Conspicuous consumption coupled with poverty are the key ingredients for a revolution, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe said on Wednesday.

Addressing a journalists during a roundtable discussion in Cape Town, he drew a link between social unrest and consumption by companies and mine bosses, in the wake of the Marikana protests and killing.

"Once the have nots get to a point where, as Martin Luther King put it, they continue to fight against the degenerating feeling of nobodiness, it is only matter of time before this resonates into a strong feeling of ridding themselves of abject poverty and deprivation," said Motlanthe.

He said the unrest in many communities, where service delivery protests were rife, was concerning but was a "necessary volatility".

"When you are a public office-bearer, I don't think we have the right morally, or otherwise, to say to those who are forever going without basic necessities of life that they should be patient.

"They are within their right to raise those issues as strongly and sharply as possible.

"If they don't do that, chances are their conditions will never change in their lifetime."

Motlanthe said public office-bearers could not cover themselves in glory, as the government had failed its people.

"Who are we to say to them, when we go to bed with full stomachs, who are we to say be patient, wait and these things will come your way someday?"

Motlanthe described the protests as welcome communication.

"... In other words, we are not lulled into a false sense of stability and therefore we have to continue to examine ourselves and see how best we can improve on performance, failing which it is clear we will forever be fire-fighting and once you get into that mode, it also means performance will plummet."