The biggest surprise of the election is that the EFF failed to breach the 20% mark that I envisaged; that MK did as well as they have, and that coloured politics is a thing - whether we like it or not.

The election has come and gone, and the noises-on dial remains on "high".

I am by no means a prognosticator or a statistician who believes that the beauty of their models is the truth, but elections, across time and place, have been accompanied by "waves of violence," and/or "political violence". Understanding that helps the imagination.

I should include, for our readers, a couple of examples from the US and Taiwan (those great reference points of the good and great of Western liberalism). As Reuters reported, "four years after the failed effort to overturn Trump's 2020 electoral defeat, the violent all-male extremist group that led the storming of Congress on Jan 6, 2021, is rebuilding and regaining strength."

In that other place, the Austronesian island (Taiwan) colonised by Chinese nationalists in 1949, there have often been violent protests against the declaration of election results and the electoral commission - an early indicator of what may come (with Jacob Zuma's MK challenges). "Truth unclear, suspend declaration," the Taiwanese opposition chanted. "Down with the commission."

There is, of course, no convincing people who still believe that since the start of the Anthropocene (precise dates are disputed), the first act...