On People Power movements: A reply by Stephen Zunes

I do not wish to try to argue against Mukoma Wa Ngugi’s analysis of the Kenyan opposition movement and I certainly agree with his contention that “The best thing for Kenya right now is a return to a non-violent path governed by principled democratic structures that will outlive both Raila and Kibaki.” I do, however, feel obliged – as a fellow anti-imperialist and a supporter of popular struggles for justice and equality in Africa and elsewhere – to respond to his faulty analysis regarding some of the recent “people power movements” against autocratic regimes elsewhere.

To begin with, Mukoma Wa Ngugi is completely inaccurate to compare the violent foreign-backed overthrow of democratically-elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with the nonviolent indigenous-based Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Unlike the imperialist conspiracy against Aristide, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution was a popular movement against an attempt by the incumbent corrupt and autocratic regime of Leonid Kuchma to steal an election on behalf of his favored successor.

Unlike Aristide, President Kuchma was no progressive. In fact, among the popular criticisms directed at Kuchma had been his call for Ukraine to join NATO and, in particular, his support for the deployment of Ukrainian forces in Iraq. By contrast, opposition presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko pledged during his campaign to immediately withdraw Ukrainian troops from Iraq, which he did once assuming office. There was some limited Western support for election monitoring and related efforts that aided the opposition, but the popular movement which forced the invalidation of the rigged election and a fair second vote which followed was of the Ukrainians own doing.

Since coming to power, Yuschenko has continued to demonstrate his independence from Washington. For example, despite enormous pressure from the United States and international financial institutions to give in to neo-liberal reforms, the Ukrainian government under Yuschenko’s leadership still maintains the strongest state role in the economy of all but one of Europe’s 42 countries, hardly the victory for “international capital” that the author implies.

Similarly Mukoma Wa Ngugi is wrong to dismiss Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change as simply a neo-liberal party. It is a broad-based pro-democracy movement which includes both neo-liberal and progressive forces. Certainly there are Western powers and imperialist interests (which hypocritically back pro-capitalist dictators elsewhere in Africa) that are opportunistically trying to engineer the ouster of Robert Mugabe, but that does not mean that they are not also millions of Zimbabweans who have their own legitimate reasons for struggling nonviolently to remove him from power – not the least of which is Mugabe’s chronic mismanagement of public and social services and the economy.

My more fundamental critique of Mukoma Wa Ngugi’s analysis is over the nature of popular struggles against authoritarian regimes. No true people power movement can ever “be used by a national elite to seize power for international capital.” While there have certainly been numerous cases in Africa and elsewhere in which national elites have seized power on behalf of international capital through coups, armed revolts, rigged elections and other means, there has never been a case in which a government that has had the support of the majority of its people has ever been overthrown through a massive nonviolent civil resistance movement. This is why the U.S.-backed strike in Venezuela in 2002-2003 failed to bring down President Hugo Chavez’ government, whereas similar shutdowns of key economic sectors in other countries under less popular regimes have often succeeded. It is certainly true that most of the nonviolent people power revolutions which have brought down dictators in recent decades in such countries as the Philippines, Mali, Serbia, and Indonesia have tended to bring in various forms of liberal democracy, not the more radical changes that are so badly needed in so many societies. It is also true that free elections and political liberty do not guarantee a progressive government or a just society and that these movements which have toppled dictatorships through nonviolent action have oftentimes been led by individuals and coalitions whose political agenda is not as politically progressive as many of us would ideally like to see. However, without individual liberties and accountable government, building a just society becomes virtually impossible. Democracy affords a political opening whereby popular organizations stand a better chance of challenging the excesses of national and global capitalism; of empowering local communities; of openly defending the rights of women, minorities, and the poor; and, of eventually gaining political power.

Few in the Latin American left, for example, would argue that – despite the failure of democratic governance to alter the continent’s underlying social end economic inequality – things were somehow better under the U.S.-backed military dictatorships that once ruled those nations. And, two decades since Latin America’s democratic opening – made possible in large part by people power movements – leftist parties are now winning elections throughout the region. Political and civil rights do not automatically lead to social and economic equality, but such equality will be far more difficult to achieve without the establishment of democratic institutions and the guaranteed protection of individual liberties.

Conversely, while successful violent revolutions have often initially been more effective in overturning the power of traditional elites, reforming archaic social systems and establishing greater economic equality, the authoritarian structure and martial values which come to the fore during armed struggle have tended to result in simply establishing a new form of authoritarianism that creates its own brand of unaccountable elite rule and injustice.

The reality is that successful nonviolent revolutions, like successful armed revolutions, often take years or decades to develop and do so as part of an organic process within the body politic of a given country. There is no standardized formula for success that a foreign government could put together, since the history, culture and political alignments of each country are unique. No foreign government or group working on the behest of international capital can recruit or mobilize the large numbers of ordinary civilians necessary to build a mass nonviolent movement capable of effectively challenging the established political leadership, much less of toppling a government. Furthermore, short of cruder forms of foreign intervention – such as coups, armed revolts, rigged elections – a regime will lose power only if it tries to forcibly maintain a system which the people oppose.

In maintaining our steadfast opposition to U.S. imperialism and efforts to impose the neo-liberal agenda on the people of Africa and elsewhere, let us not belittle the power of masses to make change themselves, even if we do not always have 100% ideological affinity with particular leaders of some of these mass movements. Let us acknowledge that just because a regime spouts anti-imperialist rhetoric, it does not necessarily have their people’s best interest at heart and that the establishment of a more democratic system is often a necessary if not sufficient means of bringing justice to the oppressed.