The anarchy experienced by our country over the past three weeks has left some among the privileged wondering if they should consider citizenship programmes offered by “safer” countries in the world.
In other words, some people have begun to wonder if SA will not end up like Zimbabwe. When personal security and private property are threatened, it is not unreasonable for citizens to explore escape routes.
The problem with us humans, though, is that when we sense danger, we are not capable of comparing our current threat with menaces that have come and gone before. We tend to exaggerate the gravity of our present circumstances, as if past generations have confronted no greater danger.
The starting point doesn’t matter, there is no century in which SA’s constitutive foundations were not shaken to the point where people sensed the coming of the end.
Think of the people who lived through the 100-year-long Frontier Wars (from 1779 to 1879). Such was a period of real war between black and white people. Our ancestors thought it would be impossible for the country to know peace again.
In fact, the 19th century was the most restless and bloodiest period in the history of our country. Estimates suggest that as many as 2-million people died during the Mfecane Wars of the early century, a period that destabilised the entire Southern African region.
The Voortrekker of the 1830s triggered a great political transformation of South Africa, leading to the creation of two Afrikaner Republics (the Orange Free State and the Transvaal) in the northern part of the country.
It is well-known that the Voortrekker was a sanguinary migration. More than 3,000 people were murdered on 16 December 1838 in the Battle of Blood River, a war between the Zulu kingdom and Afrikaner Voortrekkers. Also think of the people who perished during the Anglo-Pedi Wars in the second half of the same century.
The Anglo-Boer War at the turn of the century was among the bleakest epochs in the history of SA, leaving about 26,000 Afrikaners, 22,000 English people and 14,000 Africans dead. Nonetheless, South Africans continued to place their hopes in the future of their country.
Our current government has described the violent events of the past three weeks as an “insurrection”. It was a rebellion by black insurrectionists against a black government, leaving about 300 people dead.
In 1922, South Africa witnessed a rebellion by white insurrectionists against a white government. This was the Rand Revolt by white workers (communists) who took up arms against the government of Jan Smuts, leaving about 200 people dead.
The idea of the end of the world has been haunting us humans for eons. The people who died during World War 1 and World War2 left the earth thinking that they witnessed the end of the world.
In SA, the period between 1910 and 1994 was a hapless era for the excluded black majority. The are many people who died during that time thinking that colonialism and apartheid were permanent phenomena.
Even after 1994, black people (including 34 workers) were massacred by a black government on behalf of a white-owned company at Marikana. In other words, hopelessness has persisted for the black majority even after apartheid. Alas, the poor have no citizenship options outside their troubled societies.
If we consider the whole of SA’s modern history, the looting we recently experienced pales into insignificance.
After each of the bloody conflicts we have surveyed above, including those we did not mention, South Africans of all races continued to place their hopes in the future of their country.
There are indeed a few who left during or after every period of unrest, but history has proven them wrong.
It is true that there are many problems that continue to undermine social stability in our country – such as crime, poor education, inequality, poverty, and unemployment – but our country has always triumphed whenever it is tested.
If SA has not fallen apart during all the wars and conflicts it faced in the past, what makes those who are considering alternative citizenships believe that we have reached the end?
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