Police use water cannons to disperse anti-government protesters and students during a protest demanding the release of the Inter-University Student Federation leader and the country’s economic crisis, in Colombo on March 8, 2023. (Photo by ISHARA S. KODIKARA / AFP)
Ssince widespread unrest in several countries in July 2021, analysts warn that continued tensions could lead to further social upheaval.
This discontent is not just a South African phenomenon, as growing insecurity – caused by global economic instability, government austerity and the higher cost of living – has led to more frequent mass action around the world.
Strike action is a common phenomenon around the world, says Lawrence Abiwu, an adjunct lecturer in the School of Management, IT and Governance at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. But an indicator of dissatisfaction among citizens is the magnitude or frequency of these incidents.
According to a study by the German non-profit Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), last year there was an unprecedented wave of protest actions over food, energy and the rising cost of living.
People took to the streets in more than 12,500 protests between November 1, 2021 and October 31, the study found. Protests erupted across the region, across all types of political regimes and in rich, middle- and low-income countries.
The wave of protests, the FES study notes, signals a global failure to deliver basic goods at affordable prices. Although the unrest has been triggered by the cost-of-living crisis, there are other grievances, including complaints about the corrupt government, which is often seen as collusion with the economic elite.
“Universally, the risk factors for dissatisfaction, disruption and unrest are the same,” Lizette Lancaster, manager of the criminal justice information center at the Institute for Security Studies, said. Mail & Guardians this week.
These risk factors include the breakdown of public services, a severe economic downturn and the absence of a democratic process in decision-making on governance and national policy.
“At the heart of it all is that some people don’t like it if they believe they’re taking all the risk but they’re not getting the reward for taking that risk,” Lancaster said.
“Political and economic decision makers do what they want, as they want. And this affects people’s sense of justice.
South Africans, Lancaster notes, are “so used to such levels of inequality and economic deprivation” that they have low expectations.
However, citizens in countries where governance and services generally “run like clockwork”, stable prices and low interest rates, develop a sense of insecurity when the situation suddenly changes.
“We are seeing severe disruptions in places, even in Europe, like France [and] The Dutch … protest action can now be seen around the world because of the growing sense of insecurity and dissatisfaction with the political leadership,” Lancaster said.
Inflation is rising globally as the world’s supply chains adapt to a rebound in economic activity following the Covid-related lockdown. Although some central bankers believed that high inflation would be transitory, Russia’s war in Ukraine quickly proved that prices would remain high.
Sanctions against Russia – the world’s second largest producer of oil and natural gas – sent shockwaves through energy markets, sending fuel prices soaring. The war, which eliminated two major agricultural players, also led to a food crisis. Last year, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index rose to the highest level in at least 17 years.
The global cost-of-living crisis coincides with a drop in disposable income worldwide due to the economic onslaught of the pandemic.
For the first time in the 21st century, real wage growth entered negative territory in the first half of last year, according to the International Labor Organization’s Global Wage Report 2022-2023.
“The multiple global crises we are facing have led to a reduction in real wages. It has put tens of millions of workers in a difficult situation as they face uncertainty,” said the director general of the organization Gilbert Houngbo, who further warned that failure to recover from the pandemic “could lead to social unrest around the world and destroy the target. to achieve prosperity and peace for all”.
The difficult financial situation added fuel to the tension. Protesters in Sri Lanka took down the government last year due to the country’s economic crisis, severe inflation, blackouts and fuel shortages. Then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country in July amid mass protests.
In September, protesters in Italy set fire to energy bills and, in October, thousands in France took to the streets to show their anger at rising costs.
In Africa, demonstrations claimed the lives of several people last month. In Ethiopia, intercommunal violence led to eight deaths, while clashes between security forces and opposition protesters in Guinea left two dead, 58 injured and 47 arrested on February 15 and 16, according to the International Crisis Group.
Just this week, thousands of junior doctors working for England’s National Health Service (NHS) disrupted medical services during a three-day strike over a pay dispute across the UK. The national medical director for NHS England, Stephen Powis, told a local radio station the strike was “probably the most disturbing set of days of industrial action we’ve seen all winter”.
A national public sector strike, one of many in England over the last year, coincided with Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt tabling of the country’s spring budget.
Although Hunt’s spending plan includes efforts to protect households from the cost-of-living crisis, the budget fails to make provision for public sector pay rises, which have been scrapped by Britain’s austerity program since 2010.
The UK is set to see several public sector strikes this month.
The wave of industrial action in the UK public sector, and the political and economic ructions it has brought to a halt, is not unlike what has been seen in South Africa, which has recently experienced devastating strikes by health workers.
The strike by members of the National Union of Health and Allied Workers also comes as a result of years of public sector spending cuts, which workers say have left them out of pocket as they shoulder heavier workloads.
The ratio of health workers to 100 000 users of the system fell from 722 to 669 between 2012 and 2021, according to the analysis of the Public Economic Project.
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s 2023 budget, delivered last month, dealt another blow to health spending. According to the Institute of Economic Justice. According to the Institute for Economic Justice, there will be a shortfall of R47 billion – an under-allocation compared to if the allocation increased in line with inflation – in health spending over the next three years.
The country is preparing for another disruption on Monday, March 20 when the Economic Freedom Fighters are expected to voice their party’s grievances with the country by starting a national shutdown.
The opposition party will be joined by the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu). Among other things, Saftu demanded that the government improve services by reversing spending cuts and expanding the public sector. The federation is also demanding better pay for civil servants.
By reducing the share of the public sector in the economy, the government has opened the country to the provision of broken services.
Specialized local government data and intelligence organization Municipal IQ say service delivery protests are back to pre-Covid-19 levels, with 193 recorded across the country last year. The protests have become “a frequent and strong social phenomenon”, IQ Municipal managing director Kevin Allan told M&G last month.
The Lancaster Institute for Security Studies describes the protests in South Africa as relatively peaceful, where the majority are not prone to violence. However, high youth unemployment rates, frequent blackouts, high cost of living and widespread corruption by public officials add to the country’s volatility.
Considering the deadly protests in Sri Lanka and Venezuela, there is a direct link between the intensity and size of the protests and the severe economic decline experienced by these countries, Lancaster explained.
“This should be a lesson for us.
“South Africans still express themselves through democratic means, that is through political participation in traditional forms like voting, or through peaceful protests or through freedom of speech and being able to criticize the government.
“But of course, you know, there’s always a tipping point.”