The Politics of Privatization

Abstract

In 1967 when the popular Egyptian folk singer Sheikh Imam sang his dirge “Ghifara Mat,” mourning the death of Che Guevara and daring Nasser to be a true munadi (freedom fighter) like the slain Argentine revolutionary, he was promptly arrested and imprisoned for three years. Sheikh Imam’s lyrics reflected the gloom that had settled over Egypt after the 1967 War, as heady dreams were dashed and grandiose promises shattered. After the 1952 Revolution, Egyptians—leaders and laymen—had looked toward Latin America for solutions and prescriptions for economic autonomy and freedom from the neocolonial yoke. Nasser sent delegations to South America and received Che Guevara and Raoul Castro and embarked on a project of state building and development inspired in part by Brazilian leader Vargas’s state-labor alliance and corporatist legal code and Argentine leader Peron’s antiparty political movement. By 1967, though, Egypt was in a deep economic and political crisis: the country lacked the hard currency to finance its import-substitution policy and welfare commitments to workers, bureaucrats, and the peasantry and was facing growing unrest from students, leftists, and Islamists calling for the return of Sinai.