South Africa is a protesting nation.

It was big news in 2014 that in the last three months of the year 2947 protests had occurred.

The news made it as far as The New York Times which reported that "the [South African] authorities have recorded a staggering 3000 protest actions in the past 90 days".

This claim was of course folly. However, it does not change the fact that protest culture is deeply entrenched in our politic.

From #FeesMustFall protests, which at their height lasted two months and caused the shutdown of various higher education institutions, to service delivery protests and labour action, every month there is seemingly a report of some or other different protest demonstration.

What is curious and common in these protests is that property is almost always destroyed.

The authorities and observing public then go on to admonish the behaviour, but we have yet to unpack what it is that has created the culture of destroying property in protest.

We must always reprove of the destruction of property; equally though we must acknowledge the role it plays in societal change and the success of social justice movements. The destruction of property is a rude indication that society is ready for a radical shift in the status quo.

And we don't need to look far because even ending apartheid involved and required the destruction of property.

The challenge is to be mindful of whether the destruction of property was more palatable during the liberation movement because of the clearly problematic nature of racial minority rule, or whether it was to be expected.

If it was palatable then, how harsh should we be in the criticism of the destruction of property now. The movement or causes are different but still speak to social justice, particularly in the case of the #FeesMustFall and service delivery protests.

Destroying property manifests itself as an expression of breaking the social contract.

A society that has created and allows dissonance between the changing needs, rights and responsibilities of the people and the systems and structures that govern the people, is just such a violation of the social contract.

If the way we govern society does not serve the flourishing of the people, promote and maintain equality, justice, dignity and goodwill, the people are disincentivised to uphold the social contract.

Civil disobedience was a manifestation of a broken social contract during the Civil Rights Movement in the US.

In South Africa, the trend is protest and the destruction of property - perhaps because the majority of the people have already been dispossessed.

The dispossession of others should make those who are critical of the destruction of property empathetic of the dire straits the underprivileged and oppressed face - that they would go as far as to set property alight.

In the 1980s and early '90s, the residents of Bantustan Bophuthatswana resisted the tyrannical reign of Kgosi Lucas Mangope.

Mangope had announced on March 7 1994 that Bophuthatswana would not be participating in the multiracial elections later that year and thus aimed to remain outside of South African territory.

Seeking rather to be integrated into the Republic of South Africa, on March 11 1994 violent protests against Mangope had broken out. Under Mangope's rule Bophuthatswana's political freedoms diminished.

Subjects who opposed the state were arrested, banished or subjected to extrajudicial harassment.

In this case, residents sought social justice and political freedoms through participating in democratic elections and being integrated into a free South Africa.

The struggle towards this led to the destruction of property.

On January 16 2017, the mayor of Tshwane had to appeal to Ga-Rankuwa residents to stop being violent and cease the destruction of property in their community.

GaRankuwa residents were protesting the decayed infrastructure and prolonged water shortages in their township.

The mayor's office then went on to explain that this was because of the poor performance of the previous municipal administration.

This statement undermined the very nature of the protests. It overlooked the frustration of the residents, the dire circumstances they're in and assumes they should behave ordinarily in extraordinary circumstances.

In the new year, we are faced with the certainty of protest action, property will certainly be destroyed and we will admonish such destruction and probably also empathise with the losses endured by the property owners, be it the state or private persons.

However, the task that we face as South Africans is to create a society in which we do not force those of us already facing the harshest lived experience to bring that experience to the doorsteps of the privileged and those in power.

It's a rude awakening arising from a broken social contract.

lMontse is a student entrepreneur at the University of Cape Town