South Africa's streets were alive with protest in September 1989. In Cape Town, some genius in the police dyed the water used by a water cannon purple. The crowd commandeered the cannon and turned it on the police and the buildings of downtown Cape Town, which were sprayed purple four stories high. Among the buildings sprayed was the headquarters of the National Party.There was no Twitter back then, but if there had been the hashtags would have been #PurpleRain and #ThePurpleShallGovern.Across the country, about 3million workers heeded a stay-away call and tens of thousands took part in protests.It was simply no longer possible for the state to contain the mass-protest movement, and it was clear that commerce and industry were grinding to a halt.It has been fashionable for exiles to claim that the ANC's armed struggle and sanctions ended apartheid. Well, they might have played a role, especially as lending tightened and loans were recalled, but one thing is certain, the mass democratic movement was on the cusp of achieving its goal of making the country ungovernable.Back then, the state had massive security resources, including dedicated riot-control units to "manage crowds". They could not cope.The last apartheid president, FW de Klerk, is said to have told his cabinet that they had no alternative to releasing Nelson Mandela and entering into negotiations because of what would otherwise happen on the streets.Fast forward 26 years to modern South Africa, where a new mass movement is being born.In parliament last week, the bedraggled remnants of the old riot police, thick around the middle, their teeth pulled by the new constitutional order, were easily overrun by students, who overcame the barricades to take their fight right up to the doors of parliament. If it had been their intention to bash down those doors, they could easily have done so.But, confused by the pace at which they had advanced, they were rudderless for just long enough for the police to deploy stun grenades and move them back.Last Friday, the students marched on the Union Buildings and once more confronted the police. This time some of them burned things and dismantled security fences before running amok in downtown Pretoria.Four days later, the streets of Johannesburg were occupied by an estimated 40000 EFF protesters, who marched on the Reserve Bank to deliver a list of 23 demands so wide-ranging that there is no institution on Earth that could have met them within the 30-day deadline given, even with the will to do so.Absent so far from the mass protests are the trade unions, still licking their wounds after the rupture in Cosatu which led to the departure of the metalworkers' union, Numsa, which is to start its own mass organisation around grievances similar to those of the EFF.It is only a matter of time before the unions - at least those on the more militant fringes - join these protests.The state's ability to cope with a mass-protest movement is severely restricted. For one thing, it has lost much of its crowd-control ability. The crack intervention force police had to be deployed to the Union Buildings last week. This is a recipe for disaster, because such police are trained for gunfights, not for crowd control.Be that as it may, the route of repression is not an option in democratic South Africa. The real question is whether our post-apartheid political institutions are capable of managing a crisis of this nature, because the blame for the climate of mass protest lies fairly and squarely on the shoulders of these political institutions. It is the government that has failed to deliver education, electricity and services, sparking student and community protests. It is its anti-small business policies that have led to youth unemployment.The failure to allow independent institutions such as the pubic protector to function effectively by defying unfavourable outcomes, as President Jacob Zuma has done, has undermined public confidence in the formal structures meant to deliver fairness.These institutions might still hold a vestige of credibility for their beneficiaries - the deal-cutters, the politicians and that part of the new middle class that is not facing financial ruin - but they have no credibility with the unemployed, the marginalised, the ignored.It is this constituency, which has maintained a stoical façade for two decades, which is now finally mobilising. In the absence of a credible Left party, since the absorption into the elite of the SA Communist Party and organised labour, the members of this constituency are supporting the EFF and trade unions that preach independence.The political leadership seems blissfully unaware of the extent of the looming crisis, continuing with business as usual and believing that parliamentary debates on education will placate the protesters. Don't they know that their institutions are built on fragile ground that might soon give way under the pressure of mass protest?..