April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

evolution from Tunisia spread through mainstream media rising from the
networks of social media to the mainstream. In this information warfare,
the news outlet Al Jazeera acted as a source of information connecting the
struggles throughout the world of dictators and despots.
INTENTIONALITY, SELF-ORGANISATION, SELF-MOBILISATION AND SELF-
EMPOWERMENT
When the second stage of the revolution was maturing, the interim
government closed schools and universities in an attempt to blunt the
youth energy. After the universities reopened, there were new
demonstrations across Tunisia as teachers and students called a general
strike. The full expression of a worker–student alliance was beginning to
take shape as workers occupied workplaces while setting up committees to
run their workplaces. It is this advanced consciousness of worker control
that is slowly taking shape as the revolution of Tunisia experiment with
networks of networks beyond the old standards of democratic centralism
and other worn ideas of revolutionary organisation and the vanguard party.
Social media and social networking may represent one of the forms of this
revolutionary process, but the character is still embedded in the selforganisation
and self-emancipation of the oppressed. It is this powerful
force of self-emancipation that is acting as an inspiration and beating back
vanguardists, whether secular or religious.
In order to discredit this revolutionary process, the Western media has
been running the bogey that Islamists would be the beneficiaries of the
revolution. But the women of Tunisia have demonstrated clearly that they
are not going to be sidelined in a revolutionary process. These women,
inside and outside of Tunisia, have been organising for decades and will
not be silenced in this moment of revolution. What was visible from the
images in Tunisia was the centrality of women and youths in this
revolutionary process. Women in Tunisia had been organising for decades
against patriarchy and other forms of male domination. It was one of the
societies where the women had stood firm against the fundamentalists
who wanted to control the bodies and minds of women. These women
made common cause with the youths and other sections of the working
people to form the backbone of the revolution. Their presence and
firmness acted as a barrier to the kind of vanguardism that could be
claimed by sections of the opposition. Hence as Ben Ali fled, all of the
socialists, communists, Islamists, trade unionists, human rights workers,
rappers and other social forces emerged on the political stage of Tunisia.
The placards and slogans that proclaimed ‘vive la révolution’ were a
manifestation that all over the country, from south to north, there had
been a burning desire for change.
This burning desire for change was most clearly expressed in the
expressions of workers and poor farmers from the rural areas, who
converged on Tunis as they chanted: ‘We have come to bring down the rest
of the dictatorship.’ They did this in defiance of a curfew and state of
emergency. They had travelled through the night in a caravan of cars,
trucks and motorcycles from towns across the rocky region far from
Tunisia's luxurious tourist beaches.
I was in West Africa as this revolution unfolded. Everywhere I went, youths
and other workers were anxiously following the revolution as the mass
resistance spread to Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen. In all of the
societies I visited there were young people who wanted to know more
about what was happening in revolution. Bouazizi’s action sends a major
lesson to youths across Africa and the pan-African world. This lesson is
embedded in the significance of his self-immolation. Bouazizi’s selfimmolation
signifies self-sacrifice, different from the actions of suicide