The social scientist Gunnar Heinsohn, in his book Sons and World Power, argues that when the age group 15-29 years make up more than 30% of a population, there is a good chance that violence will follow. In his column for The Times (London) - "That violence in 1968: blame it on the bulge," - Daniel Finkelstein applies Heinsohn's analysis to the defining May 1968 riots in France. Finkelstein explains the riots in terms of a bulge in the proportion of young males in France - a product of the post-war baby boom. The driving force behind their protests (les evenements du Mai as they are known) was not ideas, despite their political romanticisation, says Finkelstein, but demographics, or to give it another name, testosterone.

According to Wikipedia, the May 1968 protest "began as a series of student strikes that broke out at a number of universities and lycées in Paris, following confrontations with university administrators and the police. The De Gaulle administration's attempts to quash those strikes by further police action only inflamed the situation further, leading to street battles with the police in the Latin Quarter, followed by a general strike by students and strikes throughout France by ten million French workers, roughly two-thirds of the French workforce. The protests reached the point that de Gaulle created a military operations headquarters to deal with the unrest, dissolved the National Assembly, and called for new parliamentary elections for 23 June 1968."

The De Gaulle government was brought close to collapse (De Gaulle had even taken temporary refuge at an airforce base in Germany), "but the revolutionary situation evaporated almost as quickly as it arose. Workers went back to their jobs, after a series of deceptions carried out by the Confédération Générale du Travail, the leftist union federation, and the Parti Communiste Français (PCF), the French Communist Party. When the elections were finally held in June, the Gaullist party emerged even stronger than before. May '68 was a political failure for the protestors, but it had an enormous social impact."

For Finkelstein: "The 1968 protests are not best understood as their instigators would have them understood - as the antithesis of war, as the street carnivals of the peace movement. The protesters should instead be seen as having some similarities with the warriors they were opposing. Both were trying to solve a problem with violence. The protesters sought to resolve political conflict in the street and through confrontation. Many of the leaders were not wishing for an end to war, but for victory by the North Vietnamese....However, if you see the événements as the product of demographics, the data is easy to comprehend. Young people, particularly young men, tend to see violent solutions to problems as more acceptable than do other groups in society. In 1968 there was a bulge in the number of hot-headed young males."

Where this bulge goes, Finkelstein argues, violence is soon to follow. "There are 67 countries in the world where there is such a bulge", he writes, "and there is violence in 60 of them."

What does this insight contribute to our understanding of South Africa?

Statistics South Africa noted that by the 1990s the age profile of the South African population was racially bifurcated. "The black African population had an age profile typical of a developing country, with a relatively large percentage of people being children under the age of 15 years [and a] relatively small percentage consisted of those aged 65 years and older....The white population, on the other hand, had an age profile typical of a highly industrialised country, with a relatively small percentage of people under the age of 15 years ... and a relatively large percentage amongst those aged 65 years and older."

This raises the intriguing question of whether South Africa would have escaped violent racial conflict in the 1990s if the white and black populations had had a similar youth ‘bulge' at the time. In other words, what would have happened if there had been a similar proportion of ‘hot-headed' young males on both sides of the racial divide? Instead, one could argue, as the white population aged the idea of pre-empting civil war through a negotiated settlement - and peaceful concession of power - became very much the preferred option.

By 2001 the 15-29 age bracket made up 31,2% of the black African population and 29,8% of the total population. In this demographic context it is not particularly surprising that the 1994 settlement - which averted a racial conflict and put an end to the ANC-IFP semi-civil war - did not see an end to violence, but rather its privatisation. While young men no longer sought to achieve party political ends through violence, many continued to pursue personal ends through criminal violence. There were more South Africans reported murdered between mid-2002 and mid-2007 (97,900) than there were Iraqi civilians killed in the five years following the American invasion (+/- 85,000 according to one website.) (Note: Iraq's population is approximately 57% the size of South Africa's.) According to the South African police there were 126,558 robberies with aggravating circumstances in the 2006/2007 reporting year.

Political violence may well have erupted if the Mbeki-ites had tried to subvert the will of the party at Polokwane. But, once again an older generation thought it not worth the risk of trying to thwart the demands of young men for change.

Our criminal justice system has become so dysfunctional, and our politicians so averse to fixing it, that perhaps our best hope is for the passing of the bulge. The proportion of South Africans in the 15-29 age bracket is now gradually declining. For black South Africans the percentage of the population in this age group has fallen to 30,5% and for the population as a whole it is now 29,2%.

Finkelstein makes the point: "With our blithe conviction that we can always make things better, we are convinced that political education and economic amelioration will work to bring peace where there is conflict. Heinsohn suggests that it might make things worse. Educated and well-fed young males tend to greater violent unrest. The only hope? That young men eventually grow up".