From violent political crime to civic neglect, Johannesburg residents ignore serious threats while obsessing over minor inconveniences.
We have a terrible tendency to stick our heads in the sand and ignore phenomena if it doesn’t directly affect us. Climate change is one.
We might joke about global warming letting the beach start at the Vaal if the ice caps melt, since we sit 1 753m above sea level, but it’s not so funny in the Maldives, where the islanders have about 50cm before the sea swamps them.
One area where we do little more than tut into our tea cups is the scourge of violent political crime.
Last week, Witness D, Marius van der Merwe, was murdered outside his Brakpan home.
The former member of the Ekurhuleni Metro Police Department was a whistle-blower in the Madlanga Commission into Criminality, Political Interference and Corruption into our criminal justice system.
It hasn’t been easy reading. The problem is we become inured to the waves of revelations showing us the reality of our dystopia that belongs in a dogeared crime novel set in New York or Chicago 100 years ago.
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But it’s happening here in Johannesburg and nobody really gives it a second glance.
Lucinda Harman stepped down as a Joburg councillor 10 days ago. She cited receiving death threats from construction mafias and was worn down by the incessant factional battles in the council chamber.
The tipping point, apparently, was she hadn’t received any support from anyone, neither the mayor, nor even her own party.
On social media last weekend, some members of her ward were more concerned that rubbish to be collected on Friday still hadn’t been picked up by Sunday morning – and used it as an ad hominem.
It truly plumbs a new level of suburban indifference.
Yes, there are problems in Joburg.
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The drains aren’t being cleared so the roads will flood when the rains start in earnest next year and the street and traffic lights aren’t working, but are we truly that callous about the plight of others, especially our own representatives who are first and foremost residents, too? It’s a rhetorical question.
As recent revelations of financial impropriety over app-delivered fast foods have shown – and the official indifference towards it, too – this country truly is bereft of real leaders.
But, given how we behave, maybe that’s all we deserve.
