Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has changed his tune about the dangers of an economic underclass in South Africa, says official opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon.
In his regular internet column, SA Today, Leon noted on Friday that Manuel — who has been widely acclaimed for his fiscal prudence — said Cape Town would one day see the kind of riots that gripped Paris and other cities across France in November.
Quoting Manuel, Leon reported him as saying: “As Paris has its burning banlieues [suburbs] and New Orleans has its Lower Ninth Ward and Cancer Alley, so Cape Town has a measurable underclass.”
Leon noted that these were strong words and a strong warning coming from a finance minister.
“Yet, earlier this year, the minister sang a different tune. In February, while attacking the unemployment statistics, he said: ‘Sure, unemployment in this country is a problem, but to say unemployment is at 40% is incorrect. If that was the case, there would have been a total revolution.”
Leon noted that in the months since Manuel made these remarks, “thousands of people have taken to the streets all across South Africa in demonstrations against unemployment, neglect, and a government that has failed to listen”.
A new phrase, “service-delivery protest”, has entered the South African lexicon.
“And in scenes South Africans thought we had left far behind us, police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds of unarmed civilians.”
Leon said: “The African National Congress leaders do not understand. Economic growth is high, investor confidence is up and a growing number of poor people are entering the middle class. What, they wonder, could the people be complaining about?
“They forget that the number of unemployed South Africans has increased even as economic growth has climbed, so that well over eight million adults are out of work.”
While congratulating Manuel on the country achieving 5,1% growth over the first nine months of 2005, Leon warned that the 19th-century French philosopher and democrat Alexis de Tocqueville, in attempting to explain the French Revolution, observed that revolutions happen in times of rising expectations, “not when the people are most downtrodden”. — I-Net Bridge