On 17 November last year a 26-year-old Tunisian man set himself on fire in front of the governor's office in the regional city of Sidi Bouzid. The immediate cause of his dramatic - and ultimately fatal - action was an altercation with a female official who slapped him in public when he attempted to stop her from confiscating the cart he used for selling fruit and vegetables, having earlier been denied a licence by the authorities.
It is to be borne in mind that he was tolerably well-educated - he had passed his baccalaureate - but had been unable to find suitable work in an area of high unemployment. As it also happened, his family's once thriving farm, where they grew olives and almonds, ran into problems when the price of those commodities plummeted in the market as a result of the worldwide recession, and the bank foreclosed. Selling fruit and vegetables was the only way he could sustain himself. In a country where the government took its responsibilities towards its own people more seriously, he would probably have been able to get a small grant to help him grow his business given his evident desire to be a productive member of his society where the alternative would have been to steal.
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