‘Don’t Look Away from Spectacles of Public Violence and Lawlessness’

July 2021 — In this moment of great challenge and terrible danger for South Africa, it is imperative for everyone who calls this country home to be part of finding solutions and making a future that is liveable for all.

Members of the public paying their respects outside Mandela’s Houghton home | Robert Dennison | CC BY 2.0

The temptation at times like this is to become paralysed, or to look away, or to give up. Our call is to honour Madiba in this month of Mandela Day by stepping up.

We applaud those who are contributing to making peace in the hotspots of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. We applaud community members who are assisting law enforcement services with the protection of infrastructure and systems which serve them.

And we applaud those who are mobilising support for relief, recovery and clean-up work. We are committed to supporting all such endeavour.

If sustainable solutions to the wave of public violence and other acts of lawlessness which is sweeping parts of South Africa are to be found, then it is critical that we understand what is happening and why. This tidal wave has been a long time coming.

For many years now the Foundation has joined with others in alerting the country to the unsustainable levels of rage building within our communities. Despite paying lip service to reckoning with oppressive and traumatic pasts, since 1994 the state has overseen serial failures in ensuring reparation, restitution, redistribution and prosecution.

Instead, those carrying deep wounds from those pasts have been left behind by macro policies and strategies which have favoured both White and Black elites but has disturbingly excluded an overwhelming majority of the Black working classes. Inequality has spiralled. The discarded and the despairing live their lives with conspicuous consumption in full view.

Levels of violence have been growing at disturbing levels through the last two decades. The Foundation believes that South Africa is best understood now as a violent democracy, a democratic polity in which high levels of violence are regarded as normal.

From domestic violence to rape, from child abuse to murder, from injuries caused by drunken driving to school bullying, statistics for South Africa are shocking. The woundedness of our society is profound.

And for too long the state has concentrated its efforts on bolstering law enforcement and the criminal justice system, neglecting violence prevention strategies (like having a vibrant and respected social work sector) and rehabilitation programmes.

In the last eighteen months Covid-19 has added whole new layers of alienation, privation and despair. Since the first quarter of 2020 the numbers of South Africans unable to put a meal on the table have grown.

Malnutrition, homelessness and depression have deepened alarmingly. There are too many people feeling discarded and in despair, too many people with nothing to lose, too many people who have seen political and other elites at all levels play fast and loose with the law, with impunity.

All that was required to let destructive energy loose was a trigger. The willingness of those who call themselves supporters of former President Zuma to weaponise identities and invite mayhem became that earth tremor setting off the tidal wave.

The consequences for individuals, communities and our country will be dire. The future will be a scary place if we don’t all step up. In the long term, addressing deep-rooted sources of rage and despair will be critical.

In the short-term, restoring the rule of law has to be a priority. And in the weeks and months ahead we can prepare ourselves for communities cut off from essential food and medical supplies as a result of the destruction of infrastructure and supply chains. Relief work, like the Foundation’s Each1Feed1 campaign, for many will make the difference between surviving or not.

Don’t look away. Join us in making every day a Mandela Day.

*SOURCE: Nelson Mandela Foundation. Go to ORIGINAL.