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14 January 2026

The Fractured Mirror: South Africa’s Crisis of Safety and the Struggle for a New Social Contract

 By Sicebise Msengana 








​In the quiet hours of a South African evening, the atmosphere is often heavy with a tension that cannot be explained by statistics alone. It is a visceral, bone-deep anxiety—the sound of a neighbor’s gate rattling, the sight of a group of young men standing on a street corner with empty eyes, or the headlines detailing another high-profile kidnapping. For many, the promise of 1994 has reached a breaking point. The term "democracy" feels less like a shield and more like an open door through which chaos has entered.