On Thursday, February 2, we commemorated two significant events in South Africa. It was 33 years since FW de Klerk made his speech unbanning the liberation movements, and it was 10 years since the violent sexual assault and death of Anene Booysen on a building site in Bredasdorp.
The one event set us on a path to political freedom; the other exposed us for the violent people we are.
On Friday, I drove to Bredasdorp to speak to the people who found a badly injured Anene at 4am on that Saturday morning.
Security guard Amos Mertz told me that the 17-year-old tried to flee from him as he offered her help. She died a few hours later in hospital.
Also on Friday, 50 women from Lavender Hill were taken by education activist agency Learning in Reach to the fields in Alphen to enjoy a morning of laughing yoga therapy. These are young mothers, some of whom faced each other in street fights previously, now embracing each other in the joy of laughter as they see another world through each other’s eyes.
Later in the day, they would move to a camp site to live together for two days to dialogue about the pressures of violence they live with and how to embrace new conversations about freedom and dignity for them and their children.
I have long pondered the violence in our society. Violence exists in the fabric of South Africa like an evil itch destined to derail and ultimately destroy our future. Despite the grandiose programmes and technologies employed to address violence, nothing has had any effect. There is no single community in this country where we have managed to eradicate violence.
Should we have been able to? Of course we should be able to. Then why has violence become so endemic in our freedom?
From Anene’s story and the lives of the mothers of Lavender Hill, I learn that we have never been taught the language of freedom. We have only ever associated freedom with the aggression and opulence of politicians and influencers who have revelled in both with extravagance.
For more than 30 years we have not been taught the multiple languages of freedom. We have been shown what to hate. We have not been taught what to love. We have been shown what to swear at and what to be angry with, but we have not been taught what to build, protect and to be kind to.
In the absence of a freedom language, we have navigated democracy with rage and violence in our encounters with each other
We have embraced a recklessness toward structures and systems that is of the most violent in the world.
The most innocuous traffic incident can result in appalling road rage, and the slightest provocation can trigger a murder.
We are a trauma-filled country on the edge of a horrific social collapse. We ignore to our detriment the on-average 70 daily murders committed in South Africa. We report political assassinations as commonplace across South Africa. Murders on school grounds are no longer breaking news.
Anene died 10 years ago because violence – not safety, dignity and kindness – is the language of our democracy.
The people of our neighbourhoods, corporations and parliaments get into street fights because they have never been taught the language of freedom and the words that make for a safe democracy. Everywhere, we are arming ourselves to defend our homes and communities against violence. Violent words and violent actions are our go-to reactions for everything.
Our political practices lead on being premised on threats of violence.
Nowhere are we taught the language of freedom and the duties of democracy. Thirty-three years later, it still is a gaping hole in the firmament of our politics.
* Lorenzo Davids.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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