Malusi Mpumlwana

The hope of Arab Africa – a perspective from the South

The uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have taken the world by storm, if not by surprise. Palestine and Lebanon have always lived out their volatility in the open, but the long-term governments of some of the other countries that have since broken into open rebellion have always seemed to have the lid fairly tightly sealed. One wonders how this would have played out in the continuous South African uprisings of the 1980s. There are similarities and significant differences between the South African and North African experiences.