Till Death us do part

On the morning of January 5^th, the day after Muhammad Bouazizi died, the bell tolled for three men whose combined term in power was nearly a century. Muammah Gadaffi 42 years and counting, reading the day’s papers in his vast tent probably never gave it more than a passing thought. To the west of Libya , Ben Ali 24 years and counting reading about the events from his palace in Tunis and Mubarak 30 years and counting at the helm of Egypt from his villa in Sharm El Sheikh may have over looked the story entirely.

Completely detached from the ordinary lives of the peoples they ruled it was almost certainly impossible for either of the three minds to conceive the desperation of the ordinary man, the desperation that made a young man choose the unspeakable pain of self-immolation rather than live another day under the yoke of poverty, or the incessant mocking of his dashed aspirations.

Bouazizi lit two fires, the deliberate one which consumed his body and the inadvertent one which consumed the souls of the millions of people in the Maghreb. In the weeks and the months that followed, first Ben Ali, then Mubarak and finally Gadaffi have all gone up in the flames that were lit that day.

As I write this Ben Ali is in exile in Saudi Arabia, Mubarak is undergoing the long drawn out humiliation of a trial and Gadaffi is MIA, AWOL, whereabouts unknown, the only indication he is still alive is the vitriol laden messages he sends out electronically.

What happened?

For the three men, the events of late last year and early this year must have come as a surprise; these men had ruled their countries for longer than many marriages last. To the extent that some wit commented that for many of these leaders, the oath of office did not end so help me God, as much as till death us do part.

In writing about marriage former chief Rabbi of the UK Jonathan Sachs said ‘My marriage is absolute but not necessarily universal’. The point he was making was this, what is accepted in a marriage is what is agreed upon by both partners in the marriage. If an outsider does not agree they should accept the fact that these are the terms that have been agreed upon by the partys to the marriage.

What happens though, when one party to the marriage has their needs transformed and the other party will not change? Will not adapt?  Without adaptation, without an acknowledgement of the other party’s needs, the relationship is heading towards catastrophic rapture.

Ephesians 5: 22-33

For anyone who has been to a Christian wedding, the aforementioned verses will not be alien to them. The love submission dialectic has been focal point of debate between men and women as to who has a greater duty, the one who does the submission or the one who does the loving. Lately that argument has morphed, would a woman be right to stop submitting if her husband stopped loving her?

The aforementioned is akin to the theorizing of the liberal political philosophers like John Locke who posited that political leadership and more importantly political stability rests on the perceived legitimacy of the ruling system, once the ruled decided the rulers no longer possessed this legitimacy it could be withdrawn and the system would become unstable. What is the duty of the rulers vis-à-vis the ruled? Can the ruled withdraw their support if the ruler no longer meets his obligations to them?

In the case of Gadaffi, his legitimacy, his perceived right to rule was anchored on his revolutionary credentials. The coup against King Idriss, the expulsion of American and British forces from the air bases in Libya, the nationalization of Libya’s oil reserves and his association with various shades of revolutionaries around the world were manifestations of his revolutionary ideals.

This may have made sense within the context of the cold war and its sharp ideological divide; however things had changed, dramatically.  After forty two years the number of people who had any real experience of the revolutionary and ideological wars that punctuated the sixties and the seventies and to some extent the eighties were few and far in between.  It follows that the number of people who questioned Gadaffi’s right to rule based on his revolutionary credentials were far more that those who believed in his right to rule based on same said credentials.

Consider this, the median age the Libyan population is twenty four years, the bulk of the population is in an age cohort which has no real experience of the foundation his revolutionary credentials.  Furthermore, with a median age of twenty four, the vast majority of the population would have attained some kind of political awareness in the post-cold war era, a time in which democracy; individual freedom, a marked divergence between regime and state security and a more accountable government were the ideological underpinnings of political discourse. This would have been diametrically opposed to the paternalistic autocratic model along which Gadaffi run Libya.

Revelations 2:4-5

It is a fact that the history of these men will be written largely by those who have deposed them. There were those who were opposed to Gadaffi from the get go, even before it was fashionable to oppose him. As a child many a time we argued with the passion only youth can garner, about the merits of Gadaffi’s rule. Even now, I smile as I think about how we believed his army was capable of taking on the combined armies of sub Saharan Africa and winning.

In the words of St John the Divine, Gadaffi forgot his first love, like a husband or wife who begins to take their partners for granted and begins to take liberties with them Gadaffi seemed to have forgotten the reason he assumed power.

His political reality was formed by four key events; the struggle against Colonialism, the formation of the state of Israel universally referred to as an Nahba the tragedy in Arab social consciousness, Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Suez crisis of 1956 and its effect on Arab nationalism and the 1967 Arab Israeli war referred to as An Naksa in Arab Consciousness.

When he assumed power, Gadaffi’s stated aim was to build an Islamist society with power, wealth and weapons in the hands of the people. In his defense he can always argue he never specified which hands and which people, but what he ended up building was a semi-secular society with power and wealth and weapons concentrated in the hands of a few people.

In verse five St John admonishes and warns, he says Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 

Gadaffi famously decreed that revolutionaries never retire, true that may be but, there is a distinct possibility that they could have power forcefully taken from them, which is exactly what happened in his case. While there has been a lot of chatter about the role of foreign intervention in the Libya, and our latter day pan Africanists have wheeled out the old and not particularly scary bogey man of neo–colonialism, reminding  us about what Gadaffi has done for Africa (but not what he has done for his people, his cardinal responsibility) they have been unable to address the fact that the internal contradictions of Libyan society were the real cause of the rebellion and  if Gadaffi had not forgotten his first love (his mission to create a more just society)  maybe just maybe I would not be writing this.