On a street corner in New York City in September, a beggar had this message scribbled on a cardboard hanging around his neck: "Give me a dollar or I’m voting Trump." Quite a few passers-by saw the humour in the message and chuckled as they walked on.
That was six weeks before the November election, which delivered Donald Trump to the White House.
Not many would have bothered to take in the deep meaning concealed in the humorous request for cash. The election result shows that the beggar’s message was deadly serious.
Here at home, we have reduced the largest ever number of our own compatriots and guests from the neighbouring states to such a state of poverty that they stand begging on street corners while the well-heeled cruise obliviously around them. Because of that, sooner or later, we will take collective punishment from these "forgotten masses".
Trump has been ridiculed as a hopeless clown and demagogue, but his triumph over establishment candidate Hillary Clinton is a broader version of what the beggar demands: expand the benefits of the globalised, mainstream economy to the forgotten, disaffected masses outside of the establishment, or face the (really) ugly consequences.
While the establishment — the political party bosses, the donors, the institutions and the middle classes — were laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, the clown cruised into the presidency. And that’s because he’s promised "the forgotten masses" he would deal with the establishment for them.
Trump prevailed by promising these masses he’d build an "artistically beautiful" wall on the border with Mexico to keep out the millions flocking into the US. He also promised to "bring back to America" the many jobs "stolen" by China, Mexico, Japan and other cheap production bases. The election result shows that the average American is tired of seeing the middle classes and the wealthy, along with China and Mexico, getting rich while US jobs are exported. "I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created," said Trump, according to The Washington Post. Many a city in the US will be "a big fat beautiful beneficiary of these new jobs", he said, with typical bombast.
A wave of protest
Trump played right into people’s annoyance with globalisation when he threatened that unless America’s Ford Motor cancelled its plan to build a huge manufacturing plant in Mexico, it would face a 35% import tax on any of its vehicles entering the US.
This was the US’s response to the rapidly growing anti-establishment wave sweeping across the world. The Greeks had their turn when they elected the Leftist Syriza party in January 2015 on a ticket to win back power from the establishment in Brussels. The Brexit referendum result in the UK reveals how Britain’s masses struck back.
In SA a revolt by "the forgotten masses" would be a lot uglier than the threat posed by Trump or Brexit, or a Greek bond default. The jobless, officially 27.1% of the population in the quarter to September (the real 36% unemployment rate is just too embarrassing), is the single biggest voting segment in SA.
Poor university students, whom we are reducing to begging bystanders, are not yet done with their demands for free education. The many service delivery protests are a manifestation of the anger in our communities at the hardship of their joblessness. A combination of these — organised university students, the community protesters and the unemployed — would be a dangerous cocktail not only sweeping the ruling party from power, but also striking a severe blow against the establishment.
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