Twin reports into 2021 unrest paint picture of ongoing clear and present danger

The SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) report on the unrest/insurrection of July 2021 has at last been tabled, this alongside that of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission).

The 250-page SAHRC report borrows the title of Nadine Gordimer’s dystopian novel July’s People that imagines the lives of a white liberal couple who escape civil war by fleeing to the sanctuary of their domestic worker’s rural village. The CRL report is less prosaic, being offered as some 20 PowerPoint slides that examine the conflict that centred on the township of Phoenix.

July’s People reminds of George Bizos’ study of apartheid-era violence and injustice, which bears the title No One To Blame? For the SAHRC the violence was orchestrated but no one is to blame. Not the Zuma stay-out-of-jail camp. Maybe the private sector, but even then, no one. So much for history.

For the CRL, the killings on the borderlands between Phoenix and Amawote are due to the alleged racism of the Indian community toward ethnic Africans. Straight up and down, finish and klaar. This deep racism permeates schools, shops and police services. Blame aplenty here. It’s the Indians, since we Africans can never be racist.

One might express gratitude that the CRL report is so clear. Substitute the words Eritreans, Bangladeshis or Ethiopians, and we are on dangerous ground indeed. This emblemises Nietzsche’s ressentiment. It is them, not us, and definitely not our institutions.

Read more in Daily Maverick: How the reports into the July 2021 unrest let South Africa down

As for Marikana, so it seems for KZN. Not quite. The fact of zero accountability for the Marikana slaughter, a slaughter reminiscent of the apartheid police state, resonates with Bizos’ anger at apartheid injustice.

The KZN havoc persisted for nearly a week and resulted in more than 300 deaths under what was at best a state whose police were AWOL, and at worst a state where the police ignored the looting.

The cause of most deaths has not been investigated. Some died in fires and from smoke inhalation or chemical poisoning, while some died in stampedes or were crushed by falling objects. Others were killed by police, private security, rivals, self-defence units (remember the 1980s?) or in motor accidents. No one knows, and save for those killed at Phoenix, no one cares. The SAHRC wants the police to investigate. Really? Why?

Large-scale unrest has been a reality of our community life (and death) for generations, manifesting what development economist Albert Hirschman called the problem of “voice”. Voice stifled or ignored leads to what he termed “exit” and possible violence. Our traditional way of life is to opt for violence to the extent that criminal syndicates have drawn on the endemic culture of violence in KZN and offer their skills countrywide. Lawyer Pete Mihalik was assassinated by KZN hitmen but one kilometre from where I live in the Eden of Table Bay.

Thing is, voice is to be heard, and a failure so to do renders the state complicit in the violent outcomes. Pre the xenophobic killings of 2007, the HSRC South African Social Attitudes Survey detected rapidly falling levels of trust across the communities. The possibility of violence was in the data, there for academics and analysts to hear and offer caution to the executive class.

If ever there was a need to monitor regularly the social fabric, the events of 2007 cried out for such insight. Thus the pertinence of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory in drawing the attention of the SAHRC to the torn social fabric and ruptured social contract of today. Will the state functionaries listen? Will they function? When will we be supported by a social fabric monitor?

The SAHRC report is long on inequality, unemployment and poverty, with Covid as an exacerbating factor receiving most attention, yet as other commentators have noted, it is short on direct causation.

And so these three remain: corruption; dysfunctionality; exclusion. Then along came Covid.

Read more in DailyMaverick: SA Human Rights Commission finds violent July 2021 riots stoked by agitators, not poverty

And behold, new life was breathed into the kakistocracy, with total authority given to Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma who used the Disaster Management Act for dictatorial actions. All will obey, the willing and unwilling, and if needs be the police will act with necessary force. We can control you, gettit? And the fear of dying and the reality of burying and grieving will keep you all in check.

And thus it came to pass until those fateful days when the curfews were lifted and we could stagger into the light, the well-off, and poor, the employed and the survivors. Some bore long-standing PTSD; others the PTSD of Covid and everything associated with it. If the SAHRC wants to understand trauma, make an appointment with Dr Saths Cooper. His INXPrime interview that deals with voice, alienation and trauma should be viewed.

Marikana, KZN. Next? The country. This is the warning of clear and present danger that resides between the lines of the eloquent (SAHRC) and inarticulate (CRL) reports. The indicators are screaming. Corruption is alive and growing, with the kakistocracy ignoring korrupsia or dying in a vain attempt to hold it back.

The loss of trust smooths the way for the second wave of violence that the Umkhonto weSizwe party threatens. Moscow-trained JZ understands this perfectly. In his world of maskirovka, there are no coincidences. The SAHRC might do well to sit down with the man for a tutorial. We have been warned. DM