What a moment for theorists

The past week has been a satisfying time, not only for rioters and looters.

Equally quick to exploit the breach of rationality and common sense have been woke social theorists and obfuscating politicians.

Anyone who ever read a sociology tract at university or been part of a Marxist reading circle has been gifted the perfect opportunity to construct a defining explanation as to why SA is burning.

As with all grand theories, it ends up being an exercise in taking observable phenomena and then distorting, manipulating or discarding the inconvenient parts that contradict your ideological template.

New Frame, the avowedly “social justice media publication”, was quick off the mark to peg the turmoil as food riots by the poor that are turning “the wheel of history [by] appropriating the bread of life”.

It writes that in Durban, “grassroot activists” who obviously lack televisions to watch the preference of looters for wide-screen televisions over bags of mealie-meal have noted that “without exception, food shops have been consistently targeted and food has been appropriated on a massive scale”.

Explanations elsewhere have more credibly touched on the wealth divide, economic decay and unemployment, failed service delivery, deprivation and hunger; as well as long-standing racial and ethnic tensions.

And then there are some who pin the blame on political actors, radical economic transform forces who seized upon the amateur dramatics of martyrdom around the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma, as the flint to light a fire that would sweep away President Cyril Ramaphosa.

There’s certainly more evidence of a political conspiracy than for New Frame’s risible theory of spontaneous bread riots heralding the fall of capitalism.

But then again, you don’t have to be a military genius to realise that the umbilical cord between the country’s biggest port and its economic powerhouse has strategic value. Truck-burning has been a national sport for more than three years.

The ANC is now pushing the narrative that the unrest is a sophisticated attempt at a coup d’état. While this may have some truth in it, it is also a politically most convenient exculpation of the government’s responsibility for what is happening.

By shifting responsibility for the chaos and cost of the unrest onto a sinister cabal of saboteurs and assassins would play to Ramaphosa’s advantage.

If he can survive widespread public disillusionment at his lacklustre leadership, Ramaphosa will be able to vigorously clean the ANC house and rally his waning support.

In the absence of a coherent police response, were it not for ordinary citizens forming street-corner militias, the loss of life and property would have been catastrophic.

Contrary to the expectations of the foreign media, there was little or no evidence of whites reverting to archetype and gleefully gunning down blacks.

Instead, South Africans of all races have stood together to keep rampaging mobs at bay.

After this, the proposed legislation to end private ownership of firearms for self-defence is, pardon the pun, dead in the water.

We should not allow our relief at the apparent waning of the unrest to make us forgiving of the failure of the ANC to fulfil the primary function of the state, the protection of the life and property of its citizens.

And we should not forget that the path to this explosion of anger and criminality has been a long time coming.