Events that undermine voting

They are young. You can see they are afraid and unsure, and they are egging each other on. There is no bravery here, no valour. Just false bravado fuelled by ignorance.

They sing a revolutionary song, one that ANC and PAC cadres used to sing in military camps in exile to build up their own courage. Noma ba sibulala, ba si dubula, siyaya (Even as they shoot at us, kill us, we are moving forward). They march on. They up-end some dustbins, they race on. There are perhaps 200, maybe 300, of them.

The television camera moves with them. Sometimes it catches a face: a young girl with eyes racing in uncertainty, an older man who seems to be directing the action.

Murder is in the air. I am sitting in my living room. It is 3C outside. The menace of the footage on the eNews Channel is growing.

The mob is toyi-toying its way towards a former councillor's house in Chiawelo, Soweto. Murder is in the air. I know the songs they sing. They are the songs of my youth, the songs of my heroes, the songs of the freedom struggle that brought us here, to this gorgeous, new, united, democratic, non-racial South Africa of our dreams.

The mob arrives at a house. It is the house of the former local ward councilor.

This is no fancy house, no house of someone who has collected the trappings of wealth. It is a four-roomed house, one of the original "matchbox" houses built by the apartheid regime as it moved people from "mixed areas" to the townships. These houses are on average 30 years old. I have been in so many, I know the floor plan like the back of my hand.

I am thinking about apartheid architecture. There is murder in the air. The mob is dancing crazily outside the house. There seems to be lots of rocks about, massive big things. The camera catches a few faces. It is heartbreaking. These are children.

The first rock hits the front window with a loud crack. The spindly, decorative burglar proofing gives in. A hail of rocks follows. These are not stones. They are huge things. The glass shatters and breaks. The noise increases as the rocks land on the roof. No one comes out of the house.

They are still singing my song: Siyaya. There is murder in the air. The house's garage door is opened. There is a car in the garage. It is not a shiny, new beast. It must be about four years old, a small, blue car - the type smart, young, educated women buy in their first jobs. This is not the stuff of politicians living large.

A man in a black jacket has a Molotov cocktail ready. He sets the car alight. It starts burning, slowly, ever so slowly. Then the fire gathers momentum and a plume of smoke makes its way up into the grey cloudy sky over Soweto. The kids are singing. The bonfire excites them.

These are the same people who, on May 18, just six weeks ago, must have voted in the local government elections. Some are too young to have voted. Now they are here to do something that undermines that vote, that expression.

They are here to kill now. Their target is in her house now, quaking in her cold shoes, afraid.

A few men walk out of the house. The scene is confused. There are snatches of Zulu conversation. It seems the crowd wants the adults. The man says there are children inside; that the children should be left alone, unharmed.

A woman in thin clothing walks out of the house into the crowd. Then the police, the Metro Police, arrive. They seem afraid. My heart is breaking now. I cannot stand this. A Metro policeman walks nonchalantly, his hands in his pockets. Murder is in the air. He is unconcerned.

Neighbours are now helping put out the fire. The police seem out of their depth.

It is one young Metro policewoman who seems to have her wits about her. She alone, of all the police officers now massed there, helps put out the fire. Tentatively, people walk out of the councillor's house.

I know this scene.

In the 1980s, councillors who participated in apartheid structures were killed like this: neck-laced, burnt to death in their houses.

Now, in our new dispensation, councillors elected by us are facing the same thing.

It is not over. A woman in a hat, one of the occupants of the house, starts screaming and running back into the house.

"Oh my God, oh my God!"

She and others run back out of the house. There is a child in their arms, a boy, his head shaved Mohawk style.

He is crying. He is under 10. His home was about to be torched and his family perhaps killed by the marauding mob of children.

Oh my God. What have we done?