Is Southern Africa About To Experience Its Own "Arab Spring"?
When the Arab Spring revolution started 10 years ago as a bunch of sporadic and isolated protests which followed the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi , a Tunisian unemployed graduate who police refused to operate his cart which he was using to make a living, no one could have predicted that they would eventually engulf the entirety of North Africa and the Middle-East region leading to the fall of many authoritarian and dictatorial governments from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Yemen. Is Southern Africa about to experience a similar period of revolt? The similarities are striking and can't be ignored. In Southern Africa, it started early June in Swaziland when protests erupted , sparked by the death of a 25-year old Law student Thabani Nkomonye at the hands of the police . Initially meant to address the issue of police brutality, the Swaziland protests eventually have grown to address the small kingdom's extensive socio-economic issues including lack of a democratic system,
