MAKHUDU SEFARA | This country needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror

What goes through the mind of a parent who goes looting with their children, asking them to help carry the proceeds of their criminal conduct, while expecting them, in the near future, to behave like prim and proper members of society?

This question has been playing at the back of my mind for a few days, since the unprecedented scenes of shameful looting witnessed in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and other parts of the country. 

What happens in the mind of a parent who says to their child: “My baby, take these (stolen goods) home and I, as your parent, am going back into the mall to see what else there is to steal and I will find you at home.” Is the rationale (I assume that there is a process used to arrive at this) that we, the poor, now have a rare opportunity to access life’s luxuries or necessities without paying a cent and, therefore, it doesn’t matter that it’s looting? Is there even a rationale to this — or is it simply a case of “everyone is looting, why behave like I am holier than thou?” Group think.

It would also be erroneous to believe that the Mercedes driver, Mbuso Moloi, who quickly rose to infamy for helping himself to goods he did not pay for, is part of the disenchanted poor. To say the last few weeks have reduced our country to a theatre of the absurd is stating the obvious. So much so that there was, at some point, a traffic jam leading into and out of a mall being looted. Yes, a traffic jam caused by looters. I am certain it’s a contender for the Guinness Book of Records or, alternatively, Ripley’s Believe it or Not. 

But the picture on repeat in my mind is of parents with small children serving as the looting battalion. When these children bring stolen cars home later in their lives, how do the parents say: “As a family, we don’t do this!” How does that message find resonance when it contrasts with practical teachings?

This is one of the questions I put to a panel of experts on TimesLIVE’s first webinar on Thursday. Annah Moyo-Mupeta, the acting executive director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, said the drivers of violence were not happening in a vacuum. Our ugly past, mob psychology, inequality and other factors conspired to provide fresh impetus to protesters who wanted former president Jacob Zuma released. Prof Tinyiko Maluleke of the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria reminded us that looting has become part of our DNA as a country, while Rev Mautji Pataki forced us to look in the mirror and ask: what makes us, as South Africans, the people we are? If we say the looting is “not us”, he said, then what makes us ... us?

If we think deeply about this question and look back at some of the horror stories we often report, a picture emerges of a very troubled society. We do horrible things that must make us question our very humanity. 

This principal, along with the looters initiating their own children in criminality, may have done different things but are, in reality, not really different to each other.

Take, for example, Luthuthu Junior Secondary School principal Lubeko Mgandela in the Eastern Cape, who had one of his pupils tied to a rope and, armed with nothing more than a stick, sent down a stinking pit latrine in search of the principal’s cellphone. We must be grateful he made it back alive without the cellphone, of course. But can you imagine the horror of having your top removed, a rope tied to your waist and being told to go down head first into the loo? I will spare you the detail. 

If we assume that principals and teachers are the parents in whose care we leave our children, our bundles of joy, why would any parent send their child on such a search party? Predictably, the damage to the child’s mind, made worse by the teasing he was subjected to by other pupils, affected him negatively. 

This principal, along with the looters initiating their own children in criminality, may have done different things but are, in reality, not really different to each other. They, and we, traumatise our children. We teach them wrong things. We subject them to horrific things. And when our country goes from bad to worse, we act surprised. It’s absurd. It’s cruelty to children, regardless of whether they, for now, find looting exciting or are shocked at how close they came to dying from choking in the pit.

In the end though, we must all confront what Pataki was talking about. It’s not enough to say this looting is not who we are. We must talk about who we are because, in truth, what makes us ... us, is not obvious to most of us. When 1994 happened, we called ourselves a miracle nation, the rainbow nation. 

Yet, 27 years later, a great part of that nation feels alienated, excluded, ready and willing to loot and burn our country, encouraged by supporters of a former president in prison because he doesn’t want to answer questions related to state looting on his watch. 

It is, again, a theatre of the absurd.