One of my most enduring memories of Cairo is sitting in a taxi in the suffocating summer heat of 2008, getting ready to return to the hotel after an afternoon sightseeing in Old Cairo. The particular taxi that we were in was extremely old, and probably not roadworthy even in the most liberal sense, but after over a week of careening down the madness of Cairene highways, my standards had dipped enough that I decided to sit in the front where at least I could make use of the safety belt. As I started to fidget with the dust-covered strap, it was apparent that the safety belt had not been used in years, and so I reacted with mild amusement rather than anger when the driver of the taxi began to laugh at me like I was the funniest thing he had seen in years. I mean, the man nearly had tears in his eyes. Eventually, he recovered enough to help me strap in, praising me and insisting in broken English that he would wear his own. He did, and even though he drove at breakneck speeds, turning left instead of going around the roundabouts, blasting into oncoming traffic rather than waiting for the lights to change, he did so with great humour and I with some pride at the tiny effect I’d had on his day.

I bring this up because like anyone else who has spent time in Egypt – the real Egypt and not the resorts of Sharm el-Sheikh – the dominant memory is of a country that should work brilliantly in the right conditions but has seen any such dreams buried under corruption, nepotism and one of the most extensive state security mechanisms in the world. Although there was always a policeman at every roundabout, driver after driver flouted every single driving convention in the book, and after nearly two weeks in the country I’m still not sure whether Egyptians drive on the left or on the right. The drivers drove as they did because they knew that policemen could be bribed, and if one was stopped it was more likely to be to demand such bribes rather than to punish law breakers. Yet the same police instilled great fear in the hearts of members of the growing Protestant community in Cairo, with universities repeatedly losing convert students to disappearances either through state operatives in the classrooms or their being handed over by disgruntled family members. Egypt always seemed to me to be a magnificent nation trapped underneath an extensive but crippled bureaucracy and an omnipresent fear of the state as enveloping as the scorching heat.

Still, I can’t help but look back on my time with fondness, and look upon the current events in the country with a mix of pride and deep concern. An imperfect and complex nation with one of the most generous and welcoming populations certainly I’ve ever experienced now lies on the brink of the most significant development in its modern history. Whichever way you look at it, Hosni Mubarak is a trapped man. Trapped between leaving Egypt safely but with his reputation as ‘father of the nation’ in tatters like Idi Amin or Ben Ali, or ignoring the protests of the Egyptians in Tahrir and digging in for a fight like Mugabe and Bouteflika. Unlike most analysts who are looking east for comparison, seeing parallels in Saudi Arabia or Jordan, in Egypt I see a recurrence of the dissatisfaction and political awakening of young people that has taken root in other parts of Africa, and I see an opportunity for lessons to be learnt further south.

Like Colonel Gaddafi and Museveni before him, Mubarak came to power in a time of political flux, leaving the military in order to ostensibly lead the country through the time of change and leave once the nation was stabilised. It may well be that the experience of the presidency revealed a facet of political relations that is hidden from political scientists around the world but is revealed especially to dictators, that nations never become stable, especially where the geostrategic interests of the outside ‘outweigh’ the interests of the people, and continue to need the guiding hand of a father-like figure. Either way, like Museveni or Jammeh, it seems that the envisioned period of stability never materialised, even as the Egyptian economy grew to stratospheric heights. Tired of waiting, the people of Egypt have opted to take the fight to Mubarak, reminiscent of the general strikes that shook, but did not topple, Eyadema in Togo. Indeed, like Mugabe, Mubarak has opted to dig in for a fight, resorting to a draconian show of force in order to try and disperse the throngs assembled at Tahrir Square.

Only time will tell whether the stand-off in Egypt will lead to a perplexing stalemate as in Zimbabwe, or feed into the birth of a new and more democratic nation, as appears imminent in Guinea. The determining factors will be in the ability of the people to continue to articulate the urgency of their demands without resorting to widespread violence, as well as the continued support of people within and outside Egypt. Significantly, Egypt – a founding member of the AU (African Union) – is an African country as much as it is an Arab one, and this means that African countries have a responsibility to speak up and speak out on behalf of the Egyptian people. It is of great concern that the African Union found time during its recent summit to discuss the possibility of helping Kenya wiggle out of its commitments to the ICC (International Criminal Court), possibly contributing to the culture of impunity that pervades the country’s political life, but left it until 11 days later to issue a statement on the crisis in Egypt.

Regardless, as the crisis in Egypt has the makings of earlier crises in other parts of Africa, so too does it hold opportunities to learn. Significantly for this analyst, one would hope that the patience and passion of the Egyptian people in the face of increasing brutality from their leader would be a lesson for young Africans everywhere, inspiring them to stand up against the excesses of their leaders without turning against each other.

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