The Zamalek metro station: 6 lessons on citizenship

Their names are Toni, Gigi, Dodi and Suzi. They are multilingual and they like pets. They seem fitter and wealthier than most middle-class Egyptians. They are also more interested in the environment and the importance of sports and art in life.

But despite all that, they have a story to tell about mobilizing for their demands. This story is an alternative narrative to the Zamalek metro station conflict.

After forming “popular committees” to protect neighborhoods during the security vacuum of the 2011 revolution, Zamalek residents started to organize. The popular committees, which started off as organized checkpoints to guard the island, became the launch pad for resurrecting the Zamalek Association, which existed for many years prior to the revolution. This association has similar counterparts elsewhere in Cairo, such as in Maadi, Heliopolis, Omraneya and Helwan.

At the end of 2011, a new board of directors was established for the Zamalek Association. The members are mostly between 40 and 50 years old with successful non-governmental professional experience.

The association’s members started to divide themselves into smaller committees using the horizontal* organizational structure method. They did not elect a head for each committee, and left the membership open to Zamalek residents. They also ensured that the committees would be flexible enough to cope with any arising environmental and security challenges.

Meetings were held at the Sawy Culture Wheel for 18 months, until association members began to fear san intervention and political manipulation by some officials at the Cultural Wheel. Hence, they shifted their work online and opened several Facebook pages. They managed to collect signatures to petition for several projects in the neighborhood, keeping their physical meetings confined to homes and cafes.  

In 2012, the association decided on four major problems to work on: Garbage, preserving trees, dealing with sheesha cafes that allegedly infringe on sidewalks and, lastly, the proposal for a Zamalek metro station.

The Zamalek Association produced dynamic local leaders who are open and sensitive to the demands of the neighborhood’s residents. They also set a good example for self-governance on a municipal level.

They began by engaging with the neighborhood’s stakeholders and Cairo University's Faculty of Agriculture to organize training for the neighborhood’s workers.  They also worked with the governorate and the Agriculture Ministry to restore the Aquarium Grotto Garden’s lost grandeur.

The group also mobilized against the government’s decision to let a café open in the garden adjacent to the Sawy Culture Wheel, and protested the construction of a parking garage on the already over-crowded July 26 Street. They appointed lawyers to sue the government for incurred damages. 

But despite working on several projects during the past two years, the Zamalek metro station emerged as the most prominent case on their agenda.

The association was invited to a meeting with the National Authority for Tunnels (NAT) at the Sawy Culture Wheel in the beginning of 2012 to discuss the proposal. The authority presented the project in the presence of a representative from the European Investment Bank, which is funding 15 percent of the development.

The meeting was contentious and ended with the bank representative telling the association’s members that they could file complaints on the bank’s website, noting that any such complaint would be communicated automatically to the ministry and the authority.

A flow of complaints was then submitted to the bank’s website alongside some proposals and certificates of experts. In addition, the association proposed three alternative locations to the authority’s proposal to build the metro station on Sedky Street. Association members argued that the street was very narrow, was home to six schools and that buildings on the street suffered damages in the 1992 earthquake. The proposed metro station would cause major traffic congestion and pose hazards to the buildings, they argued.

The authority and the ministry ignored the complaints and proposals until the European Investment Bank decided to resort to an arbitration between Zamalek residents and the government prior to funding the project.

The authority chose one of its loyal arbitrators, who the association members rejected. They submitted a request to appoint a third party for arbitration to ensure impartiality. Following this escalation, the bank proposed resorting to the European Ombudsmen to investigate the complaints.

The association’s work did not stop there. The members tried to negotiate directly with the minister, who only met with them once. The minister suggested a fourth, unnamed location for the metro stop, but took no further action on that suggestion.

The conflict faded away for weeks, only to emerge again in a clear dispute between the authority and another group of activists living in Zamalek, many of whom acted on the margins of the association.

The conflict was resurrected when the authority invited a group of Zamalek residents to a semi-secret general meeting with less than a day’s notice. A group of residents attended, objecting that they were not given enough notice and more residents should be invited, causing the meeting to be postponed.

In the second meeting, consultant engineer Mamdouh Hamza escalated the dispute, calling for a total refusal of any new metro station on the island, regardless of its location.

Several meetings were held subsequently, and some of the association members conducted feasibility studies on the proposed alternative locations. They also received a delegation from the European Investment Bank last November to study the situation on the ground.

Responding to the association’s actions, the government launched a smear campaign in the media, claiming that the Zamalek residents were seeking the help of foreign parties to resolve local issues.

The conflict continues, and is compelling for a number of reasons, both positive and negative.

First, it tells of the widespread of mobilization efforts in the aftermath of 2011, not only in poor neighborhoods but also in affluent quarters. This mobilization is translated into local community action, evidenced by the residents’ self-organization to achieve their demands through non-governmental initiatives and meetings. The Zamalek residents have acted on their right to partake in decision-making related to municipal administration, and have commanded self-management of the district’s association.

Secondly, the Zamalek district has adopted — consciously or not — many of the legal techniques and lawsuit strategies adopted by civil society organizations and human rights centers since the 1990s. This includes advocating for their demands both locally and internationally, similar to actions taken by civil society groups against violations in Cairo districts like Helwan, Qorsaya and Ramlet Boulaq.

Thirdly, Zamalek residents have not resorted to exceptional measures in handling their dispute with the authorities. They have not sought to schmooze with the minister or to fawn over the authority chief, or even manipulate the media. On the contrary, the way they dealt with the dispute was transparent. It sets a precedent for rebelling against the norm of seeking the protection and blessing of political authority representatives to formulate and execute demands.

Fourthly, poor neighborhoods do not have the monopoly over volunteer-based local organization, which is the bedrock of watchdog groups that monitor the government’s performance. This is paramount if we are to ever to reform the level of citizen representation in the work of municipalities.

Fifth, this incident is reflective of the crisis of media manipulation. The media is often used to play on people’s soft spots, through emphasizing class and social differences and using exclusion techniques to turn people against each other. This of course is done in the service of authoritarian rule. 

Lastly, the incident shows how the January 25 revolution had a lasting, extremely important and deep impact on Egyptians, specifically in consolidating their commitment to their rights. It also seems to have increased people’s protectiveness over their professional, residential and political domains. And most importantly, the mistrust of the government seems to be shared by the haves and the have-nots.

The Zamalek metro station dispute is actually a true test of the relation between the citizen and the governmental bodies after the revolution. In this context, the dispute relates to the mechanisms of developing urban planning and transportation policies.

This conflict also takes us away from the labyrinth of identity politics and security concerns that have monopolized the public sphere for almost a year now. 

After reading these lines, you could continue to believe that the Zamalek residents want to shut off their neighborhood with barricades to keep the “rabble” out, forgetting that areas like the Fifth and First Settlements in New Cairo are still not metro accessible.

Or, you could take a deep breath to discern the significance of our conflict vis-à-vis the status and relationship with public service providers, in this case the transportation sector. You could be heartened by the fact that over the past two years, those elites attempted to change the rules of the game at the level of the district, and to break the submissiveness that has marked the relationship between Cairo’s elites and the authorities for decades.

* Correction: An earlier version of this article had the word "vertical" instead of "horizontal", a translation mistake from the original Arabic version.