13 October 2019
At the dawn of our democratic dispensation, we were, reasonably so, preoccupied with setting up the legal framework for a new government.
As a consequence, we have not paid enough attention to the rampant criminality that has become the way that we solve our disputes.
It is a historical criminality that characterised the battles between our tribes, the dispossession of land by white people, and the brutality at the centre of colonialism and apartheid.
Our nation is disturbingly violent. When lovers fight, the resultant gender-based violence is macabre. When acquaintances disagree about something at a drinking hole, such disagreements may end up in bloody and fatal stabbings or exchange of gunfire. Indeed, many have died as a consequence of political differences.
And so it is that when our children fight at various schools around the country, scissors that are meant to be learning aides get turned into life-ending weapons, as we have seen at Thuto-Tiro High and elsewhere. That is our unfortunate context – of a people who use violence to solve disputes among themselves.
The rage in our society, even as it stands in stark contrast to our image abroad as a nation of peaceful negotiators instead of bloody revolutionaries, is symptomatic of a broader malaise permeating our national psyche. Our children will continue to transform our school grounds into dens of violence if we do not pay attention to our need to heal. This week alone, three incidents of pupils stabbing each other took place at various schools, underscoring the fact that our schools are fast becoming like prisons. When our children go to school, we wonder if they will make it back home alive.
It is true the violence in schools mirrors societal violence. Yet school yards are supposed to be citadels of hope – places where our youth can re-imagine a future much better than what we have bequeathed them.
US move highlights SA’s Gupta inaction
The decision by the US to impose sanctions on the Gupta brothers for the plunder and pillage in our country is, while welcome, a great opportunity for reflection.
Why is it that the Guptas are able to feel the consequences of their actions not from us, their victims, but from the US? Why are we so slow to act against those who have stolen from the poor? It has been two years since President Cyril Ramaphosa told us he would prioritise the fight against corruption while on the campaign trail to replace his predecessor, Jacob Zuma.
National director of public prosecution Shamila Batohi is either too afraid of power or has not the slightest idea where to start. Public confidence in the legitimacy of the state is undermined, among many other ways, when those known to have plundered our resources walk about with gay abandon without any consequences. Batohi must either do her work, or Ramaphosa must find her replacement.
