Anchored in being the clever black, anchored in being the reasonable friend, the skeptic who is not brave enough to call bullshit on anything that waivers from his purpose and subsequently walk away from it, I swim.

To understand what demonising Black protesters leads to, we must look no further than the history of our own country where the co-ordinated vilifying of Blackness has existed since the formation of the Union of South Africa. It is not fashionable to use history to analyse present times, but we must first look backward to understand what awaits us when we move forward.

The point I’m making is that if we follow the capitalist logic of supply and demand, then we shall understand why Stellenbosch actually wants a high unemployment rate.

The monumental Pops Mohammed followed, unpacking various musical instruments from his bag of tricks. He took hold of our imaginations through the screen and led us on "... a journey into the mystical past," before paying due homage to the likes of Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Helen Suzman, Maya Angelou and Malcolm X, among others whom, he poetically shared, "... stand for what you and me could be." He then, with his band, rendered a polyrhythmic audio therapy session that could easily be mistaken for a meditation melody before a shrine. He uttered a serene, "Welcome to the future," towards his closure.

For those Black people who were oblivious to the reality of chronic and endemic Black inequality in South AfriKKKa, the advent of the Coronavirus and the lockdowns provided us with a crystallisation of this historically evolved and structural problem.

It speaks to the importance of securing and protecting the frontline. It speaks to the importance of defending what you have or what you have gained. It speaks to the significance of a vanguard. A fortress that has warring sentinels is as good as a fort without a vanguard.

Loosely translated, the above proverb says that there are as many opinions as there are people. In the adoption of this proverb into the legal fraternity, it is said “Quot judices, to legalis sententiae”, which translates to there being as many legal opinions as there are judges.

Currently, the dominant narrative of the protests unfolding in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal is on the theft of items from businesses, especially large malls and shopping centres. Social media is awash of mask-clad people carrying television sets, maize meal, shoes and other consumer items—even medicines and sex toys (gasp!). No item carried by protesters (who are called looters) escapes the gaze of the reporter looking for an easy fix. The narrative has been set. The national consciousness is focused. The truth is lost in the horrors of burned buildings and raided storefronts.