Demonstrative: a global wave of protest

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Today, public sector workers in Zimbabwe will march for better pay amid the country's worst economic crisis in a decade. The demonstrations are just the latest flashpoint in a seemingly global conflagration of protest. In the past month on the show, we've looked at uprisings in Iraq, Chile, Lebanon, Hong Kong. Does anything tie all of them together? What is it about the world today that's bringing so many people onto the streets? Part of the answer may be economic distress. Part, perhaps, technology. But beneath all that, there are some natural human tendencies driving the demonstrations, and in Lebanon, even leading to love. Zimbabwe's protests have been spawned by years of deep-rooted economic mismanagement by the government. President Emmerson Mnangagwa took office in 2017 with with big promises to revive the economy after longtime authoritarian leader Robert Mugabe was ousted in a military coup.

Our country is going to be different and our relations all over the world are going to be normalized. I'm happy, happy. I'm totally happy. This is a change, a great change. 37 years of the same, same corporation. And we are happy that Mugabe is gone and he's gone for good.

Happy new Zimbabwe!

Yet now Zimbabwe has the world's second-highest inflation rate. Prices marked on a supermarket shelf can change by the time the customer reaches the checkout. The crisis has brought back painful memories of 2008, when inflation reached 500 billion percent, wiping out people's savings and causing Mr. Mugabe's government to abandon its currency.

The empty shelves in the shops speak of a nation on its knees.

In today's Zimbabwe, the situation is becoming more desperate by the day. It's already sparked plenty of unrest. In January, protests erupted after fuel prices more than doubled overnight.

Enough is enough.

Security forces responded violently, killing 17 people. The question is whether Mr. Mnangagwa's government will tolerate dissent at today's march.

People are expecting thousands of people to go out onto the streets today and protest in Zimbabwe.

Jonathan Rosenthal is our Africa editor.

There are some real concerns that today's protest may turn violent. In particular, there are worries about the security forces clamping down quite hard. The reason that people are concerned is that Zimbabwe's president, Emerson Mnangagwa, has set loose the police and the army on protesters in the past. In January, there were attempts to protest and people were beaten. Again, in August, there was a very small protest that took place. It had been banned. Security forces said they would arrest people who came out, and small numbers did turn out. And of course, it's little more than a year since the election in August of last year that also turned violent, where the police and army shot demonstrators who were saying the election had been rigged.

And so the protests this time around, who are the protesters and what do they want?

The protests at the moment are very much driven by the economy. It's much more about people struggling to get by rather than an overtly political protest. And the reason is that Zimbabwe's been in a slow-motion economic crisis for the past few years where its currency has been falling. It used to have a currency that was pegged to the The government has run out of dollars, so it's been essentially printing its own money. It's been producing things called bond notes. It's been producing a kind of electronic money. All of these have been steadily losing value. And of course, civil servants, who are the biggest group of unionized employees, have seen their pay rapidly falling by this devaluation of the currency and rampant inflation.

And so does the government even have the means to address those concerns?

In the short term, there is very little that the government can do. It is broke. It is facing recession. The finance minister is expecting growth to contract by about 6 to 7% this year. This year, there is very little wiggle room that the government's got to meet these demands.

To think of the notion of inflation and Zimbabwe is to think back a decade ago when, you know, you could get yourself a 500 trillion Zimbabwean dollar note. I mean, is there a link between what we're seeing now in the country and what we saw then?

That's absolutely right. Zimbabweans have this memory of the rampant hyperinflation that they had in 2008 that absolutely devastated the economy. And many people are now looking at the inflation rate, which the government has stopped reporting. So it's now up to economists to try to guess, and their estimates so that it's around 380, 400%. And of course, that not only brings back memories for Zimbabweans who are desperately trying to shop with what money they still have, we're also seeing disturbing echoes in the way in which the government is responding to this. So if one goes back to 2008, the finance minister at the time came out and said the normal laws of economics did not apply to Zimbabwe, and therefore he could print as much money as he wanted to, and that just fueled the hyperinflation. And we are seeing again that the central bank in Zimbabwe is saying what it sees is a shortage of currency, and it is is therefore introducing yet another new currency, which is going back to printing the old Zimbabwe dollar. And, you know, simply printing more money is not the way in which one deals with inflation.

So the economic situation that Zimbabwe faces now is entirely down then to government economic mismanagement?

Oh, it is absolutely the result of economic mismanagement that goes back decades. If one looks at the now late former president Robert Mugabe, who ruled from independence in 1980 until he was ousted in a coup in 2017, Mugabe Firstly overspent, ran these huge deficits. He then decided that it would be a good idea to grab the most productive assets in the country, the farms, the big commercial farms, and hand them out to his cronies who then mismanaged them. And we've seen ongoing economic mismanagement where the government has simply been unable to run a balanced budget, control its spending, and reassure investors that if they start putting money into irrigation on farms or mines or whatever it is that they want to invest in, that these assets won't just get grabbed. Now, of course, the government is not taking the blame for this. It's saying there is a drought and indeed the rains have been bad. It is also being particularly disingenuous when it blames sanctions. Western countries, US and EU, have imposed very targeted sanctions that are really targeted against the person and are punishment for being involved in gross human rights violations, whereas the broad range of Zimbabwean economic commerce is allowed to continue unabated.

So if we assume that the normal laws of economics do apply in Zimbabwe, what should the government be doing instead? How could it pull itself out of this mess?

The first thing to do is to simply get out of this crazy business of producing new currencies. Many people in Zimbabwe are simply saying, let's go back to the US dollar. The government cannot be trusted to print its own money. That would lead to quite a severe short-term economic shock, probably. But it is something that a previous opposition government of national unity did and stabilised the economy after the previous bout of hyperinflation. The second thing it needs to do is just to come clean on its major export earnings. Zimbabwe produces a lot of minerals, in particular diamonds. But there is very little transparency as to where the revenue from those government-controlled diamond mines are going. Many people suspect that it is disappearing into the pockets of senior people in the government and the military.

Do you think that all of that tells kind of a wider tale? I mean, what's your view on the outlook for the country now that it's shot of Mr. Mugabe and now under Mr. Mnangagwa? Aside from the current economic turmoil, do you think the prospects are good?

Zimbabwe has a real opportunity, and that opportunity was offered to it last year in July when it had its elections, and the West essentially lined up, said, you know, we're ready to support lending, we're ready to support debt relief and to get this economy back on its feet. But in return, what we expect is a clean election and no human rights violations. And that didn't happen. There is an opportunity now, given how deep the crisis is, for the government to put its hands up and essentially say, okay, we're willing to take this deal and to start enacting some real reforms. So I think in the protests today, we're really going to be seeing people coming out asking for change, a chance at hope. And we will see today whether the government listens to that or whether it reverts to its old tactic of simply sending in the security forces and beating protesters off the streets.

Jonathan, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. It's been great being with you.

Zimbabweans have plenty to be angry about. But looking around the world, it's clear they're not the only ones. Anyone trying to keep tabs on protest movements is finding it hard to keep up these days. This week, tens of thousands of demonstrators hit the streets in Pakistan, calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Imran Khan. Meanwhile, Chile has had to cancel two major global summits after the streets of Santiago filled with millions of people Protests there were sparked by a rise in metro ticket prices. From Baghdad to Beirut—

We came down here because we've been suffering for more than 30 years of poverty, of corruption.

From Catalonia to Hong Kong—

We can't believe that this kind of things can happen in Hong Kong. It's unreasonable, and Hong Kong citizens try to fight back.

People are on the streets and they're furious. Why are there so many demonstrations, and why now?

I think it is rare for so many countries in so many different parts of the world to be affected by protest movements of one sort or another.

Simon Long is our deputy digital editor. He's been reporting on demonstrations recently in Hong Kong and in London.

Not since, I suppose, the Arab Spring of 2011 have one seen so many apparently coordinated or simultaneous protests in one place. And even that was confined largely to one region. So I think one has to go back to the people power movements that swept Asia and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, early 1990s to see anything comparable in scale. And perhaps even further beyond that to the worldwide protests, of course, of the late '60s, the era of the Red Guards in China, the anti-Vietnam War protests and so on.

But all of these seem incredibly disparate thematically as well as geographically.

That's right. In those earlier protest movements, there did seem to be some sort of coherence, some sort of global or regional movement going on. This time, it's very hard to detect one.

So we shouldn't be looking for a single problem or set of problems that might link all of these?

Well, of course, analysts being analysts, that's what they do. And I think a number of people have come up with potential explanations for why we're seeing this now. One is economic, and of course the classic economic explanation comes from the far left, which would see this as just another paroxysm in the ultimate decline and fall of a dysfunctional capitalist system. That you've had basically capitalist governments pursuing what they see as neoliberal policies for a number of decades, and this is leading to hardship among the poor and less well-off in society, which is no longer sustainable. Beyond that, even those who are, broadly speaking, fans of free markets point to some trends in economies which might lead to more protests, widening inequality. Chile, for example, which appears to be, or had appeared to be, a haven of stability in Latin America, is on some measures one of the most unequal well-off countries in the world. So people do see that as one reason.

That sense of inequality and economic injustice now doesn't seem nearly as sort of pointed as it was, let's say, during the financial crisis when we didn't see this kind of global-scale outbreak of protests.

I think that's right, Jason. I think that's why this explanation doesn't really hold water, that yes, you can swallow all these arguments, but it doesn't really explain why now. And as you say, back when mass unemployment was far more of a reality or an imminent threat, there weren't the same number of protests around the world. So it doesn't really work as an explanation, no.

And so any other theories that you think hold more water?

Another one is demography, making the point that protesters by and large tend to be the young, that the world is still a relatively youthful place and an awful lot of people coming of age or peak protesting age, you might say, in their late teens, early 20s, having grown up in the years since the financial crisis. So linking it back to the economic period, that a lot of those people would've grown up since the financial crisis and so be perhaps more likely to take to the streets. A refinement on that argument is to look at higher education. And Neil Ferguson, a British historian, has pointed out that just as in the late 1960s, you had a surge in tertiary education around the world, so the same thing has happened in a lot of countries now so that you have a lot of university graduates or more university graduates than there are jobs to give them.

So in the absence of a compelling unifying explanation, we should just take this as a coincidence?

I think there's something going on. And I think another factor which we haven't mentioned yet is the spread of social media and in particular of the smartphone. It makes them much easier to organize and mobilize people. It means news of them travels fast, including across borders. And it makes them quite resistant to suppression. That in Hong Kong, for example, where The protesters like to describe themselves as like water. They've become very nimble, very mobile, and able to dodge where the police are and set up small-scale protests when they want. And I was recently in Hong Kong, for example, and there, one phenomenon that happened there, I thought, was when people put online a very moving rendition of a specially composed Hong Kong national anthem because they'd felt they didn't have their own. <LYRICS>So you're off to Hong Kong again.</LYRICS> And within days, less than days, mass renditions of this song would appear, would be performed in shopping malls around Hong Kong, apparently spontaneously. And that's the sort of thing that you can organize on a mobile phone very effectively.

You're not saying that all this can be pinned on the smartphone era, though.

So there's that. But more broadly, I think you have to look at why do people want to take to the streets in the first place? And one is that it's quite fun. You get a sense of solidarity. In many places, of course, people are risking their lives and/or certainly their physical safety, and one shouldn't minimize that. But if you look at a more peaceful demonstration like the mass Remain march, which happened in London on October 19th, this was a million people maybe joining to campaign for Britain remaining within the European Union. And it's a campaign that probably feels that it's basically losing, that Brexit is going to happen. And this was a chance to enjoy the solidarity of a million people who felt like you and take to the streets and enjoy it. So that's another factor. More important though, and the fundamental principle behind all of this, is that people take to the streets when they feel the normal political channels to get what they want are blocked.

But here again, that brings a kind of a why now feeling. People have felt disempowered, have felt that their vote doesn't do much, that the politicians themselves don't do much for as long as politicians have been around.

I think there are a number of reasons why it is acute at the moment. One is in some types of issues, particularly environmental ones, where the problems are so big that they transcend borders, they transcend national governments. And certainly transcend the power of individual voters as we perceive it. That the sense that how can you make a difference to climate change does make people feel very powerless. Another, I think, comes back to the smartphone world that we live in, in that, I mean, it's often said we live in sort of echo chambers where we tend to receive news that reinforces our own opinions and block out those that we disagree with. And that might have the effect of increasing that sense that the powers that be just simply not listening to us because you get the impression that everybody thinks like you and nothing is being done about it.

And if those social structures and those social media structures are a contributing factor here, then this is a glimpse at the new normal?

It would seem to be, wouldn't it? That if you're saying that this is not, as I am saying, it doesn't seem to be any coherent theme behind it, then there is no global development that is likely to put an end to this. This is something that seems to have become part of the way we live our lives now, that protests are going to become a regular part of daily life.

Thank you very much for your time, Simon.

Thanks for having me, Jason.

The idea that people might go en masse to a demonstration but partly because it's exciting and fun, seems to apply particularly strongly to Beirut's recent protests. [CHANTING] Beginning last month, Lebanese people have been protesting against a sclerotic government in which posts are divvied up along sectarian lines. Demonstrators have filled the main squares of many cities with crowds, but also with giant speakers. They dance as they sing anti-authoritarian slogans. Indeed, For some people, the energy of the crowds, the Lebanese flag face paint, the t-shirts with revolutionary slogans— they're all quite sexy, as a smartphone phenomenon is making clear.

So this is an Instagram account that was set up in the first couple of days of the protests, and it's called Thawra Crushes, Revolution Crushes.

Leila Molana Allen has been reporting from Lebanon for The Economist.

And the idea is that you take pictures of people that you see at the protests, and then you send them along. Usually with comments saying, oh, something like, I think this person is fabulous, please find them for me. And then their friends can tag them so that they can find out that you're interested. And it began— there was this joke on the first day of the protest that, oh God, you know, that feeling when you have to go down to the protest but you know you're going to run into all your exes. And then somebody thought, well, why don't we make it so that people can meet new people? So it started with a chat-up line that was, give me your number so I can wake you up for the protest in the morning. And the joke they run with is the chant here is "Killon yanni, killon," which means "all of them means all of them, get rid of all the politicians, we want all the old politicians to go." On Tharacrushers, they say, "We'll find your crushes for you, all of them means all of them." So taking pictures of protesters and looking for them to get tagged and what have you in what seems like might be a chaotic situation, I mean, is this not just a little bit creepy? That is a question people have asked, but the founder of Tharacrushers was very clear that if anybody asks her to take a photograph down, she will immediately. And of course, friends don't have to tag people. But it also speaks to the party atmosphere here that really has been spreading throughout the protests. There's been a little bit of violence, but most of it has been very happy. And people have brought their dogs down, they've brought their kids down, they bring down snacks and drinks, and they all share together. And that really has been one of the things here is spreading across the country, those connections moving between different sectarian divides that traditionally have defined protest movements here and defined politics here. And people coming together just under the Lebanese flag. And that was actually the idea behind Thawra Crushes, was that people could date between sects, could see people they would probably never meet otherwise, and find out who they are and go and speak to them.

And so is it working? Have any romances sprung out of, of the attempt?

There have been a few, yes. The local paper, the Daily Star, found a few people who had successfully found their crushes and been spending time with them. They asked to remain anonymous, but it seem to be working. And that's not the only romance that's cropped up in these protests. There's a woman called Malak Heretz who became very famous. She went viral on the first day of the protests. There was a politician's bodyguard who started firing into the air, and she went straight for a karate kick to the groin, and it was caught on video and spread across the country. And again, art came out of this. People made graffiti of it. She became a symbol. They wrote a song about her as well. But she actually got married in the middle of the protests. She had met her husband, Mohammad, in 2015 during the protests then, and they're both died-in-the-wall activists. They've been sleeping at the roadblocks every night, and they decided that this was, you know, what they wanted to do. This was the truest expression of their love. And so in the middle of the protest, a few days later, she got married, obviously covered by all the local news channels, in a big white dress with people chanting all around her.

There's a little bit of dissonance here in that the protesters do have a serious agenda, and you kind of, you describe a party atmosphere, a romance-minded atmosphere. Do you think that the Lebanese people can achieve their political goals with such a lighthearted atmosphere around it all?

That's right, and there has been some frustration here from people who feel that people are only paying attention to the fact that there's a party happening and not to the real revolutionary atmosphere that they are trying to create. But they really they firstly do have serious demands. And then I was speaking to a young man last night, and he said to me, we love this country, but we hate it too, and we have felt that we have to leave and that we have no chance here, so we have to leave the parts of it we love behind and go off somewhere else. And it's like a ray of sunlight has come into my life. For the first time, I really have hope.

Leila, thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, and you can subscribe to The Economist at economist.com/radiooffer. 12 issues for $12 or £12. See you back here tomorrow.