All over South Africa, statues and memorials deemed colonial are being vandalised and knocked off their pedestals. African immigrants are being killed and run out of town. South Africa is a nation in search of a revolutionary catharsis.

I’ve often wondered what the entry on South Africa at the turn of the 21st century would look like in a concise history of the world written in 300 years time, one of those enormous books (if we still have paper) that covers a century every couple of paragraphs.

Might it possibly go something like this: ‘Colonialism in South Africa was extended for decades through a state policy of racial segregation called ‘apartheid’ (1948 -1994). Resistance reached such a level that it threatened to destroy the economic system itself. A peaceful transition to a multi-party democratic system (1994) with greater civil liberties was negotiated to preserve the elite. However, this political solution failed to address the miserable social conditions of millions who were now living in poverty. Unemployment soared and economic hardship deepened. After 21 years …?’ Perhaps it will be illustrated with a picture of a statue of Nelson Mandela.

How that entry will end, with what happened after 21 years, is today’s concern.

One could argue that the struggle against apartheid was not only a fight for equal rights but also one long riot for greater service delivery. By the 1980s, South Africa was a pressure cooker threatening to explode. The solution was to let out some steam by doing away with apartheid and introducing universal suffrage.

Student protests in South Africa, 1976. Photo: Bongani Mnguni/Gallo Images

The erstwhile revolutionary leaders soon started their own accumulation strategies, using political capital as a means of entry. Other routes were mostly blocked or not available to them (for a host of reasons).

We now have an ever distant political elite enriching themselves through privileged access to black economic empowerment deals, legalized corruption in the form of massive salaries and bonuses, sinecure positions or outright theft of taxes and state resources.

At first, the new elite was careful not to kill the goose that it was told laid the golden eggs, but were content to merely be seen strangling it in public for political show.

But now, systemic poverty, intractable unemployment, and soaring inequality are turning up the heat on the cooker once more. The population is restive; the political response slow or not forthcoming. While preserving so-called white monopoly capital, greed, short-sightedness and corruption among the political classes – “black on black apartheid” as one protestor put it – has snowballed to such a degree that South Africa’s economy is in jeopardy.

How is the steam to be let out of the pressure cooker this time? Bringing Zuma to power on a tide of populist fervour has ironically only tightened the lid.

Protesters on a rampage in the Durban CBD, lashing out at foreign-owned shops. Photo viqa DailyMaverick.co.za

Looking at the South African news, the solution would appear to be through lynching African immigrants (“they steal our jobs”) and toppling statues (“whites are richer than ever”). We are a nation in search of a revolutionary catharsis in the absence of being able to successfully make real material change. We fought for freedom and all we got was democracy. We fought for liberation so we wouldn’t have to work. We didn’t struggle to be poor.

As much as I cared for the institution, I loathed the fact that I went to a university named after that robber baron Rhodes, whose only redeeming quality was his homosexuality, though even that he seems to have managed to pervert.

The Rhodes must fall campaign has achieved iconic status in the media, but it is at best a flashpoint. For all its rhetoric, in the bigger picture, it’s about intellectual and black middle class frustrations and student power games within the SRC, and has little if any impact on bread and butter issues. It’s cathartic, it’s fulfilling, but it’s an exaggerated victory. And it terrifies some white people because they see the statue as a metonym for their race, especially when a burning tyre is placed around its neck (as happened in Uitenhage).

For too long, we’ve had a window-dressing ANC government. I suppose to have a window-dressing revolutionary movement is to be expected.

Unable to cut upwards, the mob cuts sideways ­­– killing and hounding out of town Somalis, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Malawians, many no better off than themselves. Unable to attack “white” capital directly, we go around knocking over statues. Any old statue is suddenly deemed a colonial statue, even war memorials.

Screenshot of the defaced Paul Kruger statue in Pretoria, South Africa.

It reminds me of when a certain politician referred to the Renaissance and medieval artworks in the National Gallery as the “apartheid art” collection.

Mugabe has kept colonial street names all over Harare (there’s even a Selous Road and a Selous Avenue) and his government has repeatedly over the years resolutely stood behind preserving Rhodes’s bones at his burial site outside Bulawayo. It is fun to dance on the grave of your enemy, but how does that put food on the table or keep the lights on? It’s current government that needs to change and the economic system, not the curios of history.

Julius Malema, leader of the EFF, which has been at the forefront of bashing statues and accomplishing very little in terms of statutes, told the Cape Town Press Club last year that what one does not want is “an unlead revolution, [it will be] anarchy if you do not have leadership addressing the issues”; presumably he meant in his absence.

To return to our future encyclopedia, which by the way is written during an era of socialist utopia a few hundred years from now: After 21 years, revolution was once again in the air. A new round of oppression began …

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