South African history has proved us to be nation of monsters
WE are monsters – a nation of monsters.
Not Pixar’s imaginary kind hiding under beds or in cupboards that turn into cute animated characters. We’re the genuine item. On the face of it there’s no debate, the facts are clear, and while we can’t compete with the likes of Adolf Hitler or Idi Amin, we certainly fit the dictionary criteria of “cruel, wicked and inhumane”.
Our history proves it, the way we treat each other daily settles it.
Our monster tale begins with what is possibly South Africa’s first (recorded) mass killing.
On March 1 1510, the Portuguese viceroy, Dom Francisco de Almeida, went ashore in Table Bay.
Shortly afterwards he, and half of his entourage, were killed by (what a Portuguese writer of the time described as) “bestial negroes (sic), the most brutal of all the coast”. Except that’s not the full story. Almeida had stopped over in Table Bay to re-stock provisions on his return from India. Twelve of his men went ashore to trade with the Khoikhoi, but the trade turned sour.
Another (Portuguese) writer of that time suggests “there were some sailors who tried to take a cow without giving what the negroes (sic) asked for it”.
The sailors got chased back to their boats. Disgruntled, they convinced a “reluctant” Almeida to march on the Khoikhoi with 150 men armed with crossbows, swords and lances.
Their idea of compensation: seizing Khoikhoi children and cattle.
Only the Khoikhoi retaliated, armed with assegais and stones and, using their cattle as moving shields, they repelled the Portuguese, killing Almeida and 76 Portuguese in the process.
If we think of either the fictional Godzilla, or the very real Hitler, one thing is clear: a “monster” is inhumane, we know this because they kill humans on a mass scale.
So if the quick measure of being a monster is simply “those who perpetrate mass killing”, then it should be easy to single them out. But, in fact, sorting hero from monster is complicated.
Our accounts of mass killings repeat the same basic plot: “we’re” the good guys, “they’re” the monsters.
A quick (and necessarily incomplete) historical overview gives some insight into this point.
In the early to mid-1800s the Mfecane/ Difaqane period of aggressive nationbuilding by Zulu King Shaka and Ndebele King Mzilikazi led to deaths estimated from hundreds of thousands to 2.5 million people.
In the wake of this period, Piet Retief and his group of 100 were killed after King Dingane changed his mind on their two-day-old land treaty in 1838.
In a follow-up action, Dingane’s impi killed a further 532 Boers in the Weenen area.
These killings in turn led to the retaliatory action by the “victory commando” of Andries Pretorius and the now infamous Battle of Blood River in which more than 3 000 Zulu impi were killed.
The turn of the century was bookended by the Anglo-Boer wars, the second of which saw more than 29 000 combatants, and 20 000 civilians killed.
It was during this period that the British used concentration camps to devastating effect, incarcerating 116 000 Boers and similar numbers of blacks (in separate camps).
Abysmal conditions (which Emily Hobhouse highlighted in detail to the British authorities) in the camps led to the deaths of more than 14 000 blacks and some 28 000 Boers.
The Boer forces themselves were no angels – in 1902 a Boer leader, Manie Maritz (later a Nazi sympathiser), indiscriminately killed 35 Khoikhoi people in retaliation for being attacked while visiting missionaries in Leliefontein.
By the mid-20th century the pattern of regular mass killing was well established.
The 1949 Durban riots (in which 142 Indians were killed), the Witzieshoek stock culling protest in 1950 (16 killed), Sharpeville (69 killed), Soweto (575 killed) and then the mid-80s: Church Street bombing (19 killed), Vaal Triangle rent boycotts and Operation “Palmiet” (142 killed), Kwalanga (20 killed), Duncan Village (19 killed), Queenstown, and more, as the state of emergencies resulted in the deaths of hundreds.
Then civil war – the horror of 1989-94 has no other apt description.
This was the time of Ferdi Barnard (Civil Co-operation Bureau), Eugene de Kock (Vlakplaas), the Witdoeke, IFP against ANC/UDF, the AWB “siege” of Mafikeng, Bhisho, Boipatong, Sebokeng, St James Church and Shell House.
In total the TRC estimates that during the period 1982 to 1994 the IFP killed 4 500, the SAP killed 2 700 and the ANC 1 300.
And then it stops. Seemingly, our killing fields go silent after the 1994 elections.
Apart from the Cape Town Sizzlers massacre in 2003 (nine murdered) and the Marikana massacre in 2012 (in which 47 died), it appears that South Africans have stopped being monsters.
But as the #MenAreTrash campaign reminds us, our monsters have simply moved into the shadows of our homes – from under the bed to into the bed.
Statistics indicate that rape in South Africa is very high (old studies indicate seven to 15% of all woman being raped by a sexual partner) and that one in three children will experience some form of sexual abuse by their 17th birthday.
The Institute for Security Studies estimated that in 2014-15 on average every day in South Africa 49 persons were murdered – five times higher than the global average.
Pause for a moment and consider any one of the incidents above.
The numbers hide the individuals, they numb us to the daily reality – to our violent history.
What the numbers shout out is that language, ethnicity, race, politics or religion have no value in identifying the monsters.
The line-up of potential suspects includes every type of South African.
And every group will have a story of how they experienced violence by others.
None of which helps us identify the monsters and stop the killing.
Viewed through the lens of violent deaths, the monsters live among us.
In short – if we’re not the monsters, who is? This leaves us with a simple choice. We can continue the verbal barrage directed at the group of our choice: blacks are . . . whites are . . . men are . . . Christians are . . .
Or we can take an honest look in the mirror and see the need for a different way out, that by blaming the other we are simply sheltering the monsters that live among us.