Arresting bodies, releasing gloom

In September last year a friend of Rompi, Shaya, was arrested. An argument at a party had led to a guy smashing his car window. In a fit of rage, he beat up the guy! 

When Rompi heard about this from Shaya, he dropped what he was doing to see him and to organise bail for him. Shaya could not afford to spend another day in custody. He had to go to work that evening.

Shaya, his accomplice who goes by the name Matrapa, and their rival, Kuru, were led out of the holding cell to the waiting room to meet Rompi. Shaya’s leg had a gash. The brick which Kuru had used to smash his car fell on it. He was inside the car when this happened. Matrapa was nursing swollen knuckles. As for Kuru, he had bruises around his eye and lips.

On the day of a court hearing, the world where the wheel of justice grinds at its own pace opened its doors. There were more bums than there were benches. Other people were standing against walls. The proceedings started an hour late. The court officials had been sorting out mounds of files, and whispering among themselves.

The first two rows were reserved for those who had been arrested; the suspects. Boys and girls of between 16 and 21 filled up those benches. Most of them were wearing faded clothes. Their heavy eyes, perhaps due to hunger, or lack of sleep or recent hours of substance abuse, stirred Rompi. Cases were postponed. Others were dismissed. 

When a boy of about 19 years heard that his case had been dismissed, he happily dashed to the exit in a flash, stabbing the air with the fist to express the thrill he was in. A woman stood up two rows in front of where Rompi was sitting. She shouted the insults at her son; the one who was dashing to the exit. That human-less daily grind of releasing arrested bodies back to their gloomy existence was punctuated.

There were also foreign Africans nationals whom were in custody. A translator took up his job with enthusiasm. From what Rompi could hear, stolen goods had been found in the possession of one tall and dark brother.

‘In the aftermath of the recent lootings of shops in the townships, and violent skirmishes which ensued, perhaps that is what a typical day at the Magistrate Courts is like these days,’ says Rompi as he reflected on the goings-on. ‘The youth who’ve been arrested in a week-long orgy of dying, and looting, are being marched in and out of court to hear their fate,’ he said. 

These are the days when women, like the one who insulted her son in 2014, will be watching helplessly as economic hopelessness puts on a “just” face. They will be separated from their children who will be either in custody or on the run from the helplessly overburdened yet vicious might of the police force.

Foreign African nationals are on the run, or in jail, or under police protection. Africans, who have lost trust in one another, are separated until the situation gets back to “normal.” It always does, except that normal is, whichever way one looks at it, abnormal.

Politicians are already jamming media platforms. The MEC for Economic Development in Gauteng came on radio to outline plans for economic renewal of townships because, according to the information he had, the skirmishes were the result of economic competition. They will be rolling out training of youth entrepreneurs whom they will be placing in government departments and in the private sector companies, he said. The logic leaves people horrified, and dismayed.

Professionals, most of whom are employed and are separated from township life by the monthly pay check they receive, by the N1 and M1 highways, will jam social media to debate. That is how far their contribution to helping the situation goes. They are all working damn hard to escape township gloom.

The loitering and dejected youth, who are the most unemployed group of the population, will lose their minds again. Deaths will stalk us, again. Mothers will cry in anguish, again. Fathers will seethe in anger, and muffle their cries. We will trample upon babies, and snuff a promising life out of their young bodies, as we make our way in and out of a place of looting.

We will be back here again, to preach plans to salve the wounds, while we give ourselves full marks, and standing ovations, for arresting bodies, for maintaining township gloom. Rompi, how I wish you were wrong.

To a standstill of compliance

Somewhere in this country, employed professionals who tally 150 or more in an organisation engage in an annual commotion. In the case of 150 employees or less, the commotion happens every two years. But we will soon be partaking in it every year, says the latest amendments.

We rush in and out. Down the corridors we give each other half-greetings. Our eyes are glued to computers. We are poring through reports and populating the templates. We have been doing this for fourteen years.

Somewhere in this country there is traffic down the passage, up and down the stairs. We are so busy we even forget to attend long-standing meetings. We give half-apologies for missing them as we dash through to the next moment of pulsating race. The country has come to a standstill.

Time to connect with colleagues is limited. After all, numbers about numbers (people) require us to speak above people’s heads. There is no time to attend to little things. We are busy showing our commitment to including and empowering the “others”.

Somewhere in this country, 98% of designated employers have submitted their Employment Equity reports online. People entrusted with implementing justice… equity, have reduced themselves to less-than-efficient administrators who push paperwork for a salary.

Why is it that fourteen years later we are colliding with one another and initiating near-stampede moments in the milieu of office buzz? Why, during a time like this, are we screaming at each other and making work - about those whom we “won’t” give work - such a dreadful experience?

Because the business and workplace culture wherein White Males (62.7%) in Top Management and (57%) in Senior Management positions are vying for a patriotic honour to “comply” with the law, and not for the contentment of leading transformation that builds a just society.

Because the culture wherein African people (69,3%) in Top and Senior Management positions of government take the crack of whip from politicians with a conscience-less sense of honour, for not opening public-funded jobs for wretched Black people.

We said “open the doors for the Historically Disadvantaged South Africans.” We acted by saying “swelling the ranks with White Females to a point of over-representation!”

The B-BBEE says “embrace driven and capable Black business men and women.” To comply, we are closing the gates by striking deals mainly with connected Black political elite. Now they are rich, and they are talking down at the people.

We are using unsuspecting and gullible Black Males and Females who are, as we speak, battling with the burden of repaying borrowed money to buy equity, if not collecting crumbs called “big salary.”

Somewhere in this country, we are busy complying, believing that we are noble in our dealings yet committing fraud. And we carry on, hoping that the ultimate social collapse we are accomplices to will not happen in our name.

We will be back here again next year, to demonstrate our patriotic pedigree, our dedication to transformation, by running around, ticking boxes, tinkering with numbers. We will be back here, to bring the country’s workplace to a standstill. In 2016, we will be back here, to comply.

When the media kills the killers

‘Did the newspaper publications that were not running with the leading story miss the opportunity?’ asked Katie Katapodis. In reply, Professor Anton Harber agreed that the killing of cartoonists and two policemen in France was a leading story. 

Really? I asked myself. How does one arrive at the conclusion about what is a leading story?

France and South Africa are 12 966 kilometres apart. About 5 700 kilometres from South Africa, Ebola has claimed the lives of 8000+ people. About 21000+ people have contracted the haemorrhaging fever. It is not a leading story in South Africa, according to some media personnel.

In Nigeria, girl children have been abducted and no one knows what the rescue plan by the Nigerian authorities is. The insurgent Boko Haram is running amok. They are allegedly using girls as suicide bombers and in that way more people are being blown up.

Despite their long-standing and bloody skirmishes, which the media had not been treating as “leading story”, Boko Haram only got the spotlight when England and the U.S of America “threatened” to swoop into Nigeria to wipe the Borno State with Boko Haram’s lifeless bodies.

In a huff, President Goodluck Jonathan flew to London to “appear” alongside David Cameron. He looked so rattled that it took Cameron’s lingering hand-shake to pull him into a presidential pose for the cameras to do their business. It was that awkward. It was clumsy.

President Jonathan has been portrayed by the media as a smiling, cool-headed gentleman. And through the very media the world is mildly perturbed by his “soft” approach towards Boko Haram war-lords. Much has not been reported about his record of coordinating curfews and surveillance; of nabbing, jailing and reportedly torturing Boko Haram bandits in the Borno State.

The media is not telling the world what spawns Boko Haram, and they have not, for example, told the world that in Nigeria, the cartoons of Prophet Mohammad published in February 2006 by the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, provoked bloody riots which left 12 people dead and about 15 churches destroyed.

Back to France. Is it not bizarre, that satirists can ridicule another religion and our media shrugs and concludes that this is media freedom?

But those like Juan Cole, who hold a different view about what caused the attacks, posit that the killings are coordinated plan by those who want to force France to indiscriminately harden their attitude towards settler-Muslims in that country. He says…

‘This horrific murder was not a pious protest against the defamation of a religious icon. It was an attempt to provoke European society into pogroms against French Muslims, at which point al-Qaeda recruitment would suddenly exhibit some successes instead of faltering in the face of lively Beur youth culture (French Arabs playfully call themselves by this anagram term deriving from wordplay involving scrambling of letters).’

Perhaps there is truth in that. But what about Charlie Hebdo’s continuing provocation towards another religion? Ariel Sheron used the killings as an opportunity to appeal to the French-based Jews to return to Israel for their protection. He was not asking everyone to stop provocations and killings. He simply offered to protect the “proxy provocateurs”. The utter verbal and political recklessness by him went past our media without rebuke from it. 

To condemn the killings, the French took to the streets. I would probably do the same if I enjoy the Charlie Hebdo’s racist, sexist and homophobic “freedom of speech.” This “heroic” act by the French citizens has inspired some African leaders, who are beholden to France, to do what President Jonathan did with England - appearing in front of cameras in show of solidarity with a colonial mother country against “a common enemy.”

And this swift and coordinated act of mocking the religion of “killers” is, according to our media, a leading story, because this time the gun is pointing at them. The media is free, they argue, to kill the religion of killers.