Maponya Mall attack shows we cannot afford to be complacent
It has been documented in history that great empires don’t just fall overnight, nor does their demise come as an event that history takes a privileged vantage point to record for future reference.
It takes years of negligence and someone not doing their part for empires to eventually self-implode, and not necessarily in an explosive manner.
We don’t have an equivalent of the empires of old in the world today. In their place are nation states, and in many instances, especially in post-colonial Africa, borders drawn with total disregard oof ethnic and cultural identity.
The typical modern African state is comparatively very much in its infancy as people across the continent are grappling with the mammoth task of fashioning functional states from the rabble of colonialism and the neo-imperialism that followed it. Africa in general, doesn’t have the memory bank on which to rely as we build the type of state we need to pull the continent out of the rut.
After hundreds of years of struggle against colonialism and apartheid, the vast majority of the population of South Africa had, for the first time in 1994, what they could term a state meant to look after their interests.
It’s been a tad over 30 years now that a democratic order built on that premise has been on the job. However, the jury is still very much out on how we have been doing since 1994.
Many would argue, with justification, that we have done a great job. Yes, we would imagine they too would concede, we could have done even better, and still can. This group’s cup is never half empty.
Many others would beg to differ, among them more than a chunk of those nostalgic for how things used to be for them, thanks to the pigmentation of their skin. We would imagine they are spoilt for choice, courtesy of the state of affairs.
Chief among our democracy’s fault lines has been growing lawlessness.
Time and time again, the nation is jolted out of complacency when something happens that leaves us wondering where we are indeed on our way down the path of a failed state. It is exaggerated, we agree, but we cannot afford such scenes as witnessed at Maponya Mall this week. Utter lawlessness.
In a move that indicated how emboldened the louts carrying out the wars in the transport sector have become, e-hailing cars were set alight with one of the drivers trapped inside at the entrance of the famed Soweto landmark on Wednesday night. The community woke up to news of the death of the man and serious injury to two others as a result of the attack. It was brazen disdain for the respect of law and order while cocking a snook at authority.
It is not the first time that such an attack has taken place at Maponya Mall, or at many other such places. And often, perpetrators have got away with murder.
It’s in letting such cases go unattended that we will lay the foundation for that which will eventually render us a failed state. And thus have many great empires fallen.
