South Africa: A land not at ease

Unease in the land

There are many things I have wanted to write about my recent trip to South Africa, many of which are quite unsettling because I did not see a country at ease with itself.

Rather, in all that on the surface would have looked like a thriving society, there was an underbelly of lack, penury, poverty and destitution.

To say the country is not in a state of constant civil unrest is to ignore the fact that there are so many strikes and protests with the sad reality that very little seems to be in place for arbitration or conciliation.

The protests seem to have a militant strain and in the two weeks that I was in South Africa, at least two protesters lost their lives to police gunshots, the police having been overwhelmed to the point that they could not retreat but attack the protesters.

Riot in the camps

The thought that civilians will die at the hands of the security forces in black majority rule South Africa in 2015 is sad, especially after the Marikana killings where 41 striking mineworkers also lost their lives at the hands of the police in 2012, leaving us to draw parallels with the Sharpeville massacre of 1960.

I felt dreadfully sorry for the fact that one can begin to draw these kind of comparisons along with the fact that the leadership seems to be rocked by scandals from all ends compromising the independence and impartiality of institutions necessary to protect the hard-earned democracy of South Africa.

I will hate to think things are coming apart at the seams, but with the recent xenophobia attacks, a lack of appreciation of history and the rise of reactionary politics used to distract the people from the failings of their leaders at the centre, we have another country with great potential that risks never being realised because it has no leaders to lead the country in mind and purpose to the “Promised Land”.

Failed on the streets

Those who live in shacks on land they risk being driven from by whim or capriciousness and those who live in well-secured compounds that boast signs of “Armed Response” as part of their security response arrangements speaks more beyond what meets the eye.

The yawning chasm between the haves and have-nots will not be bridged in a generation and probably not in many generations if South Africa is to endure the rent seeking leadership it currently has.

The African National Congress (ANC) has taken the people for granted for so long that they seemed to have lost purpose or direction. Without a doubt, it is time for the people to begin to consider alternatives, the alternatives with their interests in mind.

If change is to come to the people of South Africa and unite them in common purpose, they need greater men than these at the helm, people in the stature of Nelson Mandela or who like F. W. de Klerk realised change had to come and like Desmond Tutu who stands as a Colossus in humility and humanity. The men in charge do not have the least it takes to do the latches of the shoes of these mentioned great men of history.

Opinion: This is a time for outrage at the direct hits

A hypothetical

If the presumed BUK surface-to-air missile system shot from the territory of pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine had whizzed past Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, it might have been reported sighted and considered a near-miss with some expressing a bit of outrage at such a reckless activity.

Alas! It was a direct hit and with it 298 souls were lost, the consequence of which should have precipitated such outrage at the needless, careless and atrocious waste of human life wrought by bungling rebels with Russia's support.

Then again

Down in the Middle East, literally all the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, whilst terrifying and capable of causing carnage with the loss of life and damage to goods and property, they are in their thousands, near misses. We must for all intents and purposes express outrage at the crude militancy that is no match to Israel’s firepower and organisation.

Then, you watch the missiles fired from Israel into Gaza that has no defence weaponry, literally every missile has been a direct hit, whether intentional or not, people are losing their lives in the hundreds and this calls for widespread outrage, because of the carnage caused, that is presented as a defence.

Between terror and killings

Now, I can understand the terror of missiles coming into Israeli cities, terrifying all, young and old; the government needs to have some strategy and game plan to deal with this nuisance, though I have my doubt that even with the incursion into Gaza, the missiles can be stopped entirely, for there is a deep-seated issue of unrest that is not been addressed towards achieving peace for Israel and its neighbours.

Yet, the terrified can be becalmed, for near-misses belie a stark reality along with a sense of survival. Direct hits are a different story, the people are dead and that is the end of their story.

Blood for fear barbarity

The exchange system between Israel and Palestine of avenging fear within the borders of Israel with the blood of Palestinians in their cooped-up regions as they are ring-fenced from Israel with settlements, borders and walls cannot be the roadmap to peace for all concerned.

What has developed is escalating belligerence with no prospect of peace on the horizon. More pertinently, until we are ready to express unbiased outrage at the needless loss of life anywhere in the world and make perpetrators of the killings accountable for their actions, we acquiesce and grant immunity for more impunity to those have taken the level of their lawless activities to an unspeakable level of atrocious violence.

We must condemn the near-misses, but the direct hits must attract the sternest criticism from all fair-minded members of our humanity as well unmitigated outrage.

Opinion: The Cultural Ghettos of Parenting in Diaspora

I could have been a lawyer

If I had not taken that decision to switch from the liberal arts and social sciences to pure science and mathematics in the second term of the penultimate year of my secondary school education, I might well have become a lawyer with the career path towards becoming a judge.

Nothing excites me more than to read the conclusions of judges when delivering judgements on socially sensitive issues. The clarity of thought that is presented in the simplicity of expression leaves no one in doubt as to the persuasion that inspired their words.

I have worked with lawyers before and any legal drama in television especially Perry Mason has always caught my fascination.

Cultural parenting in Diaspora

Sadly, the cases I will refer to in this blog pertain to parenting issues of immigrant communities in the United Kingdom that need scrutiny and addressing. There have been too many instances of cruelty towards children meted out in brutalisation passing for discipline, honour killings to restore parental honour in their communities, Female Genital Mutilation, witchcraft stigmatisation, bizarre and macabre rituals, to mention just a few.

Parents who have come within the crosshairs of the law have usually claimed racial prejudice and a miscarriage of justice. They protest that they are innocent and though there is nothing on God’s good earth that can justify their actions, the rights their children may not have in their home countries in what we delusionally call 'our culture' are all too well protected in the West.

Children have rights

The first lesson any immigrant parent must learn by observation or through coercion is a child in the West has rights and the State where those rights are found to have been violated will prosecute the parents to the full extent of the law.

Whilst one can understand the fears of parents who have in their own upbringing have been given the big stick and very little carrot. I dare say, the emphasis is more on size of carrot and when it is offered in the West – it can be more than just effective, the relationship that stems from love rather than the duty of parental provision – most Western kids are not unruly, ill-disciplined, uncontrollable and disastrously beyond redemption.

You’re now in Rome

The narrative is the same in many immigrant communities, the parents come from a country with different cultures and practices to live in the West, they have their children born and bred in the West, the children might be aware of their parents' heritage but they are essentially Westerners in mind, outlook, expression and culture.

No amount of community activity apart from the core environment of the home country is going to turn those children into cultural carbon-copies of their parents. As they say, when in Rome, do as Romans do.

Integrate or lose out

Again, one can understand the comfort a sense of community provides people, but like I have written many times before, these communities have a tendency to ghettoise to the extent that they become time-capsules of practices from home countries that probably have been jettisoned decades ago.

Parents who fail to integrate properly in host countries are at risk of first running afoul of the law leaving them unprepared for seriously dire consequences – brutalisation and murder leading to long terms of imprisonment – all of which could have been completely avoidable.

The honest truth is those who fail to integrate end up not being able to cope with the cultural clashes they face and they take out their frustrations on their usually vulnerable children who are caught between the freer world beyond their doors and the hell at their homes – it need not be so.

What horror!

In the case of the Nigerian couple [1] jailed for brutalising their six children, it is a damning indictment of parenthood to have a 9-year old write. “My mum is the worst mum ever because she can’t cope with five of us, her broken hand and being pregnant. She always leaves me out so I always starve and I am forced to work. If I don’t get enough house work done, I am beaten without mercy with the wooden end of a broom. I have scars all over me to prove it. I can’t stay here. I would like a new mum.” Your heart just bleeds. I can honestly say, this is not Nigerian culture, it is just wickedness.

However, the one pertaining to Pakistani parents who murdered [2] their daughter for thwarting their desire to put her into a forced married in what is commonly known as an “honour killing” just shows what many children could face in the West.

Just beyond reason

The Sentencing Remarks [3 PDF] of Mr. Justice Roderick Evans in the case of R v Iftikar Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed should be classic text for the reading of any parent in an immigrant community – what reads as so particular here is as general as you can have an assessment of issues of parenting in Diaspora.

The first question he asks sets the tone for what follows. “What was it that brought you two – her parents, the people who had given her life – to the point of killing her?”

Her father who apparently had lived in the United Kingdom from the age of 10 probably suffered what many multi-cultural kids suffer in being told that they are not this or that enough. Having first married a Danish lady, had issue and even lived in Denmark, there is no doubt that he had adopted Western customs and values until he returned to Pakistan to marry a village girl who appeared to roll back his years of Westernisation to the customs of rural Pakistan.

Pakistan in Warrington

The judge being almost too perceptive for words continues – “You chose to bring up your family in Warrington but, although you lived in Warrington, your social and cultural attitudes were those of rural Pakistan and it was those which you imposed upon your children.”

“Shafilea was a determined, able and ambitious girl who wanted to live a life which was normal in the country and in the town in which you had chosen to live and bring up your children. However, you could not tolerate the life that Shafilea wanted to live.”

The judge clearly identifies with Shafilea here as what you would expect of a child; any child regardless of parental heritage born and bred in the UK. The life she wanted to life was normal for the town and country she lived in and that is where the conflicts with a distant, unknown, strange and alien rural Pakistan of her parents knew began.

“You wanted your family to live in Pakistan in Warrington. Although she went to local schools, you objected to her socialising with girls from what has been referred to as “the white community”. You objected to her wearing western clothes and you objected to her having contact with boys.”

The short paragraph above with what I have highlighted “Pakistan in Warrington” or “Nigeria in Peckham” is a kinder reference to the immigrant ghettos that foist strange and stringent adherence to alien community standards on the parents. The subtext here is that the United Kingdom is a white-majority country, you cannot bring your children up cocooned from that reality and culture.

Children need a reference point

“She was being squeezed between two cultures, the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace and the culture and way of life you wanted to impose upon her.” The children sadly have no reference point for what the parents believe in.

“Your problem was that, in what you referred to as your “community”, Shafilea’s conduct was bringing shame upon you and your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than your love of you (sic) child.”

Therein is the real sad chapter of this heart-rending tale, the willingness of the parents to sacrifice their child on the altar of a belief system or way of life that meant more to them than the love for their child.

To have killed their daughter in the presence of her siblings and successfully used that terror to make them adhere and conform to what was literally an oath of silence for over 7 years is as evil as any parent can get.

In conclusion

For them, I really have no sympathy, there is much else the judge said that could be read in the judgement but the points I want to make are clear.

Parenthood comes with great responsibilities and along with that should be a good understanding of the environment in which your children are growing up. For them to be well-adjusted in their upbringing, it is important that the children recognise in their parents what they also see about them.

Most crucially, the children have rights, rights that will be defended to the utmost by the State; that is part of what civilisation is about, giving everyone born into this world a sense of dignity, pride and respect from the cradle to the grave.

Sources

[1] Nigerian couple who beat their 6 children and gave the baby a morphine overdose jailed. | mailOnline

[2] Shafilea Ahmed's parents jailed for her murder | The Guardian

[3] The Sentencing Remarks of Mr. Justice Roderick Evans in the case of R v Iftikar Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed | Chester Crown Court | Judiciary of England and Wales - PDF

Thought Picnic: The Americe First Principle in Fort Hood

No more a news junkie

But for the guest living with me whose presence helps my recuperation no end, I would not have seen anything on television since I returned from hospital about a month ago.

In fact, of all the television I have watched, most has been DVDs or a Friday night Dutch entertainment programme; I have suddenly become a non-news junkie.

I am no more interested in channel-hopping news channels seeking opinion and fulminating analysis of the events of the day.

If the breaking news is that I have won the lottery, eventually, the letter confirming the win will arrive in the post and we can do what needs to be done. One has to ask, what use is breaking news if you are not locked into a hypertensive stock market where your blood pressure undecided vacillates with the market, every minute is lived on the verge of a heart attack.

Even the diehard would soon realise the heart and mind does need respite from the pestilence of news and wars that surround us, we cannot find inner peace if we continue to bombard ourselves with the negative that masquerades as news.

Late on Fort Hood

It is this situation of deserved withdrawal that left me late on the trail of the Fort Hood killings; I refuse to give that situation any volatile labels because there is an underlying issue well below the rhetoric and public pronouncements that needs review.

The man joined what some people have called a family, the family of the United States Army and he was resident amongst his folk in the broadest sense of what family means.

As a psychiatrist, one would suppose his functions include “ministering” to the mental needs of siblings in that family who for all intends and purposes are trained to attack, kill and overrun the enemy, the survival instinct being alive and sometimes this ignores the way war and conflict changes a man into something yet to find adequate description apart from a fighting machine.

This man on certain aspects of merit had been honoured in the family, he had risen to the rank of major, so he was no idiot, he earned that rank, deserved that rank and was respected in that rank.

Accentuating his difference

However, there were other issues, the man happened to be Muslim, not that it should matter, I have close family members who are Muslim and they are no different from me, they are respectable, honest, diligent and worthy people whom I honour and treat with the utmost respect and regard.

Apparently, in his family, that is to say the US Army, this man found little acceptance, was disrespected and treated “badly”, one would assume. At least, this treatment within the family did lead to him wanting to leave the US Army but some hard-headed disciplinarian within the family thought little of considering this request and I am sorry, that person or persons are just as culpable in this act not by commission but by omission.

The family dynamic broke

The family is supposed to be a harmonious setting but if one of the siblings is ostracised for whatever reason and the parents do not act to make that sibling inclusively loved and cared for as to feel equal and accepted as equal in the family, it is a recipe of great disaster.

The superiority of the other siblings that belittles the abilities and the status of ostracised sibling usually ends up later in exchanged roles where the ostracised suddenly holds all the aces and everyone else is left begging for something they no more have the ability to keep or protect.

For all the opprobrium the Fort Hood killings would generate about religion, people of foreign descent and many other things that excite bigotry in the name of commentary and condemning a supposedly dastardly act, the problem started long before the man made Major, it started when they saw he looked different and did different things – nobody dealt with it then and now we have a monster. No excuse for the act itself but it calls for a deep soul-searching in the US Army hierarchy.

The family dynamic can only thrive when everyone is helped to feel part of the family, that responsibility first falls on those in charge like parents and then on the siblings who hopefully have good examples to follow from parents and good leadership.

American first no matter how different

It is a tragedy, no less but the triggers were pulled long before the guns downed the many unfortunate victims of a dysfunctional family situation that was allowed to thrive to the point of disaster.

The family needs to come together and ensure everyone really feels in and involved without ostracism, that would take longer than an inquiry, it would be a paradigm shift and complete change of mindset because the diversity of America would soon be fully reflected in every establishment and there would be no place to differentiate between people apart from the binding fact that you are all Americans first and Americans always.

Solve the crime and stop the idle talk

The spate of killings that pervaded the Netherlands underworld did not go unnoticed last week.

Whilst many may say, it was some sort of score settling between rival fiefdoms of ill repute, the killing happened in our streets and one in far off Thailand within days of each other.

The public in general might have been in grave danger with one of the killing happening quite near a school, thankfully, we were spared that greater horror.

Even so, we all have the right to be very concerned and probably even fearful that such lawlessness could be on our streets with the police just given to speculation rather than crime-solving.

That statement might be considered unfair, but not in the light of the absurd bureaucracy which classes general crimes along with crimes against the person.

One would contend that reporting a crime like a theft or burglary should be made in the appropriate police district, however, when one has suffered actual bodily harm that has resulted in visiting the nearest first aid/emergency clinic which happens to be outside the police district where the crime happened, the police station nearest to the clinic should be more obliging.

In this case, that police station is just opposite the door to the emergency clinic, and when they refused to take the report, the crime went unreported.

In the light of the killings, the deputy police chief has attributed the events to a criminal investigation which got some hoodlums scared to the point of liquidating those who might talk.

Then the police have offered a sop to other likely targets of safety if they would talk too – absurd does not begin to describe the logic behind this, my vested interest is in the fact that the police have always excelled in losing the respect of their public with such crass analysis.

There is a long caseload of unsolved gangland killings stretching over 15 years and this does not augur well for anybody. However, you are more likely to see the police nabbing fare defaulters on the Metro than actually seeing to real public safety.

Ones candid advice is to get down to the job of real crime solving, especially those intractable ones even if it involves getting a few smarter guys to run the investigations.

As for the police chief’s comments, I have heard quite a few excuses in my time but this one is just too lame to warrant any quality of stipend.

For now the sorry state of affairs lies with the hapless activity of speculation and inaction.

Reference

Investigation prompted underworld killings: top cop

Gangster John Mieremet killed in Thailand