Africa-Press – South-Africa. We need to give people a sense of hope for the future if we are to have any chance of healing a traumatised society, writes Nontobeko Hlela as she reflects on two recent assassination attempts.
South Africa is one of the most violent societies on the planet. Our rates of murder and rape are as high as some of the most dangerous societies in central America and the Caribbean. On top of that, universities, state-owned enterprises, the state itself and party politics have all been penetrated by mafias of various kinds.
This violence has a long history going back to slavery and colonial conquest and the formation of the Zulu nation during a period of massive political instability.
The apartheid regime’s hold on power was sustained through its unflinching use of violence and pervasive oppression. But it was not only through direct violence such as the Sharpeville massacre and the Soweto uprising. It debased and dehumanised the majority of the people day after day, year after year. In some cases, this was internalised and produced violence within families.
A deeply traumatised society
And, of course, the so-called ‘peaceful transition’ from apartheid was only peaceful for whites. In fact, the period leading to the end of apartheid was one of the most violent this country has ever seen. The dying apartheid state used its power and influence over Inkatha, and together they waged a civil war against the UDF in the townships and villages across what was then Natal and KwaZulu, as well as Johannesburg and the East Rand. Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes, and thousands were killed.
We are a deeply traumatised society, and we seldom speak about this, let alone try to address it. Once a toxic culture has become entrenched and inculcated, it is very difficult to move beyond it. To do so requires a conscious and concerted effort. This was never done in this country, we have never done any of the work that needed to be done to change the economic, political, and social fabric of our country. Our leadership leading up to the 1994 elections seems to have fallen into the trap of thinking that once they had won the political kingdom, everything else would follow.
Clearly, this has not been the case. And we don’t only carry the unaddressed trauma of the past. We continue to traumatise new generations with endemic violence and the vivid schisms in our society. We are the most unequal country in the world, and almost half the population is unemployed. The evidence of a country in decay and steady decline is all around us. It is an indictment on not just the politicians but also the business sector and civil society that a lot of our people are in a worse position today than they were at the dawn of democracy. Personal security has certainly worsened and people’s ability to look after themselves and provide for their families has dramatically declined.
In a society like ours, where access to resources is scarce, and one of the few available ways of getting this access is through the state, it is no wonder that there is so much contestation around political positions in South Africa. The one aspect of this political contest that is disheartening and a cause for concern is the violent nature that this takes, with assassinations having become a regularised way of deciding leadership, especially within the ANC.
Global Initiative estimates that there have been around 1,971 assassinations from 2001 – 2021. Given the long history of violence and political killings in KwaZulu-Natal, it is not surprising that this province remains the epicentre of political violence, which from 2013, began to move out of the ANC and to take the lives of activists seen to be working outside the political establishment. Abahlali baseMjondolo has been hit particularly hard, and lost four senior leaders and another member to assassination in 2022 alone.
Middle-class people are now being targeted, too, when they are seen to be doing their jobs too well and getting in the way of the various mafias that have penetrated the state, state owned enterprises and even universities.
Anti-Gang Unit senior detective Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear was gunned down outside his house on 18 September 2020. He was the lead investigator into the assassination of Pete Mihalik, a Cape Town lawyer assassinated outside his children’s school as he was dropping them off. His superiors were aware that his life was in danger, yet failed to protect him.
SA is unravelling
On 23 August 2021, Babita Deokaran, a highly respected civil servant, was murdered in a hail of bullets outside her house. She was killed for uncovering corruption during the grotesque Covid-19 PPE feeding frenzy.
Marumo Eric Phenya was gunned down on 17 October 2022 on his way home from dropping off his children at school. Phenya had alerted authorities to tender corruption at the Department of Home Affairs. Following this, he started receiving death threats, which he reported to the police, but this did not save him.
Now there have been attempts on the lives of University of Fort Hare Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sakhela Buhlungu and outgoing Eskom CEO André de Ruyter.
South Africa is unravelling in front of our eyes.
Decisive action is required in terms of intelligence, policing, investigation and prosecution. Assassinations are a national crisis and must be treated as such.
But we also need to give people a sense of hope for the future if we are to have any chance of healing a traumatised society. The electricity and water crises need to be addressed. Schools need to become safe and nurturing spaces where children can flourish. And the crisis of mass structural unemployment needs to be addressed with all the vigour that would be brought to waging a war.
We need to accept that austerity has been a disaster and build a capable state and fund its developmental programmes adequately. We also need to get rid of the tender system. It has been an unmitigated failure and the cause of many of the other ills besetting our country, including the scourge of corruption. Instead of instilling accountability and competition, the tender system has led to corruption, cronyism, lack of accountability, and incomplete and poor-quality work.
We need to get rid of the system and allow the Department of Public Works to undertake the work under the best available managers and systems of oversight. They must be able to employ the best people, thereby ensuring government gets the necessary skills and institutional knowledge in house. This would also allow the government to have command and control over the work. This would help to create jobs and eliminate corruption as people would be employed by the state. There are many low-hanging fruits in South Africa such as medical marijuana, which we don’t seem interested in pursuing. We still don’t have a 24-hour economy – even our airport shops are closed at night, yet aviation is a 24-hour activity. Our cities are drowning in filth, yet we don’t have people working around the clock to keep them clean.
No strategy
There is no reason for the electricity crisis to continue to worsen year after year. We should call on our BRICS partners, China, which has the finance and the technology to help us with this. Surely, with the ingenuity of Chinese companies, we could find a solution. Sometimes the paralysis around Eskom in the face of so many options, including solar and wind energy, seems to be deliberate to induce what Noam Chomsky referred to as the “standard technique of privatisation”, which is to “defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital”.
We need our people that feel safe and secure because only then will they be able to begin to uncoil the trauma that sits inside all of us. But there doesn’t appear to be a long-term strategy to modernise and improve our policing and make it responsive to today’s problems. Our training seems stuck in a world that no longer exists. We need more specialisation and the return of specialised units, and a focus on technology and forensics.
A large chunk of our country’s budget goes to the education department, yet we are constantly told that there are no skills in South Africa. There is clearly a mismatch here, I have argued previously that there is a need for the education department to work hand in hand with industry when formulating the syllabus and that we need to return to accessible training to create excellent artisans.
More than anything else, our people need hope. Without hope, the cycles of violence will only get worse.
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