South Africa: Hannibal Elector - From Alexandra to Zuma, Via Malema - Violence, Silence and Nothing Wrong With Nkandla

analysis

It all came to an official close this weekend. But as new realities sink in, old ones start bubbling up. Is this a country terminally at war with itself?

I roll into Alexandra with the army. In the gritted-teeth grimness that follows the South African election, and as the results roll out in favour of the ruling party, a small cohort of this Johannesburg township's residents have decided to protest a perceived vote-rigging scandal by murdering Somalis. In the acidic yellow glow of township night, the authorities have responded by supplying army trucks full of soldiers, and more police than I have ever seen anywhere, at one time, ever. They rumble past me in convoy, World War III battle-ready, negotiating the speed-bumps along Roosevelt-like ships in a swell. "Nothing can happen here tonight," a police officer tells me. "Nah-thing. We are over-deployed."

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