Statues and Shit

Horse Memorial - Port Elizabeth

The recent popularity of removing statues from our country that reminds people of the apartheid era has raised feelings of anger, of disgust and of the waste of money and time that this has taken. Students have missed classes, police have been called out unnecessarily to protect statues instead of people – and so many words have been written in the media and on social networks.

It did not take long from the destroying of the first statue, to moving onto destroying people’s lives. The behaviour of the youth of our country, as I see it, comes from a feeling of powerlessness, frustration and displaced or mis-placed anger. The powerlessness, frustration and anger come from the many promises made by the ANC which have not come to fruition.

The displaced anger arises from an inability to condemn or question the freedom fighters, their parents, for the state our land is in today. They sacrificed so much for the freedom of our land, but what is freedom without bread? They have also learned from their parents how to make a country ungovernable when you don’t get what you want.

The anger was first poured out against ‘apartheid’ statues. No amount of logical debate could move the mob to a more rational solution to their problem of apartheid symbols. Once the popularity of the statues wore off, the mob had to find another place to put their anger.

Again, their anger is not directed towards the government, who has failed to provide opportunity for work and bread, they now decide that foreigners are taking away their work. So, the anger is now directed at foreigners and they are using the weapon that was made popular by Winnie Mandela – necklacing!

In between the statues and the xenophobic attacks, there has been a continual persistence of targeting white farmers and the elderly in robberies where the violence is extreme. The motive behind the crime is not robbery because there is, in most instances, no reason for the violence once the criminals have got what they want. In some instances, not a single item is stolen – the motive is pure pleasure of watching a white person scream and beg for mercy. This is rationalized by the idea that white people are to blame for all the woes in Africa. Babies and small children are also tortured before they are killed because they will grow up and become adult whites so it is best to destroy every living person with a white skin.

Criminals are able to withhold their conscience and compassion when dealing with the killing of other people when the ‘other’ has been labelled by a name that removes human dignity. Foreigners and white people are given derogatory names, making it easier for criminals to behave in inhuman ways when dealing with “other” people. Misplaced anger and frustration is the only way I can understand our disintegration of our society.

I am not a statue and by no means am I suggesting that burning a person is the same as having shit thrown at one, but my experience at least gives me some insight into how anger can be displaced. The burning of a person is when the mob gets into a frenzy and they spur one another on. In the destruction of a statue, you do not need a mob. You only need a dozen fools and the statue is defaced or destroyed.

I have had shit thrown at me by rational thinking white adult male policemen. The shit was not thrown at me personally, but I was the symbol of everything that they despised; as well as a symbol of the power that now lay in the hands of black people and no longer in the hands of white people. I brought abused, abandoned, neglected and sick children into a previously designated white town from previously designated areas for black and coloured folk.

Imagine the amount of hate you must have, to collect packets and packets of dog shit, proceed to the offending person or object, picking the stuff up from in the bags, and then throwing it? This was not a personal insult. I stood for something that they could not stomach, that pricked their consciences and made them feel uncomfortable about themselves and how they saw themselves fitting into this new world. The statues, the foreigners, and the torture and killing of people, is happening because we are lost human beings without a moral road map. Is there a map, and a map reader, to lead us out of this hate and violence.

I want to once again feel proud to be called South African and I have no doubt that we can rise above all of this.