31 August 2021
NEWS & OPINION
Aluta Continua... or a Looter Continua? BY MOHAMMED YASEEN NALLA CFA, Founder: Magic Markets and Moe-Knows.com
W
hat happened in South Africa last month is beyond tragic. It is the worst eruption of violence, criminality, and widespread destruction that the country has arguably seen since democracy. I will not beleaguer you with a regurgitation of the news. Many of my readers are South African. So am I. Hindsight is always 20/20, but seriously, this moment in South Africa’s journey could be seen a mile away. Therefore, I cannot take seriously views of how this is ‘shocking’. This is personal so let’s take the gloves off... The centre cannot hold! Let’s get something out the way. International headlines have been laden with the assertion that this is about the former President’s incarceration. Yes, that certainly acted as a catalyst, but SA has been a tinderbox that has been carefully (or rather carelessly) laden with the tinder of broken dreams, unfulfilled promises and decades of rampant corruption and misallocation of resources.
Source: World Population Review
This is not unique globally. But let’s show how exceptional the South African circumstances have been. It is long documented that SA has the highest Gini coefficient in the world. A view commonly aired globally is that with inequality and unemployment as high as it is, it’s an outright miracle that SA has not had a revolution already. For those who are unfamiliar with the Gini coefficient, it measures the gap between the haves and have nots. On the map, SA has carved out its own shade of orange among the most unequal countries on the planet. Maybe the chart doesn’t convey the story
Source: World Population Review
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fully. South Africa is almost twice as unequal as the world average, leaving neighbours like Mozambique and Angola in the dust. At a Gini coefficient of 63, South Africa is the world’s most unequal country, where the richest 10% hold 71% of the wealth, while the poorest 60% hold just 7% of the wealth. As such, it is not like the rest of the world. It is not a case of ‘the centre cannot hold’. Quite frankly, there is no centre! Youth Unemployment
The Young and the Restless We all know how bad SA’s unemployment rate is. But more importantly, youth unemployment is the problem. At around 60%, SA’s youth unemployment is the highest in the world among G20 countries, followed by Italy around 30%. If we include smaller economies, SA is still the highest, followed by Libya, Eswatini and the West Bank/Gaza. Yes, that is right, youth unemployment in South Africa is worse than some warstricken countries. Let that sink in. Here’s the rub. It was 1994 when a promise of a ‘Better Life for All’ was made. A rainbow nation emerging out of the ashes of apartheid would have given birth to someone who today is a young adult of 27. Promises need to be kept. In a country where life expectancy is just over 60, this young adult is halfway through their life. They are no closer to realising the dream of their forebears. Yes, there is an element of poverty and desperation in the looting. There is also an element of outright criminality, which exists in the vacuum presented by absent or ill-equipped law enforcement. Young, disenfranchised, and disgruntled people have time and energy and little else. They are happy to watch the world burn as it was a world in which they had a small perceived stake. This is not a South African phenomenon. The profile of riots and protests globally tend to correlate with young angry populations. So, when someone says the SA protests are because people are hungry, they are right, hungry for change. Source: The World Bank
