World Social Forum

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the evolution of neo-world order has been a twin process, with one side characterized by persistent efforts to consolidate it and another contesting it and calling for the transformation of the core ideas of this order, and their implementation at the national level. In January 1984, Tunisia’s political landscape, for instance, was marked by a week of what is commonly referred to as the ‘bread riot’ (Zghal, 1995), an uprising that emerged following the signing of a bill dismantling the compensatory framework that had kept the prices of bread and other cereal products stable for many years. The state introduced the bill during a time of deepening economic crisis and the ascendancy of the neo-liberal development discourse. The ‘bread riot’ began in the village of Al-Mabrouka on 3 January, 1984 at 5.00 p.m., with 200 people marching from a European-owned textile company that had been established as part of the effort to open up the economy and create enabling conditions for foreign direct investment. The protest, led by female factory workers, saw villagers marching to various local sites representing state authority chanting ‘poor, poor, people, bread now costs 170 Millimes!’ (ibid.: 107). Political protests emerging out of economic crisis and the introduction of neo-liberal economic strategies embodied in structural adjustment policies (SAPS) also characterized Zambia in the 1980s.