At the nadir of the war in Vietnam, junior American officers had to examine their priorities extremely carefully before sending their squad into a particularly dangerous situation. Stoned, terrified, 19-year-old draftees were not averse to shooting their officers in the middle of a firefight, or tossing a hand grenade in their general direction, a practice known as “fragging” due to the fragments of shrapnel that would usually see their perceived persecutor removed from the theatre, either in bandages or in a bag.
Nobody is suggesting that we frag the officers tasked with fighting our own war, if impotent, grumbling bellicosity from deep in the rear echelon can ever be called leadership.
The extent to which this government has failed to win the hearts and minds of the law-abiding population in its alleged fight against the crime that is garrotting the life out of whatever culture we had left in 1994, is superficially startling. Until, that is, one is assaulted by the latest pronouncements from the state.
This week Smuts Ngonyama emerged from an ANC lekgotla, at which crime was reportedly a central topic of discussion, and said all sorts of things about unity and purpose. But despite the lengthy pauses — intended, no doubt, to signify deep thought, but which succeeded only in giving Ngonyama the air of some-one who could barely be arsed to string five words together — the only sound bite of much substance was that we, the general public, must not be spectators.
It was a curious statement, and one that made one wonder just who he was talking about. Was he addressing the millions in the townships and outlying smallholdings who would love to be spectators but instead are unwilling participants? Surely he cannot have meant the middle class, whose taxes, when not being poured down the gullets of correctional services, are apparently insufficient to supply police with adequate numbers and firepower? No? Well then, he must have been referring to the wealthy, cowering behind a veritable Alamo of laser alarms, Rottweilers and steely-eyed blokes reading Heat magazine in their guardhouses.
In other words, of everyone they could have encouraged and inspired, the ruling party chose to wag its finger at about 50 000 people who are likely to emigrate anyway if things get worse. Way to pump up the troops, Sarge.
And herein lies the frustration, the root of one’s desire to start rolling political hand grenades about. It’s quite possible that the fight is slowly going in the right direction. It makes sense that crime is exploding in the suburbs because it is being squeezed in the townships. It’s possible that correctional services have to eat out all the time because there’s no time to cook when one is galloping through the Badlands in hot pursuit of varmints. But we just don’t know, because we can’t be sure that we’re not being lied to.
Government’s response to these suspicions is, of course, to imply that the media-consuming public has been brainwashed by those media, and has retreated behind its walls with a skewed, terrified and entirely unrealistic view of the South African reality. The implication is delivered with condescension and world-weary eye rolling, betraying a state still convinced that critics are, by definition, enemies, children or racists.
It is right in one respect, of course. The white-dominated media is obsessed with death, whether deliberate or accidental: the assumption has long ago been entrenched in this country that blood is kiffer than water, that horror is more noteÂworthy than rejuvenation. One need look no further than the evening news, in which wholesale death at a level crossing is fingered and licked by the cameras, while, say, a woman who has given a loving, stable home to five abandoned babies is relegated to that swill of feel-good programming in which minor celebrities invade shacks and give starving people a hug.
But the reality, invisible to the state because of its paranoia, is that we are desperate to be brainwashed back. We are dying to be optimistic; to join a team rather than to be told to shut up. Tell us the bad news. It can’t be worse than what we’re imagining. And it’s not as if you’re going to be voted out of government.
What Ngonyama and his fellow spin doctors fail to grasp is that morale isn’t necessarily about admissions. If you’re going to fudge the truth, fudge beautifully and inspiringly. But this is a leap the dry socialist activist can’t make; and one can’t help imagining what the world would look like today had this administration been tasked with defending the British Isles in 1940 …
“We will put structures in place so that we can facilitate inroads on the beaches. We will discuss action plans to implement on the landing grounds. We will roll out cooperative anti-crime blueprints in the fields and in the streets. While surrender is not a scenario we embrace, we must consider all stake holders in a democratic process …”