POLOKWANE – Rakgadi Thulas has commended the vigilant communities of Seshego and Polokwane and their various associations and organisations for collaborating and standing firm with one voice and succinct message of no looting and no violence in Limpopo. “I took to the streets and joined the motorcade with other Polokwane residents to protest against lawlessness, violence and looting. The unity of this community brings about a culture of engagements, build common understanding and true peace.”
According to Rakgadi Thulas, the community in Polokwane has learnt a long time ago that they cannot fully rely on police so they organised themselves to fight crimes, poverty and injustices.
She says even before the looting, households were collecting as little as R20 to support and strengthen the community forums and other neighbourhood watches which were already working with businesses and government. As a result they were ready to make sure that looting does not take place and Rakgadi Thulas urges other communities to embrace this model including street committees.
She believes underlying issues such as poverty, unemployment and generally living without hope for too long triggered civilians to join these protests and take part in the looting.
“Living with hope and nothing but hope has made people vulnerable. The painful reality is also that anger and poverty of the mind played a role which led people to become so desperate that they even loot coffins. We still have a long way to go in reconstructing the soul and mind.”
She says the measures in place by Polokwane residents and government will only serve as a temporary solution as communities cannot have the army indefinitely on the streets.
Rakgadi says leadership is needed as well as dialogues during which people can engage and come up with their own solutions as imposed solutions are not a good recipe for peace.
“People need to remain disciplined and be sensitive to other people’s problems. They also need to be innovative and be able to build capacity to create jobs rather than being job seekers. If the socio-economic problems are not addressed then we will have more incidents like this and they could possibly spread to the entire country.
“In Polokwane the taxi association took charge of the situation to prevent looting. They understood the basic economics of the matter and articulated it well to the community, I think they explained economics much better than the education system in our country. They appealed to people’s sense of reason and it worked. They did not threaten violence in their usual manner, they did not make unrealistic promises, they were smart.”
She says this response will remain relevant as they spoke with respect and spoke to people as equal citizens which ensured that people understood that they need to take ownership of their destiny.
