerhe finally
agreed to participate in Kabila’s dialogue initiative. With the participation of an
opposition figure, the dialogue started on 1 September 2016, under the leadership
of a representative of the African Union. On 19 September, the Rassemblement
organised a large demonstration to demand the departure of Kabila three months
later, on 19 December, the last day of his mandate. Whereas its leaders continue to
demand elections to be held on schedule, the real aim of the Rassemblement was
the creation of a truly inclusive dialogue leading to a transition period presided
by Étienne Tshisekedi. Despite pressure from the Rassemblement, the dialogue
resulted in an agreement on 18 October that postponed the presidential election
to August 2018 and maintained the presidency of Kabila until that date.

The growing role of diplomats and the Catholic Church

After September 2016, the perceived risk of a popular uprising for the survival
of Kabila’s regime diminished. The effect of the January 2015 demonstrations
and the spectre of a Burkinabe-style scenario gradually faded. The regime, which
had weathered the two ordeals of the May and September 2016 demonstrations,
gained confidence in the repressive apparatus to counter any attempt to destabi-
lise institutions through recourse to the streets. The violence of the September
demonstration, which was partially provoked by the authorities, served as an
argument for putting the right to public demonstrations in the capital on hold.
By officially prohibiting demonstration, the ruling elite increases substantially the
cost of the protest and close the opportunity for mobilising. Although it initially
called for increased mobilisation, the opposition fell back on the organisation
of a journée ville morte on 19 October. This tactical change towards a much less
conflictual mode of action signals the wear and tear of the street demonstrations
as a political resource.
On the other hand, the influence of international actors and the Catholic
Church is increasing at the end of 2016. Since January 2015, the attitude of
 Joseph Kabila’s strategy of “Glissement” 157
the Western powers had been to support dialogue, as a mechanism for reduc-
ing political tension, but also respect for the constitution, as the foundation of
the rule of law which they had been promoting since reconstruction. On the
question of meeting electoral deadlines, their positions would become more flex-
ible during 2016.18 At the same time, the issue of violence in the management
of demonstrations has led the international community to increase pressure on
the Congolese authorities, particularly following the deadly repression of the
demonstrations in September 2016, which led to the adoption of international
sanctions against several leaders of the security apparatus. While supporting the
dialogue, the European Union insisted, even before its conclusion, on the need
for a “more inclusive political process”, which should include the main oppo-
sition force, namely the Rassemblement. From October to December 2016, the
Europeans exerted strong diplomatic pressure on the representatives of both the
Rassemblement and the Kabila coalition in order to push them to start talks under
the aegis of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo (CENCO).
Faced with Kabila’s desire to remain in power, the Congolese Catholic Church
had been oscillating since 2014 between a protest position and a unifying posture
(Stearn, 2016). The bishops had spoken out several times against any modification
of the constitution. Their level of political commitment increased at the end of
2015, with their participation in the Dakar meeting. But they had to withdraw
from it after the government denounced the partisan behaviour of the Catholic
Church. This incident, followed by the intervention of Pope Francis, led the bish-
ops to adopt a more moderate profile, even favourable to the regime, by becoming
advocates for a national dialogue without insisting on meeting deadlines. Engaged
in the dialogue, the Catholics nevertheless used the pretext of the murderous
repression of the 19 September 2016 demonstrations to withdraw from it and
align themselves with the Western position, making themselves the promoters of
a second dialogue including the Rassemblement.
After October 2016, the priority, for the church as well as for diplomats, is no
longer the respect for the constitution and political alternation, but to reach a
political compromise between Kabila and the Rassemblement in order to avoid
a popular uprising against Kabila on 19 December, whose large-scale repression
risks sinking the country into civil war (Sawyer, 2016). At that moment, the
Rassemblement is indeed threatening Kabila to put the population in the street
to oust him on the last day of his mandate, unless he opens “another dialogue”.
But Kabila sticks to the results of the first dialogue and seems confident that his
security forces will be able to resist the next mobilisations. New international
threats, notably the evocation of the International Criminal Court, finally lead
him to engage on 8 December 2016 in a new dialogue, moderated by CENCO.
During the night of 19–20 December, when his second term of office theoreti-
cally expires, a scattered, and relatively small popular mobilisation took place,
under the call of Lucha and Filimbi citizen movements, which was easily stifled
by massively deployed security forces. The CENCO dialogue led on 30 December
to an agreement which provided for the maintenance in power of Kabila and
power sharing with the opposition, as part of a transition towards elections to be
158  François Polet
held in 2017.19 Yet the new agreement is not respected by Kabila, who delays its
implementation and takes advantage of the death of the charismatic leader of the
Rassemblement, on 1 February 2017, to divide the opposition, by poaching several
figures of the UDPS. The promulgation of the electoral calendar is delayed by the
CENI, while the presidential entourage raises again the idea of a constitutional
referendum on the possibility of a third term. Divided and discredited, the oppo-
sition is no longer able to mobilise to impose the implementation of the CENCO
agreement. Calls for demonstrations by mouvements citoyens are hardly any more
successful, revealing the weak anchoring of these organisations among the youth.
The non-respect of the CENCO agreement that the diplomats sought to estab-
lish as the legitimate basis of political power during the transition, squanders
the little trust Western embassies kept towards Kabila. At the end of October,
two weeks after a statement by the president of the CENI referring to elections
in 2019, the United States ambassador to the United Nations visiting Kinshasa
endorsed a further postponement of the elections, to the displeasure of the oppo-
sition and mouvements citoyens but set the end of 2018 as the final deadline. A few
days later, CENI published a calendar setting the elections for 23 December 2018.
Joseph Kabila nevertheless leaves doubt as to his intention to run again.
The Catholic Church, whose popular legitimacy had suffered greatly from the
failure to respect “its” agreement, then took the lead in a new mobilisation cam-
paign. Three national demonstrations, each time taking the form of dozens of
processions throughout the country, are organised at the turn of 2018 by a group
of Catholic personalities, with the support of CENCO, to demand the full appli-
cation of the CENCO agreement. The crushing of these marches of “Catholics”
led to international outrage. Unlike previous demonstration, where violence
seemed to be on both sides, there was now a striking contrast between martyr-like
priests and peaceful believers on one side and blind state violence on the other.
It has given rise to a new series of international condemnations that increased
diplomatic pressure on Kabila. Adding to Western injunctions there were growing
concerns from African regional bodies and from neighbouring countries, which
feared an increase in insecurity in the border regions if Kabila remains in power.20
More than protests, it is this converging international pressure that leads Kabila
to withdraw from the race, by designating on August 8, one of his PPRD follow-
ers, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadari, as the candidate of his coalition.
In the run up to the December 2018 elections, the opposition endorsed two
candidates: Martin Fayulu, backed by Moïse Katumbi and Jean-Pierre Bemba; and
Felix Tshisekedi (the son of Étienne) supported by Vital Kamerhe.21 The official
results gave victory to Tshisekedi, but serious evidence indicates that it is the
product of a transaction between the different political camps, rather than the
result of popular vote (Englebert, 2020). The original plan of the Kabila camp was
to secure the win of Shadary, but Martin Fayulu’s considerable lead over his rival
led to a change of strategy and to the need of negotiating an agreement with the
real winner. As the latter refused, it is to the other loser, Felix Tshisekedi, that
the Kabila clan proposed the presidency, through an agreement preserving large
parts of state power to the coalition of the outgoing president. The concomitant
 Joseph Kabila’s strategy of “Glissement” 159
manipulation of the legislative elections guarantees Kabilas’s PPRD majority in
the chamber.
The majority of the population, outside the Fayulu strongholds in ex-Band-
undu, seemed to have accepted the election outcome, either because they did not
perceive the extent of the manipulation, or because they considered that only
Kabila’s departure really counted. In any case, this attitude caught the western
chancelleries off guard. After having first questioned the results, they took note
of Tshisekedi’s victory, considering that the non-respect of democratic principles
was the price to pay to get rid of the Kabila dynasty without entering a new spiral
of political violence.

Conclusion
The Congolese political process shows how important it is, in African settings,
to take international context and actors into account among the variables that
define possibilities for mobilising, as well as opportunities for influence. The
January 2015 demonstration happened in a politically polarised national environ-
ment and a regional context marked by the Burkina Faso uprising. Through their
resources, discourse and media visibility, political opponents had a crucial role
in triggering the protest. From then on, the possibility of a repetition of January
2015 protest at a larger scale shaped the strategies of the presidency as well as of
the opposition for several months. However, the impact of the popular pressure
did not last. Big political players tamed it or tried to instrumentalise it without
engaging really with the demands of the activists. Anti-Kabila protests did not
produce substantive change in the relation between state actors and constituency.
Two factors are more specifically important to understand international atti-
tude towards anti-Kabila protests from 2015 to 2018. One is contextual, the other
is more structural. First, Kabila had already lost legitimacy among Western diplo-
mats when January 2015 protests occurred. Unlike other leaders in the region, he
was no longer deemed capable to secure Western interests and political stability.
So, there was somehow political convergence between protesters and Western
ambassadors. But more decisive in the approach of foreigners is the fear of Congo
descending into chaos. Congo is different from other African countries as it is in
some way considered “too big to fail”. Like Mobutu, Kabila has tried to present
himself to the exterior as the “guarantor of order”. But the existence of public
protest was the most visible symptom of a wide popular dissatisfaction with the
statu quo. More than the principle of democracy reclaimed by the protesters, the
fear of chaos, of which the demonstrations were seen as both a symptom and
an accelerator, conditioned international and regional political reaction to the
crises. And those ultimately forced Kabila to turn over power, even if he did so
without respecting the sense of the popular vote.
Lastly, January 2015 demonstrations in DRC tell us that popular protests in
Africa must be analysed as embedded in a multidimensional political game. Its
causes as well as its consequences interplay with the complex logics of patrimo-
nial politics – the conflictual negotiation between big men around the sharing of
160  François Polet
the power – and the strategies of international actors. In a political field marked
by extraversion, gaining international attention and support is a major dimension
of the struggles, for power as well as for change.

Notes
1. From 2001, a massive international intervention took place to end the Congolese
War (1998–2003) and rebuild a state that should be “administratively capable and
well governed” (Vircoulon, 2005). The 2006 constitution, adopted by referendum,
established a semi-presidential regime in a highly decentralised unitary state and
safeguarded fundamental civil and political rights. Formal adherence to the reform
package promoted by the international community allowed Joseph Kabila to gain
the upper hand over his rivals between 2001 and 2006, before trying to emancipate
himself from the Western “semi-tutelage” (de Villers, 2016).
2. From 2001 to 2006, Joseph Kabila ruled as a coopted president, following the assas-
sination of his father, Laurent Désiré Kabila, in January 2001.
3. The AMP is a coalition of parties built around Joseph Kabila’s party, the PPRD
(Parti du peuple pour la reconstruction et la démocratie), in the run-up to the 2006
presidential election. It becomes the MP (Presidential Majority) in 2011.
4. Province of origin of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the father of the President.
5. Founded in 1983, the UDPS (Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social) is consid-
ered as the historical opposition party in the Congo.
6. Mouvement de Libération du Congo.
7. Union pour la Nation Congolaise.
8. Remarks by a parliamentarian at a meeting of the political bureau of the presiden-
tial majority, 25 August 2014 (www.7sur7.cd, 29 August 2014)
9. A PPRD delegation was present in Ouagadougou to directly observe the parliamen-
tary process in Burkina Faso.
10. Demarest analysed the role of political parties in the popular protest against Presi-
dent Wade’s third term in Senegal from a resource mobilisation perspective (2016).
11. « We must save Congo »
12. Many professors at the Unikin are simultaneously politicians.
13. An initiative encouraged by the Western diplomacy, according to our interview
with the Belgian ambassador.
14. They collectively represent about a quarter of the AMP seats in the National
Assembly.
15. Journée « ville morte » is a relatively common mode of protest in French speaking
Africa, consisting of paralysing the city during one day or more through a sort of
civil strike (everybody stay home and businesses are closed).
16. Allowing Kabila to remain in office until the inauguration of a new elected presi-
dent, thus beyond 2016 if the elections are not held on time
17. Rally of Social and Political Forces for Change.
18. On 30 March 2016, UN Security Council Resolution 2277, presented by France,
calls (among other things) on the government to organise the elections “in a timely
manner”. In September 2016, in view of the accumulated delays, the European
Union referred to “the shortest possible time frame during the year 2017”.
19. And no more in August 2018 as decided during the first dialogue.
20. The coming to power of João Lourenço in Angola (September 2017) and Cyril
Ramaphosa in South Africa (14 February 2018), who do not have the closeness of
their predecessors to the Congolese president, have contributed to harden African
positions in the Kabila dossier.
 Joseph Kabila’s strategy of “Glissement” 161
21. On 11 November 2018, the seven main opposition candidates had agreed in an
international facilitation meeting in Geneva to select Martin Fayulu as the sole
opposition candidate. The next day, Felix Tshisekedi withdrew from the agreement,
under the pretext of the refusal of the “base” of the UDPS to support this candidate.

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10 FROM VOTING TO WALKING
THE 2011 WALK-TO-WORK PROTEST
MOVEMENT IN UGANDA
Michael Mutyaba

Introduction
“Walk-to-Work”, as the protests were called, were mainly challenging the
sky-rocketing prices of fuel and daily commodities, a result of the extravagant
expenditures of state resources by the ruling National Resistance Movement
(NRM) in the then just-concluded 2011 general election campaigns. Mobilised
by opposition parties and civic groups, the masses showed discontent at the rising
inflation by boycotting public transport and instead walking to their workplaces
– hence the name Walk-to-Work – in addition to peaceful street demonstrations.
As the demonstrations grew, however, spreading out to various major towns in the
country, scenes of violent confrontation between police and protesters became
common, and economic grievances morphed into political ones as protesters
increasingly talked of regime change and started drawing inspiration from the
then on-going revolutions in North Africa. The moment revealed deep-seated
anti-regime sentiments that had been boiling for years.
The protests were soon crushed by the NRM regime, however, with teargas,
rubber bullets and mass arrests, but not without leaving a lasting legacy. In
Uganda’s opposition, the huge enthusiasm on the streets reinforced the idea that
the NRM’s hegemony could be better confronted through revolution, as opposed
to elections that were fast losing significance. The opportunity signalled by the
protests re-energised civil society and the masses to more aggressively critique the
NRM’s economic mismanagement but also call for democratic reforms. But in
response the NRM party-state also became more militarised and authoritarian,
and in subsequent years passed draconian laws further limiting freedoms of public
assembly and controlling media. The protests thus emboldened the demands for
change while also prompting a further closing of political space, setting the stage
for future confrontations.
This chapter, based on oral interviews with members of various opposition
parties1, academia and civil society conducted from January to June 2018, as well
as participant observation of the events in April 2011, explores the nature and
impact of the Walk-to-Work protests. It presents a two-fold argument. First, polit-
ical opportunity structures that is the structure of alliances between opposition
parties – the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and the Democratic Party

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-10
164  Michael Mutyaba
(DP) – and between them and civic groups (Activists for Change – A4C), was
crucial for protest mobilisation. Plus, the activists were also able to count with
a supporting public opinion. Second, framing strategies such as amplification,
bridging, and transformation, helped make the demands salient, bridge diverse
frames – cost of living, corruption, poor quality elections, democracy – and pro-
duced new understandings about the politics of opposition and protest in the
country. Indeed, a notion of democracy by revolution emerged as opposed to a
notion of democracy by elections. Uganda’s Walk-to-Work protest was short-lived
and provoked only limited changes in the political system, as the state reacted
violently to the mass demonstrations. However, it sowed revolutionary seeds that
flourished in subsequent years, particularly since 2017 with the emergence of
Bobi Wine as the regime’s foremost political opponent. This present study shows
that while political opportunity structures may be less abundant in authoritarian
regimes, the movement’s capacity to innovate, and pass along resonant frames
explains if not their outcomes at least their public visibility and recognition. This,
we argue, may produce some cracks in the system and leave an enduring legacy
for future protests.
The chapter is organised as follows. It starts with the setting, illustrating the
political opportunity structures that aided their outbreak. It then explores the
historical context that back dropped the protests. It then discusses the 2011 elec-
tions and their aftermath, in which the protests took place, as well as their nature.
Finally, it examines the impact of these protests on both the opposition and the
government and surveys the more recent cycle of protests – led by Bobi Wine and
the People Power movement – and its breaks/continuities with the Walk-to-Work
protests.

More than just the high cost of living:

Understanding protest in Uganda
One of the most interesting features of the third wave of popular protest in Africa
has been its focus on consumption that is material, issues. Indeed, between 2007
and 2008 food riots occurred in more than a dozen of African countries including
Mozambique, Cameroon, Senegal, Madagascar, Egypt and Morocco (Engels, 2015,
Berazneva, and Lee, 2013). The rising oil prices contributed to sharp food price
increases that bear significantly on citizens’ cost of living. Yet other issues – such
as political rights and democratic reform – have also propelled people into the
streets. The protest against presidential third-term bids in Burkina Faso (Bertrand,
2022), Senegal (Dimé, 2022), and Democratic Republic of Congo (Polet, 2022) and
for policy change in Cabo Verde (Sanches and Lopes, 2022) are quite illustrative
that political issues are also at the core of many protest events. From journalists
to opposition parties, ordinary citizens, and musicians, in fact, large coalitions
of individuals have protested against outgoing regimes. Protests have reached
unprecedented levels in the 2010s even in the most authoritarian regimes (Branch
and Mampilly, 2015; Sanches, 2022). Their forms of pressure, and repertoires
of action, vary a lot and propel distinct results (Branch and Mampilly, 2015).
 From voting to walking 165
Uganda has been a part of this cycle of protests. The Walk-to-Work protests
have been largely depicted as a demonstration against the rising fuel and food
prices (Oola, 2011). And indeed, the inflation in the aftermath of the 2011 elec-
tions in Uganda was instrumental in sparking off the mass demonstrations.
However, there was much more at stake than merely the skyrocketing prices.
More importantly, there was also widespread popular disappointment with the
results of the presidential election that had just ended in February 2011 – which
gave incumbent president Yoweri Museveni a fourth term in power – coupled
with longstanding grievances against the corruption and authoritarianism
of his regime that had by then lasted for twenty-five years in power. In fact,
these long-term factors constituted the more important drivers of the protests
as they sowed seeds of popular discontent long before the inflation started. In
addition, the revolutions in North Africa that were ongoing at the time cap-
tured the imagination of many discontented Ugandans. When the ruling
NRM’s lavish spending in the 2010 campaigns caused inflation in early 2011,
it only opened the lid on these underlying sentiments. Therefore, these four
factors – economic inflation, discontent with the 2011 elections, long-term
authoritarianism, and corruption by the NRM regime, and inspiration from the
then ongoing “Arab spring” revolutions – were the triggering factors of the protest
movement.
To explain the nature and impact of the Walk-to-Work protests we interact two
classical approaches in the social movement theories that have been discussed in
the African context (Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2009). First, we consider
the political opportunity structures, that is, the context-dependent factors that
enhance social movement prospects for mobilising, advancing certain claims,
employing certain tactics and affecting mainstream politics (Meyer, 2004, p. 126).
Political opportunities have been widely discussed in the literature and include
several factors related to a country’s institutional and cultural setting, for instance
openness of the regime, elite divisions, presence of political allies and nature of
political cleavages (Meyer, 2004; Sanches, 2022). In the case of Uganda, we find
two types of political opportunities: on the one side alliance structures between
opposition parties and between then and the civic groups that came together to
fight against the incumbent party; on the other hand, broad popular support, as
there were growing signs of discontent towards the regime.
Complementarily, we contend that framing strategies were important to
explain the emergence and dissemination of mass demonstrations (Benford and
Snow, 2000). Framing strategies refer to how movement actors disseminate their
messages to achieve their political goals. Amplification, bridging, transformation,
and extension represent some of the framing strategies that are utilised by move-
ment actors (Benford and Snow, 2000). During the Walk-to-Work protest activists
were able to rely on strategic framing strategies to win support. It is possible to
observe that they tried to make their issue salient (amplification), linked diverse
frames – cost of living, corruption, poor quality elections, democracy – and pro-
duced new understandings about the politics of opposition and protest in the
country (transformation).
166  Michael Mutyaba
While the case highlights the relevance of POS and framing strategies for the
emergence of the Walk-to-Work movement it also shows their limitation in subse-
quent stages. In the face of increased use of coercion by the regime the movement
only lasted one month but had a long-term impact in opposition and future pro-
tests, as we show in the final sections of this chapter.

Uganda’s historical and political context:

Authoritarianism, clientelism, and repression
To properly consider the significance of this political moment it is important
to revisit the political and historical context of Uganda. For twenty-five years
(1986–2011) the NRM had ruled the country as a de-facto single party regime
under the umbrella “Movement” system that restricted political parties from oper-
ating (Oloka and Mugaju, 2000). The country’s conflict-ridden history was cited
to justify this system as a post-conflict arrangement to enhance national unity
(Oloka and Mugaju, 2000). When it took power in 1986, the NRM had found a
country hugely divided along ethnic, religious, and other lines dating way back to
the immediate post-independence era in the 1960s.
The earliest political parties that existed after independence had either an
ethnic or religious composition, with the effect that any tensions in national
politics then tended to take an ethnic or religious direction (Mutibwa, 1992).
Consequently, the country witnessed a range of bloody civil wars, coups d’état,
and general political instability from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Therefore,
the No-party Movement system was presented by the NRM government as the
solution. It would apparently limit ethnic and religious polarisation and conflict
in the country and allow for a period of national healing and reconciliation until
such a time as when the country was stable enough and ready to have multi-party
politics again (Oloka and Mugaju, 2000).
On the ground, however, the picture was more complicated. Although the
NRM did indeed restore a semblance of peace, stability, and democratic rule,
armed conflict continued to destabilise large parts of the country. For instance,
rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) occasionally terrorised parts of
western Uganda throughout the 1990s. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels
also started an insurgency that would not end until the mid-2000s. These armed
rebel movements raised questions about the extent of the peace that the govern-
ment had restored.
Moreover, the NRM had begun largely as a guerrilla outfit in 1981 follow-
ing a disputed election that was allegedly rigged by president Obote’s Uganda’s
People’s Congress (UPC) government. Its main goal had been to topple Obote’s
government that it considered illegitimate, end decades of authoritarianism, and
pave way for the restoration of genuine democratic rule in the country. However,
by 2011, the NRM was being accused of overseeing the very evils it had pre-
viously fought against (Kanyeihamba, 2002). For instance, state-orchestrated
violence and allegations of vote-rigging had marked both the 2001 and 2006
elections.
 From voting to walking 167
Further still, it had taken power as a progressive government and initially
included a range of opposition members in its ranks to ensure inclusivity in the
post-war context; it also enhanced popular participation in government through
decentralisation and spearheaded a range of economic reforms that saw President
Museveni hailed internationally (Kanyeihamba, 2002). By the mid-to late 1990s,
however, the NRM had made a gradual U-turn. Power was increasingly central-
ised around President Museveni and the progressive agenda was fast disappearing
(HRW, 1999; Kanyeihamba, 2002; Rubongoya, 2007). Corruption scandals were
becoming more common, state-orchestrated violence had made a worrying come-
back, and the elite cohesion that fuelled the string of reforms in the initial years of
the government was rapidly coming to an end (HRW, 1999; Kanyeihamba, 2002;
Rubongoya, 2007). Within the NRM, cracks were appearing; a younger group
of cadres were increasingly questioning the status quo and calling for internal
reforms, while the old guard was increasingly adamant and bent on entrenching
itself in power (Makara et al., 2009).
The 2001 election marked the first moment when the NRM faced a serious
internal crisis. Kizza Besigye, a member of the movement system, a colonel in
the Ugandan army, and former personal doctor to President Museveni, had cri-
tiqued the regime in a 1999 dossier that led to heated internal debate. As he faced
increasing persecution within the NRM, he announced his bid for the presidency
in the then forthcoming elections. The announcement sparked off widespread
public debate, sent shockwaves throughout the system, and attracted unprece-
dented violence from the NRM machinery. Beatings, mass arrests, kidnaps, and
other forms of violence against opposition supporters became the hallmark of the
2001 campaigns and elections – as they would subsequent elections. Following
his courageous – though unsuccessful – challenge against his former boss, Besigye
faced continued political persecution that saw him flee to exile in South Africa.
He would return after the restoration of multi-partyism in 2005 to lead the newly
established opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), and rep-
resent it in the 2006 presidential elections. Once again, widespread violence and
allegations of irregularities marked the elections. Besigye became more popular
despite his loss, scoring 36% in contrast to his 27% earlier in 2001, and opposition
to Museveni’s rule further grew despite his victory, as his performance declined
from 69% in 2001 to 59% in 2006. The election generated a lot of anticipation
about the next polls in 2011, with many an opposition strategist confident that the
incumbent would be finally voted out of power in 2011. As will be discussed later,
this anticipation greatly contributed to the widespread sense of disappointment
that followed Besigye’s third defeat in 2011 and eventually fuelled the protests.

The 2011 elections: a turning point

The 2011 polls were thus a pivotal moment in the contest between President
Museveni of the ruling NRM and his main challenger Kizza Besigye of the
opposition FDC. Aware of the growing threat from his former doctor, president
Museveni and the NRM invested a lot of resources into the campaigns.
168  Michael Mutyaba
International election observers such as the EU-EOM described the election
as the “most expensive ever”, noting “the rampant (mis) use of state resources
on the part of the NRM, and the fundamental failure, as a result, to establish
a level playing field” (Conroy-Krutz and Logan, 2012, p. 632). They also high-
lighted a “variety of problems, ranging from blatant vote buying and distribution
of “vast amounts” of money and gifts, to “other subtler forms of buying allegiance”
(Conroy-Krutz and Logan, 2012, p. 632). The tactics were used side by side with
the usual violence and intimidation of opposition supporters.
But the lavish campaign spending would have unintended – and not very
distant – consequences. Following the election, there was widespread anger about
the results among opposition supporters across the country, especially the urban
youth, though for the NRM it was business as usual. After all, it had won two
similar elections against Besigye in the past, amidst violence and bribery, with
little or no consequences. For a moment it seemed that the 2011 election was no
different from the earlier ones. Even when news of revolutions in North Africa,
beginning in Tunisia, began to trickle into the country and triggered excitement
in the opposition, there was little expectation that any uprising of a similar sort
could even be attempted in Uganda. After all, the NRM had horned its military
skills for decades while fighting insurgents in northern and western Uganda and
could potentially nip any nascent uprising in the bud.
However, when fuel prices began to rise drastically as a result of the gov-
ernment’s heavy spending in the then just-concluded campaigns, the political
atmosphere began to change dramatically. The increasing fuel prices sent the
prices of other basic commodities skyrocketing, and economic hardship suddenly
united both opposition and ruling party supporters in condemnation of the gov-
ernment’s extravagance. Inflation had soared from 6% in February to 11% by
April (Gatsiounis, 2011).
This background fuelled grievances from all quadrants, bringing together
opposition supporters, lawyers, women’s groups and the merchant class “to protest
against skyrocketing prices for fuel and basic commodities” in the post-election
period (Conroy-Krutz and Logan, 2012, p. 626). The opposition, particularly the
FDC which by then was the largest opposition party, and the DP, still reeling from
its defeat, suddenly noticed an opportunity to seize. The discontent generated by
the violent and messy conduct of the election, as well as of previous elections in
2006 and 2001, it realised, could be marshalled into a movement – akin to those
in North Africa – that could potentially force the NRM out of power through
a revolution. The events in North Africa, which were being followed closely by
many people through news, raised expectation of a similar outcome. Moreover,
there were many parallels between the regimes there and the one in Uganda.
For the government, it was a moment of unprecedented trepidation. Unlike the
armed rebellions it had effectively crushed in the north and west of the country
over the previous two decades of its rule, the thousands of peaceful protesters that
thronged the streets in the Walk-to-Work movement could neither be easily dis-
tinguished from ordinary pedestrians, nor be shot without serious repercussions
for the regime’s image and survival.
 From voting to walking 169
Walking to work: Political opportunity
structures and framing strategies
The Walk-to-Work protest, as it is called, began on April 11, 2011. A group call-
ing itself Activists for Change (A4C), comprising of various opposition leaders
and civil society actors, organised the demonstrations to show people’s discontent
over rising prices (Namiti, 2011).
Talk of an uprising had in fact emerged as early as February due to dissatisfac-
tion with the conduct of the elections (Daily Monitor, 2011), but at the time it was
still an inchoate idea and did not galvanise the population into action. However,
with inflation soaring by April, public discontent grew, calls for protests picked
up momentum, and the various political and civil society groups coalesced under
the leadership of the non-partisan A4C. Mathias Mpuuga, Member of Parliament
from Masaka municipality in Central Uganda, and coordinator of the A4C,
stated to the media that the ensuing campaign was successful because the issues
raised affected the population and not just the political elite. He further added:

There will be Walk-to-Work tomorrow…We shall end this campaign only if

we have had a plausible response from government, which is responsible for
the situation in the country.
(Mpuga, 2011)

The logic at the heart of the protests was simple yet creative. Opposition leader
Kizza Besigye and other high-ranking officials from opposition parties and civil
society called on Ugandans to express discontent at the rising fuel prices by boy-
cotting public transport, which was getting increasingly expensive, and walking
to their workplaces instead. Anne Mugisha, an A4C activist, asserted:

On Monday we shall have a unique opportunity to join thousands of

Ugandans who walk to work every single day…On Monday we shall shine a
light on the plight of those Ugandans who now more than ever cannot afford
a taxi or boda-boda fare. We shall show our solidarity with the parents who
cannot put a meal on the table for their little ones due to the rise in food
prices. We shall do this simply by walking together with ordinary Ugandans
to our place of work and then we shall repeat the exercise every Thursday
and Monday until the government pays heed to our demand to intervene and
guarantee affordable food and fuel prices.
(Mugisha, 2011)

FDC party leader Kizza Besigye echoed her sentiments but went beyond the infla-
tion to focus on the political dimension of the protests. At the official launch of
the Walk-to-Work movement by the A4C, he argued that “It’s time to draw a line
between those who want a dictatorship and those who want democracy. I am sure
peaceful defiance of the dictatorship can be used to dismantle the dictatorship”
(Kalyegira, 2011). The activists also took the lead in walking to work and news
170  Michael Mutyaba
of their actions – which spread countrywide mainly through television, radio,
newspapers, word of mouth, and social media – soon inspired ordinary people to
emulate them.
Though parties were involved, it is important to note that protest was framed
largely in nationalist rather than partisan terms. Activists rallied Ugandans to
put behind their various differences and come together to demand for a reduc-
tion in prices which, they emphasised, affected everyone irrespective of party
affiliation. In fact, the very establishment of the A4C in 2011 as a non-partisan
vehicle for the protests, instead of using the already-existing parties for the same
purpose, was likely intended to avoid the impression that the protests were a
form of unseemly politicking by the opposition. By transcending party affiliation,
the protests would attract broad popular participation across the political spec-
trum and accommodate civil society actors who would have been uncomfortable
protesting on a political party platform. This accent on non-partisanship was
especially salient in the A4C’s objectives;

Political leaders, activists and civil society will act together to implement
programs in a non-partisan space in order to raise awareness of ordinary
Ugandans to their rights, responsibilities and duties as citizens. In order to
effect democratic change of government we will mobilize the masses and set
in motion a process to remove obstacles to free and fair elections through
peacefully dismantling pillars of the authoritarian regime and erecting the
pillars of democratic rule.
(A4C blog, 2011)

The move seems to have paid off. The Walk-to-Work movement managed to
attract support from a broad section of Ugandans and to overcome the bickering
that had for years been a hallmark of inter-party relations in the opposition.
The simple logic and fluidity of the Walk-to-Work movement enabled its quick
spread from Kampala to major towns across the country; as walking in protest
did not necessitate meticulous planning and organisation beforehand, anyone
anywhere could simply join the protests with no need for central coordination.
Moreover, police could not easily distinguish between people that were walking
normally from those that were walking in protest. This made everyone – pro-
testers, bystanders, and ordinary pedestrians – a suspect, thus providing cover to
the real protesters while threatening to overwhelm the police by the sheer force
of numbers. Therefore, in a moment the government, which had just won the
elections by a landslide, was scampering for solutions to a novel form of resistance
that packaged itself in economic grievance but was largely driven by longstanding
political discontent.
As the protests spread across the country, violent scenes began marking
the confrontations between police and protesters. What had begun mainly in
Kampala as a peaceful boycott of public transport on 11 April was slowly mor-
phing into a powerful, nationwide protest movement that could potentially swell
further and force the government out of power. By 14 April, they had spread out
 From voting to walking 171
to cities like Masaka and Gulu. Protesters – mainly young people in urban areas –
had, at the start, complained of the rising prices, but gradually were beginning
to point at other longstanding excesses by the government and hinting at the
possibility of regime change. Images and slogans from North Africa were becom-
ing more common in Kampala’s streets; for instance, photos from revolutions
in North Africa and the Middle East were being framed by traders and sold on
Kampala’s streets, and talk of people getting tired of Museveni’s regime seemed to
echo the slogan “the people want to bring the regime down” that was widely used
in the North African uprisings. The fall of long-ruling autocrats in Tunisia and
Egypt also inspired many to begin dreaming of a post-Museveni era and to draw
comparisons between their context and events further north of the continent.
According to my informal interviews and conversation with ordinary protesters,
it was increasingly clear to everyone – more so to the government – that the
ambition of the protesters was growing bigger and bolder than the mere demand
for a reduction of prices.
It is this factor that drove the government’s use of excessive force to avert the
possibility of a Ugandan revolution – a “Ugandan spring” as many referred to it
at the time. Teargas, beatings, and live bullets began greeting the protesters and
by the end of April at least nine people had been killed by security forces. The
government also banned live coverage of the protests and blocked social media
(Echwalu, 2011). The protests started fizzling out after the opposition leader Kizza
Besigye, the key mobiliser and face of the protests, was badly injured by security
forces on 29 April and later flown to a hospital in Nairobi. In his absence the
protests lacked a rallying figure and facing increasing crackdowns from the state,
petered out by May 2011.
The Walk-to-Work movement may have been short-lived – it lasted only about
a month – but its effects on Uganda’s political landscape would endure for years.
On the one hand, the state grew more securitised and the society more assertive.
On the other hand, for the opposition, the defeat of the movement did little to
crush the newly kindled hopes of revolution. There was even a sense of gratifica-
tion that the NRM, whose landslides at both parliamentary and presidential level
shielded it from the prospect of electoral defeat, was suddenly shuddering at the
threat of revolution. The optimism about change through the streets remained
alive for years despite the short lifespan of the Walk-to-Work movement.
On the other hand, in the NRM, attention began diverting from merely win-
ning elections to averting the risk of revolution. It was no longer enough to employ
all state machinery and resources at its disposal to defeat the opposition at the
polls if there remained a prospect that the ruling party could still be forced out of
power through protests. This lesson had been offered especially by the revolution
in Egypt, but also insinuated by opposition activists in Uganda who continued
to call on people to “rise up” in subsequent years, albeit with little success. From
2011, therefore, no red flag could be taken lightly by the NRM. Even small-scale
demonstrations or gatherings by opposition leaders were met with heavy deploy-
ments of security forces, arrests, beatings, and shootings. Consequently, the next
years would be marked by an upward spiral of repression and resistance.
172  Michael Mutyaba
The analysis afore-mentioned illustrates our findings. First, strategic alliances
between parties, and between parties and civic groups (A4C), coupled with
favourable public opinion, were crucial to elicit participation in protest. Second,
movement actors used creative ways to catch public attention and attract support.
Walking to work was a powerful initiative that helped amplify the protest frames
in social media, national and international press. Furthermore, they were able to
connect different frames beyond the cost of living itself. By doing this they man-
aged to attract support beyond partisan lines. Finally, Walk-to-Work produced
new understandings about the politics of opposition and protest in the country.
This impacted future political events, which we discuss later.

To build or to protest?: Opposition

in the aftermath of Walk-to-Work
It is important to examine the extent to which the protests were transformative
for both the opposition and the government. Within the opposition, the party
that was most affected was Kizza Besigye’s FDC, the largest opposition party in
the country in 2011. Within it the protest movement instigated the emergence of
two factions that were divided over the question of which direction the opposition
should take going forward. One faction, led by Besigye, placed accent on protest
and revolution, arguing that a regime like Museveni’s could not be defeated at
the polls. They clarified that the past three elections had all been rigged, and
that the only way out of the uneven playing was a revolution, as the 2011 protests
had apparently signalled. A revolution, unlike elections, would allegedly redesign
the Ugandan political landscape and restore genuine multiparty democracy, after
which political parties could then institutionalise and operate normally, as their
counterparts in other countries.
Another faction led by retired general Mugisha Muntu, a former army com-
mander in the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), argued that given the
electoral defeat and the crushing of the protest movement, the party had to
immediately embark on a process of institutionalisation that could see it build
stronger grassroots structures and prepare for a post-Museveni era which, they
said, was imminent. Their contention was that protest would divert the party
from focusing on its internal organisation which was apparently the most critical
element in countering the NRM’s hegemony. As long as the opposition remained
fractured and disorganised, they reasoned, it would stand no serious chance at
defeating the NRM, whether at elections or through revolution.
For the opposition then, the years following the Walk-to-Work movement can
be classified as the years of debate over what, between elections and revolution,
constituted the better method for unseating president Museveni and the NRM.
How to address this question became the fulcrum of opposition politics, and in
particular the FDC, for the next five years.
Ultimately, the majority of the opposition, typified by the Besigye faction in the
FDC, agreed that civil disobedience, as opposed to electoral politics, constituted
a more realistic way of confronting the NRM. This sentiment was most reflected
 From voting to walking 173
in the triumph of Besigye’s “defiance” faction in the FDC. Muntu had taken over
from Besigye as party president in 2012, but Besigye’s influence continued to loom
large over the party despite his retirement. This was mainly because of differences
in the approach and history of the two men; Besigye had a strong personality
cult around him owing to his confrontational style of politics, his status as the
founding president of the party, and his spirited contests against Museveni in
three previous elections in 2001, 2006, and 2011. However, Muntu had never run
against Museveni and was regarded by Besigye’s faction as unnecessarily “soft”
and “gentle” because of his accent on party institutionalisation – rather than
revolution – which many deemed as utopian and unsuitable to the authoritarian
context in Uganda. Thus when Muntu took over as party president, Besigye, who
commanded greater support in the party, continued to operate behind the scenes
and established a rival – albeit informal – party headquarters to continue his
defiance brand of politics.
Besigye’s faction eventually regained full control of the party when in 2017
one of its members, a little known former FDC legislator, Patrick Oboi Amuriat
(better known by the abbreviation POA), got elected as party president, beating
the more prominent Muntu. POA’s election was widely attributed to Besigye’s
tacit support of him, although Besigye insisted he was neutral in the contest.
POA’s emergence as the new party president signified the triumph of the defiance
approach as the official party stance, although, as the next section will illustrate,
in practice it became much harder to organise any protest akin to Walk-to-Work.
Dissatisfaction with POA’s election and disagreement with the protest approach
also led to the exit of Muntu’s faction from the FDC and his eventual establish-
ment of a new party, the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT).
It can thus be argued that the 2011 protests were fundamentally transformative
for Uganda’s opposition, more so for the then main opposition party, the FDC,
as they triggered a change in its political agenda. Since they were framed as a
non-partisan popular struggle against an authoritarian government, the protests
blurred the lines between opposition parties and also attracted much broader
popular support than what could have been possible had they been organised
on a party platform. This augmented the opposition’s strength as it minimised
inter-party conflict within it and widened the schism between protesters (oppo-
sition parties, civic groups, and the general public) on the one hand, and the
NRM government on the other. In the aftermath of the protests, therefore, many
senior members of the FDC sought to harness this new politics of protest by
attempting to re-model the party along the lines of a mass movement, believ-
ing that this constituted a more effective strategy for confronting the NRM’s
hegemony. They reasoned that discarding the new all-encompassing politics of
popular protest and returning to the older and narrower confines of the politi-
cal party would be short-sighted. It would amount to abandoning what had just
proved to be a winning formula. In the next several years, therefore, the FDC
generally seemed bent on reorganising itself according to a protest agenda and
replicating the 2011 Walk-to-Work movement. This illustrated a learning process
through which the FDC and opposition at large sought to adapt to the changed
174  Michael Mutyaba
political context and to exploit the opportunities signalled by the Walk-to-Work
movement.
However, the transformation was not entirely positive. As already discussed,
the move towards the politics of “defiance” led to factionalism and power struggles
in the FDC. While the new notion of democracy by revolution became wildly
popular within the party, it was not unanimously agreed upon. The Muntu fac-
tion felt that the protest agenda risked destroying the party’s original identity
and hampering its ability to establish grassroots structures. Since the NRM had
brutally suppressed the Walk-to-Work movement and established a harsher envi-
ronment that made protest unfeasible going forwards, they argued, it was more
prudent for the party to focus its energies on institutionalising itself instead.
The Besigye camp retorted that it was futile to attempt to establish structures
in a context where the NRM party-state was determined to stifle their growth.
This conflict paralysed the party for years, diverted attention from the main rift
between opposition and the NRM, and ultimately resulted in the fracturing of
the party when the Muntu camp exited FDC to establish the ANT party.

Policing dissent: NRM governance after the 2011 protests

While the years following Walk-to-Work marked a period of both renewed opti-
mism and increased turbulence within the opposition, especially within the FDC
as discussed earlier, in the ruling NRM they constituted a moment of reflection
and restructuring the ruling party’s approach to governance – albeit for the worse.
The new threat heralded by the Walk-to-Work movement could not be allowed
a chance to resurrect in the future, especially in the face of the NRM’s declining
popular legitimacy, and the government was determined to take all steps to rule
out that possibility. This, in the subsequent years, would entail the adoption of
a host of legal and extra-legal measures to limit the freedoms of public assembly
and communication that had been critical to the emergence of the Walk-to-Work
movement.
For instance, the police became much more militarised and abusive than ever
before, according to my personal observation during field work, but also as doc-
umented in the literature (Spencer, 2018). Under the command of General Kale
Kayihura, who arguably became the second most powerful person in the country
after Museveni, the police became notorious for human rights abuses and the
crushing of any dissent to Museveni’s regime. It also incorporated vigilante groups
into its ranks, notably the Boda Boda 2010, Crime Preventers, and the Kiboko
Squad, who became notorious for beating up opposition supporters in order to
dispel protests. Intimidation, brutality, and torture of suspects became common-
place and the police’s disregard for the rule of law generally increased. Between
2011 and 2016, the Uganda Human Rights Commission received more than a
thousand cases of torture at the hands of the police (Spencer, 2018).
Besides, draconian laws such as the Public Order Management Act (POMA)
of 2013 came into place, giving the police almost unlimited powers to control
freedom of assembly. In the guise of preventing “public disorder”, the police was
 From voting to walking 175
equipped with broad powers by the law to control a range of opposition activities,
including public rallies, protests, meetings, public consultations, to mention but
a few. This is due to the fact that POMA required organisers of such events to
notify police in advance about the date, time, venue, numbers of participants,
and other details of public meetings. It also requires organisers to provide a traf-
fic or assembly plan, and to ensure that no disruptions to public order ensued.
Though framed as a legal check on public disorder, the law was arguably a politi-
cal response to the new threat of popular protest that had rattled the ruling NRM
in 2011, and the police frequently cited it to justify its abusive tactics.
The new threat of a popular revolution signalled by the protests, reinforced by
news of the downfall of authoritarian regimes in North Africa, and maintained
by the continued revolutionary rhetoric by opposition politicians would prompt
the regime to create a more securitised, authoritarian context than before in a
bid to strengthen its grip on power (Onyiego, 2011; Goodfellow, 2014). Military
patrols in the city became the new normal (Branch and Mampilly, 2015). In 2014
government started plans to buy a phone-tapping machine for increased surveil-
lance (Kasasira, 2014).
Nowhere was the new securitised setting more evident than in the aftermath
of the 2016 elections. It was the fourth contest between opposition leader Besigye
and President Museveni, and was widely expected to be pivotal in Uganda’s polit-
ical history given the then declining popularity of Museveni and the increasing
opposition to it. However, both before and after the elections, there was heavy
deployment of security forces to prevent the outbreak of protest. Unlike the 2011
election, of which huge expenditures by the ruling party became emblematic, the
2016 election was marked more by violence. The torture, kidnap, beatings, and
intimidation of opposition supporters during the campaigns became normalised
by the government, despite the negative publicity they brought it. By the time
of the polls, it had recruited 1.6 million civilian vigilantes across the country to
play the suspicious role of “crime preventers” during the elections (Stewart, 2016).
Key opposition leaders were routinely placed under house arrest and social media
platforms were temporarily blocked during the voting days (Duggan, 2016).
It seems that for the NRM, the cost of political repression was far more tolera-
ble than the risk of an uprising. Faced with a choice between reform of the state to
appease the restless masses and continued clampdowns to suppress them, it chose
the latter. Thus, although Walk-to-Work had as its goal the reform of the state –
and ultimately it’s overhaul through revolution – the government’s heavy-handed
response heralded a further closing of political space. For the opposition, while
Walk-to-Work became etched in memory as an enduring symbol of the people’s
ability to check the government’s excesses, in practice the new securitised context
made it much harder to organise.
It is this paradox that eventually characterised the government’s and opposi-
tion’s response to the rise of popular musician-turned-legislator, Robert Kyagulanyi
Sentamu, (better known as Bobi Wine). By the end of the 2016 elections the
NRM was ready to nip any potential revolution in the bud; columns of soldiers
could frequently be seen patrolling the streets of Kampala city and various major
176  Michael Mutyaba
towns across the country, and loud, low-flying military choppers were also a fre-
quent sight in the skies. The mood among opposition supporters was defined by
anger and apathy, and there seemed to be a readiness to take to the streets at the
slightest provocation by the government. There was mutual suspicion on both
sides of the political spectrum.

Bobi Wine and the resurgence of protest politics

Bobi Wine’s break onto Uganda’s political scene in 2017 was largely enabled by
this context. His sudden appeal lay not so much in his announcement that he
would run against Museveni in the then forthcoming 2021 elections. Rather, it
lay in the fact that he echoed the old sentiment, first heard in the aftermath of
Walk-to-Work, that revolution was the surest path to a post-Museveni future. In
his slogan, “People power, our power”, opposition supporters heard a sentiment
they were familiar with – but which now was packaged in more attractive ways.
A popular musician had come to embody the long-running aspiration for change.
Moreover, unlike veteran opposition leader Kizza Besigye, he was never histori-
cally part of the NRM ruling class that was loathed by many in opposition circles.
Further still, at 36, he was much younger than the then 62-year-old Besigye, and
also closer to 30, the average age of most Ugandans at the time. His success story
of rising from the poverty of the ghetto to fame and wealth through his musi-
cal talent was the adoration of Uganda’s poor and unemployed youths. But most
importantly, his frequent insinuations that if the NRM rigged the next election it
could be forced out of power by the people freshly enthused many an opposition
supporter. For instance, appearing on an interview with Al Jazeera, Bobi Wine
asserted;

If president Museveni tries to rig the [2021] election like he has been doing
then the people of Uganda will rise up and they will stop it…It is worth it to
fight for freedom even to the point of death. I’ve said it before and I will say
it again that we shall continue to fight, legally and constitutionally, for our
freedom and if need be, we shall die fighting for our freedom.
(Al Jazeera, 2019)

Similarly, in Bobi Wine’s People Power movement the NRM recognised a nem-
esis it was familiar with, albeit one in new clothes. The government had worked
hard to crush dissent after Walk-to-Work and put in place various measures to
prevent the outbreak for a similar protest movement in the subsequent years. In
many ways, however, the new People Power movement looked like a resurgence
of the earlier Walk-to-Work movement. Bobi Wine’s vision of a non-partisan coa-
lition of ordinary Ugandans that would take charge of the country from what he
called the clutches of military rule sounded like a rallying cry for revolution and
echoed the earlier sentiments by the A4C in 2011. Moreover, to the NRM’s old
guard, Bobi Wine’s People Power brought back memories of the similarly named
movement that toppled Ferdinand Marcos’ government in the Philippines in the
 From voting to walking 177
mid-1980s, let alone the popular revolutions that had recently swept many auto-
cratic governments in North Africa out of power since 2011.
It was this growing spectre of revolution that informed the NRM’s even more
heavy-handed response to Bobi Wine than to Besigye. The latter had operated
partly within the confines of his FDC party, and thus partly – albeit unwittingly –
legitimated the shaky multi-party system instituted by the NRM in 2005. But Bobi
Wine, in the early stages of his activism, was critical even of opposition parties for
apparently reinforcing the status quo and seemed bent on working outside the for-
mal multiparty system, which he saw as a façade, to trigger radical systemic change.
Therefore, the state-orchestrated violence, mass arrest of opposition activists,
internet shutdowns, media crackdowns, kidnaps, and murders that greeted the
People Power movement reflected the kind of threat it posed to the status quo, but
also the NRM’s determination to contain the politics of the street that had been
established by the earlier Walk-to-Work movement and which seemed to have
made a surprising come-back.

Conclusion
This chapter has sought to advance a two-fold argument to understand the
emergence and impact of the Walk-to-Work movement. It has argued that, first,
political opportunity structures entailing strong public support for the protests
and strategic alliances between opposition parties and between them and civic
groups were instrumental in organising the protests. Second, activists employed
strategies that amplified the demands of the protesters, linked their diverse
grievances – such as high cost of living, corruption, sub-standard elections, and
authoritarianism – and transformed the ways in which opposition and protest
politics was understood in the country. These two elements elicited broad popular
participation in the Walk-to-Work movement and produced an unprecedented
threat to the NRM’s power.
From 2011, therefore, it became much harder for the opposition to organ-
ise. The democratic possibilities that had been signalled by the Walk-to-Work
movement emboldened the opposition, but they also attracted greater political
repression from the state and constrained the room for the organisation of similar
protest movements in subsequent years.
Nonetheless, the progressive effects of the Walk-to-Work movement were
remarkable; although it prompted the NRM to close the space for future move-
ments of its kind, it also unmasked the regime’s authoritarian character and
resulted in more popular demands for accountability. It inspired a new wave of
activism which has frequently and increasingly rattled the ruling NRM over the
past decade and led to a more assertive population, as illustrated by the rise of the
People Power Movement in 2017. Besides, the spectre of protest continues to act
as a check on government power in the absence of strong civil society or credible
political institutions to perform the role.
The case of Uganda’s Walk-to-Work is interesting as it reveals the long-lasting
impact of short-lived political events. It also reveals the importance of coalitions
178  Michael Mutyaba
(between different social groups and social classes) for the emergence of protest.
However, as in other cases such as Congo or Angola, it also reveals the limited
transformative impact of protest in authoritarian settings – at least at the political
system/institution level.
This study has offered two contributions. Firstly, it has highlighted the role
that political opportunity structures – the alliances between opposition parties
and between them and civic groups, as well as the positive public opinion of the
protests – can play in the emergence and success of protest movements. Secondly,
it has also underlined how framing strategies – such as the amplification of pop-
ular grievances, the connection of diverse frames, and the transformation of
understandings of opposition and protest politics – aids popular protests.
Future studies should try to explore the determinants of the durability of the
alliances between opposition and civic groups and what impact this has on their
capacity to challenge authoritarianism through protest in the long-term. There is
also need to examine, more extensively, what drives the various regime responses –
whether reform or further autocratisation – when they face protest or the threat
of protest. The impact of securitisation by authoritarian regimes on protest move-
ments also deserves more attention in order to understand what determines
whether the suppression of protest movements results either in their retreat and
extinction or inspires their adaptability, resilience, and resurgence.

Note
1. Kizza Besigye, former FDC party president; Mugisha Muntu, former FDC party
president; Proscovia Salaam-Musumba, FDC Vice Chairperson and former FDC
legislator; Patrick Oboi Amuriat, incumbent FDC president; Isaac Elakuna, FDC
activist and speaker, Soroti municipality; Waiswa Latif Maido, FDC activist; Gaaki
Kigambo, journalist; Yahya Sseremba, researcher; John Mastaki, former NRM
chairperson Kasese district.

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11 ANATOMIES OF PROTEST
AND THE TRAJECTORIES
OF THE ACTORS AT PLAY
ETHIOPIA 2015–2018
Alexandra M. Dias and Yared Debebe Yetena

Introduction
Africa has been undergoing a sizeable wave of protests in recent years (Mateo
and Erro, 2020), which in many ways diverges from the hitherto insurgent move-
ments with Marxist-Leninist leanings from the prior revolutionary waves (Bahru,
2014). To start with the contexts, the motivations, the strategies, and the out-
comes vary widely (Larmer, 2010; Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Sanches 2022).
Movements emerge out of material/economic issues, but also of deep dissatisfac-
tion with the political order (Ibid.). Second, since the “Arab Spring”, there has
been a shift towards the “virtual” dimension of protests with research highlight-
ing the increasing role of information and communication technology (ICT) and
social media on protests events both online and offline (Etzo and Collander, 2010;
Stepanova, 2011; Wolfsfeld, Segev and Sheafer, 2013). Indeed, in this new inter-
net era the centre of political action is transferred from and through the social
media to the streets, and protests which are local/national at their origin acquire
global projection.
Ethiopia, our focus here, has been experiencing unprecedented protest levels
since 2015, with varying motivations and outcomes. As much as the deep-seated
grievances towards the Tigray People’s Liberation Front/Ethiopian People’s
Revolutionary Democratic Front (TPLF/EPRDF) regime, the unfolding of handy
political opportunities feed into a national outbreak of mass protests first in
Oromia, later spread to Amhara and other ethno-linguistic regions.
The 2015 protests are part of a string events that have been ongoing since
the early 2010s, when the authoritarian nature of the regime started to being
exposed through cyber-activism, satellite radio, and television broadcasts. In 2014
after the publication of Addis Ababa City Expansion Master Plan (Addis Ababa
Master Plan) which planned to evict Oromo farmers to create a new economic
zone in the Oromia region, led to unprecedented youth protests (i.e. Qeerroo)
that engulfed all of Oromia in 2015 and beyond (Pinaud and Raleigh, 2017).
In 2016 the Amhara youth (i.e. Fano) joined the Oromo protest following the
arrest of several members of the Welkait Identity Restoration Committee, and
the attempted arrest of the Committee’s chairperson without a court order (John,
2021). The protesters demanded for Welkait self-determination, the recognition

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-11
182  Alexandra M. Dias and Yared Debebe Yetena
of the identity of indigenous Amhara people from Welkait as Amhara, the release
of political prisoners, further democratisation, and equal sharing of rights and
economic benefits (John, 2021).
As the nation-wide protests grew, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn (in
power between 2012 and 2018) decided to resign, following a collective decision
of the EPRDF politburo. This brought Abiy Ahmed (alias Team Lemma) to power
in 2018 in an internal reform within the ruling EPRDF. At the time, these moves
raised hopes of democratic transition, and long-term peace. It is, therefore, the
purpose of this chapter to explore the outbreak of protest in Ethiopia focusing
on the protests held in Ethiopia between 2015 and 2018 by drawing theoretical
underpinnings from political opportunity structure approaches.
Protests in Ethiopia need to be understood within the framework of contested
interpretations of state formation and nation building and the role that ethnic-
ity has had in it (see Gudina, 2003; Messay, 2008; Bahru, 2014). Which means
context really matters to understand how grievances have formed and crystallised
over time. This chapter adds to this discussion by arguing that three political
opportunity structures – the death of Meles Zenawi which led to divisions within
the incumbent party, the alliance between Qeerroo and Fano groups, and the
easy access to digital activism platforms – help explain the rise, intensity, strat-
egies, and outcomes of protest in Ethiopia. In fact, while protests succeeded in
bringing about leadership change and further democratic reforms in 2018, they
did not prevent authoritarianism and relapse into conflict. In addition, the state
response was brutal. To substantiate our arguments, we build on qualitative mate-
rial collected during field work through semi-structured interviews, newspapers,
and reports, in particular Gondar, Bahir Dar, and Addis Ababa.
This chapter contributes to the literature on protest in Africa in several ways.
First, internet shutdowns have become a go to source to repress activism in
authoritarian countries in Africa. However, a nascent literature shows that, activ-
ists fight back and find innovative ways to bypass internet shutdowns (Rydzak
et al., 2020; Freyburg and Garbe, 2018). In Ethiopia “the social media shutdown
in December 2017, targeting primarily the Amhara and Oromia regions amid eth-
nic tensions, completely failed to hinder the patterns of protest that led up to it”
(Rydzak et al., 2020, p. 4273). Second, by focusing on the territorial dimension we
were able to understand how a single event may vary across space and how forms
of coalition between different groups emerge. Finally, Ethiopia is a relevant case
to understand the rise and outcome of protest in inhospitable environments, that
is authoritarian, and conflict societies.
This chapter starts by examining the role of political opportunities in political
protest and by setting the framework for the analysis of the Ethiopian case. It
then presents an historical overview of protest in the country. The following sec-
tion depicts the actors at play in the 2015–2018 cycle of protests before discussing
how political opportunities shaped mobilisation strategies and the political out-
comes. Finally, the conclusion discusses the main findings and raises implications
for further research.
 Anatomies of protest and the trajectories 183
Political opportunity structures
and protest in authoritarian settings
The political opportunity approach focuses on how activists perceive and take
advantage of breaches in the social, political, and discursive landscape to achieve
their political goals (Meyer, 2004b; Tarrow, 2011; Sanches, 2022). There is no con-
sensual list of POS variables, Tarrow (2011, pp. 164–165) for instance highlights
access to participation for new actors; evidence of political realignment within
the polity; availability of influential allies; and emerging splits within the elite,
while Kitschelt (1986) and Jenkins (1995) look at political institutional variables
such as openness or closeness in systems of government. In places where systems
are closed, movements are likely to adopt confrontational, disruptive strategies
orchestrated outside established policy channels (see also Almeida, 2003).
In authoritarian settings, the protests could be engendered through informal
and formal organisational structures, i.e. sympathetic institutions, associational
networks, and civic organisations (McCarthy, 1996). These organisations link
previously unconnected collectivities, exchange resources and information,
and ultimately launch protest campaigns (Minkoff, 1997; McAdam, 1999).
Confrontational strategies of protest movements in authoritarian settings
also emerge for the need to resist the state, i.e. repression and erosion of rights
(Goldstone and Tilly, 2001; Goldstone, 2001). In this case, activists manipulate
such threats as an opportunity to mobilise the mass through discrediting the dec-
adence and heinous nature of the government. A threat-induced collective action
will follow in such contexts (Almeida et al., 2022). According to Tilly (1978,
pp. 134–135) “Assuming equal probabilities of occurrence, a given amount of threat
tends to generate more collective action than the ‘same’ amount of opportunity”.
However, the rule of thumb to explain the nexus of protest and authoritarian
regimes is that political opportunity seems to be less likely to exist. Instead, eco-
nomic grievances, resource mobilisation and collective identity seem to have a
stronger role in the outbreak of protests (Snow, 2013; Caren, Gaby, and Herrold,
2017). Yet scholars have shown that political opportunity such as elite competi-
tion, access to internet, alliance among diverse groups, and coupled with existing
threats facilitates the emergence, development, and outcome of protest movements
(Tarrow, 2011).
In this regard, protests have become ubiquitous in the most complicated set-
tings in Africa. In places like Uganda, Sudan, or Eswatini ordinary citizens have
gone to the streets to demand for further political/democratic reforms (Hassanain,
2020; Curtice and Behlendorf, 2021; Mutyaba 2022, Mthembu, 2022). Indeed, it
is striking to observe that it is precisely in the most authoritarian countries that
protest tends to be more recurrent. Indeed, in authoritarian settings protesters
face higher levels of repression, media is usually controlled by the state, and access
to internet is often restricted or cancelled. Despite facing harsher regimes, pro-
testers have found resources and opportunities to engage in collective action.
Almeida, Sá and Faria (2022) show that political transfers at the executive level
can be a relevant opportunity for collective action in authoritarian post-conflict
184  Alexandra M. Dias and Yared Debebe Yetena
countries. The new President elected in 2017 has experienced far more protest
than its predecessor due to its more open and seemingly democratic rhetoric,
but also because he largely failed on his reformist agenda. In the Democratic
Republic Congo and in Mozambique international actors provided crucial sup-
port for local activists’ demands. In the former, this happened in the context
of the struggle against President Joseph Kabila third-term bid (Polet, 2022) and
in the latter against the implementation of the agricultural program ProSavana
which if implemented would have dire impacts on the rural communities of the
North of Mozambique (Bussoti and Nhaueleque, 2022). The studies also seem
to suggest that actors, resources, networks, and framing strategies also matter to
explain the outcome and transformative impact of protest across different types of
regimes (Jenkins, 1995; McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, 1996; Tarrow, 2011).
Given this debate our analysis of the protest in Ethiopia in the 2015–2018
periods will focus on the political opportunities that may have helped boost
protesters’ claims. We also argue that the death of Meles Zenawi, and the sub-
sequent vacuum of power and intra-party fighting, the access to digital activism
platforms, and inter-ethnic synchronisation of the Amhara and Oromo shaped
the repertoires of collective action and fierce anti-government resistance. Our
analysis gives support to these claims but also shows that political opportunities
may not be sufficient conditions for change. Indeed, after initial hopes of demo-
cratic opening the regime backslided to authoritarianism and political conflict.

Protest and resistance in Ethiopia: An historical perspective

Protest and resistance to the central government in Ethiopia is not a new
phenomenon (Crummey, 1986; Bahru, 2014). In the twentieth century alone
assemblage of the First Wayane Rebellion of the early 1940s, the Gojjam Peasant
Uprising and the Bale Peasant Revolt of the 1960s challenged Haile Selassie I
regime (Tareke, 1991). What is more, the celebrated Ethiopia Students Movement
(ESM) of the 1960s and 1970s and the 1974 Revolution ended the longest serving
and last Solomonic King of Ethiopia (Keller, 2014). Indeed, the reign of Emperor
Haile Selassie I (1930–1974) was in line of continuity with his predecessor’s pur-
suit of the modernisation of the state encompassing the reigns of Tewodros II
(1855–1868), Yohannes (1872–1889), and Menelik II (1889–1913). Central to
the students’ activism based on their Marxist-Leninist ideology were two criti-
cal questions that led to the demise of the imperial state: land and the national
question (Balsvik, 1985; Bahru, 2014). In 1965 the group that came to be known
as the student movement engaged in a mass demonstration before parliament
motivated by demands for democratic and land reforms (Keller, 2014, p. 69). The
1974 revolution brought the Derg (Geez for Committee), low ranked soldiers, to
power. The Derg brought some radical and progressive changes like nationalising
and redistributing rural and urban land and the reorganisation of political and
administrative authority (Messay, 2008; Markakis, 2011).
The accession of the Derg continued to face, however since the beginning,
armed insurrection from insurgent movements such as Eritrea People’s Liberation
 Anatomies of protest and the trajectories 185
Front (EPLF), the ethno-nationalist Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), and
the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). Multi-national political organisations such as
Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) also challenged the Derg’s rule.
The aforementioned insurgency movements eventually led to the downfall of the
Derg in 1991. This marked the crackdown of the Military Rule for ethnic based
social engineering and state-building that in practice was still based on a strong
centralist and authoritarian policy. This phase heralded the beginning of another
political project of state building put in place by the Transitional Government
(1991–1994) which led to the creation of the Federal Democratic Republic of
Ethiopia (FDRE) from 1995 onwards based on ideals of a new revolutionary
democracy. Each time, the violent overthrow of regimes, both of Haile Selassie’s
Imperial state from 1930–1974 and the Derg’s revolutionary state from 1974–1991
costed many lives and, interestingly enough, was preceded by a cycle of protests
(Crummey, 1986; Gilkes, 1975; Clapham, 1990).
The EPRDF’s government publicly pledged its commitment to three radical
reform objectives: first the decentralisation of the state; second, the democra-
tisation of politics; and third, the liberalisation of the economy (Vaughan and
Tronvoll, 2003). The designers of this new model of social engineering claimed
that “they have found a formula to achieve ethnic and regional autonomy, while
maintaining the state as a political unit” (Alem, 2003, p. 2). However, the TPLF/
EPRDF regime was characterised by “divide and rule” tactics, one party dicta-
torship in the shadow of a dominant party system; and authoritarianism in all
domains especially after the 2005 national elections. The dominant TPLF ruled
Ethiopia with an iron fist with the baking of surrogate political parties such as the
Oromo People’s Democratic Party (OPDO) founded in 1988 and with the renam-
ing of the multi-ethnic party Ethiopia People’s Democratic Movement (EPDM)
to Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) in 1993 (Gudina, 2003;
Semahagn, 2016). Competitive political parties were effectively ousted and para-
lyzed during the transitional period (1991–1994) namely: the Oromo Liberation
Front (OLF) and All Amhara People’s Organization (AAPO) and the independ-
ent or opposition party elected representatives were not accepted. After the 2000
national elections these opposition candidates and their representatives were not
only side-lined but also persecuted and intimidated (Abbink, 2005, p. 181). The
post-1991 Ethiopian political landscape was characterised by a hesitant democra-
tisation experiment in the run up to the 2005 national elections. In its aftermath
the EPRDF/TPLF made sure to bring it to an end and replace it with the well-
known model of contemporary competitive authoritarianism (Pinto, 2021, p. 52;
Levitsky and Way, 2010) where political parties are not allowed to compete at all,
and the parliament is not the real legislative body. In these cases, the reconsolida-
tion of authoritarianism is the expected follow up to the preceding limited phase
of democratisation. The Oromo and Amhara (collectively constituting more
than 60% of the Ethiopian population) were either represented by a surrogate
party or entirely left without due representation in the new political dispensation.
With the ushering of the ethnic-based federal model and the euphoria of hope
in settling the “century old” oppression of nations, nationalities and peoples; the
186  Alexandra M. Dias and Yared Debebe Yetena
grievances (i.e. freedom and self-determination) of the Oromo towards the cen-
tral government remained unaddressed. In the case of the Amhara, in contrast,
“a burden of history” (Markakis, 2018) translated in the lack of representation in
the Peace and Democracy Conference (during which the framework of the 1995
FDRE’s Constitution was laid out) (Admasu, 2010); and through ongoing societal
security threats posed by the TPLF anti-Amhara policy based on the recognition
of ethnic traditions in opposition to past Amhara domination and suppression
(Abbink, 1995, p. 176).
The TPLF/EPRDF faced three major anti-government mass protests (1991–
2018): the post-2005 election protest (Arriola and Lyons, 2016); the 2011 Ethiopian
Muslims protest (Awalia Mission Schools) (Omar, 2020); and the youth protest
(2015–2018). The 2005 election was praised as the most democratic elections
Ethiopians ever witnessed until the announcement of the election results; which
led to major mass protests in the capital and other major towns (Messay, 2008;
Arriola and Lyons, 2016). Like its predecessors, the TPLF/EPRDF managed the
resulting tensions through some combination of coercion and political dexterity,
in devising formulae through which the fundamental divisions of an enormously
varied society could be held in some kind of check (Clapham, 2009). It worked to
suppress and prevent future mass dissidents through tightening the intelligence,
incarcerating prominent opposition political party leaders, and passing restric-
tive laws: the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation of 2009 and the Ethiopian Charities
and Societies Proclamation of 2009. In addition, the TPLF/EPRDF dismissed
protesters to use Meyer expression as “dysfunctional, irrational, and inherently
undesirable”. The 2011 Ethiopian Muslims Protests, in turn, were an organised
social media protest called through the “Let our Voices be Heard” social media
platform. This was the first experience of digital activism in Ethiopia and was
created to denounce Majlis’s wrongdoing and expose the government’s brutal
responses to the Muslim questions (Omar, 2020). It was active from 2011 to 2015.
Finally, the youth protest (2015–2018), our main focus here, had a strong anti-re-
gime/government agenda, and united actors from different geographic and ethnic
origins. The following section sheds light on the origins, processes, and outcomes
of these protests, and analyses how political opportunities shaped these different
stages.

Political opportunity structures and the outbreak

of the youth protest in Ethiopia (2015–2018)
Two outstanding events set the precedent to the 2015 youth protest even if
they did not result in mass scale demonstrations. The first was, Yenesew Gebre’s
(schoolteacher and human rights activist) self-immolation outside a public meet-
ing hall protesting against the detention of young suspects for fifteen days devoid
of their right to bail. As mobilisation depends on informational resources, the
state suppression and disinformation prevented the incident from causing havoc.
The second event was created from the Ethiopian Diaspora. It was in May 2012
 Anatomies of protest and the trajectories 187
at the Food Security G8 Summit in Washington, D.C.; Prime Minister Meles
Zenawi encountered a strong condemnation and humiliation from an Ethiopian
journalist in the diaspora, Abebe Gelaw. Abebe shouted out:

Meles Zenawi is a dictator! Meles Zenawi is a dictator! Free Eskinder Nega!

Free Political Prisoners! You are a dictator. You are committing crimes against
humanity. Food is nothing without freedom! Meles has committed crimes
against humanity! We Need Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

The TPLF/EPRDF as a “competitive authoritarian” (Levitsky and Way, 2010)

effectively banned the media, co-opted opposition political parties and used sub-
tle forms of persecution to keep critics and opponents at bay. On top of this state
of affairs, economic grievances, erosion of rights, and state repression (discussed in
some detail in the following section) fuelled popular discontent. Facing a “closed
and strong” regime the anti-government movements in Ethiopia adopted what
Kitschelt, (1986, p. 66) calls “confrontational, disruptive strategies orchestrated
outside established policy channels”.
The youth protest in Oromia (Queerroo) and Amhara (Fano), adopted a com-
bination of both peaceful and confrontational strategies of protesting. Widely
social media campaigns, marching, sit-ins, stay home, boycott, vandalism, and
other strategies were used to express their dissent. The constellation of grievances
and the government’s repressive policy towards people’s legitimate quests and
peaceful demonstrations (in the beginning) ended up with the stepping down of
the weak Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn; six years (2012–2018) after he
had become the successor to the late strongman at the helm of the state. This
brought Abiy Ahmed, i.e. “the reformer” to power in 2018. Reforming steps had
been taken to address the central questions of the protesters, pardoned political
prisoners, rapprochement with Eritrea, easing of restrictions on civil and political
liberties (Verjee and Knopf, 2019). Under Abiy Ahmed’s leadership the TPLF
would be increasingly side-lined and the EPRDF was transformed in November
2018 into the Prosperity Party. A Higher official of one of the ruling coalition’s
partners, the Amhara Prosperity Party (APP), pointed out; “TPLF/EPRDF vehe-
mently believed Ethiopians were not ready to embrace and live in democracy. The
introduction of democratic rule in Ethiopia is believed to augment destructive
outcomes” (Author’s own interview).
To better understand the emergence of youth protests, the following section
explores three relevant political opportunities.

Leadership vacuum and intra-elite competition

On 21 August 2012, the longest serving Prime Minister Meles Zenawi died. The
party lost a “big man” that maintained its cohesion and his death left a wide
shoe to fill. The unexpected death of Prime Minister Meles engendered intra-
elite competition on who should inherit his legacy. After a thorough deliberation,
188  Alexandra M. Dias and Yared Debebe Yetena
the deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam was elected as Primer of Ethiopia, which
for Mulugeta (2012, p. 2) marked;

… the dangers of a state built around one man, but he also leaves behind a
formidable political machine. For Hailemariam the challenge is whether and
how he can manage the machine. Members of competing elites may fight for
control of this machine and ethnic movements on the periphery could be
emboldened to exploit a perceived power vacuum.

The transition from a strong Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, to a weaker one,
Hailemariam Desalegn changed the ruling party’s leadership style – from a
one-man rule to a collective leadership characterised by greater consulta-
tion and consensus building. As a result, power was de-centred and dispersed
between three deputy prime ministers along ethnic lines. However, collective
leadership came with additional challenges to the ruling party’s maintenance
on power, leading to elite competition and inefficiency in the exercise of power
(Rift Valley Institute, 2013). In due course the national intelligence and military
would rise as key political players and began to challenge the Prime Minister.
Tamrat Gebregiorgis, founding managing editor of the largest English weekly in
Ethiopia, Addis Fortune, in a press briefing defiantly asked the Prime Minister:
“Can you tell me who is in charge in the government?” (quoted in Lefort, 2014,
par. 1).
The de-centring of power opened institutional access, fostered a rift between
allies within the EPRDF’s central committee and explains the unfolding challenge
to the dominant TPLF. The discord was between the OPDO and ANDM –
best known as Team Lemma – against the dominant TPLF. The competition
within the incumbent party created space for the emergence of anti-government
protests in Oromia and Amhara.
According to Piven and Cloward (2012) shifts in political alignments and
heightened conflicts during times of crisis make dissenting elites more willing to
support challenger movements. In this regard, Team Lemma has claimed its sup-
port to the Qeerroo and Fano protests since the beginning. Indeed, granting more
freedom to protest with less tight security presence from the Amhara and Oromia
regional government partly illustrates Team Lemma’s support for the challeng-
ing youth movement. This line of interpretation was rejected by some analysts
(Zekarias, 2019) that characterised instead as an act of hijacking the youth protest
to build the legitimacy of a remnant partner in the TPLF/EPRDF ruling coalition.

Internet access and digital activism

In the social movement’s literature, the nexus between digital activism and pro-
tests is construed either in terms of cyber-pessimism (Gladwell, 2010; Morozov,
2011) and/or cyber-optimism (Diamond, 2010; Shirky, 2011). In the Ethiopian
case, with limited access to the internet, through the years of the 2010s digital
activism has been effectively used by the activists and protestors alike to mobilise
 Anatomies of protest and the trajectories 189
resources, disseminate strategies, recruit members, and express dissent through
social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.
Unlike the traditional media (TV and Radio) broadcasts such as Ethiopia
Satellite Television (ESAT), Oromo Media Network (OMN), Voice of America
(VOA), Deutsche Welle (DW), and others exposed the authoritarian nature of
the regime and forged an alternative to the state-run media; the “liberation”
media (Diamond, 2010) offered a versatile platform through digital anonymity
to mobilise protests along ethno-linguistic lines. Activists living abroad widely
used social media to set strategies and mobilise the youth in the anti-government
protest. In this regard, Jawar Mohammed, a prominent Oromo activist with more
than one million followers, and Bete-Amhara (House of Amhara) an Amhara
Facebook page, to mention a few, played a paramount role in fundraising, mobi-
lising, and organising rallies, bed-ins and boycotts (Workneh, 2021).
In addition to resource mobilisation, Twitter and Facebook hashtag
#OromoProtest, #AmharaResistance, #OroMara campaigns to expressing dissent
were widely employed to exert pressure on the regime. However, since the out-
break of the protest, the virtual dimension of protest was deterred due to total
communications’ lockdown, including mobiles’ coverage and internet access in
different parts of the country since July 2016 to quell tensions of anti-government
protests. Above all the declaration of a state of emergency on 9 October 2016
(lasted for 10 months) imposed restrictions on telecommunications, media, and
Internet shutdowns along with travel restrictions on diplomats and a dusk-to-
dawn curfew (Human Rights Watch, 2017). Graffiti and printed flyers like the old
days of the ESM (1960–1970s) were used to mobilise and disseminate information
on the dates of protest events especially stay at home protests in major towns such
as Gondar, Bahir Dar, Ambo, Jimma, among others.

The unprecedented Oromo-Amhara alliance

Since the accession of TPLF/EPRDF to power, an institutional caricature of
enmity has been implanted among the Amhara and Oromo. The official nar-
rative propagates that they are historically arch enemies, have unreconciled
interests, and are destined to disagree. However, the protest held in Gondar
(city in Amhara) has broken the enmity narrative through voicing “the blood of
Oromo is ours too” and “free Bekelle Gerba” (prominent Oromo politician). The
birth of the “OroMara” (abbreviation for Oromo and Amhara) movement takes
its genesis from the Gondar protest. The solidarity between the once dubbed
as “rival ethnic groups” further strengthened in the social media (Twitter and
Facebook) activism, #OroMara.
To show their solidarity the Amhara joined the Oromo Irreechaa (thanks
giving) celebration of 5 October 2016 in Bishoftu. The festive, however, left 55
people dead due to the security crackdown and ensuing stampede. On 9 October
2016 a six-month nation-wide state of emergency was announced. Prime Minister
Hailemariam Desalegn said in a televised address: “We put our citizens’ safety
first. Besides, we want to put an end to the damage that is being carried out
190  Alexandra M. Dias and Yared Debebe Yetena
against infrastructure projects, education institutions, health centres, adminis-
tration and justice buildings” (BBC, 2016).
The common enemy, TPLF/EPRDF, sustained the OroMara coalition. The
brotherhood continued to be celebrated particularly during the formal visit from
the presidents of Oromia Region and Amhara Region; who concentrated the
meetings on strengthening the relationship of the two ethnic groups in Ambo
and Bahir Dar, the capitals of the two Region’s States respectively (see Tezera,
2021). However, as time went by the OroMara coalition faded away. This begs a
question on “why it faded away?”
The OroMara devised the coming of “Team Lemma” to power. Lemmea
Megersa and Gedu Andargachew were behind the #OroMara and later unveiled
they were backing the digital activism. The internal party struggle between
TPLF versus ANDM and OPDO also contributed to quell the TPLF hegemony.
The 2017 “deep renewal” of the TPLF/EPRDF brought individuals from the dis-
gruntled ethnic groups to ministerial positions, albeit no policy, and ideological
change was made (van der Beken, 2018).
Moreover, it goes without mentioning, the unprecedented rise and support
of “Team Lemma” to the youth resistance and protest in Amhara and Oromia
appears as more tactical than strategic. The youth movements never planned
and had foreseen what kind of political scenario would prevail in the aftermath
of ousting the TPLF/EPRDF. The members of “Team Lemma” as higher officials
of the ruling party had done despicable acts in terms of corruption (with a lavish
lifestyle) and the incarceration of youth protesters.
The OroMara movement, though despised by the TPLF as an “unholy alliance”,
transcended the ethnic arch-rival discourse seeded during the Italian colonial
rule and institutionalised in the ethnic federal Ethiopia of post-1991. However,
the question of Addis Ababa, the attitude of “our turn to rule” from the Oromos,
and the subsequent ethnic-based attacks to the Amhara living in Oromia faded
away the momentum of the OroMara.

The course and actors at play

The actors and dynamics of the protest that flared up between 2015 and 2018
were multifaceted. The protests indulged the different age groups in Amhara and
Oromia, the diaspora, political parties and others. The youth were the major
groups at the centre of every protest undertaken in various towns and cities of
the two regions, i.e. Qeerroo (Oromia) and Fano (Amhara). Collective identity
played as an organising or mobilising cause of the protest. The contagious nature
of the protest, the common enemy, and shared grievances against the TPLF/
EPRDF fostered inter-ethnic cooperation.

Qeerroo: Youth in protest

Qeerroo (Oromiffa) designates a young bachelor, but according to Gardner (2018)
it has acquired broader connotations, symbolising the Oromo movement. For
 Anatomies of protest and the trajectories 191
Mosisa, (2020) the origins of Qeerroo protest movement trace back to the estab-
lishment in April 2011 of the Qeerroo Bilisummaa Oromoo; an Oromo national
Youth Network movement for Oromo Freedom and Democracy1, while for Østebø
(2020) it “emerged as a spontaneous grassroots social movement without any for-
mal structures”. Qeerroo’s fame and influence came to the fore and was remarked
in the political scene after the intermittent major protests of 2014–2015 incited by
the publication of the Addis Ababa Master Plan, but also deep-seated “grievances
over maladministration, corruption and human rights abuses, the protesters soon
called for the overthrow of the government” (Østebø and Tronvoll, 2020, p. 6).
In the beginning, Qeerroo protests were commenced by high school students;
later university students joined the dissident and engulfed the Oromia Regional
State. The protesting strategies consisted of a combination of peaceful demon-
strations (though “illegal”) and violent protesting that involved vandalism. The
tempo of the protest had been subjected to the security or police or the notorious
Agazi Commando’s countermeasures against the protesting youth. The repres-
sion succeeded in temporarily quelling the protest, albeit facilitated in harnessing
mass support and sympathy for the Qeerroo.
To be precise, the forms of protesting included bed-in, strikes, chanting, block-
ade, boycott, vandalism. Towns such as Ambo, Jimma, Nekemete, Shashemene,
Ciro, subsequently held protests in a coordinated manner. The protests were
called and mobilised through social media (such as Facebook), short mail ser-
vice (SMS) during internet blackouts, radio, and TV Channels (such as Oromia
Media Network) (Worku, 2020). The TPLF/EPRDF labelled the Qeerroo as a
clandestine terrorist group aimed at destabilising the country and controlling
local administration. With al-shabab – Arabic for youth, next door, Qeerroo has
been equated with the Somali counterpart. Qeerroo protest faced heavy handed
suppression from the government resulting in death, mass arrest, physical assaults,
and other authoritarian responses.

Fano resistance
An attempt to arrest a member of the Welkait Identity Committee, veteran
Colonel Demeke Zewdu, in 12 July 2016 sparked the subsequent protests in
Gondar, Bahir Dar, and other towns of the Amhara Regional State. The centre
of the protest was the question of Welkait and the people’s right to identify them-
selves as Amhara. However, for different reasons during the war against the Derg
regime the TPLF insurgent movement used this area as an outlet to Sudan and
eventually declared it as part of Tigray in the front’s 1975 Manifesto. In the post-
1991 Ethiopia, the people, and the territory of this area were forcefully annexed
and administratively demarcated into the Tigray Regional State.
The creation of this Committee was a response to low intensity rivalry and
conflicts between the Amhara and Tigray regions over the domestic border
problems created with the new ethnic-based Federal model and the contested
reconfiguration of domestic boundaries (Clapham, 1990, p. 272). When the
EPRDF/TPLF came to power, the implementation of its new political project of
192  Alexandra M. Dias and Yared Debebe Yetena
state, and nation-building aimed at redrawing domestic boundaries along eth-
no-linguistic lines. In the previous political projects of state-building Amhara
as a region never existed. Before the administrative reform of 1987 the localities
under dispute were either part of Gondar or Wollo and those living in the two
districts incorporated in 1995 in Tigray Regional state were predominantly home
to Amharic speakers as their first language (Markakis, 2021, p. 33). Tigray in order
to guarantee external access incorporated parts of Northern Gondar and Wag in
Northern Wollo (Clapham, 1990, p. 211). The redrawing of domestic boundaries
in this case was justified on the basis of the argument that these districts had been
under Tigray’s administration in the 1940s, however, the majority of historians
have not confirmed this claim.
On the opposing line of the argument, a map of TPLF’s controlled areas during
the civil war placed Welkait from Gondar and both Raya Azebo and Raya Kobo
from Wollo within the TPLF-administered realm. Markakis (1987, p. 249) on his
turn followed a slightly different line on a map of Tigray’s administered areas during
the civil war against the Derg placing Welkait and only Raya Azebo within TPLF
administered areas. This is a matter of guaranteeing access to critical resources as
land but more importantly under the new ethnic federal dispensation, put in place
since 1995, became a matter of identity. Raya Azebo is home to predominantly
Tigrinya-speaking groups and Raya Kobo is home to predominantly Amharic-
speaking groups however those who identify their homeland as Raya tend to identify
with the Ethiopian state and under the new dispensation with the Amhara Regional
state and not with the Tigray Regional State as determined by the ruling party.
Since the herald of the TPLF/EPRDF era, the Amhara raised a persistent quest
for representation in the federal government, curbing grave societal insecurities,
the question of identity, democracy, and justice in different realms. The establish-
ment of the All Amhara People’s Organisation and the endeavour made to voice
these questions remained in vain leading to the killing of the President of the
party, Professor Asrat Woldiyes. The constellation of these collective grievances
ignited the protests.
The Gondar protest unfolded a year late to the Qeerroo protest in Oromia.
Activists and scholars in the Diaspora, according to Messay (2016) encouraged
the Amhara to join the Oromo protest to once and for all end the TPLF/EPRDF
authoritarian regime. Although the ongoing armed resistance to free Welkait in
Gondar province had been waged early, the Fano resistance was ripened and only
needed the 11 July incident to join the Qeerroo protest. Initially more sponta-
neous the Fano matured through the establishment of various institutions such
as the Fano Association in Gondar, the Amhara Youth Association, and the
Amhara Students Association. Further, the Diaspora’s financial support for the
Fano proved critical in fulfilling the necessary logistics.
The youth were the primary protestors in Amhara, Oromia and other places.
However, Fano does not mean “youth” in a literal sense, rather it refers to a warrior
who defends the sovereignty of his country (Ethiopia). Its history is traced back to
the patriots who strongly fought the Italian colonial occupation (1935–1941) and
the radicalisation of the student’s movement appeal to the idea of Fano – freedom
 Anatomies of protest and the trajectories 193
fighter. The Amhara resistance, then, exhibits in a way youth militancy. The
Head of the Central Gondar Zone Security Office (2020) remarked, “The culture
of owning arms and the proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW)
smuggling in Ethio-Sudan frontier contributed to Fano’s militancy”. However,
during an interview, a member of Fano recalled “the TPLF/EPRDF strategy of
downplaying an organized armed resistance such as that of the Fano, particularly
in North Gondar of the Amhara region, classifying it as an act of banditry”.
The modalities of Amhara resistance, in addition to the aforementioned,
expressed in peaceful demonstration, rallies, boycotting party affiliated company
products (such as Dashen Beer), bed-ins, vandalism (destroying and burning local
officials house and hotels affiliated to the ruling party), among other. Indeed, the
Fano resistance has changed the course of history of Ethiopian politics coupled
with the Qeerroo and other youth protests throughout Ethiopia. This is not only in
terms of pressuring the incumbent party to look for viable options to stay in power
but also exposed the authoritarian and heinous nature of the TPLF/EPRDF regime.

The state repressive response

Protests that unfolded in Oromia and Amhara encountered heavy handed
repression and infrequent tolerance. In the face of the widespread protest, the
government initially attempted to curb the protesting movement by suspending
the Master Plan (which happened in early 2016) and detaining the Chairperson
of Welkait Committee to stay in Gondar (Authors’ own interview). But the
demands transcended the plain triggering factors to the point of regime change,
so the youth went on protesting.
The state repressive response changed the course and strategies of protesting.
When security forces tightened the space for rally, bed-ins were used as an alternative
action for a week or so. In some circumstances, vandalism, or wanton destruction
of local government offices and ruling party affiliated companies and individuals’
properties were targeted. In addition, more risky strategies have been adopted by the
Qeerroo and Fano, costing the lives of thousands of protesters. The 7 August 2016
Bahir Dar and the 7 October 2016 Bishoftu (Debre Zeit) Ireechaa festivity incidents
that costed the lives of hundreds of protestors illustrates such risky strategies2. This
has led to an emotionally charged, year on year, commemoration of the fallen pro-
testors in Amhara and Oromia respectively. These incidents were used by activists
“as empirical verifications of the unworthiness of state managers to rule as well
as for motivational appeals within organizations and interorganizational units to
participate in future protest actions” (Almeida, 2003, p. 353). A better coordinated
protest movement that mobilised various resources and reduced risky confrontation
with security forces was created in the aftermath of 2016 to 2018.
With the escalation of the protesting movements, the TPLF/EPRDF undertook
various remedial measures. First, a State of Emergency was declared two times
between 2016 and 2018. This has, however, further restricted civil and political
liberties causing more criticism on the regime. Third, “deep renewal” (criticism
and self-criticism) was undertaken in the party’s central committee to the grass
194  Alexandra M. Dias and Yared Debebe Yetena
root level of government that brought new faces to ministerial positions from the
disgruntled groups. This measure also failed to achieve the intended outcome.
The third measure was an internal reform that elected a new Prime Minister:
Abiy Ahmed. The coming of Abiy to power has marked a new beginning in the
ruling party’s history.

Conclusion
The cycle of protest under analysis in Ethiopia is revealing of the relevant role of
contextual factors and political opportunities for understanding protest dynamics.
The government intention to implement a policy (the Addis Ababa Master Plan)
which would change the configuration of domestic boundaries both of the capital
in relation to the Oromia Regional State and of administrative units between the
Amhara and Tigray Regional States, triggered fierce and sustained protest, and
unexpected political alignments between the protest movements associated with
the two largest ethnic groups: Oromo and Amhara. The issues at stake – land,
identities, rights, and grievances – echoed claims and unfinished businesses that
resurface from time to time in the Ethiopian social and political landscape.
The centrality of the land question and the national question within Ethiopia’s
social engineering approaches and political projects of state-building is quite illu-
minating because of its unique trajectory in the African context: apart the Italian
period of occupation between 1935–1941 Ethiopia’s state trajectory forms part of
non-colonial Africa. Ethiopia’s difficulty and failure to resolve this dual challenge
and the recurrence of protest across eras come as a portent reminder that when-
ever power is exercised without taking into account local demands and without
creating space and opportunities for the peaceful demonstration of dissenting
voices (and for the negotiation of conflicting interests) the regime is likely to be
overthrown by violent means. This is a unique lesson to draw from non-colonial
Africa and from a state where the legal and administrative institutions associated
with the European state model did not take root. What is interesting in Ethiopia
as the sole case of non-colonial Africa is the longevity of various forms of protest
and the engagement of a plurality of social groups throughout different eras.
This cycle of protests in contrast to previous ones had in its origins a deep
division within the traditional ruling elite from highland Ethiopia (the Amhara
and Tigrayans) and had the differential outcome of leading to a reform within
the ruling party that ultimately brought about a significant shift in the loci of
power and exercise of authority: the sideling of the dominant party within the
ruling coalition and across the various key security state’s institutions such as the
intelligence and armed forces.
Furthermore, the protests in Oromia and Amhara unfolded in the aftermath of
the 2015 election and not before because of the political opportunities related to
internal elite discord, combined grievances related to the continuous reconfigura-
tion of administrative boundaries and extended access to internet and social media
platforms. In spite of the government’s resorting to internet and communications’
obstruction and blackouts as a means of quelling dissent the extended access to
 Anatomies of protest and the trajectories 195
internet, even if intermittently, offered alternative venues to mobilise collective
action and amplify its significance beyond domestic and international borders;
ultimately linking the 2015–2018 cycle of protest in Ethiopia to the transnational
cycle protest in Africa and across regions marked by contemporary competitive
authoritarianism and other types of authoritarian rule in the twenty-first century.
Extended access to the internet and social media enabled the forging of an
alliance between movements that had emerged out of identity and resource-based
grievances. Indeed, when we compare the ineffective outcome of collective action
in the political crisis a decade earlier in the aftermath of the 2005 elections to
the outcome of the 2015–2016 protests, this chapter confirms Meyer’s conten-
tion that the extent of grievances, the viability of various strategies of influence
and the perceived costs and benefits of various alliances all change over time
both because of what social movements do and how authorities respond to them
(2004a, p. 140). In the 2005 political crisis the claimants of irregularities during
the elections missed the opportunity to forge an alliance on the basis of identity
and resource-based grievances provoked by state policy, whereas in 2015–2016
these same grievances around state policies not only spurred mobilisation within
ethnic-based regions and groups but also across. In the end, the political elite
division and lack of a common vision, the cooperation between different groups
(Qeerroo and Fano) and the widespread ICT access and digital activism rendered
collective action effective in bringing about political reform.
In the aftermath of this research it becomes evident that more detailed and fine
grained research needs to be carried on how face-to-face communication, peer-
to-peer mobile communication, and social platforms’ activism affect cooperative
behaviour among and across different groups in different locations (including
both the capital and remote/hardship areas) and how these different commu-
nication strategies are key to understanding ICT access and digital literacy as
a political opportunity approach in face of the widespread authoritarian states’
response with internet shutdowns and total communications blackout.

Acknowledgements
Both authors were engaged in conceptualisation, fieldwork comprising partici-
pant observation, and semi-structured interviews with both state representatives
at the capital and regional levels, data analysis, writing and review of the present
chapter. The author Yared Debebe carried all the interviews with key political
actors that are quoted throughout the chapter.

Notes
1. Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/QeerrooB/ (Accessed: 20 September
2021).
2. See for example: ‘Bahir Dar Protest, 7 August 2016’ at https://borkena.
com/2016/08/07/bahir-dar-protest-august-72016/ (accessed 20 September 2021);
‘“Fuel on the Fire” Security Force Response to the 2016 Irreecha Cultural Festi-
val’ at https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/09/20/fuel-fire/security-force-response-2016-
irreecha-cultural-festival (Accessed: 20 September 2021).
196  Alexandra M. Dias and Yared Debebe Yetena
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12 PRO-DEMOCRACY PROTESTS
IN THE KINGDOM OF
ESWATINI 2018–2019
Maxwell Vusumuzi Mthembu

Introduction
Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) is an absolute monarchy, ruled by King Mswati
III (1986–current), who took over from his father, King Sobhuza II (1921–1982).
Power is vested in the King and influential ruling elite, who have stakes in the
perpetuation of a closed and repressive regime that is known for human rights
abuses.1 The actuation of political parties and civil society is severely constrained
not only in law (ban from 1973; and 2008 Suppression of Terrorism Act) but in
practice (protesters face high level of repression). Despite facing a very inhospi-
table political context, groups and citizens have found ways to engage in protest.
In the case of Eswatini, trade unions have been the leading protest actors against
government policies and advocating for democracy. With a special focus on
2018–2019 protests, this chapter aims to understand the emergence and outcomes
of pro-democracy protests in Eswatini.
It is argued that both, organisational resources and political opportunity struc-
tures (POS) were important to explain the emergence and the impact of protests
in the country. First, trade unions were able to build on their resources and legit-
imacy to organise and sustain protest. Second, discursive political opportunities
(legacies of unions work throughout the 1990s and first decade 2010s) contributed
to create resonance with pro-democratic frames. Third, the presence of allies –
namely of political parties and international actors – contributed to the creation
of further pressure for change. Despite these incentives, protest movements were
unable to promote significant political changes. These arguments are demon-
strated with the help of a set of qualitative sources – from personal interviews to
documentary analysis.
This study is relevant on two accounts. First, only a handful of studies, have
focused on protest in autocratic monarchies, which means that a case study on
Eswatini can add to blossoming literature. Second, the case of Eswatini reveals
the importance of organised actors, in helping keep democratic issues on the
public agenda.
The chapter is organised as follows. It starts by presenting a brief literature
review on the role of organisations, and political opportunity structures in auto-
cratic regimes with the goal of defining the arguments and framework for the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-12
 Pro-democracy protests 201
analysis for Eswatini. Next, the methodology presents the data use in the study
to test the arguments presented. The contextual section provides an historical
overview of protest in the country, seeking to explore the role of trade unions.
The main empirical section focuses on 2018–2019 protests – their emergence and
outcomes. The conclusion discusses the main findings and reflects on the main
lesson from Eswatini and how it contributes to enlighten the debate on protests
in autocratic regimes.

Civil society organisations, resources, and political

opportunity structures in monarchic authoritarian regimes
In order for a protest to be fomented there must be several resources, organisation,
but also POS (Giuni, 2009; Sanches, 2022). Opportunity “refers to the extent to
which power, repression (and facilitation), and opportunity (and threat) provide
options for collective action” (Giuni, 2009, p. 362). These are opportunities that
arise as a consequence of the political system availing possibilities that challeng-
ing groups could use to mobilise effectively (Giuni, 2009). Opportunities may also
arise from the cultural context, making certain topics and frames more resonant
and salient than others. So some movements may also benefit from discursive
opportunities that enhance the reception and legitimacy of their message (Giuni,
2009).
Studies on POS in varying autocratic regimes show that monarchies are gen-
erally less hospitable to the existence of civil society organisation and political
parties. Whereas patronage is endemic in authoritarian regimes in the form of
co-optation and participation in elections (Hultquist et al. 2021), in Eswatini the
absence of political parties has resulted in bootlicking and demonising any calls
for democratisation from some quarters of the Swati society. Individuals who push
the agenda for the maintenance of the status quo are likely to be rewarded with
political office by the authorities. This is one of the approaches that ruling elites
in authoritarian regimes use to control the electoral process (Hultquist et al. 2021).
Co-optation is evident in authoritarian regimes in the Middle East which
is an attempt to minimise any threats to the leadership and guarantee support
(Hultquist et al. 2021). Saudi Arabia is one country that has used selective co-
optation and repression to ensure stability of the authoritarian regime, which
Ertl (2015) refers to as the most stable in the region. Hultquist et al. (2021, p. 217)
examine why rulers in authoritarian regimes co-opt ethno minority organisations
by focusing on, for instance, the Berber parties in Algeria and Morocco, Shi’
parties in Bahrain, and Palestinian parties in Jordan. Eswatini is a homogenous
society where there are no ethnic minorities among the indigenous population
which explains why co-optation happens at the level of the individual as opposed
to a group. In Eswatini, citizens and trade unionists can participate at their
tinkhundla2 (constituencies) in their individual capacities and be elected in their
constituencies. For instance, former SFTU general secretary, Jan Sithole, took
part in the 2013 national elections and won. At the time, he was the president of
the Swaziland Democratic Party (SWADEPA).
202  Maxwell Vusumuzi Mthembu
The Kingdom of Eswatini is a case in point to analyse the role of organisations
and POS for protest. For many years, ordinary Swati citizens have not enjoyed
the freedoms as pronounced in the country’s constitution. Political parties were
banned by King Sobhuza II shortly after independence, which created a vacuum
that permeated politics for over 50 years. The absence of political parties in the
country has resulted in unions taking the baton and racing towards political
transformation in the kingdom. The political system known as Tinkhundla only
allows citizens to elect members of Parliament in 59 constituencies and following
the promulgation of the Election of Women Members to the House of Assembly
Act in 2018, four women MPs were elected by members of the lower House to rep-
resent the country’s four regions. “Openness of the political system” is restricted
to this level.
The nature of co-optation in Eswatini comes in the form of appointment to
both Houses of Parliament. Ertl (2015) refers to this legitimation through co-
optation which is used by the ruling oligarchy as a survival strategy for the regime.
In order to qualify for co-optation one is required to heap praises to the monar-
chy and acknowledge that the tinkhundla system of governance is a system like
no other. This narrative guarantees praise singers either an ambassadorial posi-
tion, appointment into parliament or one of the many advisory committees. The
tinkhundla system is crafted in such a way that its supporters or their children are
rewarded for defending the system. The country is an absolute autocratic monar-
chy, which means that social movement activity is severely restricted.
The monarchy is a sacred institution to the Swati people that is regarded as
a unifier. The country’s Constitution of 2005 states that the King is a symbol of
unity and eternity of the Swati nation (Swaziland Government, 2005). This has
serious connotations to anyone challenging the authority of His Majesty or advo-
cating for democratic reforms in the country. Anyone perceived as fomenting
political unrest is labelled as challenging the authority of the King. The King is
seen as a symbol and custodian of Swati culture and identity (Simelane, 2016).
The King is referred to as the “mouth that tells no lies”. An interview I conducted
with a former minister of justice in the 1990s summed it all when he said the King
can never be blamed for any wrong decision he pronounces, but they as advisors
are supposed to take the blame. This augurs well with the assertion that the mon-
archy is the “mouth that tells no lies”.
This is the very reason that has made political parties find it difficult to set an
agenda on the role of the monarchy in a democratic dispensation of the Swati
society. Political parties are aware that they have to thread carefully when it
comes to this institution. As noted by Motsamai (2011, p. 43), the local popu-
lation see the monarchy as “the embodiment of Swazi identity”. However, the
monarchy has been losing legitimacy over the years especially because of the
extravagance of the royal family in the face of abject poverty experienced by
many households. From the 1990s on there has been sporadic dissent against
the institution encountering support from across the spectrum of Swati society
including the intelligentsia. In 1996, some pro-democracy organisations and
non-political organisations declared that;
 Pro-democracy protests 203
the institution of the Monarch, revered and respected by the majority of
Swazis, should be protected and every effort should be employed to save and
rescue it from the hands of cabals and be elevated to a sovereignty position
that is above party politics.
(Swazi Solidarity, 1996)

More recently, in June 2021, three MPs questioned the appointment of the coun-
try’s prime minister by the head of state arguing that he should be elected by the
citizens instead of being appointed by the King. Additionally, some local commu-
nities have fiercely resisted the imposition of chiefs in the chiefdoms by the King.
In this context, few citizens have access to political power, and any opportunity
that presents itself for collective action is grabbed with both hands. However, a
major challenge has been fear of the armed forces that have on many occasions
been unleashed, on peaceful protesters. Ertl (2015) argues that one of the survival
strategies employed by the regime in Saudi Arabia is the use of repression. For
instance, Ertl notes that in 2011, following protests that had started in February
in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, the regime quashed the uprisings to prevent
a groundswell of support in other parts of the country. In June 2021, about 50
pro-democracy protesters and bystanders were killed by the army and the police.
In most instances protesters are quashed by the paramilitary wing of the Royal
Eswatini Police Service. It could be argued that in the Eswatini context, the polit-
ical system is closed as such protests take place in an environment which compels
the pro-democracy movement to call for transformation through demonstrations.
Focusing on the 2018–2019 protests in Eswatini, this chapter argues, that both
organisational resources and POS were important to explain the emergence and
the limited impact of protest in the country. First, trade unions were able to build
on their resources and legitimacy to organise and sustain protest. Second, discur-
sive political opportunities (legacies of unions work throughout the 1990s and
first decade 2010s) contributed to create resonance with pro-democratic frames.
Third, the presence of allies – namely of political parties and international actors –
contributed to create further pressure for change.

Methodology
The chapter employed a qualitative approach in generating data. A combina-
tion of desk top research, in-depth interviews and qualitative content analysis
of newspapers was used. The aim is to provide knowledge and understanding
of the phenomenon under study (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005), in this case the
pro-democracy protests in Eswatini. Qualitative content analysis allows the use
texts to identify the themes, discourses, and strategies (Hsieh and Shannon,
2005; Krippendorff, 2004, p. 24) used by protesters, and how the government
reacted. The mainstream newspapers under review were the privately-owned
Times of Eswatini and its weekend editions, Eswatini News and Times Sunday.
The state-owned Eswatini Observer was also used for purposes of analysing its
content together with the weekend editions, the Observer on Saturday and the
204  Maxwell Vusumuzi Mthembu
Observer on Sunday. The Times of Eswatini newspapers enjoy a larger market share
by comparison.
The period covered for the chapter was specifically 2018 and 2019. A major
challenge though is that the content of the newspapers regarding pro-democracy
protests is almost similar in the newspapers. It was rare to have one newspaper
not cover protest marches owing to the size and population of the country. What
only differs in the newspapers is the placement of the stories which is determined
by the editorial staff. However, a majority of the stories on protest marches in
the publications were on the front pages of the newspapers, which in itself is
agenda-setting.

Trade unions and protests in Eswatini an historical overview

Eswatini attained independence from British rule in September 1968. King
Sobhuza II and his party, Imbokodvo National Movement (INM), won all seats
in Parliament in the 1967 elections and took control of the government at inde-
pendence (Baloro, 1994). In the 1972 parliamentary elections, the opposition
Ngwane National Liberatory Congress (NNLC) led by a medical practitioner,
Dr Ambrose Zwane, won three out of 24 seats in Parliament (Baloro, 1994).
Consequently, the King had to tighten his grip as the opposition began gaining
ground. In an attempt to quell the threat from the opposition, King Sobhuza II
on 12 April 1973, unilaterally declared a state of emergency (Motsamai, 2011), dis-
solved Parliament and banned political parties. Political parties in the kingdom
remain banned more than 53 years after independence.
The abrogation of the constitution resulted in the consolidation of power by
the ruling oligarchy with the aid of traditional chiefs. The King assumed supreme
power and all executive, legislative, and judicial powers were vested in him. The
King’s proclamation also banned trade unions, meetings of a political nature,
and demonstrations. The proscription of trade unions was only reversed in the
1980s owing to a pre-existing International Labour Organisation (ILO) agree-
ment which forced the government to rescind the ban and allow trade unions to
operate legally in the country (Debly, 2011, p. 20).
In the absence of political parties, the trade union movement filled the void. The
protagonists of the struggle for emancipation of the Swati people from the clutches
of the royal oligarchy in the trade union movement are the Swaziland National
Association of Teachers (SNAT) founded in 1928, Swaziland Federation of Trade
Unions (SFTU) (defunct) established in 1973, and the Swaziland Federation of
Labour established in 1994. They were later joined by the Swaziland National
Association of Civil Servants (SNACS) founded in 1986, which later changed its
name to the National Public Service & Allied Workers Union (NAPSAWU) in
2007 and the Swaziland Nurses Association (SNA) now known as the Swaziland
Democratic Nurses Union founded in 1965. More recently, the birth of the Trade
Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA) in 2012 reinvigorated the push for
democracy in the country which had, at the time, become relatively dormant.
 Pro-democracy protests 205
However, TUCOSWA has so far failed to have an impact similar to that enjoyed
by the SFTU in the mid-1990s, as later demonstrated.
Public Servants Associations (PSAs) have enjoyed relative autonomy from the
government. Even though the government has tried in the past to deal with their
leaders it has not succeeded. A major advantage is that these associations have
not relied on their employer for sustenance and resources to push the workers’
agenda. The unions have put pressure on the government especially because of
the massive backing by the membership on numerous issues affecting their mem-
bership including the calls for a democratic dispensation in Eswatini.

Pro-democracy protest in the 1990s

Trade unions have played a pivotal role in calling for political reforms and they
continue to put pressure for political transformation in the country. Even though
this started in the 1970s, the SFTU’s two-day general strike on 13–14 March 1995
to press the government to accede to a list of 27 demands which had been put
forward in January 1994 was a wake-up call for the government. Although these
demands focused mainly on labour related issues, including the reinstatement of
dismissed workers, there was also inclusion of political issues. For instance, one
of the demands called for the development of a new constitution in the coun-
try (Sereo, 2018). The SFTU-led strike had a crippling effect on the economy
as billions were lost as was the subsequent strike in January 1996. The vacuum
left by the proscription of political parties in the country resulted in the SFTU
becoming an advocate for human rights and liberal democracy (Kanduza, 2003)
in Eswatini in the 1990s. Debly (2011) argues that the strikes were some form of
resistance to the ruling oligarchy’s hegemony. The inability to present grievances
in a free and open manner resulted in political opportunity which led to the
organisation and mobilisation of workers expressing their grievances in Eswatini.
Trade unions in the local context cannot be separated from politics, they run par-
allel if not intertwined. For instance, TUCOSWA’s first strategic plan elucidates
that the organisation’s establishment is to further the struggle for democracy
and free trade unions (Hlandze, 2019). When TUCOSWA called for democratic
reforms, the government revoked its registration in March 2012 (Wood, Dibben
and Klerck, 2013).
The downward spiral in the popularity of the SFTU resulted in efforts to
awaken the giant with the formation of yet another trade union, TUCOSWA.
The SFTU found itself in a quagmire with its membership as a result of lack
of transparency and unaccountability (Simelane, 2007). TUCOSWA was estab-
lished in 2012 after three powerful trade unions in the country came together
under one umbrella body. The three include the Swaziland National Association
of Teachers (SNAT), the Swaziland Federation of Labour (SFL) and the SFTU.
The inclusion of SNAT in TUCOSWA was a positive development following
the former’s success in organising and mobilising teachers to push their agenda
through mass protests (Sereo, 2018). The formation of TUCOSWA had been set
206  Maxwell Vusumuzi Mthembu
in motion in 2008 when the three trade unions signed a memorandum of under-
standing culminating in the establishment of a Labour Coordinating Council,
a temporary structure in the quest towards the formation of the federation
(Hlandze, 2019).

Prodemocracy protest in the 2000s: The role

of (outlawed) parties and trade unions
More recent pro-democracy protests can be divided in two: those led by the
outlawed political parties and those led by trade unions. The People’s United
Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) and its youth wing, the Swaziland Youth
Congress (SWAYOCO), have been the main protagonists in these protests by
banned political parties. Since its formation in July 1993 (Sereo, 2018), PUDEMO
has been one of the organisations advocating for democracy in Eswatini. Its
overall aim is to attain a multi-party democracy in Eswatini (Sereo, 2018). The
People’s Manifesto, which PUDEMO adopted in 1996, demanded the creation
of a constitutional, multi-party democracy with an elected and accountable gov-
ernment. PUDEMO’s youth wing, SWAYOCO was established in 1991 by some
students of the University of Eswatini and William Pitcher teacher training col-
lege (Sereo, 2018) who were members of PUDEMO. Other parties include the
NNLC, the Communist Party of Swaziland, and the Swaziland Democratic Party
(SWADEPA), a party that was founded by former secretary general of the SFTU,
Jan Sithole.
Protests led by the political formations rarely attract huge crowds. This explains
the decision by PUDEMO for instance to “infiltrate” the trade union movement
(Sereo, 2018) in order to push the agenda for democratic change in Eswatini. Pro-
democracy protests called by the trade unions, on the other hand, have received
massive support from workers. The protests by the trade unions are disguised as
labour related issues. For instance, the 2018 and 2019 strikes by public servants
associations and other similar strikes brought the country to a virtual standstill.
Mass protests are permitted only after having been sanctioned by the municipal-
ities and the police.
Pro-democracy protests have concentrated mainly in urban areas especially in
the capital city, Mbabane and the second largest city, Manzini. The reason is
simple, that is the centre of government activity. In the past, there have been
protests in the sugar and citrus plantations in the eastern part of the country.
In most instances, these strikes revolve around conditions of service. Simelane
(2016) argues that rural dwellers are conspicuous by their absence in the protests.
This has impacted the success of the protests because of failure to appeal to the
masses in rural areas (Simelane, 2016). He argues that the control of rural areas
by the monarchy is more pronounced as chiefs are used to ensconce monarchical
control alienating anyone who is promoting democracy. This however is begin-
ning to change as witnessed in June 2021 mass protests which shook even rural
areas. According to the 2017 Eswatini Population Census report, 76.2% of the
population live in rural areas and the remainder (23.8%) is in the urban areas.
 Pro-democracy protests 207
The success of any pro-democracy movement is dependent upon a buy-in by rural
dwellers. The concentration of the pro-democracy activities in the urban settings
diminishes any chance of success.

The political context behind the

2018–2019 pro-democracy protests
In 2011, Eswatini experienced serious financial challenges. This resulted in the
country approaching South Africa for a bail out of about USD 350 million (2.4
billion rand). The country has still not come out of the woods yet following the
global recession early in the decade. This crisis led to mass protests in 2011 from
the trade union movement but also more recently, between the years 2018 to
2020. The country is going on a downward spiral financially as witnessed by the
failure to pay government suppliers, failure to rehabilitate pot-holed riddled roads,
and failure to secure medication for the country’s health facilities.
The fiscal challenges facing the country have affected government operations.
This has also hindered government’s ability to grant public servants a cost of
living adjustment (COLA). In a press statement in 2019 following a decision by
the SNAT to embark on a strike action in September 2019 to force the govern-
ment to accede to its demands for COLA, government acknowledged that fiscal
challenges in 2018 and 2019 have made it impossible for awarding public serv-
ants COLA. Despite the spike in inflation government employees’ salaries have
remained stagnant. Government has also frozen promotions and in some cases
employment.
Eswatini has been involved in numerous capital projects which however have
been affected by the financial crisis. One such project was the construction of the
International Convention Centre (ICC) and a five-star hotel. When the project
was launched the estimated cost was USD 66,792,150 (one billion rands) however,
the price has sky rocketed to about four times the original cost and still count-
ing. A major bone of contention regarding this project is that nearby there are
hotels that are not performing well. One of the Sun International hotels located
about 300 metres from the ICC has been closed for more than eight years now. A
state-owned hotel that was constructed to accommodate heads of state and gov-
ernment who attended the Smart Partnership Summit in 2004 was also making
a loss. The construction of the ICC and the five-star hotel has drawn criticism
from many quarters including the pro-democracy movement. This new structure
was meant to accommodate heads of state and government at an African Union
Summit that Eswatini was expected to host in 2019.
Another protest triggering factor emanates from the lavish lifestyle of the royal
family. The royal family’s expenditure has been a cause for concern for some time
now. The icing on the cake was the purchase of 19 Rolls Royce cars for the king’s
wives and a fleet of 120 BMWs and motorcycles (Meyer, 2019) which were to
be used by the close protection unit. A major challenge is that this expendi-
ture cannot be questioned by anyone. Even parliament dares not debate the royal
budget. The arrival of the fleet came at a time when public servants had not
208  Maxwell Vusumuzi Mthembu
received a cost of living adjustment for three years (Meyer, 2019). As noted by
the then American Ambassador to Eswatini, Lisa Peterson, “should the people of
Eswatini really be comfortable with such disregard for the perilous fiscal state of
the country, particularly with so many of His Majesty’s subjects living below the
international poverty line?” (Peterson, 2019). Public tertiary institutions are also
struggling to pay suppliers under the current economic climate. Local newspapers
simply brushed through the story of the cars without any thorough investigations
knowing the repercussions should they investigate further.

The 2018–2019 Pro-democracy protests

in Eswatini: Claims and actions
Between 2018 and 2019, there were numerous protests by public service associa-
tions and tertiary students. In September 2018, TUCOSWA staged a three-day
protest on the eve of the country’s national elections which were scheduled for 21
September 2018. The strike turned violent after the police quashed it for having
taken an unauthorised route. The bone of contention it could be argued were the
2018 elections. The trade union movement has been advocating for democratic
reforms in the country since it was established in 2012. The national elections
were a no party contest, yet TUCOSWA had always advocated for multi-party
democracy. During the strike which newspapers referred to as a “Bloody clash”,
seven protesters were injured and three arrested (Swazi Observer, 19 September).
Despite their assault by the police, the protesters were not relenting. They again
took to the streets in their numbers and were later joined by bus conductors. The
strike turned ugly as the conductors pelted the police with stones and blocked
any vehicles from entering or leaving the second largest city’s bus terminal. The
police also detained some TUCOSWA leaders (Swazi Observer, 20 September
2020). The elections provided the trade union movement with an opportunity to
mobilise its membership and protest against the banning of multi-party democ-
racy in the country.
The Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT), an affiliate of
TUCOSWA which boasted of 11,200 memberships in 2018 had about 6,233 who
took part in the exercise to ascertain if the membership wanted to participate in
a national strike to pressurise the government to pay COLA. About 99% (6,148)
teachers voted to take part in the boycott. After the national elections teachers
marched on the American Embassy in Eswatini. They called on the embassy to
engage the Royal family of Eswatini on COLA arguing that despite the rate of
inflation in 2017 and 2018 which stood at 7.85% and 6.55% respectively, they
had not received and increment from their employer. Coincidentally, the King of
Eswatini was in the United States of America where he had attended the United
Nations General Assembly in New York. During his trip to the United States, His
Majesty had the opportunity to meet the US President, Donald Trump. America
in Eswatini has always been regarded as the doyen of democracy especially before
President Trump took office. It would be folly to assume that COLA was a major
factor in the march on the Embassy of the United States. The issue here is about
 Pro-democracy protests 209
democracy. The timing of the protest march is of major significance. The leader-
ship had planned the march such that it had a ripple effect while the king was in
the United States. It could be argued that they were hell-bent on ensuring that
the issues affecting the country, including the lack of democracy take a centre
stage during the king’s visit.
The march on the US embassy followed protest marches in September 2018.
The Times of Eswatini’s headline read “Bloody Clash” and on the following page
it read “Five injured as protesters, police clash” On the same day the Observer’s
headline read: “7 injured, 3 arrested”. This strike action had been called by the
mother body of unions in Eswatini, TUCOSWA. This strike was on the eve
of the 2018 elections which organisations like TUCOSWA call undemocratic
because political parties are not allowed to contest elections. The following day
the Eswatini Observer reported about the detention of the leadership of the organ-
isation. There were clashes between the police and the protesters such that the
second largest city in Eswatini left many commuters stranded as the protest action
was joined by bus and taxi drivers as well as their assistants. Pro-democracy pro-
tests have felt the might of the Royal Eswatini police when they are unleashed
on them. The heavy handedness of the police has in most instances resulted in
casualties. Whenever, a protest march has been organised heavy police presence
is witnessed.
In May 2018, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the National
Education, Health and Allied Workers Union of South Africa (NEHAWU)
staged a protest march at the main border with South Africa, the Ngwenya/
Oshoek port of entry. This march was on the South African side of the border.
The protesters were calling for the unbanning of political parties in Eswatini, the
release of political prisoners and the release of Amos Mbedzi (a South African
national) who was charged with sedition and terrorism in the country following
the explosion of a device that he together with two others had planned to deto-
nate at a bridge close to the Lozitha Royal Palace in 2008. The explosive device
exploded prematurely in the car they were traveling in killing two of Mbedzi’s
accomplices. On the day of the explosion, His Majesty was due to fly to New York
to attend the 63rd UN General Assembly (Debly, 2011). In 2012, Mbedzi was sen-
tenced to 85 years imprisonment. The government of Eswatini maintained that
Mbedzi is not a politician neither is he an activist as such he could not be referred
to as a political prisoner (Nsibande, 2019, p. 3).
In September 2019, the Times of Eswatini reported on the call by the SACP,
NEHAWU, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to
introduce democracy. This was at another port of entry, between South Africa
and Eswatini, in the southern part of the country, Mahamba. Under the headline
“Reintroduce democracy”, speakers at that gathering noted that though the main
issue was labour related it could not be divorced from governance because these
issues run parallel (Nsibande, 2019). To rebut this statement, the government
spokesperson argued that, “Eswatini is a democratic country where the people
freely nominate and vote for their representatives in Parliament”. The call by
these South African organisations qualifies the argument advanced by Wood,
210  Maxwell Vusumuzi Mthembu
Dibben and Klerck (2013) that COSATU has over the years been preoccupied
with the call for regime change in Eswatini and Zimbabwe.
In August 2019, students of the University of Eswatini went on strike a few days
after the commencement of the new academic year. The bone of contention was
that they had not received a refund of their caution fee which they had paid the
previous academic year. This is the amount students pay at the beginning of the
academic year when they register which is not refunded in case a student damages
university property. The students’ representative councils in all the universities
are also members of the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS) which
is linked to PUDEMO. PUDEMO has “infiltrated” the trade union movement to
push its agenda of the democratisation of Eswatini. It is not only the trade union
movement that political parties such as PUDEMO have infiltrated but they have
also ensured that the students union, SNUS, also pushes their agenda. During
elections for students’ representative councils in universities and colleges, there is
an attempt by members of SNUS, a majority of whom are members of PUDEMO,
to ensure that their candidates are elected in the strategic portfolios in the stu-
dent representative bodies.

Understanding the 2018–2019 Pro-democracy protests:

Organisational resources and political opportunity structures
This section presents the factors that incentivised collective actions: trade unions
organisational resources, discursive opportunities, and the presence of allies.

Organisational capacity
The SNAT is one union that is well organised structurally in Eswatini. SNAT
boasts of 15 branches throughout the country with a membership of approximately
12,200. The organisation has managed to secure assets through membership sub-
scriptions. The Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union (SDNU) which boasts of a
membership of about 2,100 also relies on membership fees for sustenance. Even
though the unions have survived on subscriptions, the support from international
partners has bolstered their initiatives. As noted by the secretary general of SDNU:

Our international partners give us mainly emotional and solidarity support.

We do have those that give us financial support mainly for projects that are
run by the organization such as the Wellness Centre and the Girl Child
Programme. We do receive financial support from regional and global nurses’
unions to attend international meetings.
(M. Masangane, 2021, personal communication, 25 June)

In terms of networks the organisations do receive support from other interna-

tional trade unions. For instance, SNAT does receive support from Education
International on numerous issues facing the organisation such as “union bash-
ing”. There is also support that comes from the Open Society Initiative for
 Pro-democracy protests 211
Southern Africa (OSISA) and the Trade Union Education of Finland, which sup-
port the organisation’s capacity building programmes and advocacy for injustices.
TUCOSWA also relies on a number of trade unions that support educational
activities. These include the Confederation of Norwegian Trade Unions, the
Confederation of Sweden Trade Unions, and the Solidarity Centre – American
Federation of Labour/Congress of Industrial Organisation. TUCOSWA has 19
union affiliates with a total membership of 51,000 across the country.
The availability of resources has enabled the unions to transport members to
push their agenda through protest-demonstrations throughout the country. One
advantage that unions have had as opposed to the proscribed political parties
for instance is that, they have been able to push the narrative of issues affecting
heart and soul of the workers whilst synonymously pushing the agenda for democ-
ratisation. The secretary general of TUCOSWA stated that:

Human and financial resources are invested for a successful protest action.
Protesters are to be transported to the demonstration areas and are fed. For
a protest action to be sustained it needs very minimal financial support. The
protestors must pushed by their desire to see the change that they want as
opposed to any secondary benefit like stipends. It always works well for us
though if we at least transport them. Build up workshops are also fundamen-
tal to deal with consciousness.
(MC Gina, 2021, personal communication, 27 June)

Discursive opportunities
Koopmans and Olzak (2004, p. 202) define discursive opportunities as “the
aspects of the public discourse that determine a message’s chances of diffusion in
the public sphere”. Discursive opportunities build on prior trade unions activism
over the past thirty years. This has left a legacy of frames and forms of strug-
gle that continue to make pro-democracy claims valid and widely supported.
Yet it is important to recognise that public discourse has been hampered by the
inaccessibility to the mainstream broadcasting stations which are owned by the
state. Unionists are not interviewed on state radio and television; neither their
events are broadcast on these stations. Daily and weekly newspapers have how-
ever enhanced the diffusion of public discourse of the issues raised by unions
within society albeit on a limited scale. This is mainly because such media is not
accessible in most parts of the country especially rural areas. The shrinking space
in the traditional media has resulted in the use of other channels of communica-
tion such as the Internet. Social media platforms have been utilised by unions to
disseminate information to their membership. For instance, the secretary general
of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers stated that his organisation
uses Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, and WhatsApp to communicate to their mem-
bership. The introduction of online newspapers has also provided a platform for
the teachers’ organisation to disseminate information to their membership (S.
Dlamini, 2021, personal communication, 18 June).
212  Maxwell Vusumuzi Mthembu
In the online platforms, the issues that have tended to dominate are the ones
discussed under political context. These are controversial issues that broadcasters
do not broadcast and newspapers only skirt through so that they do not offend
those in the echelons of power especially because they touch on the monarch.
The gatekeeping tendencies of the state broadcasters who have a bias towards
those in authority has tended to increase citizens’ reliance on social media plat-
forms as reliable sources of news despite the challenges associated with fake news.
Over the years politicians and members of the royal family who have control over
the national radio and television stations have lampooned the call for democracy.
Despite radio being the most pervasive medium in the country, trade unions are
banned from using national radio neither are journalists employed by these media
allowed to cover any pro-democracy protests. The protests in 2018 and 2019 never
received coverage on national radio and television despite Section 24 of the
Constitution permitting freedom of the press in Eswatini. In 2013, the ministry
of information and communication developed guidelines to regulate the opera-
tions and activities of the state broadcasters (Hlatshwayo, 2017). These guidelines
do not accommodate coverage of any protests or mass meetings called by trade
unions. The restrictions imposed on pro-democracy protests are an attempt by
government to minimise the groundswell of political dissent in the country. News
on strikes and protests is reported by newspapers and privately-owned TV station
which have limited reach compared to radio.
Recently, the issue that has dominated the social media space is the construc-
tion of the International Convention Centre together with the five-star hotel
funded by the taxpayer despite the fact that an operator has still not been identi-
fied. With many households living below the poverty line, the argument is, why
construct a white elephant that will not benefit the country. The ministry of
economic planning and development which is responsible for this project has
continued to turn a blind eye to the concerns raised by citizens. The deaf ears
in the face of concerns raised result in popular support of the unions’ calls for
protests. In June 2021, the country experienced pro-democracy protests never wit-
nessed before as citizens called for the election of the prime minister as opposed
to his appointment by the king. This call first emerged in parliament when three
MPs argued their case over the appointment of the prime minister. This reso-
nated well with the masses including the trade unions and young people hence
its popular support.
The critical issue is that the citizens do not enjoy the freedoms as enshrined
in the country’s constitution. As argued by the secretary general of TUCOSWA,

The Federation is a creature of collectivism. We are opposed to any form of

governance that suppresses the right to associate, assembly, and free speech.
We believe a system that guarantees all fundamental rights and freedoms,
is an ideal one for any society. We believe that recognition of collective
political and individual rights should be the way to go. As an organisation
founded on association values, we believe political parties can be the means
 Pro-democracy protests 213
to achieve political freedoms in the same way that unions defend the inter-
ests of workers.
(MC Gina, 2021, personal communication, 27 June)

Despite the availability of social media, the traditional means of communication

are still utilised by the unions. For instance, the nurses’ union secretary general
states that “We communicate with our members through the shop stewards on
the shop floor through constitutional structures like, branch meetings, regional
General Council, National General Council, mid-term conferences and General
Congress” (M. Masangane, 2021, personal communication, 25 June).
As a result, unions have explored and utilised alternative means of commu-
nication. The unions alluded to the fact that they do use social media platforms
mainly WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter. A major deterrent has been the cost
of accessing the Internet in the country, which is relatively high. Consequently,
trade unions have to use a multi-pronged approach to communicate to their
membership.
The call for change has resonated well with the masses particularly in the
urban areas and in the industrial towns. The pro-democracy protests have man-
aged to use frames such as red t-shirts during protest marches. These are colours
associated with the working class and the communists. Other frames used by
pro-democracy groups are slogans such as “Phansi ngembuso wetinkhundla, phansi”
(Away with the tinkhundla government)”, “Phansi ngabo gubhelakwesabo, phansi”
(Away with the greedy leadership, away), “Phambili ngemzabalazo, phambili”
(Forward with the struggle for liberation, forward)”. These have resonated well
with the masses. As argued by Starr (2017, p. 1362) “Social movement actors use
master frames to present their cause to participants, the media, and other audi-
ences”. This gives an idea what the movement is all about and what the ideals for
which it stands for (Starr, 2017).

Political allies
There have been alliances between political parties, trade unions, and civil
society to challenge the prevailing status quo in Eswatini. The alliances were
cultivated on the premise that trade unions were permitted to “freely” assem-
ble yet political parties were not afforded that space. One such party was the
PUDEMO, which has forged an alliance with TUCOSWA in an endeavour to
foster democratic change in Eswatini (Sereo, 2018). Not only that, PUDEMO and
the NNLC played a pivotal role in the formation of the Swaziland Democratic
Alliance (SDA) which was “a coalition of trade unions, Swaziland Federation of
Trade Unions, political parties and NGOs” (Kanduza, 2003, p. 62). In the South
African context, there is a tripartite alliance comprising of the Congress of the
South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the ruling African National Congress
(ANC), and the South African Communist Party (Wood, Dibben and Klerck,
2013). Though alliances between labour and political parties are common, in
214  Maxwell Vusumuzi Mthembu
Eswatini, the trade union movement retained its autonomy (Hlandze, 2019).
Worth noting is that despite the assertion by Sereo (2018) that political parties, in
this case PUDEMO, “infiltrated” the SFTU such that the trade union movement
embraced a political agenda, this was also part of the trade union movement’s
agenda. It has always been part of their cause which explains why the opposi-
tion NNLC won three seats in company towns. PUDEMO needs the trade union
movement more than the unions need PUDEMO because on its own the political
party cannot mobilise the masses towards political change in Eswatini.
Another trade union that also played a pivotal role in an attempt to bring
about democratic reforms in the country was the Swaziland Federation of Labour
(SFL). SFL was founded in 1994 following a split from the SFTU. SFL was organ-
ised mainly in the finance, retail, and manufacturing sector. SFL focused on
worker representation and provided a consistent national platform for its affili-
ates. Sereo (2018, p. 96) notes that though the SFL was a bit conservative than
the SFTU, it also supported the pro-democracy movement. The fact that at its
founding congress TUCOSWA made a pronouncement about the repressive and
non-democratic system of government in Eswatini meant that they were not
going to isolate themselves from the politics of the country (Sereo, 2018). The
union also called for the boycott of the 2013 general elections (Sereo, 2018) which
are constituency based under the tinkhundla system of government.
The International Labour Organization played a pivotal role in ensuring that
workers’ rights as well as political rights are respected in the country. The fact
that the ILO intervened in the 1980s to ensure that unions are allowed to oper-
ate despite the 1973 state of emergency is proof of the role that the organisation
has played to ensure the respect of workers’ rights in Eswatini. The trade union
movement has continued to ride the crest of support at the annual ILO assembly
where they are afforded a platform to present their grievances in full view of the
world. The trade union movement of Eswatini has not failed to make meaningful
use of this platform.

Conclusion
The intensity and continuity of protests is a sign that as elsewhere in Africa the
people of Eswatini are trying to disrupt and induce cracks in the system even in
authoritarian contexts. However, the regime is able to offset these pressures albeit
temporarily. The leadership in Eswatini has capitalised on the fact that there
seem to be minimal support for pro-democracy formations in the rural areas.
This short-sightedness threw the country into turmoil in June 2021 when pro-
democracy protests erupted throughout Eswatini. The protests followed calls by
three members of parliament that the prime minister should be elected by citi-
zens and not appointed by the King as it is constitutionally. About 50 unarmed
citizens were brutally murdered by the police, the army, and correctional services
officers. During these protests shops were looted and others burnt in the pro-
cess. The silence of the citizens has been misconstrued as peace. The protests
are a culmination of years of misuse of state funds, unaccountability, and abuse
 Pro-democracy protests 215
of power by those at the apex of the Swati political hierarchy. When the protests
had ended, the King addressed the nation saying everything in Eswatini includ-
ing citizens belongs to him. He then appointed the 11th prime minister of the
country, Cleopas Sipho Dlamini.
The pro-democracy movement has succeeded in setting the agenda by sensitising
the masses about the ills in the governance of the country through numerous protests
over the years. The opulence of the royal family in the face of abject poverty expe-
rienced by many citizens of the country and unemployment has been a major cause
for concern which is bound to explode in the near future with dire consequences.
The ordinary Swati has since realised that despite the 2005 Constitution, they still
remain subjects without enjoying the freedoms enshrined therein. The wheels of
democratic change in Eswatini are already in motion, thanks to the pro-democ-
racy movement. The trade union movement has continued to be a torchbearer for
change since the proscription of political parties by King Sobhuza II in 1973.
Despite the opportunities available for pro-democracy groups there seems to
be light in the horizon. For the first time in many years the king’s powers on
the appointment of the prime minister are being questioned. The culture of fear
which has permeated society such that any discontentment is only in hushed
tones in the private sphere is now playing out in the public domain. Many people
who dared to criticise the status quo have been ostracised in Eswatini. The impact
is also felt by their children who are either denied government scholarships for
tertiary education or are denied employment opportunities because of the affilia-
tion of a parent to a pro-democracy movement or political organisation.
As other authoritarian regimes discussed in the book citizens of Angola
(Almeida, Sá and Faria, 2022), Uganda (Mutyaba, 2022), Ethiopia (Dias and
Yetena, 2022), or Congo (Polet, 2022), pay a high cost for engaging in protest.
However, this case shows that there is an enduring tradition of protest, and that
a vibrant and strong organised civil society is pressuring for change. Ultimately,
opportunities and structures have helped the inception of protest even if the
impact has been limited.

Notes
1. ‘SWAZILAND’, Available at: https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/
160146.pdf (Accessed: 17 January 2021).
2. Tinkhundla is plural for inkhundla. An inkhundla is a grouping of chiefdoms in
close proximity. The tinkhundla serve as electoral and development centres.

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13 CONCLUSION
COMPARATIVE IMPLICATIONS
AND NEW DIRECTIONS
Edalina Rodrigues Sanches

A new cycle of protests hit the African continent in the 21st century. It is the third
wave of protest, following the ones that led to independence in the 1950s–1960s
and paved the way for political liberalisation in the late 1980s to early 1990s
(Branch and Mampilly, 2015). Like every wave, this one is unique since it unfolds
in a given epoch, stretches across different geographies, has fresh intensity and
builds on new issues; but at the same time, it is also familiar since it picks up from
some “leftovers”, that is from unfinished business that was left unresolved in pre-
vious protest waves.
Between 2010 and 2021, more than 79,000 protests took place in the conti-
nent according to ACLED data on protest and riots. This represents 90% of all
protests counted since 1997. The protests spread out across Africa’s wide range of
regimes and took ordinary citizens – youth, middle-classes, farmers etc. – but also
organisations – unions, nongovernmental organisations, students’ associations,
political parties etc. – onto the streets to fight against authoritarianism, neolib-
eral policies, unemployment, political and civil rights (Stephen and van Kessel,
2009; Larmer, 2010; Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Engels, 2015; Mueller, 2018).
Like its predecessor, the current wave continues to put pressure on neoliberalism
and authoritarianism, but it more firmly embraces issues such as self-expression,
gender equality and sexual diversity (Currier and Cruz, 2014; Tripp, 2016), and
relies on ICT and social media to scale up the messages and visibility and to
maximise the political impact (Ekine, 2010; Bosch, 2017; Luescher, Loader and
Mugume, 2017).
In the wake of this protest wave, the main goal of this book was to tackle the
following crucial questions: How transformative are protests? Do they really matter
and, if so, how? And how can we explain varying protest outcomes? The 11 chapters
in this book have sought answers to these questions building on two overarching
arguments. First, change and transformation should be understood in a flexible
and open-ended manner. It is possible to analyse varying degrees of change (lim-
ited or significant) and varying types of change (material and non-material, or
else tangible and intangible), as well as combinations between them. In other
words, some protests may provoke significative change and succeed in obtaining
tangible goals – such as new public policies, democratic reforms, or the toppling of
an autocratic president – while others may not successfully achieve these goals. In
DOI: 10.4324/9781003177371-13
 Conclusion 219
either case, protests may nevertheless produce intangible though also substantive
changes, namely in citizens’ consciousness, collective solidarities, perceptions of
empowerment and imaginations about the future. In this sense, protests can be
compared to morphic fields, a term borrowed from Sheldrake (2006), which, once
formed, shape memories, messages, ideas that become recurrent in the future –
generating new waves.
The second argument is that political opportunity structures are useful lenses
to analyse the outcome of protest, particularly when understood in more dynamic
and relational ways (Giugni, 2009, 2011). The book takes into account not only
the opportunities that emanate from the institutional setting (power configu-
ration, political alignments, openness of the political system, and so forth) but
also those that relate to the cultural setting (legacies of past struggles, salience
and polarisation of issues, and the legitimacy of certain actors, identities, and
claims). Adding to this, it examines how opportunities change across context
and issues, and how they interact with other factors such as actors’ resources and
framing strategies (Kriesi et al., 1995; Tarrow, 1998; Giugni, 2009, 2011). Overall,
the 11 case studies herein help address the book’s key questions in interesting and
multi-layered ways. Showing the dynamic nature of political opportunities, the
varying duration of protests and movements, as well as the different degrees and
forms of change and the factors that account for them. The main findings are
summarised from a comparative perspective in the following pages.

Protests as engines of (democratic) change

This book is revealing of the powerful role of African civil societies, understood
here as the vast ensemble of actors and interests that tries to challenge the estab-
lished order (Obadare, 2011). As synthetised in the Table 13.1, ordinary citizens
from all social strata as well as distinct types of organisations have tried to elicit
change. Even if some groups were more active and took the lead on some actions,
the fact is that many social groups were caught up by the momentum and joined
collective action at various stages. In Burkina Faso, Balai Citoyen musicians and
artists relied on online campaigns, powerful catchwords, and songs to mobi-
lise citizens across social strata and political spectrum to rise up against Blaise
Compaoré’s attempt to change the constitution and extend his rule. Senegal Y’en
a Marre also owes its existence to young rappers and journalists who proactively
started to mobilise the people (and particularly the youth) against the incum-
bent government. In Angola, young intellectuals, journalists, and musicians have
also been at the forefront of demonstrations against the former and the current
country President – José Eduardo dos Santos and João Lourenço respectively.
In the politically instable Ethiopia, anti-government protests united the youth
hailing from different locations (Oromo and Amhara) and belonging to differ-
ent ethnic constituencies; while in Ghana, Eswatini, Mozambique and Morocco
the middle-class, trade unions, and community organisations played a signifi-
cant role in sustaining effective forms of mobilisation. The role of trade unions
is especially relevant in the case of Eswatini, an absolute monarchy that has
Table 13.1  Summary: actors, subjects, opportunities, and outcomes

220  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches

Chapter Country Subject, year (leading actors) Opportunities, vis-à-vis other factors Outcome

Chapter 2, Sanches Cabo Verde Regionalisation, 2010 – on Institutional opportunities (+): election proximity, Bill initiation
and Lopes (GRD, GRRCV, and, Sokols 2017) power transfer, elite and issue polarisation.
Framing strategies (++): amplification and diffusion
Cabo Verde Approval of new statute of political Institutional opportunities (++): election proximity, Bill withdrawal
office holders, 2014 presence of allies
(MAC#114) Cultural/discursive opportunities (+): favourable
media and public opinion
Framing strategies (++): amplification and diffusion
Chapter 3, Noll Ghana Good governance, corruption, 2014 Institutional opportunities (~): openness of the Increased public
and Budniok (Occupy Ghana) system, free media accountability,
Cultural/discursive opportunities (+): salience of the establishment of a special
issue of corruption prosecutor
Resources (++): organisational capacity, technical
expertise, legal political knowledge
Chapter 4, Senegal President third-term bid, 2011 Institutional opportunities (~): political openness New president elected
Dimé (Y’en a marre) Cultural/discursive opportunities (+): legacy of youth
protest in the country, favourable media coverage
Framing strategies (++): amplification
Chapter 5, Burkina Faso President third-term bid, 2013–2014 Institutional opportunities (++): institutional status Change at executive level,
Bertand (Balai Citoyen, opposition parties) for opposition, less state repression, cooperation civilian-led political
between opposition parties transition and new
Cultural/discursive opportunities (++): legacy of cognitive mechanisms
prior forms of activism
Specific opportunities (++): common issue
Chapter 6, Badran Morocco Feminist demands, 2011 Institutional opportunities (~): Strides in women’s New opportunities for
(Women’s organisations) rights, and new forms of activism during the Arab women’s organisations
Spring
Framing strategies (++): silencing and speaking out
Chapter 7, Bussoti Mozambique No to ProSavana Campaign, Institutional opportunities (++): presence of allies at Halt of ProSavana
and Nhaueleque 2012–2020 the national and international level programme; awakening of
(Rural movements – UNAC and Resources (++): local and international rural issues
ADECRU, mainly) organisational networks
(Continued)
Table 13.1  Summary: actors, subjects, opportunities, and outcomes (Continued)

Chapter Country Subject, year (leading actors) Opportunities, vis-à-vis other factors Outcome
Chapter 8, Angola Regime change, pro-democracy, 2017– Institutional opportunities (++): leadership Shifting awareness and, new
Almeida, Sá (MRPLA, activists) transition, political opening, unfulfilled promises, opportunities for protest,
and Faria state repression but no fundamental regime
Cognitive mechanisms (++): change in protesters’ change
perceptions and emergence of new cognitive frames
Chapter 9, Democratic President third-term bid, 2016 Institutional opportunities (~): threat of democratic Change at executive level,
Polet Republic of (Opposition parties, students, citizens’ regression but the same political
Congo movements) Resources (+): parties’ networks and resources order prevails
Other (++): international pressures
Chapter 10, Uganda Regime change, pro-democracy, 2011 Institutional opportunities (++): alliances between Change in the dynamics of
Mutyaba (Opposition parties, civic groups) opposition parties, and between them and civic regime opposition, more
groups popular demands for
Cultural/discursive opportunities (+): supporting accountability and
public opinion democratisation
Framing strategies (++): amplification, bridging and
transformation
Chapter 11, Eswatini Anti-regime, pro-democracy, Cultural/discursive opportunities (+): legacy of prior Agenda setting on
Mthembu 2018–2019 pro-democratic unions work pro-democracy issues
(Trade unions) Resources (++): networks and organisations though the regime remains
autocratic
Chapter 12, Dias Ethiopia Announcement of the Addis Ababa Institutional opportunities (+): leadership vacuum Withdrawal of the Plan,
and Yetena Master Plan, arrest of member of and intra-elite dispute, group alliances, internet change at the executive
Welkait Identity Restoration activism level, agenda setting on
Committee pro-democracy protests, pro-democracy issues, but

Conclusion 221
2015–2018 reforms halted by conflict
(Youth – Qeerroo and Fano) and authoritarianism

Source: Author’s elaboration

Note: The influence of opportunities, vis-à-vis other factors, on protest outcomes ranges from (~) weaker role to (++) stronger role. This is a qualitative assessment drawing on authors’
findings.
222  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
banned political parties since 1973, and narrowed all channels for effective mobili-
sation. So, while, facing an adverse setting, trade unions have been able to organise
and cooperate to bring about demonstrations to life. The case of Mozambique in
turn, tells the tale of how seemingly week rural communities’ organisations lever-
aged their stakes against the government and powerful interests in the agricultural
sector. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, opposition political parties were
strongly engaged in the protest and so were students and citizens movements.
The motivations and subjects putting protesters in the streets are diverse (see
Table 13.1); which confirms Branch and Mampilly (2015) assertion that unlike
other waves, the current wave lacks unifying goals and ideologies and covers a
broader sample issues related to governance and regime reform. Thus, a constella-
tion of movement actors joined demonstrations to elicit changes in policy design
and implementation (Cabo Verde and Mozambique), to fight political corruption
and bad governance (Ghana), to stop presidents from pursuing a third mandate
(Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Democratic Republic of Congo), to bring in more
democratic regimes and better policies (Angola, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Uganda) and
to advance the gender equality agenda (Morocco). Not only these protests aim at
different targets but take place in a wide range of regimes, including entrenched
and resilient autocratic regimes; therefore it is crucial to ask: how transformative
were they? and Did they really matter?
In most these countries, protests profoundly shaped the political sphere (see
Table 13.1). In Cabo Verde, the MRCV and the Shokols 2017 led pro-region-
alisation campaigns that helped keep their claims salient in the public agenda
and pushed parties to present regionalisation bills in parliament in 2018. Even
if the bill was not approved in parliament due to lack of consensus, this was a
significant exemplification that collective action can influence public debates. A
more successful outcome was obtained by the MAC#114 whose disruptive actions
and slogans compelled the president to withdraw the new Statute of Political
Office Holders which anticipated exceptional privileges for the political elite.
In Mozambique, rural communities had an extraordinary win against interna-
tional investors (Brazil and Japan) when the government finally accepted their
demands and halted the agriculture intensive ProSavana programme. In Burkina
Faso, Senegal, and Democratic Republic of Congo, protesters helped stop their
Presidents – Blaise Campaoré, Abdoulaye Wade and Joseph Kabila, respectively –
from pursing a third mandate, and decisively in the former two cases. In the latter,
international actors played a more relevant role in determining the unfolding of
the political events.
In Morocco, the transformative impact of protest is analysed from a within-
movement perspective. It is revealed that during the Arab Spring in Morocco, the
main movement (F20) emphasised certain demands and frames (democracy and
justice) while simultaneously silencing others (feminist causes, gender issues) in
order to enhance the movement’s popular support and acceptance. Despite this,
women’s experience within F20 nurtured solidarities and cooperation between
women’s organisations, which elicited mobilisation in the future. In Ethiopia, pro-
tests seemed to have opened a window of opportunity for both policy and regime
 Conclusion 223
reform but the outcomes were mixed. The government withdrew the Addis Ababa
Master Plan in 2017, giving in to protesters demands (particularly the Oromo)
but the expectations of democratic reform particularly after the election of Abiy
Ahmed as Prime Minister vanished as authoritarianism and conflict relapsed. In
the autocratic regimes of Angola, Eswatini and Uganda, ephemeral but recurrent
forms of anti-regime demonstrations have put democracy and good governance
on the public agenda. While some of the targeted political goals have not been
attained, these protests were important in that they created new cognitive mech-
anisms; that is, “alterations of individual and collective perceptions” (McAdam,
Tarrow and Tilly, 2001, p. 26). The shifting awareness continues to trigger protest,
even in the presence of strong state repression.
These 11 case studies offer a confirmation that protests matter as exercises of
citizenship, sources of social capital, and engines of democracy and good gov-
ernance. Africans are going to the street not only to transform their material
conditions of existence but also their symbolic conditions of existence. These
protest contribute to generate the morphic fields (Sheldrake, 2006) or the free
spaces for protest (Polletta, 1999) that far from being just physical spaces are also
symbolic spaces structured by ties, identities and meanings. The 11 chapters are
also illustrative of the hybrid nature of African social movements. The set of
issues that has taken citizens to the streets is diverse and does not follow the old
versus new social movements issue division. In fact, the coexistence of concur-
rent frames and messages – material and post-material – is documented in several
analyses in this book. Finally, the 11 case studies constitute a rich sample of the
varying outcomes of protests and to that extent they are representative of broader
continental patterns and surprises.

Political opportunities for protest

So how can we explain varying protest outcomes? As depicted in Table 13.1, polit-
ical opportunity structures acted alongside framing strategies (e.g. Cabo Verde,
Senegal, Morocco) and organisational resources (e.g. Ghana, Eswatini, Democratic
Republic of Congo) as the key factors affecting the outcome of protests. A first set
of opportunities emanated mostly from the institutional sphere including open-
ness of the political system, elite polarisation, alliances between movements and
political parties, and alliances between national and international actors. While
most of these opportunities are present in the (semi) democratic contexts – e.g.
Cabo Verde, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Senegal, or Mozambique – which tend to be
characterised by more open political systems and more institutionalised political
opposition – they are not exclusive to them. For instance, in Uganda alliances
between political parties and civic movements were crucial for the dissemina-
tion of Walk-to-Work protests; and the divisions within the incumbent party
in Ethiopia following the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in 2012 made
the regime more vulnerable to increasing societal pressure for regime change.
Additionally, activists have utilised other opportunities to leverage their options:
for instance, in Cabo Verde the MRCV, the Sokols 2017, and the MAC#144 took
224  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
advantage of the proximity of elections to influence the public debates and
increase their bargaining power; whereas in Angola the election of President João
Lourenço heightened popular expectations of regime change, even if this senti-
ment vanished quickly.
The second set of opportunities relates to cultural or discursive opportuni-
ties. Indeed, the presence of favourable public opinion or media coverage (both
national and international), and the legacies of prior pro-democracy or anti-
regime struggles facilitated public visibility and resonance, but also the legitimacy
of movement actors and their demands. For example, in Burkina Faso, Benin,
Eswatini, Ghana, and Senegal protesters were able to build on the legacy of prior
pro-democracy and anti-government movements to further legitimacy, to amplify
their message and mobilise more effectively. In a similar vein, one of the most
interesting expressions of past legacies was the use of historical symbols and nar-
ratives to legitimise forms of protest.
In Cabo Verde, MAC#114 made its first public appearance on 20 January
2015 during the official ceremony of the 40th anniversary of Amílcar Cabral’s
assassination. Images of the historical pan-Africanist were also used on several
occasions through social media, as well as in other youth protests in the country
(Lima, 2020). The Sokols 2017 present themselves as “heirs” of Sokols of Cabo
Verde, a youth movement that carried out protest initiatives against Portuguese
colonialism. In Ethiopia, the Fano refers to the warriors that defended the coun-
try’s sovereignty, tracing back to the Italian colonial occupation (1935–1941). The
Fano also embodies the identity of “freedom fighters”. In Senegal, activists found
an ideological anchorage in Pan-African ideals, and sought to revive the dreams
of the founding fathers as well as their desire to build a trans-African network of
political activism. Lastly, in Burkina Faso, the insurrection was shaped by older
legacies of uprisings that hallmark Burkina Faso’s political history. The young
people who took the streets during the 2013–2014 demonstrations wore T-shirts
bearing pictures of former president Thomas Sankara, and Balai Citoyen leaders
regularly resorted to his slogans and imagery. The use of Pan-African leaders’
images, discourses, and ideals contributed to frame the identity and legitimacy
of all these movements but, more importantly, it turned historical figures into
peoples’ allies against present injustices.
Finally, the case studies indicate that specific opportunities may arise depend-
ing on the policy areas or issues raised by the challenging groups (Giugni, 2011).
The case of Cabo Verde, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia, for example help make this
point clearer. In Cabo Verde, the resistance against the new Statute of Political
Office Holders led by MAC#114 had broad popular support and united citizens
from all social strata, which played an important role in the outcome of the cam-
paign for the withdrawal of the law. MAC#114 was also able to emerge as the
leading entrepreneur behind the protests. However, in the case of the regionalisa-
tion movement, which was led by different collectives (GRD, GRRCV, and Sokols
2017), there were competing views within the movement, in the public opinion
of the different Islands and between political parties on the model of regionalisa-
tion. The extreme issue polarisation eventually resulted in the withdrawal of the
 Conclusion 225
regionalisation bill due to lack of parliamentary support. The capacity of actors
uniting around a similar goal, despite coming from different social, ethnic, or
geographic backgrounds, was also highlighted in the cases of Burkina Faso and
Ethiopia to explain not only the surge but also the outcome of protest. In the
case of Ethiopia, an unprecedented alliance between Qeerroo and Fano groups
represented a break with an historical legacy of ethnic rivalry and united youth
who, despite their differences, shared an anti-regime sentiment. In Burkina Faso,
opposition parties and civil society cooperated on a single common objective –
political alternation.
Overall, the comparative analysis reveals that political opportunities matter
to explain the birth, unfolding, but most importantly here, the outcomes of pro-
test. Indeed, the material analysed throughout the various chapters allows the
“straws in the wind”1 tests to be passed (Collier, 2011); that is, it builds confidence
in the book’s argument that political opportunities matter. However, this is not
sufficient to reject alternative hypotheses for, as we explain in more detail next,
political opportunities acted alongside other factors, namely resources and fram-
ing strategies.

Moving beyond political opportunities

Protest outcomes are determined by multiple factors besides political opportuni-
ties (see Table 13.1). In Cabo Verde, Senegal, Uganda, and Morocco, movements
utilised framing strategies such as making an issue salient (amplification), linking
diverse issues (bridging), spreading the messages beyond geographic boundaries
(diffusion) and setting an alternative agenda (transformation) to attain their
political goals. For example, in Senegal Y’en an Marre’s most striking slogan for-
mulas mixed French and Wolof to reach wider audiences; in Uganda movement
actors amplified their messages through social media, connected several issues –
cost of living, corruption, poor elections, democracy, – and embraced new forms
of political opposition during the Walk-to-Work protest. In Morocco’s F20 move-
ment, we learn about the costs of framing strategies: in order to enhance internal
and external support, movements may intentionally silence sensitive and divisive
issues (gender) while highlighting those that come across as more consensual
(democracy and justice). Framing strategies can thus imply the belittling of the
demands of some movement actors who no longer have a voice. This is not unique
to the F20 movement, and sheds light on internal power configurations, on why
activists opt to exit a movement, and on the importance of analysing framing
strategies from within.
Secondly, organisational capacity and resources are vital. In Ghana, the
middle-class, the main movement entrepreneur, employed its resources, namely
expertise on how to organise demonstrations, political knowledge and techni-
cal expertise, communication strategies and the power to put pressure on the
government to mobilise effectively. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, polit-
ical parties provided the necessary resources, and networks, as well as access
to national and international prime-time channels that were decisive in the
226  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
dissemination of their demands. In fact, this was a case where resources and
international factors mattered more than political opportunities. In Eswatini’s
2018–2019 protests, trade unions’ organisational capacity, networks, and long-
term experience of cooperation was crucial for the movement’s visibility and
authority, even if changes are not yet forthcoming.
Thirdly, depending on the context there may be more or less favourable con-
ditions for challenger groups vis-à-vis institutional groups. In democratic settings
such as Ghana and Cabo Verde, for example, movement actors were able to lev-
erage institutional actors; however, in more autocratic settings the results were
not so successful. In the cases of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo,
authoritarianism and “big man rule” are enduring features that constrain collec-
tive action. In Angola, the incoming President João Lourenço presented himself
as a democratic player that would “clean the regime”, but not only he did fail
to fulfil his promise, but he closed access to the political sphere and resorted to
repression as soon protests intensified. In the Democratic Republic of Congo,
the massive use of repression by the regime led the international community to
increase pressure on national authorities, including the adoption of international
sanctions against several leaders of the security apparatus. Moreover, the regime
relied on other tactics such as staging dialogues with the opposition and frag-
menting the opposition to neutralise political protest.
In Ethiopia youth protests faced brutal repression and the regime used the state
of emergency, which was declared on 9 October 2016 and lasted ten months, to
impose restrictions on international travel by diplomats, on telecommunication
and media as well as internet shutdowns. While the protests started by triggering
a transformation in politics, the initial reformist momentum eventually derailed
as a new spiral of violence escalated and past authoritarian practices gained
ground. In Burkina Faso, the regime used co-optation, bribes, and infiltrators
to foster divisions and discredit opposition politicians. And same happened in
Mozambique when the government fragmented the opposition front by encour-
aging the formation of a group of civil society organisations favourable to the
ProSavana programme.
Fourth, the diaspora and international networks continue to play an important
role in protest just as they did in the past. The actions led by MAC#114 in Cabo
Verde diffused to the diaspora, particularly Portugal, where several initiatives were
also held to fight the implementation of the Statute of Political Office Holders. In
Ethiopia, activists and scholars in the diaspora encouraged the Amhara to join
the Oromo protest to end the TPLF/EPRDF authoritarian regime. The rural com-
munities in Northern Mozambique would have had a harder time in pressuring
the government to put a halt to the ProSavana if they had not found the support
of international NGOs in Brazil and Japan. These international NGOs not only
provided information about the programme, but also helped amplify their mes-
sage and pressured their government to end the programme. In the Democratic
Republic of Congo, the international community was more determined than
local protesters in Kabila’s decision to step down in 2018.
 Conclusion 227
By and large, the case studies demonstrate that political opportunities
matter but do not rule out the other factors – resources, frames, level of state
repression, international factors – that concur to explain the outcome and
transformative power of protest. In this sense, the findings are also illustra-
tive of the book’s dynamic approach to political opportunities, that is sensitive
not only to different types of opportunities but to the other factors that come
into play.

Lessons, implications, and future research avenues

Building on the previous comparative exercise, this section highlights the major
lessons from this book, while also pointing to future research avenues. First, the
transformative impact of protest varies immensely so any attempt to label the
third protest wave as either a failure or a success will miss the mark on the varia-
tions that exist within and across countries over time. The result is at best mixed,
which means we need to “explore not only a particular movement, but also the
wider context in which it operates” (Larmer, 2010, p. 252) if we are to make sense
of possibilities of change. In authoritarian settings like Angola, Ethiopia, Uganda,
Democratic Republic of Congo, protesters face the highest hurdles; not only do
they have more coercive states, but a legacy of political conflict and instability
that shapes the interactions between the civil society and the political society.
To be fair, democratic regimes also resort to repression to contain demonstrators
but they tend to do so to a lesser degree when compared to autocratic regimes
and generally offer more institutional mechanisms for participation (Carey,
2006). Still, the fact that autocratic countries feature high protest levels, encour-
ages research on the elements that shape the formation of free spaces (Polletta,
1999) in these countries, and that make political mobilisation possible despite
the odds.
Secondly, change is better understood in more open-ended and flexible terms.
This links to Branch and Mampilly (2015, p. 25) who draw on Claude Ake’s
reflections to highlight the need to go beyond the restrictive “tendency to dismiss
African protest because of what it fails to accomplish instead of taking seriously
what it does achieve”. In this sense, there seems to be an inherent value in pro-
democracy protests regardless of the specific liberal reforms they entail. The fol-
lowing excerpt is quite illustrative:

With Ake’s advice in mind, we do not spend our time in this book lamenting
the failure of protest to effect formal political change. Instead, we focus on
the often-dramatic developments that accompany protest in popular organ-
isation, political consciousness, and political imagination. As diverse social
groups seek to understand and challenge their own oppression, they reveal
new political possibilities whose resonance can reach far beyond their place
of origin, transforming people’s understandings of politics nationally, region-
ally, and even globally”.
(Branch and Mampilly, 2015, pp. 3–4)
228  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
This book embodies this vision, by putting forward a notion of change that
encompasses both material and non-material dimensions. Indeed, it is interesting
to note that in the cases where concrete reforms were not implemented, there
were important cognitive changes – that is new perceptions, such as transposing
the fear of protest, forging new solidarities, and gaining a new sense of collective
action – that continue to feed protest. For instance, activists in Angola said they
had gained the taste for protest despite facing state repression, and even though
the F20 movement in Morocco silenced women’s frames, it provided the ground
for the establishment of new solidarities and forms of cooperation between wom-
en’s organisations, which became crucial for future mobilisation around feminist
causes. This suggests that experiences of protest may create political opportu-
nity for protest, as anticipated by social movement theorists (Tarrow, 1998). In
this sense, future studies should continue to explore how various forms of col-
lective action can sow the seeds for future uprisings. The relevant questions to
be answered would thus be what those seeds are concretely made of (identities,
emotions, networks, resources etc.), how they are nurtured (framing, dissemina-
tion, socialisation, networks etc.), and what the tipping point is that makes them
flourish at a particular moment?
Third, it is important to contextualise protest within the historical, political,
and social environment in which they unfold (Larmer, 2010; Lodge, 2013; Branch
and Mampilly, 2015). While existing research has mainly explored how contex-
tual factors such as economic and/or political crises trigger protest, the present
book offers the first systematic analysis of political opportunities for mobilisation
in Africa’s range of regimes. In doing so, it reveals the importance of institutional
and cultural/discursive opportunities for understanding protest dynamics. The
analyses displayed in the country case studies reveal a dynamic interplay of dif-
ferent opportunities in which movement actors benefit from more open systems,
but also from cultural resonance and public visibility to attain their goals (see
Table 13.1). This is a promising research line, to be further explored with other
African case studies, that may either confirm or challenge these assumptions.
Fourth, protests have put broad coalitions of social groups in the streets – from
deprived people to elite. These coalitions, even if temporary, shed light on the
inner complexity of social movements and how actors with different backgrounds
and interests build bridges, and use their resources, to attain a shared goal. Several
cases in this book confirm that the resources held by the middle-class, the polit-
ical parties or trade unions – time, money, national and international networks,
political knowledge, access to national and international media, and so forth –
go a long way in sustaining effective forms of protest. Furthermore, individual
resources such as public notoriety and charisma also make a difference: musicians
and pop stars have been able to move masses, and particularly the disenchanted
urban youth, in places like Burkina Faso, Senegal, or Uganda. Thus, a mix of
collective and individual resources provides the much-needed material, moral,
and symbolic support to leverage the chances of collective action. Some of the
research discussed in this book highlighted the role of collective resources and
hinted at personal networks and resources. However, this is a subject that clearly
 Conclusion 229
deserves more research and can enrich the discussions on the nature of third
wave protests, since it nuances the view that mobilisation is achieved without
extensive organisation and indicates that resources and networks exist beyond
what Internet can supply.
Fifth, our findings on framing strategies add to the social movement literature.
On the one hand, it confirms that movement actors use several tools to amplify
and disseminate their messages (social media, striking slogan formulas, mixes of
languages, etc.), and that new information and communication technologies are
as influential in Africa as they appear to be in the Western world. On the other,
it is revealed that framing strategies are not just about how demands are spread
to the world; they are also about what movements chose to hide from the world.
Future studies should delve into the hidden logic of framing, because it allows us
to understand the competing views and interests within social movements, as well
as how certain frames became dominant and visible while others are silenced,
thus reflecting unequal power configurations from within. This goes along with
Larmer’s (2010, p. 253) view that “social movement research must always have
regard to tensions and conflicts, not only between particular movements, but also
within them, over a period of time”.
Sixth, while is true that African social movements are hybrid in that some of
the main movement entrepreneurs (e.g. NGOs) are externally financed and local
agendas are often influenced by external agendas (Ellis and Kessel, 2009; Larmer,
2010; De Waal and Ibreck, 2013), this not universal. In many of the countries
analysed herein activists put forward concrete issues to advance political goals
in their country, even with limited or no external support at all. For instance,
according to Lodge (2013, p. 147), one of the things that characterised the uprisals
in Northern Africa vis-à-vis other pro-democracy waves was that, despite facing
“tougher authoritarian governments”, they received “less support from outside
their national settings”. Therefore, the material and symbolic exchanges between
African social movements/actors and international movements/actors need to be
complicated to a greater extent in future research.
Finally, there are two aspects that are less covered in this book and that war-
rant more investigation. On the one hand, the linkages between movements,
actors, and identities from the local to the global scale. While research refers to
forms of contagion, to solidarity and cooperation between movements, and to the
circulation of actors and ideas (Seddon and Zeilig, 2005; Stephen and van Kessel,
2009; Branch and Mampilly, 2015; Yarwood, 2016; Mueller, 2018), more systematic
analysis is needed to clarify whether a transnational Pan-African civil society is
emerging. On the other hand, the chapters in this book focused mainly on urban
uprisings which means there is little insight on rural uprisings. Although this
was unintentional, the fact is that it neglects the geographic dimension of protest
together with territorialised struggles, grievances, and identities. The rural-urban
divide encapsulates differences in terms of state-constituent relations, levels of
coercion exercised by the state (more despotic and brutal in the rural areas), polit-
ical identities (rural “subjects” versus urban “citizens”), and interests and demands
(Mamdani, Mkandawire and Wamba dia Wamba, 1988; Mamdani, 1996; Branch
230  Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
and Mampilly, 2015). In this sense, there is a need for more research that can
illuminate the issues, actors, and forms of mobilisation in rural Africa. This is
not only important demographically, because the majority of the African popu-
lation still lives in rural areas (59% according to World Bank 2020 estimates) but
also substantively, as polarisation around the extractive industries, land use and
agricultural programmes have been increasing and triggering new forms of con-
testation in rural Africa. Future research should address these gaps, and embrace
comparative work cross-cutting regional boundaries.

Acknowledgements
This work has been financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Technology – FCT under the framework of the project UIDB/03122/2020.

Note
1. In the process tracing methodology “straws in the wind” tests help increase confi-
dence in our hypotheses and arguments, but do not rule out alternative hypotheses
(Collier, 2011).

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Index

Note: Page numbers in bold represent tables; page numbers in italics represent figures; Page
numbers followed by n and number represent endnote and note number.

Aar li ñu bokk (preserving our common Alliance for National Transformation

goods) 68 (ANT) 173
ABC (Brazil) 116, 117 Alliance pour la Démocratie et la Fédération/
Accra 40 Rassemblement Démocratique Africain
activism: anti-regime, music and 6–7; (ADF/RDA) 75
digital, in Ethiopia 186, 188–189 alliances 76, 118, 172, 213–214, 223;
activists: F20 movement 97–103; of international 118–120; Oromo-Amhara
Occupy Ghana 44–48; 2014 insurrec- 189–190
tion, in Burkina Faso 78–79; Walk-to- Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) 166
Work movement 169–170 Almada, Janira 31
Activists for Change (A4C) 169, 176; alternance 81–82, 85
objectives 170 Amazigh language 98, 105n18
Addis Ababa City Expansion Master Plan American Embassy, Eswatini: march on
14, 181, 190, 221 208–209
ADECRU (Academic Action for the Amhara 14, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 187,
Development of Rural Communities) 193; social media shutdown in 182
118–119, 123, 124n4 Amhara National Democratic Movement
Afonso, José 29 (ANDM) 185, 188
African Fertilizer Summit in Nigeria 112 Amhara Prosperity Party (APP) 187
African Green Revolution (AGRA) 112 #AmharaResistance 14, 189
African Union Comprehensive Africa amplification, framing strategy 21, 30
Agriculture Development Programme 111 Amuriat, Patrick Oboi 173
agendas, protests: non-material issues in 5 Anas, Anas Aremeyaw 51
agricultural development 111–112 Andargachew, Gedu 190
agriculture: privatisation 111–113 Angola 9, 113, 128–140, 219, 223, 226;
agrochemical corporations 112–113 change in leadership 12, 128–140;
Ahmed, Abiy (TeamLemma) 14, 182, 187, elections in 129; independence 128;
188, 194, 223 new president’s initial openness to
al-Bashir, Omar 8 protest 134–135; relevance in protests in
al Filani, Amina 102 Africa’s authoritarian regimes 132–134,
Algeria 201; protests and riots in 1 133
Ali, Ben 8 anti-capitalist ideology 109, 116, 119
All Amhara People’s Organization anti-Compaoré protests 73, 76, 79
(AAPO) 185 anti-government social movements 24
Alliance for a Presidential Majority anti-regime/anti-government sentiment/
(AMP) 150, 154, 160n3 protests 6, 128, 186; in Ethiopia 14
 Index 233
anti-regime contestation, music and 6–7; Cabo Verde 7, 9, 19–33, 222, 223; anti-
see also activism government social movements 24;
Anti-Terrorism Proclamation of 2009 186 elections 27, 31; independence in 1975
Arab Spring 5, 41, 94, 96, 181, 222; 24; policy change in 164; protests and
February 20 Movement (F20) 11–12 movements in 23–24; see also Movement
Armed Conflict Location and Event Data for Civic Action (Movimento para a
Project (ACLED) 1; dataset 129, 136 Acção Cívica) (MAC#114); Movement
Arriving Women (group) 102 for Regionalisation in Cabo Verde and
Article 37, of Burkina Faso’s Constitution Autonomy for São Vicente (Movimento
73, 74–75, 77, 82 para Regionalização em Cabo Verde e a
authoritarianism 165, 166–167, 185, 226; Autonomia para São Vicente) (MRCV)
competitive 131, 195 Cabral, Amilcar 7, 23, 24, 30, 65
authoritarian rule: protests against 5 Cabral, Luís 23
authoritarian settings, protest in 9, 147; in Cameroon 58, 164; presidents’ third-term
Angola 132; confrontational strategies bids in 8
in 183; in Ethopia 183–184; monarchic Catholic Church 120, 156–159
201–203; in Tunisia 6 Cerrado 111, 120
change: leadership, in Africa 131–132,
Bahrain 201 134, 140–141; political 3, 139; protests
Balai Citoyen (“Citizen’s Broom”) 58, 75, and 7–9
78, 81, 83, 130, 219 Chef de File de l’Opposition Politique
Bale Peasant Revolt 184 (CFOP) 73, 78, 80–81
Bambara, Serge 75 Citizen Ghana Movement 45
Barro, Fadel 61 citizens’ movements 56–57 see also social
Be Haly Be Halek [Like me, like you] movements
102 Civil Rights Movement 93
Beirão, Luaty 129, 135, 139 civil society 41, 84, 114; organisations
Bemba, Jean-Pierre 149, 151, 158 201–203
Besigye, Kizza 167, 169, 172–173, 175 climate crisis 1, 15n1
Bete-Amhara (House of Amhara) 189 coal project, in Tete 115
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 112 Collectif d’Organisations Démocratiques de
Biya, Paul 8 Masse et de Partis Politiques (CODMPP)
Black Church 93 77, 81
Bobi Wine see Sentamu, Robert colonialism 43, 114, 224
Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine) Comité Anti-Référendum (CAR) 75
Boda Boda 2010 174 Compaoré, Blaise 7, 8, 11, 58, 73–74,
Bongo, Omar 74 75–76, 82, 147, 219; electoral reform 77;
Bouteflika, Abdelaziz 8 ousting of 82; regime 78–79
Brazil 110, 116, 117; La Via Campesina competitive authoritarianism 131
109, 115, 124n1; Vale 115 “Complaint against the Government of
Brazilian Movement of the Peasants Senegal” campaign 64
Without Land (MST) 117, 119 Concerned Ghanaians for Responsible
bread riots 5, 20, 164 Governance 44
bridging, framing strategy 21, 118, 164, Condé, Alpha 8
165 confrontational strategies 183
Burkina Faso 7, 8, 9, 24, 113–114, 147, 151, Congrès pour la Démocratie et le Progrès
222; Balai Citoyen 58, 219; elections in (CDP) 75, 76, 83
81–82, 84; foods riots in 20; presidents’ Congress of South African Trade Unions
third-term bids in 8, 164; protests in (COSATU) 209, 210, 213
132; Senate of 75; term limit issues Conseil National de la Transition (CNT) 83
74–76, 81; 2011 crisis 78; 2014 insurrec- contestation 10, 59; anti-regime 7; dynam-
tion in 73–86 ics of 56; hip hop as form of 6–7; idioms
Burundi 58; presidents’ third-term bids of 63; political 57; societal 13
in 8 co-optation, in Eswatini 201, 202
234  Index
Correia, Ulisses 19, 27–28 electricity riots 61
corruption 10, 13, 49, 50, 51, 128, 136 elite defection 76, 80
cost of living adjustment (COLA) 207, 208 #ENDSARS movement 6, 15n4; Special
Côte d’Ivoire 58 Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) 6
COVID-19 pandemic 1, 136, 140 energy crisis in 2007, Ghana 44
Crime Preventers 174 Engenhos revolt in 1822 23
cultural environment 22 Eritrea People’s Liberation Front (EPLF)
culturally sensitive issues 92, 94, 97, 98, 184–185; and anti-government mass
105n5 protests 186
cultural resonance, movement framing Eswatini 9, 183, 200–214, 219, 223; civil
and 94 society organisations 201–203; co-
Czechoslovakia 25 optation in 201, 202; outlawed parties
206–207; political opportunity struc-
Dakar 60, 61, 62; Parcelles assainies in 68 tures 201–203; pro-democracy protests
Dala, Silvio 136 in 13–14, 200–214
Dali, Dito 139, 140 Eswatini Observer 209
dataset, protests 129, 136, 141n4 Ethiopia 9, 131, 181–194, 220–221; anti-re-
Deaf Culture Movement 93–94 gime protests in 14; central government
decriminalisation of homosexuality 97 in, protest and resistance to 184–186;
Democratic Association of Moroccan digital activism in 186; elections in
Women (ADFM) 96 186; political opportunity structures
Democratic politics 19 183–184; protests between 2015-2018
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 9, 181–194; youth protest in 186–190, 226
58, 74, 146–159, 184, 222, 225–226; pro- Ethiopian Charities and Societies
test against presidents’ third-term bids Proclamation of 2009 186
12–13, 164; protests 1, 132; riots in 1 Ethiopian Muslims protest 186
democratisation 40 Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary
de Oliveira, Júlio Bento 25 Democratic Front (EPRDF) 181, 182,
Derg (Geez for Committee) 184–185, 192 185–186, 190; as competitive authori-
Desalegn, Hailemariam 182, 187, 188 tarian 187
Diabré, Zéphirin 80, 82 Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party
diffusion, framing strategy 21, 26, 30 (EPRP) 185
digital activism 186, 188–189 Ethiopia People’s Democratic Movement
Diop, Cheikh Anta 65 (EPDM) 185
Diouf, Abdou 58, 81; “years of fire” 59 Ethiopia Students Movement (ESM) 184
discursive opportunity structure 21–22, 52, European Union 64, 157
65–66, 200, 211–213 Expresso das Ilhas 23
distrust 147 extension, framing strategy 21
“divide and rule” tactics 185 extraversion strategies 149
Djibouti 58
Dos Santos, José Eduardo 128, 131, 134, Fabius, Laurent 68
219; protest against 134 Fano (Amhara youth) 14, 181, 187;
draconian laws 174–175 alliance between Qeerroo and 14; resist-
ance 191–193
Economic Community of West African Faria, P.J. 183
States (ECOWAS) 84 favourable media coverage 10, 20, 60,
Egypt 5, 134, 164, 171; protests and riots 65–66
in 1 Fayulu, Martin 158
elections: in Angola 129; in Burkina Faso February 20 Movement (F20) 11–12,
81–82, 84; in Cabo Verde 27, 31; cam- 91–103, 222; culturally sensitive issues
paign 61, 66; in Ethiopia 186; in Ghana 94; framing strategy 11, 92–94, 96–103;
43; in Uganda 165, 167–168 political opportunity structures 92–94;
electoral reform, by Compaoré 77 problems with 91; slogans 97–98
 Index 235
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia gender equality 92, 98, 100
(FDRE) 185 General Peace Agreement 114
Federation of Organs for Social and general strike of 1966 79
Educational Assistance (FASE) 117 Ghana 9, 39–52, 113, 219, 225; economy
feminism, in Morocco 92–94; Le 43–44; elections in 43; energy crisis in
Mouvement alternatif pour les libertés 2007 44; ethnographic fieldwork in 40,
individuelles (MALI) 91, 99, 101; oppor- 53n1; GDP 43; manufacturing sector 43;
tunities for 94–96 middle classes 40–43; POS in 40–43;
Filimbi 155 resource mobilisation 40–43; social
first protest wave 4, 15n3 movements 40–43; see also Occupy
“First Republic” (1975–1990) 114 Ghana
First Wayane Rebellion 184 glissement 12, 146–159; from draft con-
Flagstaff House 44 stitutional revision to 150–151; January
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2015 demonstrations see January 2015
111–112 demonstrations
food crisis 111 global financial crisis 1, 4–5, 134, 135
food riots see bread riots GMOs 114
Food Security G8 Summit, in Gojjam Peasant Uprising 184
Washington, D.C. 187 Gonçalves, Lina 30
foot soldiers 82 Gondar protest 192
Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) 167, grievances, socio-economic 5
172–174 Grupo de Reflexão na Diáspora (GRD)
Forum of Niassa Province Associations 25–26, 28; blogs 25
(FONAGNI) 121 Grupo de Reflexão para a Regionalização
Forum of Zambezia Province Associations de Cabo Verde (GRRCV) 25–26, 28
(FONGZA) 121 Guebuza, Armando Emílio 109, 120
fourth protest wave 4, 15n3 Guinea 58; presidents’ third-term bids in 8
frames: internal consistency of 11, 92, 94; Guinea Bissau 23
usage of 21
framing: defined 59; process of 21; social Hamadache, Nidal 104n1
movement 93 Hannan, Kofi 112
framing strategy 13, 20–22, 22, 151–154, Harare (Zimbabwe) 114
225; amplification 21, 30; bridging Hassan, King 95
21; diffusion 21, 26, 30; extension 21; Hata, José Gomes 135, 138
February 20 Movement 11, 92–94, hip hop music: and anti-regime contesta-
96–103; importance of 34; in protest tion 6–7
movements in Cabo Verde 22–23, Hizb-al-umma 98
29–31; transformation 21; “Walk- homosexuality 98; decriminalisation of 97
to-Work” protests, in Uganda 165, 166, hybrid democracies 9, 11
169–172; Y’en a marre (we’re fed up) 10 hybrid political environment 149–150
“Freedom, Dignity, and Social Justice” hybrid seeds 114
slogan 97–101
freedom of expression 40, 43, 66 Imbokodvo National Movement (INM)
Frelimo 109, 110, 114–115, 121 204
Front citoyen (FC) 155 IMF riots 5
Front de Résistance Citoyenne (FRC) 75 independence movements, in Cabo Verde
23
G8: Food Security Summit, in Independent National Electoral
Washington, D.C. 187; Joint Statement Commission (CENI) 154
on Global Food Security 111 indocility, vocabulary of 63–64
Gebre, Yenesew 186 information and communication technol-
Gebregiorgis, Tamrat 188 ogy (ICT) 181
Gelaw, Abebe 187 Inhambane (Quiva) 117
236  Index
Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Laroui, Fadoua 96–97
Studies of the University of Western La Via Campesina 109, 117, 119, 124n1
Cape (PLAAS) 119 leadership change 12, 131; in Angola
Institute of Alternative Policies for the 134–140; in Ethiopia 187–188
South Cone (PACS) 119 Le Balai Citoyen 7
Integrated Pest Management 113, 114 leftist activists 97, 98
international alliances 118–120 legislative elections see elections
International Convention Centre (ICC) Le Mouvement alternatif pour les libertés
207 individuelles (MALI) 91, 99, 101
International Labour Organisation (ILO) LGBT rights 98, 99, 100
204 liberalisation 4, 5, 20, 113
Internet 6; and digital activism 188–189; L’Indépendant (newspaper) 77
shutdowns 182 Loada, Augustin 76
Islamist activists 98 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) 1667
Lourenço, João 12, 128, 129, 131, 219, 224;
January 2015 demonstrations 146–159; initial openness to protest 134–135;
consequences of 154–159; “extraver- promises 136; as reformer 135–136;
sion” strategies 149; framing strategies repression under presidency 137,
151–154; hybrid political environment 137–139
149–150; jobless young people’s partici- lu ëpp turu 62–65, 70n3
pation 153–154; opposition parties role Lumumba, Patrice 65
in triggering 152; political opportunities
150–151; resources 151–154; student MAC#114 see Movement for Civic Action
mobilisation 152–153 (Movimento para a Acção Cívica)
Japan 110, 116, 117 (MAC#114)
Japanese International Voluntary Centre Machel, Samora 7
(JVC) 119 Madagascar 164
JICA (Japan) 116, 117, 122 Mafigo, Augusto 117, 120
Joint Statement on Global Food Security Mahama, John Dramani 44
(G8) 111 Majol 120
Jordan 201 Mali 58; protests in 132
journée ville morte 155, 160n15 Manica 115
Justice and Spirituality Organization Maputo 115
(JCO) 91, 98 Marcos, Ferdinand 176–177
Marques, Rafael 135
Kabila, Joseph 12–13, 58, 222; first term Martins, Filomena 24
(2007–2011) 150; glissement strategy Marxist Democratic Way Party (DWP)
146; and hybrid political environment 91, 99
149–150; second term (2011–2016) Marxist-Leninist ideology 181, 184
150–151; third-term bid 184; see also Mascarenhas, António 31
January 2015 demonstrations Matos, Inocêncio 128, 138, 139
Kaboré, Roch Marc Christian 75, 83 Mauritania: protests in 132
Kagame, Paul 147 Mbedzi, Amos 209
Kamerhe, Vital 150, 151, 156 Megersa, Lemmea 190
Katumbi, Moïse 154, 158 Menelik II (emperor of Ethiopia) 184
Kayihura, Kale 174 middle-classes: as protest initiators 6; and
Kenya: protests and riots in 1 social change in Ghana 40–43
Kiboko Squad 174 Mindelo 27
Kilumbo, Olívio 139 MLC (Mouvement de Libération du
Kinshasa: January 2015 demonstrations in Congo) 151, 160n6
see January 2015 demonstrations mobilisation 11, 13, 59, 60, 68, 76, 85, 110,
186; civic 4; feminist 102–103; mass 6;
Labour Coordinating Council 206 resource 40–43, 93; socio-political 57;
land, rush for 111–113 against third-term bid 146–147; Y’en a
Landless People’s Movement in 2001 109 marre movement 62–65, 69
 Index 237
modernisation 112 Nampula Commission of Peace and Justice
Mohammed, Jawar 189 120
Mohammed, King, VI 95 Naoko Watanabe 122
“monarchical devolution of power scheme” narrative fidelity 11, 92, 94, 100
60 National Assembly, Burkina Faso 73, 77,
monarchic authoritarian regimes 201–203 78, 80
Moreira, Rony 29, 31 National Democratic Congress (NDC) 39,
Moroccan Association of Human Rights 40, 43, 44, 50
(AMDH) 99 National Education, Health and Allied
Morocco 9, 164, 201, 219, 225; February 20 Workers Union of South Africa
Movement 11–12, 91–103, 222; feminist (NEHAWU) 209
protest in 92–94; protests and riots in 1; National Episcopal Conference of Congo
women’s rights in 94–96 (CENCO) 157–158
morphic fields 3, 8, 223 National Land Summit (2005) 109
Mouvement du 21 Avril (M21) 75, 85 National Public Service & Allied Workers
Mouvement du Peuple pour le Progrès Union (NAPSAWU) 204
(MPP) 75, 80, 83, 85 National Resistance Movement (NRM)
mouvements citoyens (citizens’ move- 13, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 171, 172;
ments) 155, 158 governance after 2011 protests 174–176;
Movement for Civic Action (Movimento People Power movement and 176, 177
para a Acção Cívica) (MAC#114) 9–10, National Union for the Total
19–20, 32, 32–33, 35n11, 222, 223–224, Independence of Angola (UNITA)
226; framing strategies 22–23, 29–31; 134
people against 28–32, 30; political allies National Union of the Peasants (UNAC)
31; POS in 22–23, 31–32 110, 114, 117–118, 122
Movement for Regionalisation in Cabo National Unity Platform 7
Verde and Autonomy for São Vicente neoliberalism 109
(Movimento para Regionalização em New Alliance for Food Security and
Cabo Verde e a Autonomia para São Nutrition 112
Vicente) (MRCV) 19, 24–28, 32, 32–33, New National Order (NON) 61
222, 223; framing processes 25–26, 26; New Partnership for Africa’s Development
framing strategies 22–23; POS in 22–23, (NEPAD) 112
26–28 New Patriotic Party (NPP) 40, 43, 48, 50
Movement of the Small Producers 117 New Revolution of the Angolan People
Movimento Claridoso 23 (MRPLA) 134, 142n7
Movimento Para a Democracia (MPD) 24, New Type of Senegalese (NTS) 61
27, 30; dispute over issue ownership 28 NGOization 67, 70n6
Mozambique 7, 9, 24, 113, 164, 184, 219, Ngola, Mwana 138
222; agricultural development 111–112; Ngwane National Liberatory Congress
foods riots in 20; independence of (NNLC) 204
114; political opportunity structures Niang, Madické 66
115–116; ProSavana agriculture devel- Niger 58, 130; demonstrations on identity
opment programme 12, 109–122; protest issues 20; presidents’ third-term bids
in 114–116 in 8
Mpuuga, Mathias 169 Nigeria 58, 111; African Fertilizer Summit
Mswati, King, III 200 in 112; #ENDSARS movement 6;
Mudawwana 11, 95 protests and riots in 1
Mugisha, Anne 169 1974 revolution 184
Muntu, Mugisha 172, 173, 174 nio bagne (we refuse) 68
Museveni, Yoweri 7, 74, 165, 167, 175 Nio lank (we say no) 68
music, and anti-regime contestation 6–7 Nkrumah, Kwame 53n2, 65
Nkurunziza, Pierre 8
Nacala Corridor 116, 117 No-party Movement system 166
Namibia 109 “No peasant without land!” slogan 117
Nampula 117 North Africa: protest in 8
238  Index
Not Free by the Freedom House index Partido Africano para a Independência da
132, 133 Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) 23, 24
“No to ProSavana” campaign 116, 117, 119, Partido do Trabalho e Solidariedade (PTS)
120–121 27
Nyerere, Julius 65 peaceful protest 141n4
peasants 23
Obama, Barack 68 Pedro 117, 120, 122, 124n2
Obelisk Square 66 People Power movement 7, 176
Obote, Apollo Milton 166 People’s Movement for the Liberation of
#OccupyFlagstaff House 39, 44–47; and Angola (MPLA) government 128, 133,
emergence of Occupy Ghana 43–44; 134, 138–139; electoral motto 135
organisers of 46 People’s United Democratic Movement
Occupy Ghana 10, 40, 42; activists 44–48, (PUDEMO) 206, 210, 213, 214
50–51; agenda 39; core group of 45–46; Pereira, Aristides 23
emergence of, #OccupyFlagstaffHouse Peterson, Lisa 208
and 43–44; as NGO 44–45, 49; Philippines 176–177
resources behind 44–48; role of POS on political allies 31
outcomes of 49–52 political alternance 81–82
ODA (Official Development Assistance) political openness 21, 40, 42, 49, 52, 59,
122 65–66
old wave feminists 101–102, 105n10 political opportunity structures (POS)
“One Million Signature Campaign” 95 3–4, 7–9, 19, 20, 73, 223–227; in Angola
openness, of political system 21, 40, 42, 49, 128–129; defined 59–60; discursive
52, 59, 65–66, 202 21–22, 52, 65–66, 200, 211–213;
Open Society for Initiative for Southern Eswatini 201–203; Ethiopia 183–184,
Africa (OSISA) 210–211 186–190; February 20 Movement 92–94;
opportunity 148, 163; defined 147, 201 in Ghana 40–43; protest movements in
opposition parties 151; in aftermath of Cabo Verde 22–23, 26–28, 31–32; role of
Walk-to-Work 172–174; coordination 20–22; role on Occupy Ghana outcomes
and collaboration of 79–81; role in trig- 49–52; 2014 insurrection, in Burkina
gering January 2015 protests 152; rural Faso 73–74, 76–82; “Walk-to-Work” pro-
movements of 109; in Uganda 163 tests, in Uganda 165, 166, 169–172; Y’en
ORAM (Rural Association of Mutual a Marre (we’re fed up) movement 65–66
Help) 117–118 political unrest 147, 202
Organization of Mozambican Woman Politique Africaine (journal) 81–82
(OMM) 114 Poor People’s Alliance 109
#OroMara 14, 189–190 Portucel 115–116
Oromia 14, 130, 181, 184, 193; social media Portugal 29–30
shutdown in 182 post-colonial protests 113
Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) 185 post-materialist issues 1
Oromo People’s Democratic Party Power in Movement (Tarrow) 93
(OPDO) 185, 188 presidents’ third-term bids 8, 184; mobili-
#OromoProtest 14, 189 sation against 146–147; protest against
12–13, 164
Pan African Chemistry Network 112–113 privatisation, of agriculture 111–113
pan-Africanism 65 process tracing methodology 20, 23, 230n1
Pan-Africanism Today Movement 119 PRODECER project 111–112, 117
Parcelles assainies, in Dakar 68 pro-democracy protests, in Eswatini 13–14,
pareel 62–65, 70n4 113, 200–214; alliances 213–214; claims
Partido Africano da Independência de Cabo and actions 208–210; discursive oppor-
Verde (PAICV) 24, 30, 31; conference to tunities 211–213; in 1990s 205–206;
debate regionalisation policy 27; dispute organisational capacity 210–211;
over issue ownership 28 political context behind 207–208; trade
 Index 239
unions and 204–207; in (two thousand Revolutionary Movement of Angola
eighteen)2018–2019 208–214; in 2000s (MRA) 138, 142n27
206–207 riots 61; bread 5, 20, 164; electricity
ProSavana agriculture development 61; food 5, 20, 164; IMF 5; numbers,
programme, halting of 12, 109–122, 184, between 1997 and 2021 1–2, 2
222; end of 122; opposition to 121–122; Rockefeller Foundation 112
rural social resistance against 117–122 rural Africa: protests in 113–114; social
protesters 5–6; excessive force against movements in 109–122
141n4; perceptions 139–140; Walk-to- rush for land, in Africa 111–113
Work movement 171 Rwanda 131
protests: agendas, non-material issues in 5;
analysis of 6; against authoritarian rule Sall, Macky 10, 61
5; in authoritarian settings 9; causes of Sama, Karim 75
2; and change 7–9; dataset 129, 141n4; Samussuku, Hitler 137, 140
as engines of (democratic) change Sané, Aliou 68, 70n7
219–223, 220–221; global financial Sankara, Bénéwendé 80
crisis and 1; with intervention 141n4; Sankara, Thomas 65, 76, 78, 79, 80
nature of 5; numbers, between 1997 and São Vicente 9, 19, 25, 35n2; Partido do
2021 1–2, 2; opportunities in authoritar- Trabalho e Solidariedade (PTS) in 27
ian regimes 130–132; outcomes of 3–4, Satoshi Inoue 122
7; post-colonial 113; against presidents’ Saudi Arabia 201
third-term bids see presidents’ third- second protest wave 4, 15n3
term bids; pro-democracy 113; rural Selassie, Haile, I 184
113–114; waves 4–7, 15n3, 20–21, 41, self-immolation 96–97
146; see also specific protests Senate of Burkina Faso 75, 78, 82
Provincial Platform das NGO of Nampula Senegal 7, 9, 147, 164, 219, 222; demon-
(PPOSC-N) 121 strations on production/identity issues
Public Order Management Act (POMA) 21; framing analysis of protest in 58–60;
174–175 protest against presidents’ third-term
public prosecution 50 bids 164; student movement of May
Public Servants Associations (PSAs) 205 1968 58–59; Y’en a Marre (we’re fed up)
public tertiary institutions 208 movement 7, 10–11
Senegalese-Mauritanian dispute of 1989
Qeerroo (Oromo youth) 14, 187, 190–191; 58–59
alliance with Fano 14 Senghor, Léopold Sédar 58
qualitative content analysis 203–204 Sentamu, Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine)
175; and resurgence of protest politics
Rádio Moçambique 117 176–177
rapprochement 154, 156 set setal phenomenon 58–59, 70n1
Rassemblement 156, 157, 158 Shinzo Abe 120
Régiment de Sécurité Présidentielle (RSP) 84 Siemenpuu Foundation of Finland 120
regionalisation 27, 224–225; in Cabo silencing 97–101
Verde 9, 19, 24–28, 222; Republic of Silveira, Onésimo 25–26
Santiago vs. 24, 25 Sithole, Jan 201
Renamo 114 slippage 12
repression 4, 8, 49, 77, 129, 131–132; under slogans 117; February 20 Movement
Lourenço’s presidency 137, 137–139 (F20) 97–98; Y’en a marre movement
Republic of Santiago: fundamentalists 62–65
25–26; regionalisation vs. 24, 25 SlutWalk movement 102
resistance, to central government in Sobhuza, King, II 200, 202, 204
Ethiopia 184–186 social despair 147
resource mobilisation 40–43, 93 Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP)
“revolutionary democracy” 24 91, 99
240  Index
social media 23, 29, 46, 181; gender equal- Tandja, Mamadou 8
ity on 92 Team Lemma 14, 182, 187, 188, 190
social movements 4, 7, 10, 12, 15n2, 56–57, term limits 74–76, 81, 85–86
92–94; alliances between opposition Tewodros II (emperor of Ethiopia) 184
parties and 76; anti-government 24; in Thailand 112
Cabo Verde 24; chronological phases third protest wave 4, 5, 15n3, 20–21, 41,
113; and civil society 41; classical 146
theories 21; Ghana 40–43; outcomes of third-term bids, of presidents see presi-
20–22; political opportunity structures dents’ third-term bids
and 92; in rural Africa 109–122; and TICAD, Tokyo 120
2014 insurrection, in Burkina Faso Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)
76–78 181, 185, 190; and anti-government
socio-economic grievances 5, 137 mass protests 186; as competitive
Sokols 2017 movement 19, 25, 27, 28, 223 authoritarian 187
Sonko, Ousmane 66 Times of Eswatini 209
Soros, Georges 68 tinkhundla 201, 202, 214, 215n2
South Africa: hashtag student movements Togo 58
6; Landless People’s Movement in 2001 Tolentino, Corsino 31
109; protests and riots in 1 Trade Union Congress of Swaziland
South African Communist Party (SACP) (TUCOSWA) 204–205, 208, 209, 211;
209, 213 formation of 205–206; strategic plan
South-South cooperation 120 205
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 105n14 Trade Union Education of Finland 211
“Standing up to the vampires” 28–32, 30 trade unions 114, 200, 203, 219, 222; and
state repressive response 193–194 pro-democracy protests in Eswatini
Statute of Political Office Holders (SPOH) 13–14, 204–207
19–20, 28–29; Parliamentary approval transformation, framing strategy 21
of 29 transition, political 82–86
student movement of May 1968, Senegal Transitional Government (1991–1994) 185
58–59 Trump, Donald 208
subaltern 97, 105n14 Tshisekedi, Étienne 150, 156
Sub-Saharan Africa: protests in 5; third Tshisekedi, Felix 158
wave of protests in 41 Tunisia 5, 6, 134, 171; changes in execu-
Sudan 183; protests in 1, 132; riots in 1 tive leadership 8; demonstrations on
Swaziland Democratic Alliance (SDA) production/identity issues 20; protests
213 and riots in 1
Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union Tunisian Jasmine Revolution of 2010 96
(SDNU) 204, 210 2011 debt crisis 78
Swaziland Democratic Party (SWADEPA) 2014 insurrection, in Burkina Faso 73–86;
201 activists 78–79; historical social move-
Swaziland Federation of Labour (SFL) 204, ments and 76–79; opposition coordina-
205, 214 tion and cooperation 79–81; political
Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions opportunity structures 76–82; single-
(SFTU) 204, 205 issue agenda 81–82; term limits 74–76,
Swaziland National Association of Civil 85–86; transformative impact of 82–86
Servants (SNACS) 204
Swaziland National Association of UDPS (Union pour la Démocratie et le
Teachers (SNAT) 204, 205, 208, 210 Progrès Social) 150, 151, 154, 160n5
Swaziland National Union of Students Uganda 9, 183, 223; anti-regime contes-
(SNUS) 210 tation in 7; elections in 165, 167–168;
Swaziland Nurses Association (SNA) 204 historical and political context 166–167;
Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) protest in 164–166; “Walk-to-Work”
206 protests in 13, 163–177
 Index 241
“Ugandan spring” 171 Welkait Identity Restoration Committee
Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) 14, 191
172 Wine, Bobi 7
Uganda’s People’s Congress (UPC) 166 wolofisation 10, 64–65
UNC (Union pour la Nation Congolaise) Woman Choufouch 102
151, 160n7 Women Forum Mulher (FM) 110, 114
União Caboverdiana Independente e women’s associations 114
Democrática (UCID) 27, 30 women’s rights, in Morocco 94–96
Union de l’Action Feminine (UAF) 95 World Bank (WB) 111–112
Union pour la Renaissance – Parti
Sankariste (UNIR-PS) 80 Yaméogo, Maurice 79
Union pour le Progrès et le Changement Yara 112
(UPC) 80, 82 Y’en a Marre (we’re fed up) movement
United Nations Committee Against 7, 10–11, 130, 219, 225; as catalyst for
Torture 96 socio-political protest in Senegal 60–62;
United Socialist Party (USP) 91 emergence of 59; idioms and mobilisa-
United States Anti-Abortion Movement tion practices of 62–65; as institutional-
98 ised movement 66–68; objectives of 62;
United States of America 208–209 political opportunity structures 65–66;
urban mobilisation 66 slogans 62–65; strategies of action
66–67; vocabulary of indocility 63–64;
Vale, Brazil 115 young members of 61
Vicente, Adriano 117, 118, 121, 124n3 Yohannes (emperor of Ethiopia) 184
Vunjanhe, Jeremias 118, 119, 124n4 youth protest in Ethiopia (2015–2018)
186–190
Wade, Abdoulaye 7, 10, 59, 60, 62; candi-
dacy, protest against 64 Zambezia 115, 116
Wade, Karim 62 Zambia 5, 111
“Walk-to-Work” protests, in Uganda 13, Zenawi, Meles 14, 182, 187; death, and
163–177, 225; aftermath of 172–174; leadership change 187–188; 223
framing strategies 165, 166, 169–172; Zewdu, Demeke 191
nature and impact of 165; political Zimbabwe 109, 114; protests in 130
opportunities 165, 166, 169–172 Zongo, Norbert 76–78, 82, 84
Wallu askan wi (the people’s share) 66 Zwane, Ambrose 204