The Bouazizi Revolution

Gatvol, that expressive Afrikaans word meaning “we’ve had it up to here”, says it all – people around the globe are gatvol of exorbitantly rising food-, fuel and other prices; corrupt leaders; an ever-widening wealth gap; cruel dictators; no jobs; oppression and human rights abuses; governments in bed with corrupt big business; wars; environmental destruction; poverty and hunger; failed political and economic systems; and more. You name it and it’s probably on the list.

The bad news for Big Brother and Big Business is that the little guy has finally decided to stand up. The result is wave after wave of protest rolling and crashing around the world. Hardly a country or city has remained untouched. People are voting with their feet ... and in some instances with sticks, stones and street barricades.

In the main, it started in Africa, triggered by the actions of a young student. When Mohamed Bouazizi, set fire to himself on a Tunisian street some 10 months ago because he was denied a vendor’s licence to support his university studies, he could not have imagined he would ignite the Arab Spring; that it would bring powerful governments and dictatorships to  fall; and inspire a global protest movement the like of which has not been seen for decades and which threatens to change the world as we know it.

When future historians look back they may quite rightly refer to this period in history as the Bouazizi Revolution. And, if currently unfolding events develop to their logical and final conclusion, Bouazizi’s name may well join those of Emperor Constantine, Gavrilo Princip, Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Hitler, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Ford, Tim Berners-Lee, among others.

And, just what - you might ask - do these people have in common? Simply that each one of them, or their actions, in some or other way changed the world.

In Africa the revolution has been expressed in many ways and in many places. Bouazizi’s act triggered popular uprisings in countries throughout North Africa and further afield in the Arab world. Some of them continue despite brutal repression.

In South Africa service delivery and poverty protests have been around for a while longer than the Arab Spring. But it would probably not be incorrect to assume that the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere gave new impetus to the township protests.

This year alone, since the start of the upheavals in the Arab world, protests in South Africa have occurred in the townships of Ermelo, Grahamstown, Zandspruit, Ficksburg, Mkhaza in Khayelitsha, Samora Machel in Mitchell’s Plain, Shaka’s Kraal, and Noordgesig in Soweto to name but a few.

These protests in South Africa are probably erroneously called “service delivery protests” as the causes are much more varied and deeper than simply a lack of service delivery. The term “rebellion of the poor” is probably a more apt description. Poverty – hand in hand with high levels of unemployment - seems to be an element in all of them.

In South Africa the ruling ANC’s youth league has announced that its leader, Julius Malema, is to lead a mass march against poverty and unemployment. But Malema’s motives are suspect in some political quarters having previously been accused, for instance, of hijacking the issue of the nationalisation of South Africa’s mines to further his own political career and feather the nests of his backers.

The youth league’s march to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and President Jacob Zuma’s offices in the Union Building has divided the country’s biggest labour federation, Cosatu, and has been rejected by another ANC ally, the SA Communist Party.

Malema, however, is bucking the global trend. While his march has very explicit political connotations and is firmly stuck in a party political mould, the global protest movement that started as Occupy Wall Street – and became Occupy the World with protests being staged in cities around the world -- is known for its absence of any party political patronage, links or influence.

And while the Malema-led youth league march will emphasise campaign issues popularised by the ANC in previous elections, the Occupy Wall Street/the World movement, inspired by the Arab Spring and the Spanish Indignants, is protesting social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of big business, especially the banking sector, over governments.

In the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa there have been popular protests and social unrest targeting existing political orders, poverty and related issues in Uganda, Cameroon, Swaziland, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Benin, Gabon, Djibouti, Ivory Coast and Senegal. In Angola the authorities cracked down harshly on organisers before any popular protests could take place against the 32-year-long rule of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Many of these have gone largely unnoticed by the media as world attention was focused on the Arab world and the occupation of Wall Street.

However, just like the first humans came from Africa and gradually spread around the world, it seems Africa has again spawned a global human movement...this time for a more just world order, something that may yet come about in the not too distant future.

Stef Terblanche