Peaceful Resistance in Contemporary Africa: Nonviolent Social Movements in Kenya, Sierra Leone and Liberia

Abstract

As scholars gradually extend social movement analysis to Africa, there is a need for comparative studies on the different ways civil society responds to different levels of repression. In Kenya, individuals and (mostly later) organizations responded from the late 1980s to 2002 with increasingly bold and public challenges to the regime, leading eventually to a ‘culture of resistance’ with widespread participation and finally competitive elections in which the ruling party lost. In Sierra Leone, civilians faced not only repression but regimes occupied by civil war. Yet at key moments in the Sierra Leone’s trajectory from one-party rule to competitive party politics, students, women, and the general public resisted one civilian and two military regimes through demonstrations, grassroots organizing, and non-cooperation, helping draw international attention to abuses and increased pressure on the military regimes to step down. In Liberia, where the repression was the harshest of the three case studies, civil resistance involved journalists, women, students, the Catholic Church, and others during the rule of Samuel Doe and later Charles Taylor. This comparative study examines who the actors were, how they resisted, and offers some insights on motivations, including courage, principle, and ambition. 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 was the critical factor in regime change; international intervention was the key to change in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The study draws on a total of nearly 200 in-depth interviews by the author with key activists and others in the three countries, plus archival research.