When a state really fails

EIGHTY-SIX people died this week, a third of them children. Their deaths were as agonising and appalling as death can ever be. Yet they hardly made it onto the front pages of South African newspapers. The pictures are heart-rending. The reports of Tuesday’s chemical attack on Khan Skeikhoun in northern Syria are spine-chilling. These people aren’t the first to die, they won’t be the last.

In their own way they provide a glimpse for us in South Africa of what happens when a state really fails.

The political temperature has been skyrocketing. Citizens and opposition parties have been speaking out against President Jacob Zuma, his supporters inside the faction-riven ruling party have resorted to brazen war talk in some instances, outlandish and irresponsible conduct in others – such as the Tshwane State of the City Address on Thursday, when ANC members hijacked the proceedings – even though the council acceded to their initial demands for the anniversary of freedom fighter Solomon Mahlangu’s death to be recognised.

We are on a slippery slope. We have a constitution that is seriously being tested, especially as people try to exercise their rights to think in opposition to the ruling hegemony, to associate and to mobilise.

The constitution allows this; it enshrines this. These were hard won freedoms forged in a furnace of struggle against state repression.

They were gifted to us by the founding fathers of this new country. These freedoms – and the right to exercise them, make us a nation.

The alternative stares us in the face; the blank eyes of the dead children – and their silent reproach.