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Opinionista

Once upon a time, we cared

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Andrew Ihsaan Gasnolar was born in Cape Town and raised by his determined mother, grandparents, aunt and the rest of his maternal family. He is an admitted attorney (formerly of the corporate hue), with recent exposure in the public sector, and is currently working on transport and infrastructure projects. He is a Mandela Washington Fellow, a Mandela Rhodes Scholar, and a WEF Global Shaper. He had a brief stint in the contemporary party politic environment working for Mamphela Ramphele as Agang CEO and chief-of-staff; he found the experience a deeply educational one.

Today, so many of us are so disconnected from the fact that every day hundreds of people, who already suffer under the yoke of poverty and discrimination, are made to feel unwelcome.

There is so much questioning, so much speculation and so many opinions. Yet, we are no closer to fixing what is wrong in our country. We are not any closer to meaningfully addressing the issues facing millions of South Africans.

Instead, our focus seems to be on the past, on the struggle for freedom, and the issues that crop up on our daily newsfeed. We remain unable to grab on to the opportunity to redefine our collective future.

In many ways, we seem to have shut off the desire and urgency to deal with the issues facing our country. We may want to unpack the flaws in the governing party whether it is on a national, provincial, and local level. However, after all of that analysis, we are yet to scrutinise our own conduct or to question our own involvement in what is wrong in the place we call home.

I grew up in the dying days of Apartheid. Despite the inevitable fall of Apartheid, I was acutely aware that South Africa was not a country for all, and that it was a country that made people less. The sense of that injustice lingers still, it clings to our lives and yet it is something that we have not fully confronted.

Growing up in those dying days was not a lonely or solitary walk. It was a walk where we collectively stood together. It was a time when children belonged to communities. It was a time when those who had less were part of our own family. It was a time when schools, community centres, places of worship and corner shops were all something we were responsible for.

Today, we only need to drive or walk through communities that were built to honour the oppression and darkness of Apartheid. Those communities remain trapped in a cycle of despair.

We only need to look to those communities today where families plead with criminals and gang leaders for calm, for a ceasefire so that they can at least have some semblance of normality.

Those pleas often go unanswered, yet they are our brothers and sisters and only live 10 minutes away from affluence, comfort and certainty. That is the lived reality that so many continue to endure while many remain oblivious to the treacherous and difficult existence of so many.

This past week, around 100 words circulated online about the Johannesburg Metro Police arresting 550 window washers since February this year. Similarly, in February, a short article was published about the initial arrest of 36 window washers, who were “street traders, beggars and window-washers”.

The articles, or rather the journalists who wrote those articles, were happy to refer to the 550 people simply as “illegal window-washers”.

I suppose the legality in question is not worth questioning but rather we rely on the fact that these individuals will be charged with loitering or some other such charge and possibly of violating a by-law.

The articles do not question or query why poverty has somehow become criminal nor do they try to unpack what is wrong in our society.

I am sure many people feel ‘confronted’ or even worse ‘threatened’ when these ‘unwanted’ window washers proceed to ‘assault’ their windscreens, unsolicited, with their makeshift tools and so they may feel that the metro police are doing their job.

However, the by-law is not concerned with the structural issues, the issues around criminalising poverty, the use of force to ‘cleanse’ or gentrify our public spaces.

The by-law is also not concerned with questioning the fairness of rounding up people, who already are vulnerable, dejected and poor, and then giving them the option of paying a fine or appearing in court on charges of loitering.

Sadly, window washers are not the only victims of ‘laws’ like this. We only need to look to the buskers, homeless people, and others who somehow contradict the idea of this modern city that we have been lead to believe is the way of the future.

On the very same day, the Washington Post dedicated over 2,000 words to Alfred Postell, a Harvard Law graduate who studied alongside US Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr, and who now is a homeless man living on the streets of Washington, DC. The Washington Post engaged with the complexity, unpacked the assumptions yet our own local papers were unable to meaningful engage with why it is wrong for us to use the law to police and push poverty away from the public eye.

It would be easy for us to dismiss articles about 550 window washers being arrested. It would be easy for us to dismiss the plight of the poor as simply being their fault.

There were days when we cared. There was a time when a child playing around or walking around the streets after dark was not just concern to the child’s family but rather to everyone who saw that child. There was a time when violence meted out in our communities mattered to all of us and not simply to the residents of Manenberg.

There was a time when we were willing to be more. There was a time when we were willing to tackle the difficult issues. There was a time when we stood together especially for the vulnerable like the 550 people who were arrested without any concern for their story. DM

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