This week, The CIHA Blog has been posting a series of articles about nonviolence movements across Africa. This is the final post in our series, by CIHA Blog co-editor Simangaliso Kumalo. Read the introductory post, the post on Nigeria’s nonviolent protests, and yesterday’s post on nonviolence education in DRC.
Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa today
by Dr R Simangaliso Kumalo
One of the biggest challenges of post-apartheid South Africa is the high level of brutal violence and crime. This has been visible in a high incidence of crime, where people have been killed just for their cell phones or car keys. In most of these cases, people already have handed over the keys or the cell phone to the criminal, but they are still killed. The violence has also manifested itself in strikes by workers for incremental wage increases. Whilst one would have hoped they would march peacefully, there are incidents when who do not take part in the marches are beaten up, vendors have their goods taken away from them, and police are threatened. A number of thinkers have attributed this violence to the violence that was inflicted on people by the apartheid government, seeing this violence as a legacy of the past.
This legacy shows the need for South African society to break the culture of violence and embark on strategy to build a culture of nonviolence and tolerance. At the moment, we do not see much, if any, tangible evidence of a commitment to nonviolence in South Africa. We seem to have forgotten that great philosophy and discipline, which was upheld during the struggle against our people. We seem to be reverting back to violence as a solution to problems. Those of us who live in Pietermaritzburg, the same town where Mahatma Ghandi lived and practiced his noble principle of Satyagraha, are ashamed that we seem to be forgetting his work and the teaching of Satyagraha. Is it not ironic that every year his work is celebrated through a lecture facilitated by his granddaughter Ella Gandhi, but still we don’t seem to remember his peaceful model of resistance?
Part of the irony is that nonviolence is hard work, much harder than violence itself. It requires more education and discipline. South Africa is no longer a friendly place for civil society, and groups battle to get funding. So even those civil society groups that should be doing work on nonviolence find it hard to survive in this environment, where there is little funding for their work. We need another reawakening before it is too late.
Recent violence in South Africa
The past two years in South Africa have been marked by two forms of violence which are interrelated. The first form of violence is the one that is often sparked by service delivery protests but also includes protests against unemployment and corruption. Almost every month we have two or three service delivery–related protests by members of the community. Most of the time people protest that they are not receiving basic services such as water, electricity, and housing. However, these issues often boil over into deeper frustrations with the lack of employment and the ongoing corruption which is rampant in the country. South Africa is a democratic society where people are allowed to protest freely, but protesters burn government offices, buildings, and libraries, leading many to question why people protest against the lack of services but then destroy some of the services that have been delivered to them. Protesters also channel their anger into xenophobic tendencies, looting markets and shops, especially those owned by foreigners. People are regularly injured, and some even die during these protests.
The second form of violence is perpetrated by the state. The police use excessive force against these protests. In many cases, they have used live bullets. The Marikana massacre, in which 34 striking miners were killed by the police, happened less than two years ago, and the Commission set up by President Jacob Zuma to investigate “what really happened” in that tragedy drags on. While the situation was clearly very tense on all sides (the protesters, for example, formed a huge crowd armed with traditional weapons), the police came into the situation ready to respond with deadly force. The nation was shocked by the police violence in this massacre as well as others which occurred in the country.
The South African government has both the resources to deliver services to the people and also professes the political will, yet implementation tends to be extremely slow. As a nation, we do have problems with capacity and skills. This begs the question of how we should analyze the resulting violence on all sides.
Why the violence:
- The legacy of apartheid. South Africa emerged from a decades-long situation where, to obtain any basic services at all, people needed to face and fight a brutal system. To an extent, this has left a considerable amount of residual anger. The result is responses to situations that are frequently worse in other parts of the continent but may not produce the same kind of violence that erupts in South Africa. The wounds of the past are not yet healed.
- The cry of the poor. For Contextual and Liberation theologians, this term represents the ongoing social costs of long-standing patterns of economic appropriation, colonization and oppression, and the resulting cry – manifested in public and private ways – of those who suffer from these systemic forms of violence. In South Africa, the increasing gap between the poor and the rich is fuelling the anger. People cannot understand how it is difficult for them to receive basic services when they can see others living in extreme and sometimes wasteful luxury. That raises the anger levels and the feelings of disillusionment for the majority of the people. Therefore, they are not necessary willing to compromise but are prepared to fight to the end to be heard.
- Political party power struggles. Some violence is connected with power struggles within political parties. Political connections, position and influence have become a matter of life and death in the new dispensation. This is because many people earn a living through their political connections and party involvement. So if people have not made it to the party’s list of nominated candidates, they start disruptions. For instance the ANC itself has had a number of disgruntled senior members who, after not making it to the party list, have caused disruptions of meetings and undermined the leadership. This happened in a number of wards, towns and provinces. So if for some reason they are not happy with the election list or some leader, they then mobilize other disgruntled members to start disruptions.
The current levels of violence are a threat to South Africa’s future stability. Workers and others who are dispossessed are angry, and security forces have been trained to respond with violence rather than nonviolence. Those, including many religious leaders and organizations, who were at the forefront of nonviolent struggles during apartheid are comparatively quiet today. Part of the reason is that there are few resources today to conduct peacebuilding work – many civil society organizations (especially those unconnected to the government) are struggling to survive. Religious and other civil society groups need to engage in deep soul-searching to reclaim their voices in the ongoing struggle for justice in the country. There is no doubt that suddenly there is a huge vacuum in the social arena. The religious communities are no longer visible and audible in their criticism of what is happening. The other problem is that those who dare to speak out are either dismissed as whining or then get marginalized by some of those in leadership. Religious communities are still trying to understand what it means to be a prophetic voice vis-à-vis a legitimate government.
Dr R Simangaliso Kumalo is Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies in the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.