The winter of our discontent

in the aftermath of the widespread looting of shops and businesses that took place across many parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in July, there has been a flurry of insightful debates about the importance of developing low-income and unemployment-afflicted townships.

For over a week in July, South Africans were glued to theirTV screens, watching thousands of people ransacking and pillaging shopping malls and small businesses in an orgy of violent unrest the country has not seen since the early 1990s.

After the dust had settled,