The Sunday Mail
The violence that resulted in the burning of 21 buses including two from Zimbabwe by South African mobs last week protesting the imposition of ANC City of Tshwane mayoral candidate Thoko Didiza must be understood within the broader framework of a country grappling with an endemic problem of violence whose genesis can be traced to apartheid years although some are always tempted to fatuously go further in history.
Analysts who trace violence beyond apartheid years are quick to point out the inherent violent nature of black South Africans emanating from ancestors who are often depicted derisively as “warrior-like” individuals obsessed with the idea of settling conflicts through military conquests.
Such analyses normally inevitably include Shaka as the central figure whose reign is said to have been characterised by the displacement of multitudes of tribes during a period historically referred to as Mfecane.
Mfecane was a period of political disruption and population migration in Southern Africa during the 1820s and 1830s marked by widespread chaos and warfare among indigenous communities.
While some historians attribute this displacement to a period of massive competition for resources caused by drought, Eurocentric historians centrally attribute the movement to the marauding Shaka’s regiments who for a period knew nothing but military conquests and are said to have bequeathed their “bloodthirsty” legacy to later generations.
But any rational person would surely dismiss such kind of analysis as nothing but white historical sanitisation of the violence brought about by slavery and colonialism.
To suggest that South Africans are naturally violent because of ancestral inheritance is simply to disguise the real cause of the violence which can be traced to the coming of the white man on the shores of the Cape and also the skewed manner that gave birth to Freedom Day.
Writing barely a year before the attainment of Freedom Day, Graeme Simpson, then director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, apportioned blame on apartheid, which he said ingrained the notion of violence as the ultimate arbiter of conflicts.
He wrote, “It has been argued that the legacy of apartheid has bequeathed to South Africa a ‘culture of violence’. This has been rooted in the notion that violence in South Africa has become normative rather than deviant and it has come to be regarded as an appropriate means of resolving social, political and even domestic conflict.”
In concurrence with Simpson’s view, it appears as though violence has been sanctioned as a means both of maintaining political power as well as an accepted means of attaining change or resolving conflict across the political spectrum.
It is from this perspective that the violence that has earned South Africa the tag of being the third most dangerous country in the world must be interrogated.
The obvious legacy bequeathed by apartheid to freed South Africans is a racially-based society characterised by hostile stereotypes, severe political intolerance and serious economic disparities.
It cannot be over-emphasised that the most obvious offshoots of a racially-based society is the absence of a social welfare net and obscene levels of unemployment that create conditions for solid foundation for the social, political and criminal violence which pervades South Africa.
Central to the genesis of South Africa’s violence is the nature by which the country attained its freedom. Its Freedom Day was essentially attained through street protests which were always met with violence from the racially biased apartheid police.
The intervening period of negotiations also created some form of security vacuum.
The transitional period leading to elections had the effect of discrediting the traditional apartheid based mechanism of regulating society.
Repressive control exercised during apartheid became indefensible.
It is this “window period” of no legitimate source of authority entrenched seeds of violence and created an atmosphere of lawlessness.
It was during this period the majority of people in the townships resorted to “legal self-help”, creating a spiral chain of retribution and increased violence.
This “legal self-help” was also a catalyst for the “black on black” violence which the commercial media largely controlled by the white establishment hyped so much as a way of justifying their stereotypical depiction of blacks as barbaric.
This kind of description simply feeds into the fear that white people had and has been the foundation upon which apartheid politics was sustained.
But black political organisations also fell into this narrow stereotypical grid when they competed for influence at the negotiating table and consequently mobilised people along ethnic lines.
Once mobilised ethnically in violent situations, the volatile situation that came about became very difficult to contain.
Another important ingredient of violence was what is commonly referred to as the “third force”.
The third force is fuelled by a white mentality of superiority that constantly stokes flames of violence to vindicate the failure of black leadership in managing the “complex” affairs of the South African society.
This “third force” operates at two levels.
The first level is where the force’s intention is to regain power by all means from the incumbent ruling ANC and the second level is materialistic and thrives on creating instability as a pretext for demobilising people from collective revolutionary spirit aimed at transforming the political economy.
Both groups find ready candidates in their devious schemes amongst the disillusioned youths, criminal gangs and within the insecure hostel populations and informal sentiments.
It can be argued that the prevalence of quasi-military or security organisations has also given birth to right-wing groups who still hold an avalanche of arms that readily find their way into society.
The unbanning of liberation movements during the negotiation period opened doors for right wing groups that abstained from the negotiating table to flourish.
In the post-apartheid era, these right-wing groups have continued to pose a threat to security and occasionally carry out sabotage acts, including targeting African nationalists like Chris Hani.
Subsequently, the violence in post-apartheid era has developed a momentum of its own and local communities still lack confidence in the local security sector that is viewed as alien and always at odds with the aspirations of the ordinary man.
The residual presence of whites in all the critical security institutions further erodes the confidence of the ordinary man as it is a reminder of the repressive apartheid system.
Individuals feeling powerless and helpless in the face of dramatic and economic changes, frequently symbolically express their power through violence in the domains of their lives in which they still hold sway.
This explains why demonstrators protesting on purely domestic segmented issues often vent their anger and violence within the family and home and by extension any foreign groups of people.
In the post-apartheid era, there has been a blurring of purely criminal activities and political disturbances.
This has been compounded by the disillusionment of political freedom which has been characterised by poverty, unemployment and consequent conflict over scarce resources particularly in township communities, hostel dwellers and informal settlements.
As a result, violence has become multifaceted from a range of non-political sources rapidly becoming politicised.
Lack of meaningful reform of the South African police has also been a major cause for the continued lawless as the law enforcement agencies had failed to develop a trust based relationship with communities.
Stories have been told of South Africans having no respect for human lives and that widespread illiteracy has also fuelled wanton violence.
Although this may be true, it must never be forgotten that apartheid society was premised on the marginalisation of whole communities that were denied a voice were economically disempowered.
The apartheid system thus dehumanised individuals in such a way that it accentuate their capacity to engage in acts of violence and brutality.
Given the entrenchment of the violence culture in the South African society, remedial strategies must also take a holistic slant.
The fundamental remedy that needs to be undertaken to uproot a culture of violence is the socio-economic reconstruction of South Africa rooted in addressing alarming economic disparities between whites and blacks, coupled with effective education.
There is also need to address the issues of establishing credible law enforcement with direct civilian accountability and re-orient law enforcement agencies towards socially appropriate skills development.
Tighter legislation of gun control needs to be enacted to reduce weapons being in private hands.
Besides gun control, the state must also pragmatically institutionalise the provision of psychological, medical, legal and financial aid in order to inhibit the generational nature of violence and its cyclical regeneration.
South African leaders need to take serious introspection of a recent World Bank research that used the Gini coefficient and concluded that the country is the most unequal society in the world.
The economic disparities have worsened social cohesion and even very irrational ideologies find taking amongst the disempowered groups.
Until the resource distribution imbalance is addressed and the critical education levels of ordinary citizens improve violence will continue to tear at the fabric of the South African society.
