IT SEEMS not a day passes without some South African threatening violence and mayhem. If it is not the so-called veterans, it is teachers.

IT SEEMS not a day passes without some South African threatening violence and mayhem. If it is not the so-called veterans, it is teachers.

Yesterday the perennial warmongers, the minibus taxi operators, threatened to shut down Johannesburg. We are not going to get into the merits, if any, of their grievances.

We, however, refuse to accept that anybody, however righteous they believe their anger to be, should hold the country to ransom with a threat of violence and other forms of unconstitutional means.

Our Constitution guarantees all of us the right to publicly express our unhappiness with the state's actions.

But the same document enjoins the minister in charge of the police to maintain public order and protect and secure the inhabitants of the Republic.

By failing to arrest what are patently seditionary tendencies, and kowtowing to a perceived political constituency even when it threatens the social fabric of society, the minister is frankly abdicating his responsibilities to the State and the citizens.

Civil society should also come to the party and isolate all those who behave as though they miss apartheid by behaving as if what we have is an illegitimate, unresponsive and unrepresentative government.

We refuse to live in fear of any type of terrorism, be it of the teachers or the taxi industry.

We expect the minister of police to do his job and protect all of us - it is no more than what his job requires of him.