As nations stumble towards collapse, there’s inevitably speculation about what the tipping point will be and when it will happen.
In truth, there’s rarely a single event that can be foreseen and, if not circumvented, will trigger the final implosion. Rather, there are a series of cumulatively critical moments that, unfortunately, are often most clearly discernible in the cracked rear-view mirror only after the crash has occurred.
In South Africa, one of the most worrying potential tipping points for the ordinary citizen is the to-the-bone erosion of law and order.
At a white-collar crime level, it can be seen in the looting of state assets to the tune, by government estimates, of R1 trillion. At a criminal violence level, it can be seen not only in some of the worst murder, rape and assault markers in the world, but also by a sense of growing public anarchy.
Public violence is approaching levels last seen in the political uprisings of the mid-1980s. Then, it was brought under tenuous control by the National Party government unleashing its own massive, retaliatory violence.
Now, public unrest is mostly unpoliced and has become so ubiquitous as to be unremarkable. Messages on neighbourhood WhatsApp groups regarding missing pets and potholes are routinely interspersed with
warnings about stone-throwing mobs to be avoided when going shopping.
The national broadcaster has developed a format that is as mundane to locals as it must be scary to overseas visitors. After the news and the weather, the traffic report now includes, as rote, a long list of roads, intersections and highways to avoid because of violent protests and fiery barricades.
Almost any of these incidents is a microcosm of all that is failing in SA society. There’s a grievance - often real but blown up out of all proportion - combined with the assumption by the aggrieved that any means of obtaining redress is justifiable and that they will not suffer serious consequences for criminal acts.
Take the ongoing student riots at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, with a professor hospitalised on Thursday after being assaulted with a brick. Students who have been reluctant to join the protests have been assaulted.
So far, this year, the UKZN
students, numbering about 1 000 out of an enrolment of close on 50 000, have burnt down the HIV-clinic and two campus security offices.
The SAPS nationwide strategy seems to be one of containment, trying to prevent the violence from spreading. As SAPS put it, the police will monitor protests and “take appropriate action when protesters commit a crime”. But at the universities, arrests have been few and far between, and when they have occurred, it seems, they have mostly been by varsity security.
It’s not all the fault of the SAPS.
It must be wearisome for the cops to see their best efforts thwarted by a supine and endlessly accommodating political establishment.
Fees Must Fall thug Kanya Cekeshe, who was sentenced to eight years jail for public violence - trying to set a van full of cops alight - of which three years were suspended, spent less than two in prison, following a campaign supported by the likes of former public protector Thuli Madonsela, for mercy to be extended to the “political
prisoner”.
It is not coincidence that at many incidents of public disorder can be seen the red berets of the EFF. It’s not clear whether they are merely enthusiastic participators in existing chaos or orchestrating it. Or both.
What is clear, however, is that the ANC government is incapable of acting forcefully against any public violence that has attached to it even the vaguest connotation of leftist political action. To do so, it fears, would be to strengthen the EFF and to weaken its credibility and support among an increasingly militant youth.
Unfortunately, the government is absolutely right. And, even more unfortunately, that means we are sliding towards one of the most important triggers of a failed state - widespread and uncontrollable mob violence, fomented by sinister populist forces.
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* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.