Dead: Repulsive replay of violent South Africa

By Paul Arhewe

The killings of 34 protesting South African miners penultimate Thursday quite unfortunately amplified the global perception of Africans still ruminating in the Stone Age, in spite of the privilege of co-existing among people of civilised parts of the world where the value for human lives is inestimably cherished and protected. The apartheid era in South Africa was a blight in world civilisation because of the callous indifference of the minority white rulers to the rights of black Africans and the regime’s dehumanising and discriminatory practices against them, especially treating them as second class citizens and subjecting them to all kinds of cruelties.

The massacre of the 34 miners by South African police at the Marikana platinum mine, Rustenburg, Johannesburg brings back memories of the ugly affairs of the apartheid state.

 An incident that has claimed 44 lives since the quagmire began is a sad reflection of the dark side of an uncivilised society. It is even more painful that black South African policemen were killing striking workers in the public glare. It is pertinent to ask when black Africans would be civilized enough to disconnect from any acts that reflect us as still living in the Stone Age. This sad event shows South Africa is wallowing in the hangover of the evil of yesteryears.

It shows the Zulu people are still in an apartheid state, but in a new garb. In the epochal 1948-1994 period, the various governments dominated by the National Party visited the worst forms of denigrations on the majority black South Africans. Torture, maiming, killings of blacks were elevated to an art by the Afrikaner minority in power.

Just like what happened to the harangued miners in the Marikana platinum mine site, unprovoked killing of protesting blacks underlined the brutality of the apartheid era. The civilized world identified that regime with extreme brutality and torture in its efforts to suppress opposition.

Under the current black African leadership, such unpardonable carnage as displayed, tends to mangle the celebrated sacrifices the nonagenarian political icon and poster card of South African multiculturalism, Nelson Mandela and others paid in the redemption of their country. Mandela was arrested in 1962 for being the arrowhead of the 1961 workers strike. He spent 27 years in confinement at the height of segregation and apartheid in South Africa. His release in 1990 and subsequently becoming the first postapartheid president of the country (1994- 1999), is seen as victory against the gory experience of the dark period of cruelty.

Howbeit, the Marikana saga is quite revealing on violence in people in this part of the continent. How can one describe the situation where rival political group killed about 14,000 people between 1990 and 1994 even after the supposedly end of apartheid? It is a good thing President Jacob Zuma has instituted a panel of inquiry to get to the root of this massacre.

I believe his chances of securing another term next December depend on how he would manage the current bad situation, which is the only way to placate aggrieved South Africans. Critics argue that Zuma was slow to responding to the massacre. It is true his visit to the mine site was delayed because of a state visit to neighbouring Mozambique.

He couldn’t reach the aggrieved workers, but he visited the injured in hospital.

The police’s argument that they were acting in self defence is untenable. Using live bullets to quell a rioting mob and killing some in the process, is a premeditated murder. In civilized societies shield, batons and water cannons are normally deployed to disperse protesters, no matter how grievous the situation seems to be. It is unfortunate that South Africa is still showing flashes of a high level of intolerance.

Similar occurrences in the post apartheid era have shown that xenophobia is a militating physiological phenomenon in that country.

While the targeted recipients of such hostilities are foreigners, including blacks from other African countries, it was rare seeing attacks on natives, even as this spate of xenophobic dispositions becomes ubiquitous. When security personnel paid by taxpayers turnaround to unleash mayhem on the same people it is to protect, something is really amiss. South Africa, Africa’s largest economy, should not condone such dehumanizing penchant for bloodletting. What moral grounds would the big brother portray when mediating in other smaller countries with similar tendencies?

The Africa continent needs to grow up and belong to the modern civilized age where people’s rights of protests are respected. Using brutality to quell justified grievances will only end up in causing more pandemonium; and things will get messier.