Non-Violent Civil Society Resistance to Authoritarian Rule in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kenya

Abstract

Authoritarian rule in sub-Saharan Africa, greatly diminished by the wave of democracy that swept much of the region in the 1990s, remains an unfortunate part of the political landscape today. Coups in Mauritania, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Niger provide recent examples; but even in some cases of elected governance, human rights are curtailed and abused. This makes some of the lessons learned from past civil society resistance to authoritarian rule in Sub-Saharan Africa all the more relevant today. This comparative study of non-violent resistance movements in Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, primarily in the 1980s and 1990s, provides one of the few detailed studies of civil society efforts to tame authoritarian rule in sub-Saharan Africa using social movement theory as a way to examine the movements. The study is based on a total of approximately 200 interviews in the countries with activists and others to gauge what they did, how, and why. In contrast to the relatively few studies of social movements in Sub-Saharan Africa, this one includes the role of individual as well as organizational activists and highlights the role of small movements instead of just large ones. Tactics differed in the three countries, depending on the level of repression, but in all three countries, repression not only failed to halt the resistance (though it did limit it), it led to continued resistance. In Kenya, domestic resistance developed into a “culture of resistance” and was a contributing factor in eventual regime change; in Liberia and Sierra Leone, international intervention was the force that caused regime change, but the peaceful resistance movements in the capitals helped legitimize such interventions and kept the heads of state off balance.