Sitting in a Cape Town coffee shop on one of those dull and grey winter’s days one can be forgiven for thinking that you are in some cosmopolitan European city. The coffee is excellent, the service efficient (and more than likely accompanied with a bigger smile than in Europe), the food is of high quality.
Many people are sitting on their own, probably working, maybe catching up the latest news using a sophisticated laptop or tablet, possibly using the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi.
In the background there could be a large screen tv showing some news channel like CNN or Sky.
Outside the streets would be clean, people doing their daily errands in an orderly fashion. Cars on display would cover the entire range, including a significant element from the luxury segment.
Nearby there could be a number of hotels and restaurants, all delivering a standard that would be comparable to anywhere in the world.
Maybe one of the coffee shop’s patrons is booking concert tickets online, for a concert that will be held in the Cape Town stadium, the same stadium that hosted games for the 2010 Soccer World Cup that saw world renowned people like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Britain’s Prince William in attendance.
Maybe another is booking a holiday via the web, intending to use one of the top airlines that fly in South Africa daily.
I could go on citing examples of just how “normal” life in this country can feel. Why worry about any looming crises? Why concern yourself with such a thing as social cohesion? Afterall everyone appears to be talking in a civilised manner with each other.
At the risk of sounding alarmist, let me draw your attention to two examples, one from two decades ago, one current.
In 1984 Sarajevo, in the then Yugoslavia, hosted the Winter Olympics. The subsequent years were a boom for tourism and business. One can imagine similar scenes there as to that which I described above – without the sophisticated gadgetry of course. Yet between 1992 and 1995, during the Bosnian War, the city was largely destroyed, some 11 500 people died.
Fast forward to the present. You may have seen pictures recently on the news channels of the international airport at Donetsk in Ukraine. It lies completely in ruins as a result of the on-going tensions within that country. Yet just three years ago it was rebuilt and modernised as Ukraine was hosting the 2012 UEFA European Soccer Championships.
My point is obvious. One cannot be complacent, assuming that the worst cannot happen. Yes there are fundamental differences between what happened in Sarajevo and Ukraine and the situation in South Africa, most notably being that, at present, there is only one entity that possesses the weapons to cause large-scale destruction, namely the SANDF. At the moment the weapons of the “opposing forces” are words. Let’s keep it that way.
Whilst sipping the latte and nibbling on the blue cheese croissant (a la Khanyi Mbau), cast your mind towards what could go wrong. Already a few years back there was the threat to blockade the N2 between the airport and the CBD. Picture the consequences of something like that happening, perhaps even on a wider scale and involving some destruction of property. Entirely feasible? The plummeting in investor confidence, the cancellation of holidays by overseas visitors. All of which would have a significant negative economic impact. Yet to dismiss events like that, should they occur, as being the work of thugs hell-bent on causing chaos, to me is short sighted. It is the classic case of looking at the symptom and not the cause.
My mind is taken back to 1993, in the wake of the Chris Hani assassination. Protests in the Cape Town city centre turned the area into a virtual ghost town. There was a significant degree of violence, shops were looted. How we have come along way since then. The city has remodelled itself, whole areas have been rejuvenated. Tourism has boomed. One can draw similarities to Sarajevo in the 1980’s.
The average South African citizen probably feels powerless to make a huge impact on society. Most of us are not making the country’s laws, or implementing government policy. It is easy for us to develop a laager mentality, withdraw into our mental cocoon, let other people sort things out – the perennial South African condition of sheltered existence.
However, there is one area where we can, each of us, make a difference. It is how we relate to one another, especially when another demographic is involved. Let us not underestimate the power this can hold. Imagine two divergent individuals – one possibly white and affluent, the other black and underprivileged – standing side by side because they see a common future. That the wellbeing of one is reliant on the wellbeing of the other. However, it is no secret that the fabric of our fractured society is broken and needs to be restitched. And this must happen from the ground up. If we, stitch by stitch, weave the fabric until it is strong, then together we stand a better chance of withstanding any pressures against it.