The revolution is devouring its children

IN 1793, journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan wrote, about the French Revolution, that “Like Saturn, the revolution devours its own children." For the revolution ushers in the season of unrealistic ideals, unjustified losses and often wanton destruction.

- LORENZO A DAVIDS

These are the thoughts of Prof Aleksandre Mikaberidze, Professor of History at Louisiana State University-Shreveport, in an interview titled "The Five Stages of Revolutions." South Africa has undergone the first four stages of the revolution since about 1799. It is now in the fifth phase of that revolution, where “the revolutionary spirit grows weaker and withers away. The passionate idealism of the early revolution is gone; weariness, fear, paranoia, and resentment set in.” Mikaberidze states that a "Revolutionary government remain in power thanks to repression that is, as a rule, more merciless than the preceding governments. The revolution has essentially ended, and the revolutionaries are now part of the ‘conventional regime’ that is, in many respects, worse than the one they sought to overthrow in the first place.”