Failure to rein in brutal violence a betrayal of 1994

25 May 2016 - 09:42 By The Times Editorial

A sickening photograph of the bloodied body of a man is doing the rounds on social media. His battered corpse is partly covered by a sheet of corrugated iron but there is no mistaking the flames shooting out of his abdomen. The picture could have been taken in Tokoza in 1993, at the height of the township war in apartheid South Africa, but it wasn't.The unidentified man, probably a day worker hired to carry out an eviction, and a colleague died horrible deaths this week after they were cornered, stoned and burned by an enraged mob that had gathered in Hammanskraal to prevent the demolition of shacks.People's impatience with, and growing desperation at, the slow pace of the government's low-cost housing programme is understandable but nothing can excuse murder. It is a terrible indictment of our democracy that the casual resort to extreme violence has become so common.In recent weeks hundreds of millions of rands of damage has been wreaked on schools and universities by arsonists with political motives that have nothing to do with legitimate demands for improved access to education.The response of the police was tardy and inadequate. Arrests have been pitifully few and even fewer convictions are likely to follow.The government, hobbled by years of corruption and complacency, is battling to marshal the capacity to rise to the challenge of providing decent services in a society bedevilled by widening race and class divides.But it is simply unforgivable that people who resort to violence are not brought to book. A student who torches a lecture hall automatically forfeits the right to be treated as a student. The fire-starters have to be identified, tracked down, arrested and prosecuted. This is the only way to stop the rot.Political leaders, too, need to learn the hard way that they cannot get away with preaching violence in a democracy.This is not what we signed up for in 1994...

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