There's a political civil war going on in SA. The ANC is fractured between the Jacob Zuma and Cyril Ramaphosa camps. And the ANC itself has never been less popular, so they're swinging hard at each other as the two camps desperately try to scrabble for power that no one really believes they should have.
We're at one of the most dangerous points in our history, as it looks increasingly impossible for the ANC to win more than maybe one more general election. We're the most protest-heavy country in the world, and the vast majority of protesters for the past decade have been people protesting a lack of service delivery and who've given up on even bothering to vote, but who take to the streets to vent their frustrations by assaulting ANC party representatives.
The ANC can see the strong possibility of it's own end on the horizon, and that makes them very, very dangerous.
Zuma was head of intelligence for uMkhonto we Sizwe during the struggle, so he has a lot of dirt on a lot of people in a lot of high places. He is also very popular with large portions of the Zulu population (he's every inch the populist that Africa has a reputation for) - that Zulu loyalty is why most of the violence has happened in Kwa-Zulu Natal.
He's what you could consider the head of the ANC's leftists; communist sympathies, pro-land expropriation, etc.
Ramaphosa represents the pro-corporate heart of the ANC - he's corrupt as fuck, but he's also not an ideologue and he has a reputation as a practical businessman, and so he rose to power within the ANC after Zuma's scandal-filled presidency did a decent job of tarnishing the ANC's reputation even among supporters (a few examples: Zuma raped the AIDs-infected daughter of a dead friend and claimed that it was fine because he had a shower afterwards; he appropriated state funds to improve the facilities at his person home at Nkandla ranch; he was responsible for a state capture scandal, in which a rich Indian crime family purchased access to our national funds and resources; and the country declined massively from 2009 onwards, despite our largely being unaffected by the GFC). He was seen by some ANC supporters (the sort who have come to revile Nelson Mandela as a sellout in the pocket of the Western elite) as an ANC concession made to corporate South Africa.
It's not really a surprise that the army's been involved in the recent riots, etc. Cyril Ramaphosa's never been shy about bringing force to bear. The Marikana Massacre happened because he directed armed police forces against unarmed striking miners. A couple years ago, he pushed the army into Cape Town in an attempt to get the crime under control (that was a bit of a laughable failure), and last year he was quick to put the army on the streets to enforce the lockdowns (leading to a handful of deaths).
These things are extra concerning, when one considers the new gun-control bill under consideration. We already have very strict gun laws, and no one in their right minds thinks they protect the innocent.
And yes, speaking of Covid, corruption didn't get worse, South Africans just dared to hope that just this once, they wouldn't be screwed by the people in power. Cyril really seemed to step up at the beginning - he had a well-laid plan, processes in place that accommodated our shortcomings, and consideration toward the group that we all knew would be incredibly vulnerable - the poor. Arrangements were being made as early as January, and things actually looked positive for once.
That all fell apart quickly enough.
To be honest though, the current headline violence isn't worse than usual fare. There's just an angle that makes it attractive to the Western media.
That said, make no mistake, the country's circling the drain fast - and it's been getting fast since about 2017. Looking at the voting rolls and the general sentiment in the country, the ANC barely has a mandate to lead as of right now; and they know it. The only reason they hold power still, is that the opposition party's been successfully painted as the inheritors of apartheid in the eyes of a significant portion of our very uneducated population (much like the American democrats do the the Republicans). But those people are not necessarily voting
for the ANC, they're simply not voting at all, because they do not see their interests represented by anyone.
The current violence is, in actuality, probably the best outcome Zuma's trial (which feels like it's been going on forever) could have had.
The fact that Zuma was even arrested is fucking insane, to be honest. He's guilty as sin, but none of us expected him to actually be punished for it. Hell, a few months ago, there was a stand-off between the police and his own personal cadre of MK veterans, trying to prevent him from having to face any sort of justice.
