This is the second and final part of a two-part series on the recent violence in South Africa. Read part one here.Kolkata: As the violence stopped, Umesh Morar, the tobacconist who lost three of his shops in the mid-July violence in KwaZulu Natal (KZN) and Gauteng in eastern South Africa, was vaping.“Why is vaping banned in India? Pan, gutkha causes more harm,” he said, apparently at ease.However, Morar has been been busy assessing damages. He is planning to leave the coastal city of Durban to settle in another coastal province in Gujarat’s Navsari, where his aunt’s house lies empty.“With family and friends there, it will be easier for us to reboot in India than in a third country like the US,” said Morar. On July 20, as he had on July 15, he again refuses to call last week’s violence racial.“It is essentially political, not a racial one. The African people have been incited by political parties,” said the 56-year-old tobacconist. Morar’s observations are the silver lining to a week’s violence, the worst since the fratricidal fights between African National Congress (ANC) and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) three decades ago. South African-Indians unanimously said that the attacks were a combination of multiple factors – and racism could be one – but indeed were not exclusively racial.As a court ordered a 15-month jail term to former South African president Jacob Zuma for defying an instruction earlier in February to table evidence at an inquiry into corruption during his nine years in power until 2018, two provinces – KZN and Gauteng – witnessed large scale arson, looting and deaths. Many businesses, shops, retail outlets, farms, malls and even banks were looted and even razed to the ground. South African-Indians bore the brunt but other communities were targeted as well. However, the clouds within the silver linings are too conspicuous to pass over. As victims and social scientists spoke to this correspondent, they repeatedly used three sets of phrases while talking of the South Africa of 2021.The country was sitting “on a powder keg”; most felt that they were resting “on a tinderbox”, and a political commentator described the South African situation as a “ticking time bomb.”The pandemic has merely ignited it, said Dr Sheetal Bhoola, a professor in the Critical Food Studies Centre in the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN).“What was looted – at least initially?” she asked. It was food, drink and beverages from retail or wholesale outlets – a trade that involves many South African-Indians.“The repeated lockdowns and very high inflation has completely debilitated black African households. A single mother of two or three children needs to always overwork to provide barely two meals,” Bhoola said. Lockdowns have snatched jobs as small businesses have gone bankrupt, pushing an already alarming rate of unemployment of over 60% in the 18-34 age groups, even higher. When a level four lockdown was imposed – again – about three weeks ago, around the time Zuma surrendered, the number of hungry families on the streets of KZN already outnumbered law enforcers. ‘Julius Sello Malema, the 40-year-old rightwing ANC renegade.’ Photo: ReutersAmidst this, Julius Sello Malema, the 40-year-old rightwing ANC renegade with 25 seats in the national parliament, identified the “Indian cabal” of South Africa as the cause of black African misery. Indians were targeted. Noted social scientist Dr Dasarath Chetty, a former pro-vice-chancellor of UKZN who holds professorships at two universities in South Africa and in Germany, however, added that Malema “targets different communities in different speeches.”“Depending on the audience he attacks all communities and targets whites as well,” Chetty said.The Indian angleBhoola added that while Malema resorts to a deeply racial narrative, it is difficult to refute such allegations on the face of it. Indians themselves are apologetic about many other Indians – the mega-rich – in South Africa and their plots to derail a nascent democracy. Many referred to the Guptas who are held partly responsible for the political and economic mess in South Africa.The Gupta brothers and their family, from Saharanpur in western Uttar Pradesh, penetrated government departments, influenced policies and politicos, bribed ministers and transferred officials who resisted kickbacks at will. They did this primarily as Zuma’s henchmen. The family employed even Zuma’s wife and son, and bought and sold private and public property, violating laws.Also read | Rough Edges: Long Arm of the Law Falls Short When It Comes to the Rich and FamousThey used the government’s resources to enhance their business empire and political foothold in nearly all profit-making sectors – from mining to real estate, from media to computer hardware – of a country that adopted a neo-liberal economy, only a few years after embracing democracy. The Guptas, being zealous students of crony capitalism, ripped apart the new democracy and economy.The South African-Indians – who landed in KZN 150 years ago – and have seen themselves out of indenture through hard work, hate the Guptas, who arrived in South Africa little before the last white president Frederik Willem de Klerk handed over power to Nelson Mandela, following an election, in the summer of 1994. Police raid the home of the Gupta family, friends of President Jacob Zuma, in Johannesburg, South Africa, February 14, 2018. Photo: Reuters/James Oatway/File Photo“They earned a very bad name for the community. We suffer because of them and such Indians,” said a businesswoman, who maintains an online file on the Guptas and follows cases lodged against the family. “They fled to Dubai and the government has now signed an extradition treaty with United Arab Emirates. We sincerely hope that they are brought back and tried in South African court,” she said, requesting anonymity.Bhoola was more direct.“Indian fat cats and African fat cats are aligned. That is how people interpret it,” she said. “A lot of political communication happened in South Africa, historically, through protests. Now, the Zulus – who were exploited for a very long time – find that after attaining democracy they continue to remain poor, while a section of Indians grew much more. So they protest the way they have habitually protested,” said Bhoola. With 3% of the population going to college, white collar jobs are routinely going to “foreign Africans from Zimbabwe, Ghana or Cameroon” adding to annoyance, she said.A majority of Indians however are not rich, not even middle income and rather poor, said Salma Patel, a news editor of the popular media network South African Broadcasting Corporation.“The rich – among Indians – may not be more than 1%. The gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ is very wide. There are families which cannot afford to pay for electricity or rent, struggling below the poverty line. It is a generalisation that all have prospered,” says Patel.The rich-poor gap, a common problem in Africa, is even more acute in South Africa. A 2019 Oxfam report indicated that the wealth of the bottom 650 million (50%) of African population is US $ 22.98 billion, while the estimate wealth of three billionaires – of whom two are from South Africa – is US $ 28.8.A decade and a half after the anti-racist and democratic country set out to rewrite not just its own but Africa’s history, it ended up in 2019 as the ‘world’s most unequal country,’ indicated a 2019 World Bank report. Also read: Unrest Is Being Used To Subvert South Africa’s Democracy: Giving In Is Not an OptionThus, the social scientists used phrases to indicate that the country may explode anytime. And, for now, Jacob Zuma is to be blamed, says one of foremost social scientists of South Africa, Dr Rama Naidu.“The way Zuma came to power (in 2009) is completely different from earlier practices of electing the best leader. He, rather, mobilised various groups and camps to garner support which completely changed the face of politics in South Africa and ANC. This notion of democracy, standing up to voice dissent – the hallmarks of South African politics over centuries – changed with the arrival of Zuma,” said the professor. Black Africans are about 80% of the South African population and many are surprised that the government has hardly made an effort to change the segregated architecture of the provinces. “Apartheid literally means segregation and spatially this segregation is so evident and yet the government refuses to address it,” said Amhale, an university student.Naidu said that in terms of structural design the Indians are between blacks and whites. “So when you come out of your area, with all the pain and hunger, the first group that you meet is Indians. This takes a racial overtone. It is the way this whole apartheid system was designed,” he said.“It is changing but at a very slow pace between the middle and the upper class, while the poor blacks are left out. But to make the democracy work, to make ourselves feel safer, we need to know who our neighbours are. It’s only when I do not know you and are suspicious of you, that seeds of malice and war are sown,” the professor said, worried. Members of a private security walk at a looted shopping mall as the country deploys army to quell unrest linked to the jailing of former South African President Jacob Zuma, in Vosloorus, South Africa, July 14, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Siphiwe SibekoCan the violence trigger more violence?Discussing the Rwandan genocide of 1994, noted political scientist Mahmood Mamdani argued in his book When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda that the origins of the Hutu-Tutsi violence – which witnessed 5-10 million deaths – “is connected to how Hutu and Tutsi were constructed as political identities by the colonial state, Hutu as indigenous and Tutsi as alien.” With a deeply unstable economy, the anger in post Rwandan independence (1962) borne out by facts that Tutsis – merely 15% of population – were close to the Belgian colonists who divided the ethnic groups through reforms favouring Tutsis like the majority “Hutu were not ruled by their own chiefs, but by Tutsi chiefs.” Years of colonialism-driven rivalry resulted in the genocide. Such discrimination-led anger remains hidden in normal times and often surfaces in the form of deep hatred at historical moments. Then, deep differences are created by particular political conditions in which “terribly and terrifyingly normal” people commit crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for them to know or to feel that they are doing wrong, noted political scientist Hannah Arendt in her seminal study, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963).Naidu says, the last week’s unrest – when communities brutally targeted each other – is not the beginning of a similar hate campaign. “South Africa has resources and infrastructure to stop such a flare up. The army is strong. However, this is also a wakeup call,” he said. Dasarath Chetty is not as sure.“If the conditions are not addressed systematically through policies, addressing poverty and unemployment…such situations are a possibility,” he said.Also read: South African Riots: FM Pandor Assures Jaishankar of Early Restoration of NormalcyThe professor was very sure that the riot was an attempt to dislodge president Cyril Ramaphosa.“The attempt was to bring the country to its knees, to wreck the economy and to undermine the presidency,” Chetty said.President Ramaphosa is projected as a failure and a campaign was mounted from the left-wing positions, the professor said, adding that Ramaphosa is “a billionaire and a beneficiary of the transition.”“He represents a small group of elites who have emerged and who have protected the rights of those who historically dominated the economy at the expense of the majority of the black people who can vote but cannot participate in economic activity,” he said. With the surge in the food crisis and systematic economic exclusion, Zulu hero Jacob Zuma’s arrest acted as “a social detonator.”However, Chetty categorically refused to call it a racist attack, despite having accepted that the rich-poor gap is turning South Africa into a “tinderbox.”“It is not an attack on the Indian community, it is an attack on the business community. Huge business establishments, warehouses owned by Indians, whites or blacks were all looted and burned. The companies listed on the stock exchange were ransacked and these were not Indian companies,” the professor paused and added, “It is rather attack mounted against the Ginie Coefficient that measures the inequality of resources in a society.”The South African society – both the professors agreed – is not essentially against any-particular community as it has suffered racist violence for centuries. The society has taken on the recent violence, which may have elements of racism, seriously. ‘Mr Ramaphosa has defined his presidency as the opposite of Mr Zuma’s. In his speech on July 12 he told the country: “This is not who we are as South Africans. This is not us,”’ reported the latest issue of The Economist.Religious leaders carrying South African flags walk near a looted shopping mall as the country deployed the army to quell unrest linked to the jailing of former South African President Jacob Zuma, in Vosloorus, South Africa, July 14, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko/File PhotoThe appeal may have worked and South Africans have joined hands, for now, to stop the violence. They have united “again” to protest, said Naidu.“Something is rising out of this commotion – the black, the brown, the white are again standing together. Possibly, till now, people had become a little complacent. My sense is, people are now going to engage to understand who their neighbours are and their problems so that a new chapter can be ushered in,” said Naidu. Veteran ANC leaders of the neighbourhood – the residents said – are back to stitch open wounds. These veterans enjoy credibility and had protested side by side, hand in hand, three decades ago to deliver the truth. This time, they may have to do more than they did in 1994 to build bridges in a country of many broken promises. Suvojit Bagchi is a senior journalist who has previously worked with BBC and The Hindu.