The human cost of conflict: understanding violence in South Africa and Gaza's tragic reality

Dear DM168 reader,

Here in South Africa, depending on where you live, you may be woken up or jolted by police or ambulance sirens, the shouts of neighbours, the cries for help by a woman being abused or raped, the gunshots of rival gangs, a cash-in-transit heist or armed robbers invading a home, farm or business.

According to the police crime stats released in August, the top five causes of murder, attempted murder and serious assault in South Africa were arguments and misunderstandings; road rage and provocation; robbery and vigilantism/mob justice; gang-related; and revenge.

As we saw in the massive decline in trauma admissions, motor vehicle crashes, falls, drownings, shootings, assaults and burns when alcohol was prohibited during Covid, our violence is fuelled by South Africa’s drug of choice, alcohol.

Household surveys by the Medical Research Council – which found that 40% of South African men have hit their partner and one in four men have raped a woman – show that toxic masculinity and a macho culture in every race group, in which men falsely believe that they own and can control women and children, is another contributor to our crime rates and violence.

These crime stats tell us that we are a society buckling under the stress of poverty, patriarchy, unemployment and corruption.

We live in an unequal, violent society, where life in many suburbs, townships and informal settlements may feel like living in a war zone as murderous thugs, thieves, rapists and gangsters run riot. But, we are not at war.

We do not have to dig for loved ones in the rubble as our homes, schools, malls and hospitals are bombed on a daily basis. We do not have to move en masse in our thousands with our worldly belongings in a Checkers packet from Cape Town to Colesberg and then again to Calvinia, every time the army instructs us to leave, living in temporary makeshift camps with up to 40,000 other people as our homes have been demolished. Living on humanitarian aid – if the army lets it in. We do not wake up to warnings of missiles and drones and soldiers marching through our homes.

This is what Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have been waking up to, if they are lucky enough to wake up and are not buried under rubble, since Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war after Hamas killed at least 1,200 Israelis and wounded more than 3,300 on 7 October last year. At least 42,289 Palestinians have been killed in retaliation, while Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad hold more than 120 Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage, including foreign nationals.

The horror of living in a war zone haunted me again when I read the United Nations warning on Thursday, 17 October, that “catastrophic acute food insecurity and concerning acute malnutrition levels will continue to prevail if the conflict continues, and humanitarian activities are restricted”.

Furthermore, “violence has displaced nearly 2 million people, decimated livelihoods, crippled food systems, destroyed 70 percent of crop fields, severely restricted humanitarian operations and resulted in the collapse of health services and water, sanitation and hygiene systems”.

According to the latest data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization and the Palestinian government as of 13 October, Israeli attacks have damaged or destroyed more than half of Gaza’s homes, 80% of commercial facilities and 87% of school buildings.

The Israeli publication Haaretz published a piece by an anonymous resident of northern Gaza that speaks poignantly about the dire circumstances Gazans find themselves trapped in:

“I wish for the release of the Israeli hostages to the same extent that I wish for my own liberation. I call on the world to relate to us just as it relates to them, as hostages, and save us from both the brutality of the Israeli occupation and from our Hamas kidnappers. This will only happen by exerting great pressure on our kidnappers and on Israel’s government so that they stop colluding against Gaza, and finally let us decide our own fate.”

I don’t for a moment believe that any Israelis feel safe and secure in this atmosphere as their army continues unabated brutal attacks against Gaza and Lebanon, and as retaliatory missiles fly from Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

I’m also not sure how any Israeli civilians could feel safe when their much-vaunted modern Israel Defense Force and  intelligence agency did not and could not prevent Hamas's brazen and brutal attacks on civilians at the Supernova music festival and in their homes that triggered Israel's latest total onslaught.

Netanyahu celebrated the Israeli forces’ killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar this week, calling it an “important landmark in the decline of the evil rule of Hamas”, saying the war is not over but Sinwar’s killing is the “beginning of the end” of the Gaza war.

Proving that war begets war when peace and talking around a table is not given a chance, a senior Hamas member told NBC News that the organisation would not let up on its fight. Khalil Al-Hayya, a top official of Hamas' political bureau, said the death of Sinwar "will only increase the strength and solidity of our movement," calling Sinwar "a continuation of the caravan of great martyrs in the footsteps of the founding Sheikh Ahmed Yassin," who was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

Eyal Mayroz, senior lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, writes in The Conversation that an existential fear lies on both sides of the Palestine-Israel conflict, hampering any chance of peace.

He writes that those of us who are outside observers tend to view security concerns rationally, based on the threat to the state or to the people as a whole.

“But in the Israel-Palestine conflict, people react to such fears emotionally, focusing first on their own safety. And the fear is ever-present – a rocket exploding in my house, or my child being shot at by a sniper on the way to school.

“These worries and experiences have been etched in the minds of generations of Palestinians and Israelis. We need to appreciate this fact to make sense of how both sides have dehumanised one another and excluded the ‘other’ from their spheres of moral concern, particularly following the 7 October attack and in the weeks and months after.”

Mayroz suggests it’s time for the world to intervene not by taking sides, but by focussing on reconciling both parties’ objectives: a ceasefire in Gaza, an end to the unjust occupation, self-determination for Palestinians, and safety and security for Israelis.

But the world is taking sides. The US has spent $17.9-billion on military support for Israel since 7 October 2023. And Iran is said to financially support Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Centuries of colonial conquest and conflict in South Africa ended with our protracted negotiated settlement in the 1990s. There are still critics from the left who say our founding father, Nelson Mandela, and the ANC conceded too much, and from the right who still feel aggrieved at the loss of the dominant political power that the white majority commandeered.

We’re nowhere near angels. Poverty, inequality, violent crime, racialised populist hate and xenophobia hurts us. But we are still giving peace a chance. Every day. Peace is never easy, as we all know, but I hope the children of Lebanon, Palestine and Israel get a chance one day to experience a life without missiles, bombs, soldiers kicking down doors and houses exploding on top of them.

Share your thoughts about this with me at heather@dailymaverick.co.za

And catch the latest scoop from our criminal mastermind Caryn Dolley on the front page of this week’s DM168. Caryn connects the dots between Durban and Dubai, explaining how a “super-cartel” and the world’s most prolific drug trafficker operated between Durban and Dubai. The story leaves in its wake the bodies of two Capetonian men found in the Free State, and reveals that fentanyl, an opioid drug driving deaths from overdose in the US, has now landed on South African soil.

Yours in defence of peace and truth,

Heather

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.