On December 4 2022, my siblings and I were driving somewhere between Sabie in Mpumalanga and Groblersdal, Limpopo, winding through the country on what was the end of a beautiful family retreat (no-one was moody or argued over rooms). As usual, I ran for shotgun and was in charge of the aux!
We were obsessed with Bakermat’s One Day, so it was on repeat: a track that offers a strange kind of optimism, mostly because it features Martin Luther King Jr’s voice. Spilling through the speakers, his voice goes: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” It was such a fun moment ...
Almost as if on cue, the car jolted violently. I was too impressed with the driver’s quick reflexes to scream. The three of us laughed absurdly with relief while getting out of the car to see the damage or what the obstacle was.
Lo and behold, a pothole. It yawned wide in the middle of the road, shaped unmistakably like a heart, an asymmetrical thing chipped and chiselled at its edges with grass growing out of its tail. It was a perfect metaphor: heartache can camouflage itself as art. This was not some heart reminiscent of Valentine’s Day props, it was not love, but erosion, an absence that echoed a cavity that one cared to fill. Yet there it was.
And of course, I’m a Gen Z, my first instinct was to take a picture; otherwise, who would have believed us?
The music had not stopped when we got back into the car, relieved there was no damage. The part “... this nation will rise ...” was playing.
Welcome to the reality of South Africa, where the Leviathan is feasting, not on foreign threats but the trust, safety and monies of the people.
And suddenly, it wasn’t inspirational or fun any more. It haunted me. It felt like I was caught up in a cruel joke. Not to be dramatic, but the pothole was not just a rupture on the road; it could have caused us to have a bad accident. It was decay dressed as a sentiment, a ruin of romantic thoughts forged by apathy, neglect and budget cuts. As for the grass pushing through and growing despite the ruin? I guess, when hearts break, something will always try to grow.
Alas, Bakermat’s track faded into another track. We had to “keep it moving”. In that quiet collective shrug, I realised that this was a thriving phenomenon in South Africa; this toxic tolerance is something that not only happened in that car but is also something that has settled over the nation. We swerve around dysfunction, laugh it off and take pictures (not for the record or pursuit of accountability but memes and memories). It is damning.
In public choice theory, Thomas Hobbes argued that a political governance structure can be viewed as a Leviathan, where people surrender some of their natural attributes and liberties to a sovereign power — the state — in exchange for protection and stability and to avoid chaos. In South Africa, through democratic processes, we, the citizens, have entered into this ultimate social contract where we have traded our liberty for safety; we chose structure over chaos. We pay heavy taxes, live within the established laws and protocols. But what happens when the same sovereign neglects its part of the deal? When does it morph from protector to predator (though not through brute force but ineptitude)?
How are we OK with this state of affairs? How is this our reality? How toxic is our tolerance towards this sheer lack of care?
From townships where power cuts are the order of the day, high levels of crime, rural areas that have no access to clean water, to potholes shaped like hearts, we are living through the slow betrayal of this contract. How naive that we have surrendered our power to the Leviathan with hopes that it will keep the lights on and chase away the monsters at night, but it is instead living up to its true nature and gobbling us up one day at a time. The courts are becoming dysfunctional, schools are a battlefield, corruption is rife, and the cost of living is high.
When pupils in the Eastern Cape have to cross a river to school because a bridge in their community has collapsed, ambulances cannot reach patients on time because of bad roads, mothers have to choose to throw their babies out of windows of moving cars because they feel unsafe and villagers still do their laundry in the river — that’s not ineffectiveness but a breach of contract.
Welcome to the reality of South Africa, where the Leviathan is feasting, not on foreign threats but the trust, safety and monies of the people. We were promised order, but instead, got disharmony — a bureaucratic, discouraging and slow-burning chaos.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have laughed the pothole incident off and “kept it moving”, but fought for my right to be safe on the road. But here is the kicker: the tolerance levels in South Africa are so abnormal that I didn't have time to follow up on the pothole. We stay and hope, whether out of habit, the appreciation that things might change or worse: we too don’t care any more as long as we didn’t die.
This is not a call to burn it down to the ground, but the Leviathan needs to be reminded who it serves. But surely a contract broken this often and blatantly needs to either be rewritten or exited.
For opinion and analysis consideration, email Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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