Another night shift at Cape Town. The only difference is tonight is that we need to plan to leave early enough because there is protesting/looting planned for tomorrow.
The official story is that there are people who have a problem with the foreigners. By foreigners here, we mean that the black residents of South Africa has a problem with the other Africans who are in South Africa and either taking up space, jobs, trafficking drugs or some other perceived pressure.
The reality is, however, that whenever there is civil unrest in South Africa, that there are those seeking on capitalizing on the chaos. This is when the bottle store, the grocery store and the clothing store is broken into and the stock stolen. This is not a coincidence!
On a day like today, it is when the police will be patrolling the hotzones, trying to just keep a tab and monitor the unrest. There is only so much they can do and unless the situation escalates badly, they won’t do too much to interfere.
These crowds of people may start a riot and start looting or perhaps there will be looting because the police is elsewhere occupied.
In South Africa there are quite a bit of armed response companies that assist the police and companies in patrolling the streets and around businesses to keep them safe.
Anyway, back to my situation on site. This site is in the Cape Town CBD. Whenever there are marches and such, it may be possible for there to be unrest going up towards the parliament buildings. This is again, in a perfect world a place for people to do their walk, chant and dance and stand before the important places of Cape Town and have their united stay.
In reality, these things can turn violent, turn to looting and cops with tear gas or even the use of rubber bullets.
That said it comes back to a thing I say a lot: Sit across from even the most radical of protestor and have a conversation. Ask them to explain their reasons why they do and say what they do. Generally, you may have an intelligent conversation with that person. They will give you their motivations and the reasons that incited them to do the actions that they now take.
Meanwhile take a group of people… after around five people there is an inverse relation between the intelligence of the crowd and the size of the crowd. The more people, the more stupid and foolish the organism of the crowd will behave. Once one wrong move sparks violence, out of the window goes moral high ground and beliefs. There will be action and often it will be violent!
There is also the concept of Ubuntu culture here with the black South Africans. In their culture, if they here a commotion outside and someone is running away from others who are throwing stones and yelling accusations of theft, or some other crime, then it is their cultural logic that they pick up a stone and also throw it at the fleeing person. Their concept of Ubuntu, which is unity says that the guilty flee and the righteous would have stayed and argued. Therefore you should help punish the guilty.
I asked the guys I worked with, they agreed that this is their way, those are their rules.
Getting back to the example of the crowd… all it takes is one person to throw a stone and soon twenty people are throwing stones and then soon a hundred. You would be amazed at how effective that sort of projectile barrage can be!
So yeah… the plan is to go home early before any trouble starts.
See you all on the other side!
Cheers!
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