South Africa’s turn just around the corner?

In line with what has become a global trend, started at the end of last year in Tunisia and most recently exploding on the streets of United Kingdom cities, South Africa could be on the brink of its own youth revolt, driven by the ANC Youth League around the emotive slogan of economic freedom in our lifetime.

In a statement last week under the heading “ANCYL to mobilise against economic oppression,” the league announced that it is planning marches on the symbols of “strategic sectors of the economy” like the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), the Chamber of Mines and AGRISA (representing organised agriculture. Interestingly the seat of government in Pretoria, the Union Buildings, is also included among these targets of mass mobilisation.

The ANCYL’s National Working Committee (NWC), after a meeting on Thursday last week, said in the statement that league-branches were ready to lobby branches of the parent ANC and their local structures on the economic freedom in our life time programme.

The statement went on to say that the NWC “remains unshaken on its programme of economic freedom in our lifetime and will continue to lobby for the nationalisation of mines and for expropriation without compensation. The ANCYL will in the next two weeks have bilaterals with fraternal organisations to develop a common programme on economic freedom in our lifetime.”

It now becomes critical for the leadership of the senior ANC to manage its relationship with the Youth League with great care to avoid further disruption of the economy and threats to social stability in the wake of the chaos caused by the past week’s strike actions of municipal workers.

The declared intentions of the ANCYL that it will “roll out mass action throughout the country on free education, youth unemployment and on economic freedom in our lifetime,” is fraught with danger.

“The ANCYL will mobilise all young people, unemployed youth, informal settlement dwellers to fight against economic oppression in all its formats and character. The details of these mass protests will be unveiled on the birthday of the ANCYL 12^th September 2011.

“We are inspired that most structures of the ANC at provincial, regional and branch level agree with the ANCYL on nationalisation of mines and expropriation without compensation. The ANCYL members must never be demoralised or defocused by threats that are circulating in the media, they must remain vigilant, focused and on the ground. The struggle for economic freedom will never be diverted by anybody,” the statement said.

There can be little doubt that the planned action by the ANCYL forms part of a wider global phenomenon. As it is the league, in explaining their recent stand on the government in Botswana, made reference to resolutions taken at the international youth conference held in South Africa earlier this year.

The world-wide discontent of a young generation who feel that they have been left behind in the midst of huge structural challenges to the economic, financial and governance dispensations of the last couple of decades, prompted one German commentator last week to describe the riots in the UK as a “social Fukushima for the Western world”.

In  less than a year the face of the Arab world has changed probably for ever, protests have rocked Greece, Spain and to lesser extent Italy. Last week protests swelled across India in support of a self-styled Gandhian anti-corruption campaigner fasting to death in jail, with most of the protestors described in reports as young.

In Germany authorities were last week baffled by an unprecedented wave of mainly luxury-car torchings that many observers interpreted as a precursor to more dangerous forms of protest.

How vexed these problems are that are  facing many governments in different parts of the world is illustrated by the following description in a news report of the youths involved in the UK-riots: “This miserable life of drugs, loitering and weapons in neighbourhoods which were devastated by the policies of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s …. Is the fate of those dubbed NEETs in the UK. It stands for not in education, employment or training, and there are about 1.2 million people who fit the description.”

It is a description that is not difficult to make applicable to South Africa and many other countries, often with even more disturbing figures attached to it.

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Also see Stepping back in time; Booty from the East; Facebook crime and Social media and unrest (from last week)