The trouble with crowds

While pondering the meaning of life and the great exstasies of existance this past month i gradually came to realise the wisdom of a goon show character. I too feel, more and more, that the real problem of our planet is not the question of poverty, not the problem of insufficient capacity, not the problem of crime, corruption, or venal abuse. There are plenty of schools. There are plenty of hospitals.There are enough police and police stations-. The real problem is none of these things.The real problem ...


The real problem is that there are too many people.

In the rising tide of rage that is being promoted and fanned by wave after wave of death, destruction, rape, slaughter, mayhem, chaotic response rates, there are all kinds of messages being sent in many ways; and many of these messages are confusing to say the least. It is my sense that it is the sheer profusion of superfluous people in many parts of the planet, that is in part responsible for a rising tide of incivility in our society while simultaneously the entire society seems to be bedding down and becoming more civilised.

After the past century the planet's population has trebled and we don't need to see Al Gore's seriously impressive 'doccie' to know that. We have done as much as possible to encourage more people but it is only those places where the levels have become catastrophic that any serious attempt has been made to discourage more people from coming into existence and the resistance to this latter process has been massive and the dislocation potentially even more catastrophic. So, for instance in our own country we have increasingly a system originally designed to service the needs of about five million people with expanded capacity under duress to about eight million people, now in our wonderfully more democratic times having to service the needs of forty five million people and possibly an unaccounted for [alleged] ten million extras: the so called 'illegals'. That the system continues to work as well as it does, and it does work reasonably well, is testimony to its inherent strengths- whether it can continue indefinitely without serious compromise is part of our challenge.

So first amongst these challenges: among the confusing signals being put out consistently in our perplexing system not least is the strange contrast between the response rates we have been used to and the response rates we are getting now [on occasion.] when we survive in increasingly violent brush with the law of the jungle.

For instance thirteen years ago [on September the eleventh] this writer was attacked and shot many time by a gang of unknown persons. I survived [obviously] and twelve days later after an intervention with the provincial minister of the time, one Ms Duarte, an interview with the police took place. Part of the police issue then, as they pointed out at the time was that there were eleven of us in the intensive care section of the best local hospital in the North east part of Jozi and that was just that weekend's toll at one of a few dozen medical facilities in the city. A year or so later I went to court and my testimony sent one of the surviving members of the gang, a man who had attempted to chop me up with a huge, sharpened, yellow handled screwdriver, to jail for ten years [where I understand he later died in a fight over the use of his rear end for carnal purposes.]

Now I read that a man was arrested for murdering a fellow raconteur and general imbiber of congenial tales [fellow of mine that is in the abstract since I never met or knew of the historian chap, 'Rattray' before this furore over his murder erupted]. Not only was a 'bad guy' arrested within the week, [good stuff] but he was TRIED, CONVICTED AND CONDEMMED to twenty five years 'inside' [and may inevitably be involved in male rape either as rapist or rapee or both and die of a mysterious unacknowledged [formally] ailment loosely referred to as HIVAids within a decade.]

And all this happened within ten days

As an historian myself albeit economic rather then military I have always enjoyed the story of Isandlwana and like the late Mr Rattray attribute its success to African/ Zulu genius as much as to Pom folly. So it is possible that the community that was the major beneficiary [in terms of kudos] of his apparently legendary oral skills, would have been sufficiently outraged by the murder of a most unusual 'whitey' to give up [one of] the baddies. In my readings of the universal truth of day-to-day reality there are not many such instances although the almost equally speedy arrest of a group of young men who violated, despoiled and then stabbed and stoned to death a 14 year old schoolgirl in my city this past week, Ms Thato Radebe, lends credence to the possibility that the system is functional, it is simply that there are too many people, that there is more crime than is absolutely normal. Presumably the actual trial will take a year or two.

I have no recollection of such speedy justice as that in the Rattray murder since reading Athol Fugard's moving testimonies about the trials of Pass law offenders during the fifties and sixties- which according to his testimony as a former courtroom employee lasted on average two minutes. We are all agreed that those trials hardly represented justice at all, rather they were the epitome of injustice. .

While I rejoice that some justice has been served I am concerned as to whether the prisoner's rights were fully respected. Yeah I know, I'm sorry- I think the bad guy is a scumbag too, I just prefer to know that I have the real scumbag and not an accidental one, or one put into my space to placate me, or even [further horror] to misdirect me- Abracadabra!!!

The question. Does the news that the illustrious Charles Windsor had a hand in the foreword to Mr Rattray's forthcoming new definitive history of things Zulu-ish have anything to do with this almost unseemly speed? There is a sense of the Imperial response in this post-haste affair. Justice has not really been served perhaps; so much as vengeance has been extracted.

What kind of power can intervene to cause a single case to proceed at such speed that we are bedazzled at its speed and overjoyed to know what the dimension of the possible truly is; while recognising its almost criminal haste in the wake of a common enough reality: which is that it can take twelve days for someone in authority to even answer the phone..

Again the problem seems to be, not the absence of functional systems but rather an excess of people. This has given rise to a disproportionate number of people in our liberated age who avail themselves of the opportunity to behave without regard to civility. And one suspects that it is this rising tide of brutality accompanying the crime rather than the actual crimes themselves that is as much the problem as the nature of criminality itself, which face has been endemic for decades.

It is this constant litany of stories of brutality and random gratuitous murder that keep making headline news and they are horrible and real. A single day's news is equal to a year in some parts of the world: babies are butchered before breakfast, young girls eviscerated over lunch, old men are beaten with bricks and crushed and strangled as a dinner aperitif. Torture of bystanders has become a standard accompaniment to assault, burglary and robbery. Security guards are burnt to death in their vehicles, young men hijacked and burnt to death locked into the boots of their cars, a young man of my acquaintance gratuitously shot down while walking in a public park- no robbery took place, the list is endless- We are at war with ourselves as some commentators have suggested.

On the other hand last Sunday I drove some 350 kilometres around the region North West of my home city, Jozi up to Platinum country and back, on a circular rural route and never saw one single patrolling police vehicle on the entire journey that in any way intruded on my consciousness. My entire journey took place on normal roads not highways and I encountered no violence, aggression, hostility, rage or any other suppressed bullshit on the part of the presumably thousands of other road users that day. It was a most excellent drive and a most congenial day.

Then there is the empirical evidence provided by my neighbouring suburb- the once fiendish 'Dark City' [although no longer dark by night but well lit with modern streetlight-] I have a note in my diary for June 1992 that I stopped counting the gunshots, and had only been doing so randomly anyway, when the gunfire subsided for a moment and then resumed and one caught the clutter of rounds blasting across the horizon line.

Nowadays I hear almost no gunfire at all sometimes resounding through the neighbourhood for weeks at a time-. And even then it could simply be firecrackers.

This past week I drove past a young woman, running, or should one rather say jogging, down the street in which I live. I wouldn't do it, but her perception of risk indicated that she saw no problem, notwithstanding that it was dusk and darkness was almost upon us. Perhaps she ran on faith. My own daughter has on a few occasions ventured into the streets of our suburbs and made it up the hill and back without incident- I wouldn't do it myself but I am happy that others more vulnerable than me can do it with alacrity.

I also had a pleasant conversation with a man in another suburb about twenty kilometres from mine, that also borders on a traditional zone for the formerly dispossessed. I was guarding the car while my director general was organising something with a resident, and looking about me I was struck by the absence of barbed wire and electric fencing and commented about it when the opportunity arose to one of the residents. He seemed puzzled by my question and referred to some incidents a decade ago. It seemed his was a neighbourhood without the plague of random criminality

My point here is that there are many messages that indicate that the worst of the post-revolution era is over and that South Africa is becoming a normal society- perhaps this is why the high profile stuff that does happen is so freaky there are now more than twice as many people as there were fifteen years ago who have everything to lose from random violence; and perhaps it is in this element of transformation that our seemingly oblivious leadership is most retarded. Fifteen years ago life was 'nasty brutal and short' for most citizens with no glimmer of hope on the horizon. Today life is sweet for a huge number of people: maybe half the citizenry- and the reminder that it is often also nasty, brutish and can be cut short at a moment's notice is an increasing source of rage and extreme anxiety.

Another thing that bothers me about many of these more high profile murders is that they so often seem to be orchestrated by employees, or rather disgruntled employees of their victims- Take that Rattray fellow for instance. He was allegedly murdered by a disgruntled employee.

A while back a disgruntled employee murdered an old acquaintance, Ian Gillies, outside his restaurant in Craighall Park [one of two people I knew last year who were murdered ]. In between this I'm sure I've read of a few hundred cases where a disgruntled employee murders his ex- boss, or other person representing the boss. Recently a farm manager, one 'Eva', was butchered by dozens of humans in Natal who may or may not have been employees. I haven't read anything about a speedy trial in that case but maybe I missed an edition or two. There's even been more than a few murders of bosses and colleagues in a wave of post-disciplinary hearing fury.

On the other hand I haven't read anything much on the possible sequel to the so-called 'laundry murders' where the employers on this occasion were alleged to have murdered disgruntled employees, first [their bodies were discovered by other employees in assembled laundry baskets when the came to work]. This case somehow died through mal-collected evidence: rather the way some of Mr Zuma's most damming evidence was discounted in his recent alleged rape trial, due to failure of due process.

So what can we make of this - A system that can be devastatingly quick when it wants to be but generally cramps along, because no one can sustain that level of output over the total spread of human cases.

There is the conspiracy theory part as well of course but as you all know by now I generally believe, from a lifetime of dedicated interaction with humans, that we are as a species too stupid to be able to sustain anything but a tacit unthinking conspiracy. {I don't intend to be rude about my more clever fellow humans I am simply restating well known facts about the overwhelming number of sub-normal intelligence abounding on the planet] This alleged conspiracy holds that the future [of our country] would be best served by the disappearance of the most disliked colonialists. This is not an overt wish it is covert, locked into the very fabric of struggle politics, and the resistance, which is still being felt.

Perhaps it is not in the interests of the new ruling class that they have to continue indefinitely to deal with an arrogant and inherently intransigent deposed former ruling class. If in your heart of heats you don't truly believe the cake will ever become large enough to feed the growing tide of humans wanting a piece for themselves then perhaps it is inevitable that the lemming mindset that dominates human mass action will lead to an exclusionist future. Perhaps it is this that is represented in the feral images on ancient San rock paintings- the feral knowledge of impending engulfment.

Some commentators have got the picture this week- this violent climaxing is inevitable and has less to do with poverty than it has to do with the chaotic space that erupts during a pitched all out turf war. There are faceless forces at work here the random agents of chaos who seek out new turf in the vacuum left by the collapse of the old order- We are perhaps entering an era of barbarism similar to that, which engulfed the civilized world after the sacking of Rome. We are in the era of incivility promoted by the seemingly endless stream of additional humanity that has poured into our space to overwhelm inadequate infrastructures.

I suspect that our beloved leader and his favourite party apparatchiks are as much spectators to this unfolding crime drama as the rest of us, for there are forces of history at work here which we are almost powerless to overcome so divided are we between ourselves and between our range of conflicting sub-texts.

Nonetheless i do think it ios interesting that we have just had this bedding down business with the visiting Chinese Premier. If ever a place represents what to do with too many people it is that place.

Cheers: keep on blogging