15 September 2025 | 12:32 CAT
3-minute read

Nepal’s Social Media Ban and Westbury’s Dry Taps: Fury at Failed Leadership Fuels Parallel Protests

From the crowded streets of Kathmandu to the dry taps of Westbury, ordinary people are reaching a breaking point. Across continents, residents say they are betrayed by leaders who appear indifferent to daily hardship. In Nepal, a sudden social-media blackout in early September 2025 ignited nationwide protests led by Generation Z. In South Africa, the persistent failure of water infrastructure has driven Johannesburg neighbourhoods such as Westbury and Ivory Park into repeated demonstrations.

Speaking on Radio Islam International, political journalist Qaanitah Hunter drew striking parallels between the two crises.

“The situation between Nepal and South Africa are very similar in that people are used to failing service delivery, you have an economy that’s stagnant in both countries as well as the fact that you have heightened corruption,” she said.

Nepal’s unrest began when the government blocked major social platforms, ostensibly to curb “misinformation.” But the ban followed years of rising youth unemployment and widening inequality. According to Human Rights Watch, security forces killed at least 20 young protesters during the first week of clashes.

Hunter noted that the ban “represented the elites and the government essentially throttling the assertion or the efforts by citizens, especially young people, to survive and to make do despite government failures.”

South Africa faces its own tinderbox. Johannesburg’s water crisis—exacerbated by years of under-investment, leaks and mismanagement—has left many residents without reliable supply. The Auditor-General’s 2024 report found that municipal water boards lost more than 40% of treated water to leaks and theft, while billions of rand in infrastructure grants went unspent. This comes after the national “War on Leaks” programme spent R5 billion between 2015 and 2019 but trained fewer than a thousand artisans, failing to repair the network.

For Hunter, the issue is not just technical failure but political disdain.

“When it hits at something so personal which is a basic human right which is access to water it becomes, you know, more than just a theoretical issue of corruption of mismanagement,” she explained.

Her reporting from Rustenburg found officials returning millions in unused funds while blaming “water mafias” for shortages. Residents, she said, now view official explanations with “complete disdain” after years of promises and little change.

The parallels with Nepal extend beyond infrastructure. Hunter pointed to a generational shift: young people rejecting entire political systems rather than campaigning for a single opposition party. She referenced similar youth-driven movements in Bangladesh, which toppled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024, and Kenya’s protests over tax hikes.

“What they are fed up with is an entire system and so what characterises Gen Z protests is a singular flame that leads to a very deliberate effort to say the entire system must be overhauled,” she said.

In Johannesburg, community activists warn of a similar mood. The South African Human Rights Commission has repeatedly declared access to clean water a constitutional right, yet the Department of Water and Sanitation admits that more than a third of municipalities are in a “critical” state of collapse. President Cyril Ramaphosa recently conceded that “water is a lot more important” than electricity, promising emergency interventions. But local residents report continuing outages and sluggish repairs.

Hunter cautioned that unless leaders treat water security as an immediate priority, protests will escalate.

“I think water, as we’ve seen in these protests in Ivory Park, we’ve seen it in Westbury, is an example that it could become this for South Africans,” she said, warning that youth disillusionment could spark a broader reckoning.

Listen to the Debrief Report on Sabaahul Muslim with Moulana Sulaimaan Ravat.