Africa-Press – South-Africa. South Africa is a nation in despair and its citizens are a broken society, Professor Barney Pityana said on Thursday.
“We are a nation in despair; it seems progressive, almost psychotic. South Africans are almost depressed about their condition at the moment.
“We are, in every way you would like to think about, a broken society,” Pityana said.
Pityana delivered the keynote address at a South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) lecture, under the theme: 28 years of democracy in South Africa: Prospects for the future.
The lecture was in commemoration of the key calendar month and placed a spotlight on human rights issues.
During his speech, Pityana, who previously served as the chairperson of the SAHRC in 1995, said a drive through any inner city across the country would make you realise the brokenness in society.
“You see nothing, but dilapidation, wreckage, dirty, piles of rubbish…. you see buildings that are falling apart.
He said:
“Very active, healthy young men and women wandering around aimlessly or standing on corners around the areas where we live, with nothing to do. The sense of depression just hangs over the place like a cloud, and the people are the ones who have to live that life every single day,” Pityana said.
But, in Sandton, and parts of Braamfontein, you see different views of society, he said.
“You see people busy, energetic, rushing from place to place, and they, too, are never without fear, clutching at their bags because they expect anyone who passes to grab whatever they are carrying.”
He said South Africans lived in constant fear and were unsafe in their homes.
“The idea of home being like a castle you resort to for security is not there. At any time, you could be watching television, and somebody could point a gun and empty your purse, and if you are lucky, you live to tell the story on another day, but quite likely, there will be no story to tell from you. That is the South Africa we live in today.
“There is nowhere in the world where I can think of where illegal, undocumented foreigners live and control parts of a city to the point of insisting it must be named after their own towns where they come from. That is colonialism because that’s what colonists did.”
He said municipalities could no longer provide the essential services in any society that citizens could depend on.
“I want to come across the president or anybody in our Parliament who goes to a public hospital, or whose children go to a public school. They don’t.
He added:
“We need a government to govern and to govern in the interest of our people, but the government is a disappearing state,” he said.
For More News And Analysis About South-Africa Follow Africa-Press
