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Opinionista

This is not the South Africa I want to live in

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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.

As we commemorate the third anniversary of the Marikana massacre in which 34 South Africans were killed, we can see in the mining sector a reflection of the broader issues of inequality, inertia, incapacity, unemployment, poverty and a growing ambivalence to black lives. Yet, we seem content with a ‘business as usual’ approach. Attention is given to platitudes, rhetoric and grandstanding but not much action towards addressing inequality and poverty.

The South African body politic is sick, it is riddled with indecision and the overwhelming sense that there is no avoiding the inevitable reality that our leaders are not well placed to serve the interests of the country.

On Sunday we marked the third anniversary of the Marikana massacre that resulted in the death of 34 South Africans. Last week, the Daily Maverick’s Sisonke Msimang wrote beautifully about the vulnerability of the black body and how “Marikana taught us that our state could not only kill its people but it could do so and show absolutely no remorse for its wrongdoing”.

The mining sector is reflective of the broader issues of inequality, inertia, incapacity, unemployment, poverty and a growing ambivalence to black lives. There is a part of me that hoped the horrific event and the violent aftermath would have galvanised South Africans into addressing the underlying issues that led to Marikana. Yet, we seem content with a ‘business as usual’ approach. Attention is given to platitudes, rhetoric and grandstanding but not much action in addressing inequality and poverty.

The motives and underlying rationale for governing no longer seems to be rooted in the idea that elected officials are required to serve the interest of the country. This disconnect is not only illustrated when many of our leaders are out of touch and extends beyond simply not knowing the price of bread, milk, sugar, maize or potatoes to the fundamental misunderstanding of what it is like to be a South African today.

Parliament, the house that meets sometimes for shouting, sometimes for the appearance of the white-shirts (security officials), sometimes for heckling but mostly just for the privilege of noise being made, held a debate on August 13 on the Farlam commission of inquiry report into the Marikana massacre. The governing party decided that no cabinet officials would participate in the debate.

Every year, Parliament convenes for the state of the nation address with its dose of pomp and ceremony, albeit the introduction of the Economic Freedom Fighters has added a comedic spin. At his press conference on August 13, President Jacob Zuma remarked that “he was told by a Ugandan that God lives in Cape Town”. So it would appear that comedic, ad-libbing takes precedence over any notion of inspired, ethical, responsive or sound leadership. There may be time for a few jokes but where was Zuma or any of his cabinet colleagues when Parliament debated the Farlam report?

Indignation and shock at this would probably be wasted. After all, the African National Congress boycotted the first commemoration of the massacre in 2013 and the release of the Farlam report, so far, has brought little or no closure to the victims and the families of those who were killed unnecessarily three years ago.

Marikana is just one example of the struggle that many South Africans must endure at the hands of our elected government in a democratic and free South Africa. This burden is not only carried by citizens dealing with the national government but is felt across the length and breadth of our country.

I only need to look to the neighbourhoods of Cape Town that I grew up in and spent my primary schooling in to realise that in large parts of our country still struggle with the bitterness of the past but are also weighed down by their difficult present and the obscured future.

Young men and women, 10 to 15 years my junior, still children actually, struggle in a school system that is unable to provide adequately for them, trapped in communities and homes that were designed by an Apartheid spatial planning regime with the added burden of broken and under-resourced families and support systems.

These men and women, these children, grew up a few streets away from me and my family, apparently born free in the late 1990s yet they find themselves trapped in a cycle of abuse that degrades them and leaves them brutalised by a system that we are unable to confront.

Daily Maverick’s Rebecca Davis wrote about the Khayelitsha commission report (chaired by retired Justice Kate O’Regan and former National Prosecuting Authority head Vusi Pikoli) on August 13. Davis wrote: “Khayelitsha is the South African township with the highest number of murders and rapes, yet it is served by a third of the number of police available in relatively crime-free Cape Town suburbs like Rondebosch.” Instead of an uproar over this, we know that Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega has ducked and dived and refused to act in the interests of those who are confronted with this disproportionate string of violence.

That system reflects our own inadequacies, our inability to really confront the real issues. Instead, young men and women find themselves leaving school, they are often raised by their grandparents or have an absent father or mother, in a world that judges them, a world that frowns at them, a world that rejects them as if they are sub-human.

This is not the South Africa that I want to live in yet each day in the way we approach privilege, poverty, patriarchy, inequality and the issues around Marikana, gender violence, policing and development, we entrench this suffering and somehow pretend that we are doing something to confront it.

We pretend that we are doing enough yet young men and women have to fight to be seen. We pretend that somehow the country we want to live in will miraculously appear. That dream of what is possible is being wasted away as we sit idly and without enough conviction to honour those who have been lost and to protect those who are being taken from us long before their time. DM

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