Dear Editor,
South Africans have been forced to endure the perfect storm of plague, coupled with violent and destructive insurrection, the combination of which has tested us.
Without becoming immersed in a dissection of how we arrived at this dark place, I would like this opportunity to make a few comments.
Our history is a complex one, and I doubt it can be adequately described without the lived experience of being a South African.
We’re a diverse people with our ‘Africaness’ binding us, whether we admit it or not .
This week saw the true strength and resilience of our people coalescing into active resistance to criminality which threatens our very existence.
Criminals tried to destroy the fabric of our society and set us against each other. The opposite has occurred.
It’s easy to default back to our clan mentality, but we’re better than that.
This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with criminality. If we default, the criminals have won .
As dark as it seems, some positives have emerged from this.
Good South Africans galvanized against bad South Africans and protected their communities.
Young men of courage with new weapons stood shoulder to shoulder with old men and their old long guns, as a result of which, thankfully, many of our towns remained intact.
Old eyes and young eyes with one thing in common, a steely resolve not to buckle.
This is the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ aptly so named in honour of the brave (often old) men who crossed the English Channel, in their little fishing boats to take ‘their boys’ off the beaches of Dunkirk .
Neighbours who previously were strangers have become friends and race has become (and hopefully will remain), a non-issue.
I write this short letter as proud South African.
The ‘looters’ – I prefer the adjective ‘criminals’ – are not my people, they do not represent South Africans.
We’re a resilient people, we shall overcome this and endure .
I salute all those who held and continue to hold the line.
ROBIN PETTERSON
Ramsgate
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