Carol’s Column

'African Renaissance' is nonsense until killing ends

This weekend, journalist Barry Ronge wrote a pertinent column about African Renaissance. He stated that the term to him was fallacious, not real.

That when writing he would continue to place the words “African Renaissance” in inverted commas which he would only drop when human rights abuses throughout the continent ceased.

Such as the clubbing to death of 22 schoolchildren by “soldiers of liberation” in a Burundi classroom and other such atrocities.

He makes a valid point. “African Renaissance” is a term much used by our politicians from the president himself downwards.

“African Renaissance” becomes particularly ironical a little nearer home especially when you consider the killing fields of Richmond where 47 people were murdered last month. This past week alone, nine died as they slept in their beds. Four were children.

So badly were they mutilated by high velocity bullets that the policemen coming upon the scene wept, and these are hardened men who have seen continuous unmitigated horror upon horror.

Daily, throughout the country, our murder rate rises. People are hijacked and murdered in their cars, shot at their place of work, killed in their homes, slain on their farms.

In the past few years I personally knew a friend's son of 23 who was clubbed senseless then shot dead at point blank range as he walked from his mother's to his grandmother's home in Soweto.

I personally knew a man who was shot dead in his garage when hijackers stole his car. I personally knew a woman who was killed by two gunmen when she removed the salary bag for her small business from the boot of her car.

I personally knew a podiatrist who was murdered in her home by robbers. And I personally knew a shopkeeper who was shot dead when his suburban cafe was burgled.

I also personally knew a domestic who was a victim of a taxi shooting in which the taxi was ambushed and most of the passengers killed.

Some were friends, some acquaintances but the point is I personally knew them all.

Six people who were all brutally and senselessly murdered.

This is a horrifying statistic and the tragedy is that I know there are others, especially those living in townships or troubled rural areas, to whom this figure is low. They personally know far more people who have died violently.

I remember when I saw a dead person for the first time. It was the body of a young man who had been shot by the police. That was in Alexandra township during the uprisings of 1976. He wore a red T-shirt but the blood on his chest had dried black and contrasted with the shirt. I hadn't realised dry blood was so dark. His face was unmarked and it looked as if he was sleeping.

Just a few years younger than me at the time. I wondered about his family, his parents. The picture of him lying broken and bloody in the dust has haunted me ever since.

Whenever I see a report on yet another violent shooting, hijack, massacre, murder, I think of that young man in the dust in Alexandra.

The sadness is that my experiences are not unique.

“African Renaissance” is a glorious term, a message of hope for a future that could be. But until the killing stops, until every South African can live peacefully without fear. Until each and every one of us can take it for granted, as they do in all civilised countries of the world that death will come from old age or sickness, I, like Barry Ronge, will think of it as a term I cannot believe, one to be used in inverted commas.

■