'We cannot say we are free'

If you judged the disquiet in South Africa by elections, you'd miss a lot. As we wrote here a few days ago on this blog (republished here), the growing discontent with the state and the ruling party has been brewing for a while. Here's another example. Ayanda Kota, the chair of the Unemployed People's Movement in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, writing in the Mail & Guardian:

… The ANC tries to control the people with its police, social grants and rallies with celebrities and musicians. The ANC tries to drug us against their betrayal by keeping us drunk on memories of the struggle — the same struggle that they have betrayed. But everywhere the ANC is losing control. Protest is spreading everywhere. Everywhere people are boycotting elections and running independent candidates. Everywhere people are organising themselves into their own autonomous groups and movements.

As Mostafa Omara wrote about the Egyptian revolution: "People in Egypt will tell you: 'Gone are the days when we felt helpless and little; gone are the days when the police could humiliate us and torture us; gone are the times when the rich and the businessmen thought they could run the country as if it were their own private company.'"

In South Africa we long for the same feeling. But revolutions do not spring from nothing. Revolutions come through the united action of men and women, rural and urban — action that springs from their needs. Revolutions happen when ordinary men and women begin to take action to seize control of their own lives.

The rebellion of the poor in this country is growing. More and more organisations are emerging. More and more people have become radicalised. More and more communities have lost their illusions after experiencing the violence of the predator state. More and more people are starting and joining discussions about the way forward for the struggle to take the country back.