Reading through Facebook posts I came across a thread that was disturbing, writes Usha Naidu.
Durban - A truck had lost part of its cargo in Westmead, Pinetown, and the resultant mayhem was photographed by a member of the public and posted on a public site.
The cargo was something edible and people in the vicinity, most probably from the informal settlement nearby, had taken advantage of this manna from heaven.
The ethics and morality of this cannot be disputed. It is wrong to steal. Whether you are doing it blatantly like this, or insidiously via little dishonesties, the fact remains that stealing is wrong.
We all know that. Yet in this case, the issue is cloudy. Especially in our country where people live in such extremes of poverty and wealth. What shocked me was the level of vitriol that was directed at the looters.
You cannot condone what they did. Looting is wrong on every level and lawlessness cannot be tolerated.
But calling the looters “bushpigs” and a host of other derogatory names and comparing them to animals smacks of people who do not count understanding among their virtues.
What was also disturbing was the number of people “liking” these comments, thereby giving tacit approval to these vitriolic rants.
Most of the looters were of a particular race group, prompting comments of “you will never see us behaving in this way”. As wrong as it is, when you are faced with a rumbling tummy and free food drops by unexpectedly, you are going to take advantage of this bounty. Whatever your race group. That is just human nature.
Indeed, the annual sardine run bears testimony to this, when members of the public use every manner of container to scoop up this bountiful harvest from the ocean. Then it is a legitimised tourist attraction and the mayhem is condoned in the nature of good fun. Which this no doubt was to the looters, who saw an opportunity for a free meal and seized it.
Human nature is such that whether in India or China, Europe or anywhere else in the world, as long as there are poor people, this type of behaviour will prevail. We cannot condone but we can understand it.
We seem to have become immune to the poverty around us. And we have lost all capacity for understanding. What irked me the most is that many of those who posted comments live in an elite suburb with restaurants and coffee shops. They have no lack of money or food in their homes. It is easy to condemn when your own belly is full.
My first teaching stint was at the now defunct Clare Hills Secondary School, situated next to an informal settlement. Just 3m separated my classroom from the shacks and I became privy to their pitiful morning ritual: mother’s pacifying hungry, crying children while promising them scraps of food later on. None of the mothers were employed. They relied on the Springfield Municipal Dump for their sustenance.
The dump trucks would start arriving at about 8am and there would be a rush to get to the bin bags. Later on, these women would arrive back at the camp, carrying plastic bags filled with discarded vegetables and other food items. Soon the fires would be started and the cooking commence.
Rotting vegetables would have the offending bits cut off and be popped into the stew of whatever could be found that morning in the dump. In the meantime, the toddlers and older children would be pacified with the dump site fare: discarded fruit and rescued bits of old bread. When hunger is gnawing at your stomach, even rotten fruit and stale bread is acceptable.
This is simply the juxtaposition of the country we live in. Extreme poverty and extreme wealth share space adjacent to each other. Just as it is on the hillside of Westmead, where the informal settlement perches precariously overlooking warehouses of abundance. Is it any wonder then, that when an unexpected windfall drops into their ambit, they would take advantage?
Maybe we are too quick to condemn in this country… so anaesthetised by our own pain that we have forgotten our humanity. After all, it takes time to process the events of the past two decades. South Africa’s transition to a democratic country was almost surreal, as though staged for a global audience and basking in their admiration when in reality, it has not yet been accepted in the hearts and minds of its people.
Maybe the resultant crime, corruption and scandals, have depleted our capacity to feel, empathise and understand. Maybe we have become so disillusioned with the current status quo and our own impotence that all we can do is sit in our ivory towers and rage.
Maybe we have become immune to suffering, hunger and poverty because we see it as just punishment for changing the old order. Whatever it is, we have lost our humanity.
We live in a parallel universe with each other in this country. This is the legacy of our apartheid past. Policies of separate development worked a treat in creating this huge chasm of wealth versus poverty. Keeping the races separate meant that each had to exist within the confines of their own reality. Today, some of us cannot be bothered to attempt to understand the reality of another.
It is the reason for us raging at our domestic worker for coming in late, when she has been up since 5am, trekked to the taxi rank, waited for an hour, then caught the taxi to a central point from which she had to take another.
She goes home to her shack, township or RDP house after having spent a day cleaning your mansion by comparison. Her reality is far removed from yours, yet she can bridge the gap and exist in your world.
Can you exist in hers? If you could, then maybe you would understand the reasons for the behaviour that you are so quick to condemn.
We all need to take stock. Someone once said that an unexamined life is one not worth living. I agree. We need to reflect on how, when and where we lost our capacity to understand, to empathise, to condemn the act while understanding the motivation. We need to rediscover our humanity and re-engage with the spirit of ubuntu. We need to make the effort to figuratively walk in another person’s shoes.
We also need to recognise that vitriolic comments posted on public forums fuel the simmering racial tensions. We need to douse these flames before they turn into a bushfire that burns us all. Be circumspect about what you post.
Learn the value of keeping thoughts to yourself. We worked hard for this democracy. Let’s all make it work by starting with those two basics: understanding and empathy.
* Usha Naidu is a teacher at Eden College, Durban.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
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