Time to show our South African character!
Let’s get busy cleaning up, rebuilding and solving the long term underlying socio-economic problems that affect all of us.
That’s what truly makes us South African. That is our character.” – Mandy Wiener
Mandy Wiener writes that now is the time to shift! Now is the time to show our South African character!
“We are all juggling conflicting emotions, trying to digest and understand and comprehend the images we have seen over the past few days. The looting and violence in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng has been extreme – at least 72 lives have been lost.”
There is still no real clarity on what is driving it. Ostensibly, the catalyst was former President Jacob Zuma’s incarceration.
Reports from News24 today say that investigations are under way to determine if ex-State Security Agency agents close to former president Jacob Zuma are fanning the unrest. If that is indeed true then that is insurrection, terrorism against the state and those responsible must be held to account.
There is undoubtedly a criminal element involved, leveraging the situation.
To destroy a blood bank, clinics, vaccines, radio stations, water treatment plants, cellphone towers is pure anarchy and targeted terrorism.
But we have to also understand and appreciate that this has also been the spark for a tinder box of unemployment, hunger, disenfranchisement and disillusionment with the government.
As Isobel Frye, Director at the Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute told me, if there is a sense that if you’ve got no hope in the future, you’ve got nothing to lose today.
The unemployment rate among youth aged 15-34 years was 46,3% in the first quarter of 2021. There are 7.2 million people without jobs in South Africa.
Lockdown, without sufficient support for the unemployed, has exacerbated hunger and desperation.
Last weeks’ Nids-Cram survey reminded us of this too. According to the study, child hunger remains extremely high. In April/May 2021 14% of households indicated a child had gone hungry in the past 7 days
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