One way of measuring the quality of a democracy is to assess the behaviour of its police. The recent brutal attack on the Unemployed People’s Movement leader Ayanda Kota reveals the sad state of democracy in South Africa.

‘Few things are more hateful’ than the ‘deliberate manipulation of the minds of the broken and destitute in the name of liberation,’ writes Pedro Alexis Tabensky, as the ANC attempts to win support from South Africa’s poorest communities by portraying the party as ‘the representatives of God on earth’.

The ‘only existing alternative’ left to South Africa’s poor is to ‘take matters into their own hands’, writes Pedro Alexis Tabensky. And in ‘increasing numbers, and with increasing levels of sophistication, the poor are coming together, ganging up against the common foe responsible for their shameful predicament.’

Following the ANC Youth League disruption of a UPM-convened public meeting to discuss the water crisis affecting poorer areas of an Eastern Cape municipality, Pedro Alexis Tabensky observes that ‘sadly for our democracy, this sort of oppressive behaviour in the name of the ANC seems to be part of a general trend of violence exerted against social movements’ .