{"id":189107,"date":"2021-07-19T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=189107"},"modified":"2021-07-20T05:21:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T04:21:59","slug":"cry-the-bedeviled-country-i-weep-for-my-homeland-of-south-africa-as-i-watch-its-disintegration-from-afar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/07\/cry-the-bedeviled-country-i-weep-for-my-homeland-of-south-africa-as-i-watch-its-disintegration-from-afar\/","title":{"rendered":"Cry, the Bedeviled Country: I Weep for My Homeland of South Africa, As I Watch Its Disintegration from Afar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A police officer stands guard in front of protesters as the country deploys the army to quell unrest linked to the jailing of former South African President Jacob Zuma, in Vosloorus, South Africa, July 14, 2021. \u00a9 REUTERS\/Siphiwe Sibeko<\/p><\/div>\n

17 Jul 2021 – <\/em>Widespread looting and burning has killed over 100, and wrecked factories, shops and homes, with Indian and whites increasingly the target. Is the country I love, where I spent 30 years of my life, spiralling into racial warfare?<\/p>\n

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Many years ago, I was invited by Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi to attend the Shaka Day celebrations in Natal. I was one of a handful of whites. Thousands of Zulus in their traditional garb, swayed, danced and sang praise songs to the great 19th-century warrior king, Shaka kaSenzangakhona<\/a>, who made his people one of the formidable and feared powers in southern Africa.<\/p>\n

Without the support of Chief Buthelezi, the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, Nelson Mandela would not have been released from jail. Gavin Relly, the former chairman of Anglo American, has said<\/a> the Zulu leader was \u201cthe anvil on which apartheid was broken\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

But because he refused to join the African National Congress (ANC), due its Marxist underpinnings and his strong belief in \u201ceducation before liberation\u201d, Buthelezi and his supporters paid a heavy price, and he was frozen out of the highest echelons of power in post-apartheid South Africa.<\/p>\n

This week, I watched in horror as my beloved homeland was transmogrified into an apocalyptic hell. The fruits of liberation before education were on full display, as looters and arsonists rampaged across the country. The tragedy was almost Shakespearean. Who could imagine that a nation would loot in order to express their rage at the jailing<\/a> of the great Looter-in-Chief himself, former president Jacob Zuma?<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/FaeceSocietatis\/status\/1414703360394108929?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1414703360394108929%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-ed%2F529434-south-africa-unrest-zuma-natal%2F<\/p>\n

Nelson Mandela gave the nation a gift: a non-racial constitutional democracy that enshrined freedom, equality and the rule of law. What we saw was the wilful torching of this gift \u2013 criminal behaviour emblazoned across the world\u2019s screens. I was ashamed.<\/p>\n

The orgy of looting, the burning of shopping malls, the wanton destruction of cars and trucks, and the brutal killing of livestock \u2013 all speaks to a descent into a barbarism that is plainly inexplicable. What is clear is that we have reaped what we have sown: a culture of impunity forged over decades of rampant government corruption<\/a>, lawlessness<\/a> and maladministration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

High rates of unemployment<\/a> (70%-plus in many areas), poverty<\/a> and ill health only partially explain the widespread manifestations of anger and anomie. But they are an insufficient explanation for this barbaric plunder of the economy. If they were, why would rioters loot a sex shop and a funeral parlor?<\/p>\n

Revolutionary movements such as the ANC demand unfettered loyalty from the electorate for having defeated the enemy: apartheid. And that loyalty means turning a blind eye to the excesses of the ruling elite\u2019s entitlement to the state\u2019s resources, with which they buy themselves opulent villas, Ferraris and Bentley convertibles, and large farms while millions of the people they promised to set free live in ramshackle wood-and-corrugated-iron shacks in crime-ridden slums<\/a> without toilets, jobs or hope.<\/p>\n

But within the ANC, the ruling elite is not a monolith. The tribal divisions run deep. Zuma is a Zulu in a party that accords hegemony to the dominant Xhosa ethnic group. And this subterranean faultline has been the fatal flaw that, since Mandela departed frontline politics in 1999, has seen it struggle to remain united.<\/p>\n

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A mother in South Africa was forced to throw her baby from a building after it was allegedly set on fire by lootershttps:\/\/t.co\/lBKZwCVjm8<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/xFhlQsicn3<\/a><\/p>\n

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 14, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n