April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

significance of these riots. The human rights website, “Algeria Watch”,
commented that: “Very few Algerians are against the mobilisation of young
people; in street conversations, most of them find it legitimate, in a
country where other ways out are blocked, and the ordinary means of
expression are absent. The parallels with the events of October 1988 are
commonly pointed out amongst the oldest ones.” That year, the huge
social crisis facing the country led to a series of riots, walk outs and
strikes, which ultimately led to the downfall of the monolithic one-party
rule of the FLN. Bloody repression by the army left several hundreds
people dead, and the lack of an independent workers’ left political force
to drive the revolt forward was exploited in the aftermath by reactionary
Islamist forces, which plunged the country into a terrible civil war for a
decade.
As neighbouring Tunisia illustrates, the iron grip of a repressive regime and
the lack of basic democratic rights, which have contained opposition and
frustration for so long, means that once such energy has been released, it
can go much further and take an extremely explosive turn. Commenting on
the prospects of such a movement, Mohamed Zitout, a former Algerian
diplomat, told Al Jazeera: “It is a revolt, and probably a revolution, of an
oppressed people who have, for 50 years, been waiting for housing,
employment, and a proper and decent life in a very rich country.” If it is
not yet a revolution, the possibility of the present movement taking on
revolutionary dimensions is clearly present, in a country where the
traditions of resistance of the oppressed are ancestral. The attitude of the
working class, which has not yet entered the scene as such, will be
decisive in determining the development of these protests.
Accumulated anger has been bursting out simultaneously in many areas,
shared and assisted by internet facilities such as facebook, youtube or
twitter, cutting across the attempts by the State media to cover up the
scale of what is happening. Like in Tunisia, the violent repression deployed
by the regime as a response (in Tunisia, around 20 people have been
reported shot dead during demonstrations, while in Algeria, at least 5
people have been killed) has only helped to inflame people’s anger even
more. Unsurprisingly, the ongoing violent repression and killing of
demonstrators has benefited from the silence and complicity of Western
‘democratic’ governments, who, at best, have limited themselves to
expressing their ‘concern’.
300 people from Tunisian and Algerian backgrounds gathered on Sunday
afternoon in Marseille to demand an end to repression in the Maghreb. The
CWI is asking for the immediate release of all people arrested because of
their involvement in protests in Tunisia and Algeria, and is encouraging
similar actions wherever possible.
Not just a food riot
This tsunami of riots does not come like thunder from a calm sky. Already
for months, a revolt has been brewing in Algeria. According to the daily
newspaper, Liberté, an average of almost 9,000 riots and ‘troubles’ each
month took place in 2010 alone. For months, workers at companies in
Algeria went on strike one after another. In March of last year, we wrote:
“Strike after strike, protest after protest, are transforming the country
into a social cauldron ready to explode at any time.” This is increasingly
being confirmed by the recent events. The straw that broke the camel’s
back was the recent dramatic rise in food prices, which have risen by
between 20 and 30% since the beginning of the month. This is particularly
the case for oil, flour and especially sugar, the price of which has
increased by 80% in the last three months alone.