The violence within us

Written by Jonathan Jansen

'They lied to us, they lied to us, they lied to us!" The bearded white man shook with emotion as he repeated these words after the talk I had just delivered at a Men's Convention in the poor white community of Elsburg in the south of Johannesburg.

This was the second men's convention that I was privileged to address on successive weekends. One thing is crystal clear: there is a deep and unremitting pain among middle-aged men about the past, about their participation in it, and especially about that unspoken war in which white men were conscripted into military service to do things that few dare speak about.

Do not be deceived by the poorly-written books by former soldiers with bravado and self-justification lacing the pages; it is an attempt to retain sanity as these men come to terms with official lies.

What are the lies the bearded man is talking about? It was the lie that they were fighting terrorists when they were fighting their brothers and sisters. It was the lie that their country had a democracy to be defended when what we had was a pigmentocracy that was indefensible. It was the lie that you could repress the democratic instincts of people deprived of land, life and the right to vote, and get away with it. It was the lie, of course, that white rule was about defending Christian civilisation against godless communism.

Over the two weekends seven men at these two men's conventions came separately to talk with strong emotion about what they did in the past. Here was a trauma that remains concealed from public and even familial view, and that could burst into open rage and inflict great pain on the individual and society if not dealt with.

Which brings me to the "public servant" strikes (the term itself sounds laughable given the destruction under way) in the beloved country. What should scare South Africans is not the strike itself; after all, our democracy allows for citizens to participate in peaceful protests.

What should concern us is how protest cultures that are vicious and violent are the norm. In other words, the foundations of our culture and society are permanently changing so that it is no longer enough to have differences with other people; we must go further and destroy, break down, threaten and attack the people and institutions with which we disagree.

There is another view on all of this. Africa's most distinguished social scientist, Mahmood Mamdani from Makerere University in Uganda, likes to make this important point: "The present is not its own explanation." In other words, when you witness the violent behaviour of strikers, the reasons for such actions lie in the distant past, not in the observable behaviour of the moment.

The question that must be asked, therefore, is this: how did we come to be such violent people? Of course, our country was born out of conquest and violence centuries back. The apartheid government routinely tortured and killed people, making violence part of our societal culture. Put differently, violence became institutionalised in our society.

That is why outsiders to the rainbow nation cannot understand why a democratic government would use the methodologies of the previous government - rubber bullets and tear gas - on the people who voted it into power.

When we placed tyres around the necks of people suspected of being informers for the previous government, we contributed to the conditions for institutionalised violence that remain with us today.

Rather than simply condemn violence - and we should - we must ask the question, "where does it come from?" The present is not its own explanation.

But we are not victims of our past, whether as one-time conscripts in apartheid's army or as present-day strikers in our post-apartheid democracy. We can change this behaviour, difficult as it will be. Talks about difficult social questions must always be preferred to demonstration. Peaceful protests must become the norm, not violent protest cultures. The lines for decent behaviour must be firmly drawn.

We fool ourselves, however, if we think that simply by repressing the strikers or dismissing the trauma of former policemen and soldiers we can resolve the underlying reasons for our private and public behaviour. The violence of the present is not spontaneous combustion; it comes from somewhere.

Our commentators and our officials now need to go beyond the expression of disbelief and the condemnation of terror. It is time for a national dialogue on how we came to be this way. Or expect worse.

(This story was provided and used with permission by Timeslive.)