Keeping the peace in Senekal will be hard
What made ours a rainbow nation, or our transition from apartheid to democracy a “miracle”, was the appreciation of one another’s humanity. It avoided a war ahead of the 1994 elections. This belief and tolerance were stretched to near breaking point in Senekal this week. There was relief when the sun set on Friday without any bloodshed following the appearance in court of two men suspected of killing Brendin Horner, and the war talk that accompanied the event. On the surface, it appears police and the country’s spies deserve praise for this.
Looked at closely, however, they had no option, given the chaos of the previous week when a gun was fired in the magistrate’s court precincts by a protester and a police van was overturned and set alight.
It is of concern that on Friday some people were arrested and others turned away for carrying guns, and that supporters of AfriForum and the EFF threw bricks and bottles.
Such events reveal how fragile the 1994 democratic stitch-up remains. It takes a few evocative words from a political party formed less than eight years ago to get the country on tenterhooks. The EFF leadership cleverly uses the country’s persistent inequality to drum up support, arguing that apartheid is not dead because black people remain poor and victims of racism. There is much truth in this.
AfriForum argues that farmers, responsible for the country’s food, are unfairly left to fight off murderous criminals on the farms without state support. That, too, is true.
To the extent that black people remain on the periphery of economic participation, it must be expected that such exclusion, in which the state is complicit, will continue to be exploited by the likes of the EFF to polarise the nation.
All South Africans ought to agree that Horner’s killers, whoever they are, must face the full force of the law in the same way that all those who vandalised state property ought to. The events in Senekal teach us that it is easier to talk or stop a war, but harder to maintain peace. The success of the police strategy will be seen in how they maintain peace on the farms, in townships and in court precincts long after the cameras have left the little Free State town.