Trouble seldom arrives in the garb one expected. Sixteen months ago, in response to the coming pandemic, SA locked down in ways tailor-made to provoke the poor. People were shut into crowded townships under a military-style siege. Those who broke the rules were subjected to public humiliation. Millions were cut off from their livelihoods without adequate compensation. At the time I thought SA would be lucky to see out lockdown without a rebellion.
It turned out that circumstances mattered. People were afraid of the virus. People believed their government took such extreme measures because it was in the public interest. People were extraordinarily acquiescent.
The quietude of the poor instilled in me a dose of cynical complacency. If this doesn’t provoke rebellion, I thought, nothing will. After all, the poor are too weak, too lacking in agency, to resist. It is more with privileged insiders, people with voice and muscle, that potential trouble lies.
And on this front things seemed to be going well too. After a period of fragility, President Cyril Ramaphosa had stamped his authority on the ANC. His allies were in control of three previously querulous provinces. Ace Magashule had apparently been brought to heel, despite a broken justice system failing to do its job.
And then, out of the blue, two sources of trouble — the fractious privileged in the ANC and the fury of the poor — met to wreak the perfect storm. It could not be more bitter that the trigger was the jailing of Jacob Zuma, a man who caused enough destruction to bring poverty for generations to come.
Those who say we must choose between two rival explanations for the violence — a conspiracy among the elite versus the desperation of the poor — are surely wrong. Why must we choose between them? It is so obviously both. Nobody can set fire to a field that is not already parched.
The geography through which the violence coursed in its first hours is old and familiar. The killing fields of KwaZulu-Natal; the area around the Jeppe Hostel in central Johannesburg; the old war zones in Alexandra. Violence has never died in these places; it has just worn different faces. The killing during the transition to democracy; the so-called “xenophobic” mobs — memories of the spilling of blood have never been laid to rest.
But there is something new this time, and the novelty is vastly important. However severe previous episodes of violence, they were corralled by apartheid geography. In 1992, the country went on as normal while townships across the East Rand burned. In the 1980s, half of SA rose in insurrection; the other half went to work.
This is different. The violence is aimed at the most glaring symbols of plenty: shopping malls, warehouses, factories. The circuits along which goods make their way to the nation are being systematically looted. This has been the stuff of white nightmares for more than 300 years; now the nightmares of the privileged have entered the real world. No matter how conspiratorial its source, this is as close to a rebellion against inequality as SA has ever come.
One of the tasks of the moment is to end the violence before it provokes war. Scenes of vigilantes versus looters, the security forces nowhere in sight, are a recipe for protracted instability. Another is for the law to go after those who lit the fire. The conspiracy must be outed in open court, the guilty locked away.
In the longer term, SA needs to relook at the welfare of its people. The first 15 years of democracy coincided, in part, with a commodities super cycle. It was something of blessing. Life got better, literally for everyone. Over the last decade, life has been getting worse for most. The last few days have shown what happens when this goes on for too long.
Until now the National Treasury has held the line that SA cannot afford a basic income grant, and there is no doubt that the price is dear. But the question now is whether SA can afford its absence.
• Steinberg is a research associate at Oxford University’s African Studies Centre.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.