Dark secret that violence conceals

A group of foreign nationals threaten to defend themselves as police get between them and South Africans after a peace march in Durban. Violence seems to be an answer to the shame, fear and hopelessness of poverty that too many people in our country feel, says the writer. File photo: Rogan Ward

A group of foreign nationals threaten to defend themselves as police get between them and South Africans after a peace march in Durban. Violence seems to be an answer to the shame, fear and hopelessness of poverty that too many people in our country feel, says the writer. File photo: Rogan Ward

Published May 21, 2015

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Some of the most horrifying things I have seen have been here at home, says veteran war correspondent Hamilton Wende.

Like many South Africans, I have been grappling for meaning in the recent outbreak of violence that has convulsed our country. We have witnessed so much killing in our history, in our land, in our schools, in our homes, and in our families.

For much of my career, I have been a war correspondent covering conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda and many other places. Some of the most horrifying things I have seen in the last 25 years have been here at home, in our own land.

People hacked and stabbed to death on Khumalo Street in Thokoza, blood-spattered brains on the floor of a tiny house on Second Ave in Alexandra, the crazed violence of the AWB at Ventersdorp – the list could go on and on, but there is no need to revel in cruelty and the grotesque.

Now, we reel in shock as waves of brutality sweep through our country yet again, targeting poor black people from other countries. The violence is committed by a minority of our citizens and yet its horror ripples through all of us. The middle class of all races have largely been isolated from direct involvement in this ruthlessness, but we shiver at its threshold. Our psyches as South Africans today are deeply traumatised. Despair and fear fill our minds. How could they not? We had hoped and believed in better for our country.

What we do not properly understand is that violence has its own deeply addictive potency. It may arise in a moment of madness, but that madness has a force that is difficult, sometimes impossible to resist. Those who are cursed by the red mist of anger that leads to physical brutality are often unable to control themselves. And within all of us lives the possibility to submit to its power.

Of course violence must always be condemned, the power of shame brings many to their senses before they strike, stab, or pull the trigger.

As a war correspondent, I have met many soldiers and rebels who live constantly with the deep shame that comes from hurting or killing another human being.

There is a dark secret that violence conceals, but it is one which is as old as humankind itself. At the heart of violence lie two powerful monsters: shame and fear. The addiction of violence is that it comes as a sweeping, temporary force that liberates our subconscious from these monsters that eat away at our hope, and which can destroy the very meaning of what it means to be alive on this earth.

We need to understand and admit this sinister truth if we are to begin to address the viciousness that is our South African inheritance.

The truth is that violence seems to be an answer to the shame, fear and hopelessness of poverty that too many people in our country feel. Until that hopelessness is somehow moderated we will never see the end of this cycle of killing.

We will never see an end to service delivery protests, we will never see an end to home invasions. We will never be safe in our land.

Certainly, we need firm and decisive action by the government to deal with the immediate crisis.

The bitter paradox is that it is only through violence, or the threat of it, that the state can stop these attacks. Certainly too many people in our country have attacked foreigners and never been brought to book.

But we need, as people, to go further, much further. We need to see that, as the middle class, our callousness towards the poor is part of the problem. Merely condemning the mercilessness of a relatively few desperately poor people will get us nowhere.

There is another unpleasant truth at the heart of what is happening. Too many South Africans, of all races, believe there are “too many immigrants in this country”, too many believe “Nigerians are all drug dealers”, or that “Zimbabweans are taking our jobs”.

We, as South Africans, with our deeply ingrained history of racial division are all too prone to project our failings and prejudices onto others. Those “others” today are Africans from other parts of the continent.

This ugly projection is not a new thing in our society. Nearly a quarter of a century ago, after the Battle of Ventersdorp in 1991 when South Africa seemed on the brink of a racial conflagration, I wrote the words below. Today they seem worth republishing.

“If it has done nothing else, Ventersdorp has taught us this much: that within all of us, black and white, dwells the heart of darkness.

“It has nothing to do with being Afrikaner, or Zulu, or Xhosa, or German. It has everything to do with simply being human. Hatred, perhaps, binds us even more deeply than love does, for love can die, but there is only one way to eradicate hatred from our lives: we must choose to do so.

“We must actively find its source within us and work to remove it.

“Ventersdorp is past, and for many of us whites it must be said that, for the first time, we have seen the heart of darkness within our own selves.

“We can no longer sit in the false Eden of our suburbs and claim an innocence that we never really possessed. As bitter as the fruit of this self-knowledge has proved to be, there can be no going back now.

“We now know who we are, and what we are capable of. What we do with this new awareness of ourselves is what matters now. Do we allow it to fester into further hatred, or do we work to find some way of turning it, if not to love, then at least to understanding and acceptance, not only of the black people we share our country with, but of ourselves? The choice is yours, and mine.”

* Hamilton Wende is a commentator, freelance writer and television producer. He has covered wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He has worked for international networks including the BBC, NBC, ABC (Australia), SBS (Australia), NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) and Al Jazeera English.

** The views expressed heer are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

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