By 2014, around 47% of mostly black South Africans continued to live in poverty, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. Widespread dissatisfaction with the slow pace of socio-economic transformation, government incompetence and maladministration, and other public grievances in the post-apartheid era, precipitated many violent protest demonstrations. In 2007, less than half the protests were associated with some form of violence, compared with 2014 when almost 80% of protests involved violence on the part of the participants or the authorities. The slow pace of transformation also fomented tensions within the tripartite alliance between the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.