Green, Yellow and Impeachment: Brazil vs South Africa
South Africa and Brazil. We share the good (great beaches, fab climate) and the bad (flagging economies, falling exchange rates, possible junk status, a government often charged with corruption, and a president threatened with impeachment). But that’s where it ends – or it did this weekend, when the lower house in Brazil’s congress voted to impeach President […]
South Africa and Brazil. We share the good (great beaches, fab climate) and the bad (flagging economies, falling exchange rates, possible junk status, a government often charged with corruption, and a president threatened with impeachment).
But that’s where it ends – or it did this weekend, when the lower house in Brazil’s congress voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff. (A bid to impeach President Jacob Zuma on 5 April failed.) Thousands of Brazilians in yellow and green took to the streets to celebrate the impeachment vote on Sunday night.
Brazilians have been protesting in the streets for months now, many of them patriotically dressed in the colours of their flag, green and yellow, which, ironically, are the same colours as the ANC. That has made the protests seem like déjà vu to South Africans.
Rousseff, once one of the most popular leaders in the world, has seen her popularity plummet due to a bad economy and a scandal plaguing the seminational petroleum benemoth Petrobras.
An impeachment crowd in Brazil:
A non-impeachment crowd in South Africa:
