ZWELINZIMA VAVI | SA on the edge: a warning we can no longer ignore

We have warned, repeatedly, that the levels ofunemployment, poverty, inequality and corruption in this country are not sustainable. Too often those warnings have been dismissed even mocked as alarmist. But the lived reality of millions of South Africans tells a different story.

You cannot have 12.4 million unemployed people, with 62% of the population surviving below R1,558 per month, and expect social stability. You cannot deepen the inequalities inherited from apartheid and colonialism and assume that patience will last forever. There is anger in our communities, and it is justified.

It is most visible among the youth, a generation trapped in unemployment and exclusion, drifting into substance abuse, violence and despair. A generation losing hope. We saw a glimpse of what this anger can become in July 2021, after the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma.

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What unfolded was not simply unrest; it was an eruption of desperation. Lives were lost, businesses destroyed, jobs wiped out. For a brief moment, it forced a reckoning.

But that moment passed. We returned to business as usual. At the same time, the institutions that once gave direction to working-class anger have been weakened.

The trade union movement and broader civil society are not as strong, united, or rooted as they once were. This is partly the result of deindustrialisation and job losses, but also fragmentation, years of demobilisation and co-option. Resistance has not disappeared.

Across the country, communities continue to mobilise against housing shortages, water and electricity cut-offs, crime and gender-based violence, collapsing municipalities, and job losses. But these struggles are increasingly fragmented and localised. And in that fragmentation, a vacuum has opened.

Into that space are stepping forces that do not unite but divide. The “new hero” emerging in some sections of the marginalised is not grounded in the traditions of the liberation struggle. It is a figure rooted in tribal chauvinism, exclusion and anger.

We hear chants that weaponise identity. We see groups arming themselves, patrolling communities, deciding who belongs and who does not. They act as police.

They act as immigration officers. They act as courts.

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