'Angry nation' on verge of an Arab Spring?
Anger helped bring an end to apartheid but what is it doing to South Africa now? The recent high profile death of a Mozambican taxi driver tortured by South African police provoked Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, to sound an alarm. South Africa, she said, was “an angry nation” on the brink. Taxi driver Mido Macia was quiet, unassuming. He'd lived in South Africa 17 years. He was tied to the back of a police vehicle in a Gauteng township and dragged through the streets. He was later found dead in police custody. It is part of a disturbing pattern of police brutality targeting black foreigners as the number of economic and political refugees balloons. Mass unemployment (70% of young have no secure employment) is building resentment. "Immigrants have lowered the wage rate, there's no doubt about that, and whole shifts of workers have been fired in one go and replaced by immigrants who have no union representation,” Patrick Bond, Director of the Centre for Ci...