What's Gone Wrong?

Still when I think of the road we're travelling on,

I wonder what's gone wrong,

I can't help it,

I wonder what has gone wrong.

Simon and Garfunkel 

 

A high school student stabs another.  In a fight that started over a cigarette.

Protests over racism erupt. The school comes to a standstill. Anxious parents fetch their children and agonize over what's going on. And so, in South Africa, we pile misery upon misery. 

Normal people do what needs to be done to restore peace and normality. We love to stoke the fires that are consuming our country.

We should be dismayed that violence flares up so easily in our country. That kids in South Africa are not looking for that better, brighter world.  We should be troubled that parenting is failing and the village can no longer raise a child. Troubled that respect, in our land, has become a swearword. Not dancing to the tunes of further violence and hatred. And who is paying the piper?

Ah, but it's easy to be victims, not contributors. Its easy to burn but it's damned hard to build - when you're wired to burn.

At any rate, if we want to be precise with our pointless racial colour coding, it was a 'black' boy who stabbed a 'black' boy. He happened to live in a largely 'coloured' suburb, among 'coloured' people. There go the racial semantics and mathematics.

Then, the worst, in a country gone brutally insane.  A doctor, distressed beyond the describing of it, sends a voice note, pleading. She treated a young girl who had her eyes gouged out during an assault. She was not a celebrity or related to anyone famous. Just a young, South African girl. The celebrity politicians were busy elsewhere, when the police came out in numbers to guard the alleged perpetrator, being treated for a bite to his hand. The journalists, the EFF and all the vocal people, we did not hear from them. You want to be outraged? Be outraged that life is as cheap as if we manufactured it ourselves, with cheap materials and backhanders.

The corrupt, the incompetent and the buffoons in high places will go on with corruption, incompetence and what buffoons do. But you and I can longer pass by on the other side of the road. And not lose our souls. Because 'we are dying, Egypt, dying / and not expecting pardon / hardened in heart anew". And it profits nothing, even if we gain the whole world. 

And we cannot pass on without saying to the powerful who have been sowing tares of corruption, division and hatred for so long. And abdicated (shamefully) their duty to hope, kindness, courage and the vision of a better South Africa:

'Shame on you

A plague upon your houses'

'And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or driven to its knees.'

And where shall we find hope? In the mirror. Compatriot.

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted Capitec Bank, South Africa 1378565477 O Tichmann +27 833970723