2011: The year of protests

most cases when the adrenalin on both sides: protesters and the police boiled over, scuffles erupt. Lives are needlessly lost. Thousands around the globe got injured. Properties worth billions of dollars were lost, and relationships were strained.
This reflective piece in pictures tries to capture some of the memorable moments when people expressed themselves in the best form they believed would drive their message across to their governments and other powers that be. I deliberately omitted Africa, which birthed the 2011 protests through the Arab Spring in North Africa, aided and abetted by information and communication technologies (ICTs).
Protests in Africa have also been reduced to what some term as the normal way Africans react to issues – violence. The police have also been pigeon-holed to make them look like the only best method they know about protest management is by way of violent repression. Only time will tell what impact the 2011 protests will have on a global arena that has to deal with yet another economic recession, climate change, the increasing gap between the rich and poor, etc. The first picture in the collage was taken on November 23 last week in Guatemala, South America.
This is WOMAN expression at its best – a picture of defiance, which is a sum total of Tahrir Square and any other protest no matter how large the numbers. The elderly protester appeals to most of us as a mother, grandmother, wife and basically a WOMAN who knows how to use her power. Who cannot relate to this form of protest? Would the police dare remove her? She looks unfazed. For want of land, you can do the impossible. She is a huge placard with all sorts of messages complementing what Freya Stark said, “The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised.” The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests which landed in Durban this week at the climate conference have produced some of the most memorable pictures.
Unlike Tahrir Square, OWS is everywhere in the United States and other Western cities. Instead of one still picture, we have a variety. Although the tent has become the symbol of these protests, so too the drumbeat. Dear reader, just imagine this: ratepayers playing the cowhide drum all night outside Harare City Council Mayor’s house. The drumbeat as a protest form is meant to bring the mayor’s attention that rate payers need better services. Well, the OWS protesters last week held a drum circle in New York City near billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg’s house. They banged drums, cowbells and upturned frying pans to get their point across to the mayor, whom they accused of having “no respect for the First Amendment rights of New Yorkers”.
It was like the street theatre we see in Harare’s Central Business District, as the third picture shows, with a young woman who could as well be doing a “kongonya” dance, enjoying herself, but sending her message across. Sometimes non-violent tactics can achieve the desired results.