On Saturday I did my usual 70km+ cycle and heard from a friend when she got back (3 punctures later) that a 70 year old cyclist had made a snide remark while cycling to some guy on a motorbike. Not soon after 3 men had ripped him off his bicycle and beaten and bloodied the old timer's face.
When my friend, who was essentially in the broom wagon, offered to pick the guy up he simply got back on his bike (with 3 broken ribs) and rode on.
My own experience that day was somewhat milder. I'd pulled away from the C+ bunch fairly early and so found myself riding on my own for some time. Then, not far from the end of the ride I was forced to stop at an intersection. An African lady pulled up and was instantly preyed upon by a vagrant there asking for money. She clearly indicated that she couldn't help me, and he continued to pitch his demands, hovering ever closer at her window, glancing over her elbows at the contents of the passenger seat. The tension was palpable. Finally another car drew up and he walked along the side of the car to the next one. I saw her make a small glance in her side-mirror to see what he was doing. Meanwhile, 4 or 5 other vagrants loitered about.
It isn't hard to imagine the same scenario in a few months from now, when street posters will be filled with RECESSION HITS SOUTH AFRICA news, and it will seem as though every editor in the country is a Jeremiah taking pleasure in abject misery and bad news. The problem is, there won't be much good news to report: jobs lost, statistics plummeting, prospects for prosperity worsening each day. The result of all this will be a growing sense of hopeless, of despair. Cities all over the world will become the dark dystopian Gotham's of the Batman comics. It will first be despair that assails these urban populations, and soon after, conflict, violence and crime will follow.
What South Africans now encounter at intersections is relatively benign. Vagrants asking for handouts; when they're rejected they simply move along and ask someone else. Aspasia Karras refers to this as 'intersection guilt'. This [scenario] is likely to escalate as stressed motorists will notice not only more vagrants gathering on the roadside, but will be increasingly irritated and then fearful at the sight of them. And as they grow in number, they will become increasingly in-your-face, and increasingly belligerent in turn.
It is not hard for me to imagine Xenophobia flaring up during the winter months July/August in South Africa, but this time their fury is likely to spill over into the streets and the suburbs. Part of their anger will be directed at the government they elected that has somewhere not only failed to deliver, but allowed conditions to suddenly worsen. Governments in power now are likely to feel very unlucky, and are likely to bare the brunt of BLAME.
In South Africa, we are likely to see a period of anarchy. The government is obviously powerless to turn around a Recession/Depression, and initially workers won't believe this. It will take take for this to sink in, and while it does, conditions will worsen again. This will be in the form of increasing fuel and food prices when people - more and more - don't even have jobs. If you have a job, oil prices at $147 are pretty exorbitant, but one can still make do. With no job, $50 oil will feel unavoidable. Imagine having no job and you see prices slipping upwards of $100, then $150, and continuing upward?
How can this happen you say, when demand is so weak, when OPEC is mulling oversupply problems. Easy. There is no more capital to finance exploration, or for the upkeep of rigs and technology. As a result, we will see not only demand destruction but supply destruction working in contagion with depletion. As such, when prices begin to move upward, the market - what's left of it - will be caught utterly by surprise. This will be a supply crunch of energy that will translate in all its vicissitudes into everything else - a supply crunch of cash, of food, of jobs, and worst of all, of hope.
People will groan 'how could this happen' when months ago we appeared right as rain.
The reason this could happen is the same reason you will read this post, wonder about it for a few moments, and then continue to do what you tend to do every day, hoping reality won't catch up. Unfortunately, it always does.
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