A winter of discontent or season of revolution?

Brian Kagoro reflects on recent youth-led protests in Africa and the implications for the future

In the initial two weeks of July 2021, protests ignited by the incarceration of former South African President Jacob Zuma caused significant social, economic, and political turmoil across South Africa. Understanding these events necessitates a consideration of the racial, class, and gender dynamics of South African society, where 49 percent of the populace is chronically poor, 13 percent transiently poor, 14 percent vulnerable, 20 percent middle class, and 4 percent elite. These socio-economic disparities profoundly influence the majority’s perceptions of the state and business sectors.

Simultaneously, sporadic protests in the usually peaceful Kingdom of Eswatini escalated into deadly uprisings a week earlier. It is reported that at least 40 people were killed by security forces. The Eswatini protesters’ demands were comprehensive, advocating for the democratization of the political system, the unbanning of political parties, a transition from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy, and the cessation of all forms of state economic and political impunity.

The anger of African youth against various societal structures is rooted both globally and regionally, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2011, there have been recurring mass uprisings by African youth across the continent. Some analysts describe these as a modern proletarian social revolution. Despite this, tangible changes that would benefit African youth have not materialized, and the situation, including levels of authoritarianism, has deteriorated over the last 11 years.

Globally, young people are increasingly asserting their agency, challenging existing paradigms from diverse backgrounds. Movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, #RhodesMustFall, and #EndSARS represent a significant reconfiguration of African political thought. Yet, many policymakers and development agencies still struggle to fully grasp the essence of these movements—a confrontation between the African masses and emerging forms of imperialism and exploitation.

Global Trends and Local Responses

Globalization has facilitated the thriving of imperialism, racialism, oppression, populism, and militarization within the context of non-inclusive growth and political and economic liberalization. The continent has witnessed recurring mass uprisings by African youth from all regions since 2011. Some hail these uprisings as a “triumph of the oppressed and exploited,” a contemporary proletarian social revolution.

However, despite the initial euphoria surrounding these insurrections, real transformative changes in favor of African youth remain elusive. The situation for young people has worsened over the past decade, with a concurrent rise in authoritarian practices.

Youth globally are displaying a decisiveness and force that can no longer be ignored. Emerging from the slums, villages, townships, and suburbs of Africa, the specter of youth-led revolutions now pervades streets, parliaments, and cabinet meetings across the continent. This phenomenon is slowly reshaping African political thinking, with policymakers and development agencies only beginning to understand its full impact.

The so-called ‘Youth Question’ has often been relegated to polite conversations about the trajectory of development and economic structural transformation in Africa. For nearly two decades, since the onset of multipartyism, discussions about economic alternatives, agrarian revolutions, and radical redistribution have been taboo. Extensive efforts have been made since the late 1980s to obscure the real issues facing Africa.

African youth are demanding economic and political self-determination within the framework of the right to development. Maya Angelou’s words resonate deeply here: “There is nothing as tragic as a young cynic because it means that the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.” African youth firmly believe in the possibility of a different, more just Africa.

The systemic socio-economic and political pressures and repression are the primary causes of death among African youth. They endure chronic stress, exacerbated by state repression and the environmental impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, many African youths feel culturally disconnected from their families, communities, the economy, and society at large, due to pervasive exclusion. Unfortunately, young women are doubly affected by regressive cultural practices, economic exclusion, and rising sexual and gender-based violence in an increasingly militarized patriarchal society.

As youth face discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, and class, the impoverished also become vulnerable to recruitment by various elite and anti-state groups, leading to violent extremism or political violence. Overall, poverty, inequality, exclusion, and state repression and impunity are fueling a rising tide of youth-led revolution across Africa.

Deep Dive into Systemic Failures

At first glance, the tumultuous state of Africa indicates multiple systemic failures, including in leadership, electoral systems, liberal idealism, governance, ethics, professionalism, institutions, service delivery, economic management, state, market, and societal dynamics, and in the concepts of citizenship and followership.

A deeper examination into the continent’s soul – its history, economic structure, governance systems, political culture, and overall trajectory – reveals the true challenges at hand:

The prevailing system is fundamentally broken. The economic development trajectory and the political systems and institutions designed to support it serve only a few elites, who benefit disproportionately at the expense of the masses. This system has continually failed to produce significant transformations for women, youth, or peasants and has proven incapable of resolving issues of poverty, inequality, and exclusion.

Our current economic pathway does not and cannot foster liberty, freedom, self-determination, or self-reliance. Adherence to neoliberalism has not provided essential services like healthcare and education for all, nor has it encouraged skills development, value-adding, or the creation of locally vibrant economies. This system has also failed to ensure greater accountability and transparency from state elites.

This enduring system perpetuates poverty, particularly feminising it, and entrenches racism, classism, and a deep state. We face democracies without real choices, where elections are mere rituals leading to the betrayal of public trust in institutions and leadership or simply the recycling of the same gerontocracy.

The breakdown in social contracts has led to widespread anti-establishment sentiments among the youth, manifesting in radicalization while political populism thrives.

With systemic failures and the hijacking of institutions and constitutions, the Deep State becomes overt and unapologetic.

A hollowed-out state and soulless civil society organizations result in state elites, civil society elites, and the academic, military, bureaucratic, and business elites becoming mere echoes of the empire.

There is a global and local concentration of capital and power as well as the militarisation of society.

The COVID-19 pandemic era has underscored the links between global economic policies, decision-making in economics, science and technology, and the control of intellectual property rights (IPRs).

We see how instruments of domination are deployed. Transnational corporations and multinational corporations produce goods and services, while the local private sector, especially small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in sectors like agriculture, mining, telecommunications, transport, and infrastructure, serve as mere subcontractors, vendors, or touts for global monopolies and oligopolies.

There is now solid evidence of the extent to which surveillance is used to entrench dominance as monopolies and oligopolies covertly and overtly influence political power, electoral outcomes, and candidacies. This leads to a degradation and commercialisation of democracy, further resulting in a blatant mortgaging of policy processes and outcomes.

The legitimacy of the state and its leaders is compromised by clients, debtors, or comprador elites – effectively recolonised. Negotiated subordination occurs where mutual interests exist between local elites and international finance capital. We observe leaders becoming increasingly autocratic to defend economic interests and privileges in the face of social and political upheavals.

Future Perspectives

What do these observations imply for the future? African youth are not a homogeneous group; they are a diverse collective facing the same global, regional, and national structural challenges. The structural crises they confront cannot be transformed by simply integrating them into or representing them within the status quo – the current mess we find ourselves in.

Transformation requires a critical consciousness and a profound understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Only with this knowledge can specific strategies be developed to address the challenges we face collectively. Notably, the transformation of structural factors cannot arise solely from protest or entrepreneurship.

Significant work is required to address the root and stem issues at national, regional, and global levels.

Drawing inspiration from Thomas Sankara and Frantz Fanon, we recognise that transformation requires a certain degree of madness, and it is up to the current generation of youth to discover their mission, fulfill it, or betray it. The time to blame past generations has passed. African youth are actively seizing history and planning their futures through social struggle.

Through their actions at multiple levels, they aim to reverse the legacies of colonialism in social and economic policy and practice across Africa, encompassing education, health, housing, infrastructure development, technology access, financial inclusion, and research and development. They seek to dismantle the global system dominated by oligopolies and monopolies or to find alternatives to it.

Alternatives and the Way Forward

Domestic struggles against local or regional comprador classes are insufficient unless they include challenging the system of international institutions and donors that govern development agendas and control levers of power, often favoring the interests of white supremacists or the West above others.

African youth are striving to dismantle coloniality in local institutions, policies, and practices across all social sectors and the economy. They aim to move beyond mere behavioral changes among African elites to advocate for structural changes in the global, regional, and national economies.

Across Africa, protesting youth are working to dismantle supremacism – white supremacy, genocidal tendencies, exploitation of labor, land grabs, and the over-exploitation of natural resources; male supremacy/patriarchy; and human supremacy – that justifies the destruction of the planet and biodiversity to the detriment of future generations.