South Africa’s Black twitter community was at it again on Saturday, tweeting about the political events that were happening in Sri Lanka, as thousands of protesters broke into Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s residence demanding for his immediate resignation.
Since April this year, Sri Lanka has been hit by nationwide protests against the deteriorating living conditions, lack of fuel, food and essentials.
The island country located in south Asia is experiencing its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948 which resulted from a contraction of foreign tourism due to the pandemic, that subsequently led to the shortage of foreign currency reserves in the country.
As Black twitter followed the Sri Lankan demonstrations closely online, the hashtag #UnionBuilding started creeping up the trends list, with many people calling for the same thing to happen in South Africa.
“It might seem like this is just about Sri Lanka, but this is a victory for the working-class fight against neoliberalism everywhere,” one of the tweets read.
“Protesters broke through the front gate of Sri Lanka’s Central Bank. They are finally figuring out who the real target of their anger should be,” another tweet read.
Former DA member Phumzile Van Damme, who’s often been labelled as a ‘Colonial Clerk’ posted this on her twitter account: “Why is there an uprising in Sri Lanka? Amongst others, the consequences government’s financial & economic mismanagement on the lives of the people of Sri Lanka – food shortages, inflation, rising fuel prices, 13-hour daily power cuts. Sound familiar? A cautionary tale? One hopes.”
One particular tweet that appeared to be gaining significant traction on this hashtag read as follows: “This is going to happen to South Africa, Union Building very soon. Cyril Ramaphosa and his partners in crime must resign otherwise we are coming after them. We want to live in a country that is ruled by law.”
