Former president Kgalema Motlanthe laments the lawlessness of SA, but is curiously blind to the systemic causes and governance failures that underscore the problem.
“We have total disregard for rules and laws and accountability. And half the time, it’s more brutal when citizens take matters into their own hands and there’s no due process. And many, many mistakes are bound to happen.” It is these words, spoken by former president and deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe in an interview with the FM , to which I feel compelled to respond.
SA has a violent history. All the major historical developments in this country, from the time of the old Cape slave colony, have — overwhelmingly — been of a systemic violent nature. In fact, the country was birthed in terrible violence from the time that Jan van Riebeeck arrived in the Cape in 1652, through the numerous wars of dispossession, the mineral revolution of the mid-19th century, and the apartheid period.
It is rich of Motlanthe to draw attention to such lawlessness by the masses, yet have nothing to say about the numerous ANC cadres who have unlawfully and unconscionably looted public resources in a frenzy of corruption over many years Most of the violence — and indeed the “anarchy” we have seen over years — is a clear consequence of the failure of the ANC to meaningfully change the living conditions of the black working-class majority, who are in material terms worse off today than they were under apartheid. Just look at the record unemployment and the highest levels of poverty and inequality ever seen in SA — factors that lie at the root of the xenophobic violence we’ve seen so much of recently.
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