Submitted by Trevor Watkins
Some of us achieve our destiny only in death. The image of the burning man that has flashed around the world this month will haunt our beloved nation for years to come. Such images have changed the course of history, and may yet change ours.
Most South Africans are bowed down under the weight of shame of these horrific events. Everyone has an opinion on who to blame. Most favour blaming the “government”, some continue to blame the past and some blame blacks in general. There are a few benighted commentators who even blame the foreigners.
We allocate blame so that we may punish those responsible and thereby avoid a repetition of the blameworthy act. Blaming the wrong people is a serious mistake with serious consequences. The innocent are punished; the guilty go free. Better to allocate no blame than to allocate it incorrectly.
The government is not to blame for this recent violence. To the best of my knowledge, no one in government instigated these attacks, or beat or burned or robbed anyone. I am fairly certain that no one in government profited from these attacks.
For a change, not apartheid, colonialisation, globalisation or whites are to blame for these attacks, although, outrageously, the leader of the PAC said they were. Blaming the government is just as mindless, just as irrational, as blaming apartheid for the evil that specific men and women do through their own free will and choice.
The blame for these attacks lies squarely with the stupid, brutal, immoral people who beat their former neighbours to a pulp, who doused them with petrol and set fire to them, then stole all their belongings. It is these people who must be caught and convicted and punished. No matter how many, no matter how desperate, no matter how poor, they must be severely punished or this cycle will continue indefinitely.
There are reasons aplenty for their ghastly behaviour — we’ve heard them all: poverty, joblessness, lack of housing, lack of education, boredom, frustration, cramped living conditions, influx of foreigners, bad hair days. But there are no excuses. Many people with every one of these reasons did not go mashuga in the past two weeks, did not enrich themselves at the cost of the strangers in their midst. These people did not riot because they were poor; they rioted because they wanted to be rich, no matter what the cost to anyone else.
There is, however, a branch of government that must take the blame for not stopping this behaviour quickly, for failing to apprehend the culprits, for failing to protect the innocent. This is the branch of government specifically tasked with protecting the life and property of all the residents of this country, one of only two real responsibilities of government.
The police alone have the authority, resources and funding to guarantee our security, to challenge and defeat the criminals. Just as they fail miserably every day to stem the flood of crime in this country, so they failed miserably to control the riots at the start, to mobilise resources fast enough, to have effective plans and procedures for this situation. Corrupt from top to bottom, our police are good at catching housewives doing 65km/h in a 60 zone, but have failed South Africa otherwise.
So how did we get from a rainbow nation in 1994 to this black-and-white Polaroid just 14 years later in 2008? Mostly through stupidity. We are one of five countries left in the world with a functioning communist party directly involved in the leadership of the country. Does no one here remember the history of the 20th century? Were we all sleeping in 1989? Do the names Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Tse Tung fail to ring any alarm bells? South Africa is overwhelmed with disastrously bad policies, and most of them came from the communist handbook. For this policy catastrophe our ANC government is directly responsible and directly to blame.
Hong Kong has lived alongside the world’s biggest communist dictatorship since World War II. Throughout this time this tiny lump of rock has resisted the insanity that is communist ideology, and it has grown to be one of the wealthiest, freest countries on the planet.
In the 1960s, Singapore flirted with communism but chose another path under its benevolent dictator. A mere 20 years later, this swampy peninsula has become the crossroads of Asia, an immensely wealthy centre of finance and shipping.
In the 1970s, Mauritius too flirted with communism, but also chose a different path. Now it is one of the wealthiest, most stable countries in the entire African realm, despite its history of colonisation, exploitation and lack of resources, land and skills.
With our vast mineral resources, our beautiful land, our intelligent people, our solid infrastructure, what have the ANC and its communist allies brought us after close on 15 years? Rioting in the streets due to lack of jobs, houses and infrastructure pretty much answers that question.
How do we get out of this mess? I suspect and fear that the path to the shining city on the hill passes through the burning swamp of despair. This is how it has been and will be for most of our neighbours. This is how it is in Africa. Or so we are told.
If we could develop a culture that placed more emphasis on individuals than on the groups they supposedly belonged to … If we could effectively protect these individuals through the rule of law … If we could stop counting noses as a means of selecting leaders and rather measure leaders by results … If we could abandon our culture of entitlement … If we could simply forget our fixation on phony third-generation rights such as that to a job and implement our real first-generation rights such as protection from the use of force … then perhaps us South Africans might stand a chance. But I honestly think we are too stupid to do that.
Trevor Watkins is an ageing hippie who has finally escaped from Gauteng to the Eastern Cape coast. Married with three adult children, he is South African-born and -bred, but considers himself to be a sovereign individual. A recent victim of armed robbery and torture, he estimates that he has been robbed about 40 times in the past 30 years. He was interrogated by the security police in 1986, became the deputy leader of the KISS party in 1994 and has been an active libertarian since 1985. Like most concerned South Africans, the recent riots have jolted him out of his complacency, hence this article
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