OPINION: Lorenzo A Davids writes that we have eliminated all processes that allow for reasonable government and the rule of law. We go from being offended by someone to killing them.
By Lorenzo A Davids
SOUTH Africa is in the grip of an exploding and expanding crisis of political and criminal violence.
From the hallowed halls of Parliament to the walkways of our cities and towns, from our public transport systems to our residential areas, waves of violence roll on without any prospect of stopping.
It is pointless to quote well-known statistics. It is more important to address the political paralysis and administrative apathy that have allowed this crisis of violence to exist and engulf our daily lives.
I fear that we have accepted political killings as part of our democratic fabric. We have allowed the political violence of the 1980s on the East Rand, in KwaZulu-Natal and Crossroads to dull our abhorrence.
We justified apartheid political killings, finding all the reasons why “it was different”. We have also lacked an appropriate response to criminal violence, despite the ongoing body count on our streets.
Families of murdered individuals should ban the Minister of Police from visiting their homes and communities. It is a pointless, and in fact, cruel pontification by an ANC government that is folding its arms over our mutilated children and dead parents’ bodies.
In a traumatised society such as ours, depleted of reasoning and sense-making justice, everything becomes a trigger. When trains are late, they get stoned. When taxis perceive other transport means are taking commuters from them, violence often erupts. Politicians who don’t like what their colleagues are saying, physically attack them.
Political office-bearers are assassinated because of political factionalism. There is visible defiance of systems that seek to advance the rule of law when those clash with existing economic or traditional practices.
The smirking faces of our politicians are sorely misplaced when, on several indices, we rank as one of the most violent countries in the world.
President Ramaphosa’s snail-pace approach to fixing South Africa and his confusing love for the maze of imbizos and summits he announces all the time has eroded all confidence in him.
Massive law enforcement deployments as an ultimate response to violence is no solution. It does not allow one to get to the root of the violence – the economics, injustices and fear that sit at its root. I have stated this previously, most political and criminal killings have a direct link to economics and injustice.
Over the past 20 years, a massive illicit economy has grown across South Africa, with revenues in the billions of rand that can no longer be undone by putting cops on the beat.
The supply of drugs and guns outstrips all confiscation efforts of drugs and guns.
The July 2021 looting spree in KwaZulu-Natal was a very small insight into what we might face post-2024. We had an overrun police force, an absent government and a silent president.
We have eliminated all processes that allow for reasonable government and the rule of law. We go from being offended by someone to killing them. There are no longer any steps allowed in-between.
As the ANC faces a possible election loss in 2024 and as poverty deepens in South Africa, violence is emerging as a standard response to the failing system and its inequities.
South Africa is a loaded gun that is be triggered by minute offences. Like they told us in 2016 that there is no State Capture, so they will tell us that violence is not out of control. The statistics however show us that it is out of control.
Someone dies on average every hour from gun violence in South Africa. Let that sink in as you go to the next government summit.
Listen to the platitudes and see the paralysis. Then you will have some insight into why violence has become our first response.
We are an exhausted, abused and angry people, whose lived experience incubates violence. We have not recovered from being hand-reared by violence. I fear for our future.
* The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the DFA.
