We are all Andries Tatane

Anonymous:

South Africa is far from what Tunisia was like pre-revolution (for one it is not governed by a one-party police state), but the parallels of small-town cops beating to death (here's video footage from South African TV news) a South African Everyman because his was angry with crappy or non-existent service delivery (water, electricity, roads, housing) is eerily reminiscent of a certain fruit vendor in southern Tunisia. Again, the differences between South Africa and Tunisia are too many to mention. But if you asked someone in Meqheleng (yes, I did look up the largest township in Ficksburg in the Free State Province) if they are as frustrated as your typical Tunisian circa 2010, I wonder what they would say?

Would the ANC's proper electoral mandate and liberation credentials outweigh the impression that those in power–Jacob Zuma, Tokyo Sexwale, Sicelo Shiceka, and Siphiwe Nyanda, etcetera–are amassing wealth and governing just like Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali? I worry that a few years from now they won't care how legitimate the ruling party's mandate is: crap service delivery is crap service delivery.

That leads me this: Does that 18-year old in Meqheleng know the basic dynamics of what is happening in North Africa or the Middle East? Are vernacular radio and local papers giving the "Arab spring" coverage, at least to the point that that 18-year old realizes how crap Mubarak was and, closer to home, how dismissive the ANC leadership has been to their demands the last 17 years, basically the span of his or her entire lifespan?