In the last week, as we write this, there have been angry, volatile outbursts of action in different parts of the Free State. Youth at Masiphumelele have been confronted by riot police with live ammunition being fired. This follows earlier outbursts in different parts of the country including Diepsloot. These are sporadic outbursts, largely isolated from each other. But so is Christmas sporadic – in fact, only once a year. If these outbursts are still sporadic, they are becoming and being made ordinary. They involve relatively tiny numbers of people, but what is most important, striking and extraordinary about those people is that they are ordinary working class people, like millions who are not participating in such action. These outbursts are expressive of a far wider, deeprooted, accumulating and accumulated anger. The triggers for its expression vary from situation to situation as does the interplay between spontaneity and organisation. There are claims and accusations about the build-ups, the outbursts and who is responsible. There is room for every form of opportunism. But immediately beyond the specificities, these outbursts are similar in that they emerge around immediate issues of everyday life with a simple message. ‘What is happening to us is not good enough. It must stop and change.’ The event itself carries a further message. ‘We will stop it and change it.’ Whatever else and whoever else is or is not involved, the build-up is everyday life itself and the responsibility lies on the one hand with those who create an everyday life that is intolerable and should not be tolerated, and on the other, with those who are saying by their action that they will not tolerate it. Between the noise and volatility of the outburst are periods of apparent silence and inactivity. But these are the periods which lead up to the outburst. In the silence and inactivity is the ferment which leads to the outburst – or does not, in some places. This is the social movement of ordinary working class people. It is rooted in the lived experience of barbarism under capitalism and shaped by everyday struggles to survive that. Most often, these are individualised, but the individualised experiences and struggles are shared millions of times over.