Saturday, May 17, 2008

It's not Xenophobia, it's the beginning of SA's slide into anarchy

"I can't say this is xenophobia. This is a kind of organised crime by a mob of lazy people hiding behind xenophobia to loot and rob others' goods." - Solomon Abdi (from Somalia)

NVDL: All South Africans, whites in particular, ought to be concerned about this. Large mobs invading homes, and essentially committing mass robberies under the cover of chaos, and safety in numbers. Why is this happening now? Simple. Some basic commodities have just become unaffordable for a large group of people - things like bread, milk, meat and fruit. They have overnight turned into economic losers. Many of them. And this is the response. Except more of the same, and it will devastate poor communities and in time [mass violent crime/looting] will target suburbia in general.

Schalk Burger's sister may have a little bit of the psychology right, in deciding not to be a victim. But her response is actually completely irrational. It's once again a 'positivised ignorance' at the expense of a critical appraisal of the context (reality) that we live in. A rational response is to assuage how severe the crime situation has become, that we are starting to famous people more and more become victims of crime (at one end of the spectrum) and at the other end, mobs preying on the poor.

As with the fuel, I don't expect this to sink in until it is a foregone conclusion. South Africa is at the leading edge of what Peak Oil expert (we emailed each other today) James Kunstler calls, The Long Emergency. And South Africa will provide a vicious case study for the West for how a country in an energy crisis breaks down into anarchy, chaos and degradation.

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