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| Sisonke Msimang |
Sisonke Msimang, The Daily Maverick
The opposition may be acting silly, but the decision that
McBride should be head of Ipid despite the fact that he has broken our laws and
despite the fact that he is a broken man who probably needs help, seems bloody
and careless. It seems as though someone in power cares as little for the
public as they do for McBride. Again short-term thinking trumps long-term
decision-making in a country in which everyone is a victim. It has never been
more important than it is this year to vote, and to do so wisely.
The police seem intent on killing ordinary citizens. They
Police Commissioner lurches from one bloody disaster to the next. She tells us
that police are human beings too. She is right, even though this is not the
moment for her to tell us this. They have just killed a child. I forget the
name of the town. I forget – as soon as I hear it – the name of the child who
was killed. I am inured to the pain of others. The suicide rate amongst cops is
shameful. They are stressed out and trigger happy and under-paid and
overworked. Their problems are systemic, as deep and as wide as Blood River. We
fear them as much as they fear us. This has always been the case in South
Africa.
We view each other from a wary distance. Then we begin to
shout. South Africa is a nation of victims. I do not say this in a tone of
sarcasm. It is an observation that makes me sigh and wince, almost
simultaneously. I wish it weren’t so. Even the men with guns and water hoses,
those with rubber bullets and live ammunition, are victims. The whites are
victims of affirmative action. The blacks are victims of racism. The poor are
victims of exploitation. The women are victims of abuse. The men are victims of
rage.
In the new South Africa - which is not so new anymore but is
remarkably new compared to the three hundred years of bloodletting that
preceded it - we must talk of violence and politics in the same breath.
Politics is violent and violence is political.
We cannot know anything if we do not know that the levels of
violence in the country, and the persistence of rape and murder in particular,
are an indicator of political failures. The decision that McBride should be
head of Ipid despite the fact that he has broken our laws, despite the fact that
he is a broken man who needs help, seems bloody and careless. It seems as
though someone cares as little for the public as they do for McBride.
Short-term thinking trumps long-term difficult decision-making.
McBride – like countless others who were brave and young and
angry and who killed so that others would one day be free – has not been taken
care of the way he should have been. They – like him - are the walking wounded,
twisted and righteously bitter and armed to the teeth and seeking refuge in bottles
and bodies and places they should not be.
There was no plan made for the ones who carried guns across
the Limpopo to join MK. There was nothing for their families. And so, there
were many AK-47s that were redeployed when it became clear that the ANC did not
have a plan to reintegrate yet another set of victims. There had already been
provisions made for all sorts of other victims. The victims who had suffered
Bantu education, the victims who had contracted HIV, the victims who had been
punched in the face by the migrant labour system, they stood in line and the
ANC became busy.
The simmering rage of the victims who fought and so knew how
to use guns, the rage of those (I suspect like McBride) who had nightmares and
sweats and drinking binges and violent rages and PTSD – these were ignored.
Those fighters were young when freedom came. Today their
bitterness has hardened, it has become as leathery and worn down as our
politics. The era of the art of ‘congress’ is over. Once more we are at war.
New fighters have emerged. The Economic Freedom Fighters
have arrived, led by a Prince called Julius. The rhetoric is violent. The
uniforms make me anxious. The rounded bellies over tightened belts make me
smile. He is a victim too, a brilliant, important victim who speaks on behalf
of many. Someone didn’t take care of him.
So, Julius is here to remind us that our state has not yet
developed a plan to address the deep economic divides that were inherited from
Apartheid. He tells us – rightly – that instead its officials and functionaries
drive expensive cars over rutted streets and whizz arrogantly past aching
poverty. Despite the remarkable Constitution of which it is the custodian, our
government has failed to inculcate widespread respect for the rule of law. He points
to local councillors and senior politicians who flout the rules and write new
laws to shield themselves from prosecution.
These problems may have been created by old thugs but their
persistence is the fault of a new mob. What are we going to do about this?
As we celebrate twenty years of democracy South Africans are
beginning to realise that we are stuck in a pathological victimhood, forever
pointing the finger outward, forever waiting for the return of saviours who
have long since passed.
Their words remain, to buoy us but they are gone. And this
needs to be okay. Their absence needs to be okay. The lack of a morally upright
cadre of leaders cannot stymy us.
On August 3, 1857 Frederick Douglass, who was born into
slavery and escaped it, made a speech in which he said “[F]ind out just what a
people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and
wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are
resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are
prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of
those whom they oppress.” One hundred and fifty years later, these words
resonate for South Africans. Mandela is no more. Jacob Zuma is not an
unstoppable monster. Our leaders are no better or worse than any others. They
will only stop the violence that wounds everybody and resolves nothing, if we
insist that they do. In April we must vote and we must do so wisely.
