Unlike under apartheid, there is no obvious target for people’s rage. There are protests, almost daily, against housing conditions, police brutality and political corruption. There is considerable anger against the ruling African National Congress, in both national and local governments. Yet the relationship of people, even of critics, to the A.N.C. is complex. It remains, for most, the party that brought about liberation, and so retains considerable moral legitimacy.

The confusion about whom to blame for conditions that seem little improved from the days of apartheid has often led people to turn on one other. The explosion of xenophobic violence, directed against migrant workers from other African nations, that swept through South Africa in 2008, and again this year, is one expression of this. So is the growing conflict between apartheid-defined categories of people, like “blacks” and “coloreds.”

New conflicts have also emerged, like the one between longtime residents of Cape Town’s townships (who call themselves “borners” — people born in the townships) and immigrants from elsewhere in South Africa. Such divisions have been exacerbated, even exploited, by sections of the A.N.C. As the failure to transform the lives of the poor has eroded support for the party, many A.N.C. politicians have turned to the politics of ethnicity and identity to strengthen their base.

It is a development that has long been evident, but that has really gathered strength under the leadership of South Africa’s current president, Jacob G. Zuma. Mr. Zuma has unashamedly exploited his Zulu identity — “100% Zulu Boy” read the slogan on supporters’ T-shirts before the 2009 general election. And to shore up his support, he has promoted supposedly traditional African values, enhancing, for example, the powers of unelected tribal chiefs.

Last year, his government attempted to pass the Traditional Courts Bill that would have created a separate legal system for millions of people living in the former Bantustans, allowing local chiefs to act as judges, prosecutors and mediators, with no legal representation and no right of appeal.

“Let us solve African problems the African way, not the white man’s way,” Mr. Zuma proclaimed in defense of the law.

“It’s shocking how the language of apartheid now comes out of black mouths,” one former activist said to me.