Parliament burnt down, the houses of former Nepalese prime ministers razed, the supreme court torched along with the headquarters of two political parties. Nepal’s youth launched a revolution on September 8.
KP Sharma Oli, the prime minister and a longtime political operative, resigned a day after security forces fired into rampaging crowds. By September 13 the security forces had killed at least 51 protesters.
After deploying onto the streets, the army negotiated an interim government with the protesters, who are running a kind of national convention on the gaming platform Discord. The army agreed to the protesters’ demands for the dissolution of parliament and that Sushila Karki, a former chief justice, becomes the interim prime minister.
The curfew has been lifted and national elections are scheduled for March 5 next year. The protesters seem to have won a resounding victory. Hitting the streets worked.
Social media ban sparks protests
The immediate cause of the uprising was the government’s banning on September 4 of 26 social media channels, including WhatsApp, Facebook, WeChat and YouTube. Even though the ban was reversed four days later, protests continued because there are deeper causes.
In 1951 democratic forces brought an end to the Rana dynasty, which had ruled from 1846, one of a string of monarchical dynasties stretching back thousands of years. An interim government was formed and elections were held in 1959. Unfortunately, democracy didn’t last long.
A 1960 coup d’état brought absolute monarchy back to power, which remained the situation until 1991, when parliamentary monarchy was established. The country descended into civil war between 1997 and 2006 as a Maoist insurgency fought the government. Only in 2008 was a general election held. Maoists achieved a simple majority and the monarchy was subsequently abolished.
Corruption and unemployment fuel anger
While the now former prime minister Oli’s assault on free speech fits in with a history of conflict between anti- and pro-democratic forces, two other factors seem to have driven the current uprising: corruption and youth unemployment.
Hashtags such as NepoKids and PoliticiansNepoBabyNepa have long gone viral. The hashtags feature politicians’ children, a former Miss Nepal included, flaunting wealth and luxury in a poor country with limited opportunities for the youth.
Nepal isn’t the only Asian country where the youth have forced democratic change. In July last year the student uprising in Bangladesh led to the downfall of prime minister Sheikh Hasina. The original cause of the uprising was the state’s decision to reserve 30% of all government jobs for descendants of freedom fighters in the 1971 war of independence. Issues such as corruption, an economic downturn and state violations of human rights also entered the arena.
Hasina is now on trial in absentia and facing five counts of crimes against humanity, including the mass killing of protesters. The office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has estimated that more than 1,400 people were killed during the uprising.
The All-Indonesian Students’ Union played a pivotal role in the 2022 mass protests.
— These protests have commonalities: they are primarily driven by Gen Z, those born in the 1990s and 2010s. The protests are decentralised, use social media heavily and endure state violence.
In February this year the student union kicked off a series of events that has led to widespread and continuing protests against the corrupt and increasingly authoritarian regime of President Prabowo Subianto, a former soldier involved in the pacification of East Timor. With 284-million people, half of whom use social media, the globe’s fourth-largest country by population is roiling in discontent.
And Asia isn’t alone in people demanding an end to corruption, authoritarianism and youth unemployment. For the second consecutive year Kenyan youth across the country are taking on President William Ruto, partly out of economic frustration and partly as a response to police violence. Security forces killed 23 during last year’s protests.
Gen Z driving change globally
These protests have commonalities: they are primarily driven by Gen Z, those born in the 1990s and 2010s. The protests are decentralised, use social media heavily and endure state violence. Each country has an authoritarian past.
While specifically addressing the situation in his country, Kenyan political analyst Patrick Gathara makes a point that can be applied to all Gen Z protests. In a recent Al Jazeera article he wrote: “The streets must remain a legitimate space of powerful political participation, not one to be pacified or criminalised. For its challenge to formal state power is not a threat to democracy. It is democracy.”
Lessons for South Africa
There’s another commonality that applies directly to SA: youth unemployment and limited economic opportunities in a context of widespread corruption. According to the World Bank, our country has a 60.9% youth unemployment rate. Only Djibouti is worse, at 75%. The world average is 13.6% and Nepal’s is 20.8%. Even South Africans with degrees face an uncertain future — their unemployment rate is 11.7%, according to Stats SA.
What does 60% unemployment actually mean? A large swathe of our population is cut out of the economy and will remain so. The brutal truth is that if you haven’t worked by 25 and don’t have a degree, you are unlikely to ever get a job. A year’s gap in a CV is bad enough; empty space is apocalyptic.
South Africans with wealth flaunt it shamelessly. Owners of expensive cars curve around Table Mountain on their way to meals of Romanesque decadence. And that’s just your average parliamentarian.
The uncertain future ahead
A Gen Z uprising originating among university students facing a desperate, debt-laden future, or from one of the squatter camps that ring SA’s cities and towns, stark geographical imprints of forever inequality, is not just possible, it is likely. How would that turn out? The consequences are uncertain. Much would depend on the commitment to democracy, the kind Gathara writes of and Nepalese debate on Discord.
Gen Z could save us all. Or the protests could descend into the kind of violence that rends asunder the fabric of society.
The ANC is not only incapable of cleaning its own house, it cannot even provide the most basic requirement for economic activity that cities have provided for millennia, such as water. Interesting Gen Z days await. Brace yourselves.
• Dr Taylor, a freelance journalist and photographer, is a research fellow in environmental ethics at Stellenbosch University.
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