It's easy for you and I - Thought Leader

Let me start by unequivocally stating that I reject in the strongest terms the violence that has been unleashed upon defenseless foreign nationals in the townships and shanty towns of our country lately.,African on African violence reminiscent of the divide and conquer strategy mastered by the old regime. But – and there is a very big ‘but’ here.

Allow me to explore the perceived evil, unreasoning, uneducated, sheep mentality subscribing perpetrators’ viewpoint of the life that led them to these indisputably horrendous actions.

It is my belief, supported by what I have heard the perpetrators say and what I have read, that the issue here — the major issue — is not xenophobia, but rather service delivery. The foreigners are the easiest, closest and softest targets (exposed by their lack of volume and neglected by our government) for the natives of South Africa to vent their anger at.

I begin: It is very easy for you and I, standing by the espresso machine at work sipping on expensive coffee percolated from excellent quality imported grains and talking about the xenophobic attacks, to judge the perpetrators of these heinous crimes and look at them with disgust as we relate how we saw them rampage the dusty streets of their informal settlements hunting down people who surely must be their own.

It is easy for you and I — we have jobs to go to.

It is very easy for you and I; sitting in front of our computers and laptops at work reading up on the violence that has been sparked in places which seem very, very far away from us, to think how barbaric and obtuse it is for these simple natives to resort to the killing of one another in what seems to be protest against the government’s lack of delivery on free basic education, as they have committed to the people.

It is easy for you and I — we can read and write.

It is very easy for you and I; leaving the coolness of the office and heading outside to the balcony for a smoke, watching a man who is a cleaner scraping off rust from the metal railing that borders the balcony, bullets of sweat shooting down his sideburns in the heat of the Durban sun. It is easy for you and me to look past him and think about how unnecessary for the people who are killing other Africans.

It is easy for you and I — we work in air-conditioned offices.

It is very easy for you and I to sit in our couches, however cranky, and reach for the remote to channel-hop searching for the best news bulletin with the most updated revision of the saga that is unfolding in our country. To hear the microwave ‘ping’ signal that the pasta and sauce microwave meal is read, to pull it out, get a fork and grab another cold beer and settle in for the bulletin.

It is easy for you and I — we have most of the creature comforts we desire.

It is very easy for you and I to sit in our cars at the petrol station and ask the guy who is a petrol attendant to ‘fill her up’ and proceed to complain about having to pay for what is quickly becoming the most expensive hydro carbons in the world, blaring our music out preparing, for a weekend get away to the ‘berg.

It is easy for you and I– we have cars.

The majority of the people who have taken it upon themselves to take innocent lives and displace the already displaced are truly without any other avenue with which to display their displeasure at the treatment handed down to them by the own government. They feel betrayed by the system which allegedly sells RDP houses to foreigners, fraudulently marries off their women for identity books for foreigners, and employs foreigners willing to take a huge pay cut ahead of them.

I in no way advocate the way in which the disgruntled public has chosen to voice their opinion of what has been a mockery of service delivery by the government, who now claims that there is third party involvement (typical), but I do understand the poor’s grievances.

I’ve heard even more ludicrous conspiracy theories to this sad tail:

This is a well orchestrated plot by:

Bob — to divert the attention of the South African media away from the atrocious human rights violations that he is inflicting upon his own people so that he may effectively steal the election campaign in the dead of night

Morgan — to further highlight the plight of the peace and democracy loving Zimbabwean to put even more pressure on the SA government to finally act on Bob, on behalf of SADC, and end the madness that is a return to the polls after the MDC clearly initially won the election.

IFP — to destabailise the country in the time leading to the ’09 elections and prove that the ANC is indeed not fit to govern.

AWB — to put enough fear in the hearts of the international community which in turn will put pressure on FIFA to move the FIFA World Cup to Australia, just to prove that these people cannot pull it off.

There are many others, but all are very far-fetched if you ask me. The crux of the matter is that we are facing a crisis of catastrophic proportions. We are again at a crossroads as a country and we need a solution, and fast. If the poor citizens of any nation believe, or are led to believe, that again their emancipation may lay at the end of a knobkerrie, then we have a very serious problem which needs all our faculties for us to resolve it without further bloodshed.

Innocent people are dying for the poor to make a statement, and the statement is that ‘We have had enough, you will listen to us, or there will be Armageddon’.

It is very hard for me to sit here on my cranky couch, waiting for my tripe meal to warm up, with a beer nestled between my couch and I, writing this on my laptop in a warm, dry apartment with cement walls, most windows, a TV, Playstation, fridge, cupboards full of food — to write about this matter as if it were not eating away at me.

It is very easy to convince a hungry man that in order to eat, he has to kill, is it not after all in our nature to survive at any cost?

I rest
The Sumo