EDITOR – In the past 12 months South Africans have been exposed to a new brand of politics both inside and outside of Parliament.
It would appear as if the old book of politics has been discarded and there’s no rule book to replace it. Since 1994 the ANC has felt threatened as they have now that the EFF has come onto the political stage and its evident that the ANC’s armour has been dented.
Simultaneously, we have also witnessed a change in the way protests have taken shape. Now the masses have changed their tactics and they have almost returned to their old ways of demonstrating and this a more violent aggressive way of getting the attention of the Government. We have witnessed the burning of schools, something that never happened in a long time and then with the Fees Must Fall Campaign, the burning of libraries and laboratories and other strategic facilities on university campuses, something that used to happen 30 years ago.
This change of stance by disenchanted masses is typical of the trend in most countries when the liberation struggle heroes have no more to offer and its evident that the ANC has lost their magic with the masses. Nowhere in Africa are the liberation struggle political formations still in government except in Angola and Zimbabwe, where dictatorial regimes are still hanging on and rule by the sword.
Essentially, the restless masses and the restless students have reached the point at which there’s nothing to lose and also acknowledge that the ANC does not have the power and the will to take them on and they have found their space in this lapse of power to maximise their gains.
We will witness the victory of the masses and the victory of the students before the next planned general election and this will support the cyclic theory of history, in terms of which, history repeats itself.
Sicario
Durban