Discontent is growing as the strike season, which started some months ago when threats of tools being downed started being made in the mining sector, continues unabated.
Students have marched on Parliament, into Johannesburg and Cape Town, and continue to protest against any sort of fees at tertiary level. Parliament turned violent again this week when protesters demanded an end to outsourcing - generally a way companies use to keep costs down.
Every other week or so, there is a protest through the dirty streets of Johannesburg - be it the EFF or Numsa - calling for economic freedom and decent salaries.
And now there’s a drought, with large areas in Gauteng running out of water and people being killed over the commodity elsewhere.
It’s almost as if the heat wave has raised anger temperatures as people have finally had enough. Enough of not being paid what they are worth, enough of shoddy service delivery, and enough of money lasting for fewer days each month. And enough of going to bed hungry because there just isn’t enough cash.
According to the UN’s World Food Programme, one in nine people don’t have enough food to lead a healthy, active life.
The economic situation is a grim reality, and I don’t see it improving any time soon. We’ll know in just more than a week whether the economy is in a recession or not, but even if gross domestic product doesn’t contract, things will get tougher.
Food will become more expensive because of the drought, that will push inflation higher and the South African Reserve Bank could well hike rates when it meets again next week.
Merry Christmas. Not. In addition to houses and cars costing more to pay off, it looks increasingly likely that petrol will cost more from December.
It’s like the Grinch that stole Christmas. And it’s no wonder tempers are frayed.
The world is increasingly one of two halves, with those that have getting richer and filling their opulent homes with more and more goodies, and those who are battling to scrape together a living finding each month harder than the last.
And then there are those who seem ridiculously wealthy, and their lives seem to come out of some soapie; not reality.
Take taxi driver turned financier, Chinese tycoon Liu Yiqian, who this week stunned the art world with his record-setting purchase of a famed Modigliani nude costing more than $170 million.
“Nu Couche”, or “Reclining Nude”, painted by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani in 1917-18, sold to Liu after a frantic nine-minute bidding war at a Christie's auction in New York on Monday.
Then there was the $70.53 million a work that looks like little more than blackboard scrawls fetched on Wednesday - a new record for painter Cy Twombly.
“Untitled”, which was a new record, was produced by the artist as part of his apparently acclaimed Blackboard series in 1968. He used oil-based house paint, wax crayon and pencil on canvas.
Twombly, who used to be an army cryptographer, painted six bands of repeated loopy lines on a gray background.
Then there was the large, pink diamond that sold for $28.55 million on Tuesday, followed by someone setting a world record by spending $48.4 million on the rare and flawless “Blue Moon Diamond”.
My word. I cannot imagine the opulence. It seems so wrong somehow.
And yet, we all aspire to be that wealthy, even if we don’t admit it.
Which is why we need an environment that enables, and makes it possible for people to grow themselves into what they want to. Then SA can stop being the country of our discontent.
But, to get there, we need to also get involved, and not just partake in passive clicktivism.
* Nicola Mawson is the online editor of Business Report. Follow her on Twitter @NicolaMawson or Business Report @busrep.
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