The impaired state of the SA psyche is on show

Our national flower is the protea. Our national disease is schizophrenia. This week provided another glimpse of the delusional and impaired state of the South African psyche.

Shortly after two rating agencies downgraded us further into junk creditworthiness status, the Business Confidence Index hit its highest level in almost three years. Partly, it’s the yo-yo effect. What goes down must come up. It’s also, perhaps, the likely response of someone inadvertently drowning in their own bathtub: “This is ridiculous. Surely this can’t be happening to me?” But it is.

Not only is the ANC too enfeebled to lead but it has possibly terminally undermined the entire state. The state’s primary duty is to ensure the safety of its citizens. SA can no longer adequately protect its people from criminal violence and, increasingly, political violence.

Just as the sclerotic, pandemic-impaired arteries of commerce start flowing again, there are determined and sinister attempts to shut them down. In the past 10 days, in protests aimed supposedly at foreign truck drivers taking local jobs, about three dozen truck-andtrailer rigs have been torched on major routes. Several drivers have been hospitalised and one, a South African, shot and then burnt to death.

The Road Freight Association (RFA) says this is not a labour issue. When I ask Gavin Kelly, RFA CEO, what the impetus for the attacks was, he doesn’t mince his words: “I can’t tell you why it’s happening, but I can tell you how. This is a planned, coordinated, destruction of the economy. These are coordinated, military-style attacks. They are preceded by ample warnings, with social media calls for action and letters circulated beforehand, inciting violence.

“The police are not acting on such intelligence to prevent the attacks and they are not acting when the attacks are happening. The police are unable or unwilling to act. We have reports of the police standing and watching the petrol bombings happening. No arrests are made.”

This is not faceless violence. This week’s rampage through Durban and the port blockade was carried out by people purporting to be members of the All Truck Drivers Foundation and the uMkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association.

These are not new developments, they are part of a pattern. The main orchestrator of protest actions that – oops! – spill into public violence is the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and its “commander-in-chief” Julius Malema.

Last week, the EFF seized on allegations of racism at a school for a protest that turned ugly. The police used water cannons, stun grenades and teargas to control the mob. This week, Malema turned on the police. The EFF was not afraid of police “cowards” and “fools”, he said. “We will go to their homes and fight them in their own houses with their own families.”

Police Minister Bheki Cele “noted with disgust, the reckless, irresponsible and dangerous statements” by Malema. Fine sentiments, but it was left to AfriForum and Solidarity to lay criminal charges of incitement to violence. But as University of SA academic Dr William Mpofu explained, there was nothing harmful in Malema’s words. They were merely a “political metaphor”.

If you swallow that, seek an appointment with a psychiatrist. You may have the national disease.

William Saunderson-Meyer.

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