Animal Farm revisited at Boulders taxi rank

I saw something very shameful today.

Plainclothes police officers from the JMPD, well they were in JMPD vehicles while all clad in suspiciously fake-looking football shirts, rained down on a group of mostly foreign men who offer cheap haircuts on the pavement outside the taxi rank at Boulders, Midrand.

Tents and tarps were torn down and equipment kicked before being hauled up into a waiting JMPD minibus. Naturally there was a fair amount of shouting, swearing and finger pointing while this was going on. Thing is, it was from the police. The men, all stood helpless with the threat of arrest hanging heavily over their heads.

I did mention this happened outside a taxi rank, right? So what was happening at the taxi rank while this scene unfolded before my disbelieving eyes? You’d (maybe) be shocked that it was business as usual. Klapped out taxis kept together by masking tape and wire were driving in and out as they do every day. Drivers were not wearing seatbelts, some were on their cellphones, and every so often there’d be a bottleneck because someone was dropping off/picking up passengers right in the middle of the road.

Did this occasion even a lazy glance from the metro police? Was there a finger waved at them with a threat of them being next? Nope. Nada. The phrase looking the other way has never had a situation more deserving than what I saw. I would never even try to argue that the police were necessarily wrong in demolishing illegal structures and cracking down on businesses operating without permits.

Nor would I wager anything valuable on the legality of the assembled barber’s presence in the country. But given the inconsistency I saw before me, it would also be very hard to argue that the police’s actions were driven by a sense of duty and seeing to it that the law is enforced. Because there sure as hell would have been dozens of taxis impounded and drivers fined and even arrested were that the case. Not to mention a number of obviously drunk individuals I saw haphazardly roaming the pavements.

It reminded me of a pair of friends telling me about the scandalous scenes they saw at Home Affairs when they went to sort out paperwork for their Zimbabwean domestics. How the department was on the one hand extending an amnesty to illegal Zimbabweans and urging them to arrange their paperwork, while the Home Affairs employees at counter level were soliciting bribes just so people could access the very paperwork they needed to get on the right side of the law.

From people whose job it was to not only give them the forms but to help them through the process. The very people entrusted with welcoming people into the refuge they seek in our beautiful country. A friend even remarked that it would be a sad day were we to ever need refuge and solidarity from our brothers up north just as we did less than a generation ago. Because looking at the way we treat them, we would deserve every ounce of scorn and rejection coming our way.

It is easy to blame apartheid and its architects for engendering an inferiority complex among our people. A complex that has people thinking that to validate themselves, they must reject and tread on those they consider even blacker (and therefore somehow more vulgar) than they are. It certainly is true that decades of brainwashing cannot go away overnight. Despite what those who wish we’d just forget the past may want us to believe. But it is also true that in an age where a black person can go and vote for another black person in a legitimate election, and not be in contravention of any law, then the oppressor is not always going to be outside of one’s head.

Of course I could be wrong, it could well be that the JMPD were simply staying true to their easy target-driven approach to law enforcement. It is, I imagine, far easier to hassle illegal immigrants eking out a legit living on the streets than it is to take on an industry where the players can not only cripple entire cities by merely keeping their keys in their pockets, where they have the manpower, equipment and most importantly the backbone to engage in a fight, where some of the top dogs have strong connections to the ruling elite, and where they can vote your bosses out of their positions.

That could just be it. So forgive me for thinking that what I saw was driven by something that would make Verwoerd, Malan and Vorster smile even in the hell they earned during their lives. Maybe I’m just cynical.