Unrest cannot be attributed only to poverty and hunger – experts

THE recent unrest should not be attributed purely to hunger and poverty, as the unrest was a manifestation of myriad issues, some of the country’s thought leaders have said.

This emerged during a webinar titled “The Serious State of the Nation: Where to from here?” whose panellists included Dr Imtiaz Sooliman of the Gift of the Givers, political commentator Khaya Sithole, Professor Leila Patel and Tracey Henry, chief executive of Tshikululu Social Investments.

Sithole said: “What we’ve seen now is just a snapshot of what South Africa’s long-term trajectory will be like unless we do something drastic, unless we do something radical, and unless we do something that is responsive to the state of the nation as it is, rather than what we wish it was.”

Sooliman said that to address unemployment, instead of the youth going to university and embarking on dead-end studies, the focus should be on what was relevant to the country.

Patel, professor of social development studies at the Centre for Social Development in Africa, said several factors were at the heart of the unrest.

“It’s not so (simple as) to automatically attribute the problem purely to hunger. That might be one factor, but there it’s a complicated situation, and it did start with the demand for the release of former president Jacob Zuma, and we shouldn’t gloss over that. Some say this was an insurrection, and some say it was an elite kind of insurgence; others refer to social psychology that helps us understand mob or unrest behaviour. And then the question is why is it that in some communities where this is this kind of abject poverty we didn’t see the violence?” said Patel.