Insight: No simple interpretation for ransacking incident

Davidsonville community activist and spiritual leader Ronald Dyers has weighed in on Sunday’s looting incident and he had some scolding words for the community.

“What happened in Davidsonville in the ransacking of a Somali shop by predominantly cColoured people from Davidsonville and the consequent positions people take on that event, cannot be understood as a simplistic interpretation of what was right and who was wrong. That incident is also reflective of the impractical and skewed religious world views which we have come to trust to be the alpha and omega. It is also reflective of where we are in South Africa and where we’re likely heading towards,” said Dyers.

Community ransack Somalian supermarket

“The looting of Somali shops was essentially started by themselves in a twofold manner. They had chosen to loot from others. On that day they had bought and accepted a mass load of stolen or hijacked cold drinks and they were caught red handed by the police. This they did in brought daylight when even the community noticed the unusual delivery being made. The Somalis had looted from others and they had the false assurance that nobody would loot from them,” he explained.

Dyers went on to say that “since the establishment of their shop their problem had always been an attitude problem towards the very community of Davidsonville that supported their business. Clients from Davidsonville were treated with disdain, disrespect and as lesser beings. An ungodly haughtiness permeated their demeanour towards Davidsonville.

“They applied Islam as looking down on others and had forgotten that Christians, of whom the majority of Davidsonville residents are, were the only people that had historically provided shelter and love to the prophet Mohammed. Their wrong was aggravated by the fact that they had no integrity left of a brotherhood between Christians and Muslims. Commercial profiteering had permeated their minds to such a degree that they cared very little about the lives and families of others,” Dyers said.

“This is the same wrong that is happening in South Africa today, where the poor and marginalised are continually told not to steal, not to loot and never rob while banks that are run by rich people have been robbing the poor for decades through merciless ploys, non-spending of billions to boost economic growth and the strategic misuse of service fees.

“It is the same mentality that has forgotten a common citizenry and where deals are made, tenders are signed and contracts allocated

that excludes any meaningful supposedly trickle down effect for the poor. It comes down to the rich having forgotten a bond of citizenry of brotherhood, as much as the Somali Muslims had forgotten the ancestral brotherhood with Christians, even those very people from Davidsonville,” Dyers lamented.

He wanted to know if Davidsonville had not before looted or burned down the shops of foreigners and had all along been accepting them in the community, what was Davidsonville’s wrongdoing?

This question he answered himself.

“It is a given that stealing, robbing and looting is wrong. Yet, Davidsonville’s wrong lies not so much in the looting, but in where

they are as a community and where they are heading as a community. Large number of the looters were indeed church people or at least people who profess that they are from the Christian faith. This faith has seemingly now been altered to become a faith of stealing and looting and not one of hard work, strategic planning, opposition to structural imbalances and consistent betterment of the self in order to overcome economic hardships.

“In this lies the wrong of Davidsonville and many poorer communities in that they have applied their faith to passively wait on God and not to seize the day in total reliance on God,” said Dyers passionately.

He wanted to know why the community can not club together and pull their resources together.

“Why do they not demand that they be treated with respect, to make sure their children goes to study even if the family must foregone an unaffordable matric ball, to shun any laziness and to even work as a packer in the family’s own shop, to boycott anyone who mistreats them, to demand from local businesses to provide apprenticeships for the unemployed and to help invest in the community?”

Dyers concluded by saying “the community should realise that God had always been the champion of the marginalised and poor and He provides opportunity to break the shackles of marginalisation. Any community is absolutely wrong in not grabbing it”.

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