Johannesburg, South Africa (CNN) Many South Africans have been smug watching the images of lawlessness, anarchy and violence on London’s streets.

As hooded youths burnt and trashed the streets of London, there has been a sense of self-satisfied bemusement from the country that hosted last year’s World Cup football.  So much so, the spokesperson of the opposition party, the DA, mentioned on Twitter that she was “perturbed” by the tone of tweets posted by South Africans and asked if “the chips on our shoulders are really that deep?”

In the years leading up to the 2010 tournament, the British tabloid press in particular irritated many South Africans with constant assessments of how “unsafe” South Africa is. Proud locals felt that many English football fans were dissuaded from attending the World Cup because of the fear campaign generated by the British media.

Now that the South African government has issued a travel warning to citizens travelling to the United Kingdom some have been questioning the double standards. Had this happened in South Africa - a year before the World Cup - many suggest that the world’s media would have been pressuring the football governing body, FIFA, to move the tournament someplace safer. FIFA would often hint at a Plan B location, such as “safe” Australia, if South Africa became too dangerous or unpleasant to host the World Cup.

However, now that the Olympic Games are to take place in a year’s time in London, some Africans are asking why more people aren’t debating whether England can pull off the world’s oldest sports tournament. After all, they say, the streets are burning! The mobs are in control! The politicians are on the beach! Call in the army!  Is there a Plan B for the Olympics, some ask jokingly? How about South Africa?

Africans are generally ultra-sensitive to comparisons between themselves and Westerners, particularly old colonial bosses. This time around the debate is less rooted in reality - no one really suggests that London is too dangerous to host the Olympics - but in the perceptions that many Africans believe still exist.

If that was happening in Africa … they mumble as they watch the TV.

That said, there is also a reverse smugness about the level of rioting seen in England and the British police’s inability to challenge it. In some cases rioters are dismissed as just a bunch of gormless “hoodies” on the rampage. One South African newspaper headline read: “London riots are tame by SA’s protest standards.”

In many ways, the UK riots, while shocking to many, are relatively meek compared to the violent protests experienced in South Africa for decades.

As a reporter, I have lost track of the number of times we have watched groups of angry South Africans march, protest and then trash the streets. Just last year, I filmed as police fired rubber bullets and water canons at violently protesting doctors, nurses and teachers on one of Johannesburg’s main roads.

In fact, it happens so often that mobs of people gather to slash, burn and intimidate that South Africans are quite used to these unacceptably high levels of public violence.

When it happens in the land of Big Ben, Trafalgar Square and The Ivy - well, that’s different.

It is vastly different. South Africa has a history of public protest that is deeply-rooted in the anti-apartheid struggle. The legacy of police brutality in those pre-democratic days also left many South Africans with a rather jaundiced view of law and order. The simmering anger felt by many is also said to fuel the ugly violence that inevitably emerges during a protest in South Africa.

These are uniquely South African reasons, social and historical experiences, that continue to scar this nation.

However, there is one similarity between South Africa’s rampaging mobs and those in England. It is a theme that has emerged as Tunisians and Egyptians took to the streets. Again and again, we are seeing the effects of a global problem that will continue to define this century - youth who are dislocated, disenfranchised, poor and, crucially, have no prospects for the future.