More people than rooms

FOR all of Egypt's abundant riches, the plain fact is that most Egyptians remain poor. The government insists that less than a fifth of the population (and falling) subsists below the global poverty threshold of $2 a day. Yet household expenditure surveys show that four-fifths of families have less than $3,000 a year to spend. That sounds about right: $200 a month is considered a good salary for an Egyptian. A rookie policeman or newly trained teacher makes less than half that. And the pay of Cairo street-sweepers on make-work government programmes is so low that they often beg from passing cars. Official figures claim a slow decline in unemployment, to around 9%. But for Egypt's armies of day labourers, street vendors and domestics, employment is pretty tenuous; and only a third of women of working age are in the labour force.

It is possible to live a comfortable rich-world sort of life in Egypt, and many people do; in some ways it is easier than in well-off countries because maids and cooks and drivers are cheap. On the desert outskirts of Cairo you can cruise palm-lined boulevards leading to gated compounds with names like Beverly Hills, Dreamland and Mayfair, with ranks of porticoed villas, mirror-clad office blocks, hypermarkets, private clinics and schools with emerald-green playing fields. Here you can forget you are in the old Egypt.

But not for long. Descend to the Nile valley and be jolted by rutted roads lined with rubbish and packed with crowded jitney cabs, ferrying the working poor from their cramped and airless dwellings to insecure jobs and run-down schools. Among the wealthiest fifth of Egyptians, some 82% say they are generally satisfied with their living standards; among the poorest fifth only 29% do. Nearly all rich kids but scarcely a quarter of poor ones brush their teeth, largely because toothpaste is an unaffordable luxury. The poorest are also more than twice as likely to die as infants, or to suffer from hepatitis C. Egypt has led the world in infection rates since a 1970s campaign to combat another chronic malady, bilharzia, inadvertently spread hepatitis C through the reuse of needles.

According to government statistics Egypt remains a largely rural country, but that is because villages that have expanded, some to over 100,000 inhabitants, have not been reclassified as towns. Demographers reckon that at least three-quarters of Egyptians actually live in urban areas. Census figures show that four in five people inhabit flats rather than houses. Those flats tend to be tiny. The 2007 census shows that in every one of Egypt's 29 governorates there are fewer rooms than people. Families often share beds in shifts.


Even Egyptian government economists admit that even as the rich get much richer and Egypt's small middle class is expanding somewhat, the rest have struggled to keep up with an inflation rate that is far higher than in most comparable countries. The private planes, holiday homes, new highways, airports and supermarkets remain out of their reach. That may help to explain why recently Egypt has seen an uncharacteristic flaring up of strikes and protests of every kind. For the first few months of this year the streets around the parliament were occupied around the clock by angry factory workers, disgruntled tax inspectors or junior doctors, all protesting against their miserable pay. Nor is the disillusion just about money. At least in spirit, more and more Egyptians have joined the small core of political activists, many of them Islamists or leftists, who insistently demand civil rights and an end to police brutality and sham democracy. They are fed up and want the government to know it.

 The rich get richer

Egypt's colossal state, with its 8m employees and army of security agents, is in no danger at all of losing physical control. Yet its grip on the media has weakened. Until ten years ago the press was dominated by the state broadcasting monopoly and a range of state-owned newspapers, magazines and publishing houses. Private-sector television and newspapers are still subject to government pressure, and independent bloggers risk arbitrary arrest. But their audiences far outstrip those of the state media, and they now set the agenda.

By and large, though, poor Egyptians grumble surprisingly little. There are some positive reasons for their forbearance. Strong bonds among extended families, neighbourly solidarity and the Muslim tradition of charity support many of the needy. Egypt has very low crime rates, and it is the poorest who feel most secure in their homes. With their street life and intimacy under year-round sunshine, Egypt's slums are often less grim than those in other countries. Sociologists have long noted the knack of Egypt's poor to appropriate things they lack, such as space and freedom, by nimbly skirting the rules. Egypt may be chaotic, but it is often joyfully so.

However, there are also less attractive reasons for public passivity. One of them is fear. Corporal punishment and physical violence persist in Egyptian homes and schools and, most notoriously, in police custody. “Systematic” is how Amnesty International has described the use of torture by Egyptian security forces in annual reports for the past two decades. In 2007 it reported “beatings, electric shocks, prolonged suspension by the wrists and ankles in contorted positions, death threats and sexual abuse”. In 2008 it suggested that as many as 20 people had died in Egypt from the effects of torture. In 2009 it said that impunity “continued for most perpetrators, exacerbated by police threatening victims with rearrest or the arrest of relatives if they lodged complaints”. There was good reason why under the Bush administration Egypt was a favoured destination for “rendition” of terrorist suspects.

Keep your head down

Clearly not all of the estimated 3m people employed, in one way or another, by security agencies are bullies. Many are hard-working, professional and courteous. Yet the pervasiveness and lack of accountability of the security apparatus has had a smothering effect. This is amplified by the government's insistence, for all but brief gaps in the past six decades, on maintaining emergency laws that allow arbitrary arrest and, in effect, indefinite detention without trial. The law is renewed every two years, most recently in May this year, and always with the promise it will be applied only to terrorists and drug dealers. That promise is never kept.

It is true that Egypt has suffered from bouts of terrorism, though mercifully not much in recent years. Nevertheless, for a state as strong as Egypt's the concern with security appears excessive. “State security” can be cited as a reason to stop publication of academic research, to block a film script or ban a troublesome person from the airwaves. Mosque preachers, airport workers and people seeking jobs in tourist resorts, even as street-sweepers, find they need clearance from State Security Investigations, the thuggish plainclothes branch of the Ministry of Interior.

The security services look after their own very well. Businessmen report getting phone calls from security officials to “recommend” that they hire security veterans. Some pre-empt such recommendations by putting officers on their payroll from the start. Others curry favour by handing contracts to companies run by former policemen. Former police, intelligence and army officers hold many of the most lucrative posts in state companies and the bureaucracy. Traditionally they make up the majority of Egypt's provincial governors. These are appointed by the president, as are all 4,000 village headmen, the presidents of state universities, top judges and prosecutors, a third of the members of the toothless upper house of parliament, and so on.

Such levers of control operate in tandem with the ruling National Democratic Party, which Mr Mubarak also heads. The party is not especially democratic but it is ubiquitous, with branches in every village and on every college campus. Its ideology bends to the changing whims of national leaders. It does contain some idealists who believe in working from within to make such improvements as they can. It also has a record of trying to care for the poor by subsidising some goods and maintaining at least the promise if not the reality of government welfare services.

But inevitably the party also includes opportunists, including millionaires who owe their fortunes to sweetheart loans from state-owned banks, bargain-basement sales of state land or no-bid contracts from state agencies. “Our system is a pyramid of mafias,” snorts one disgruntled businessman.

All of this provides another reason why so many Egyptians have, for so long, shied away from voicing complaints. In their experience no one is likely to listen unless they are a relative, a friend, or amenable to a bribe. In theory citizens are represented by their MPs, but all too many people enter parliament for perks such as immunity from prosecution. Litigation is possible but unattractive because the courts are slow, capricious and open to corruption.

Saad Zaghloul, the leader who brought Egypt independence from Britain in 1922, and whose statue conducts traffic over Cairo's Qasr al Nil Bridge, is said to have muttered the dying words “mafeesh fayda” (it is hopeless). He probably meant his own struggle with death, but naysayers ever since have taken those words as a commentary on Egypt's condition.