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The high price of fear

I AM sitting in Jomo Kenyatta Airport with three hours to go till my flight to Joburg, trying to process the whirling impressions of the last five days. 

The traffic alone, dear heaven, the traffic…! I thought I was prepared for it, but not even regular use of Jozi taxis can prepare you for the Mombasa road in rush hour.

To be an involuntary part of an impromptu three-vehicle convoy passing two articulated trucks on a solid line and discover that yet another truck has decided to pass your little caravan as it accelerates into an awesome overdrive of 70 kilometres an hour in a gut-wrenching speed record for the whole trip… and then to see ahead the glowering eyebrows of yet another articulated truck crest the hill heading towards you, you, trapped in the centre of the convoy like a tiny little wiener in a hotdog roll…

I passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death at least 30 times and moved into the gentle plains beyond, breathing deeply, understanding fully what it meant to ‘be in the moment’, and filled with awe at the thought that my Kenyan friends deal with these roads daily.

And they deal with other, familiar trials too. We had stopped at a small roadside petrol station and I had just realised I’d forgotten to change dollars to shillings. The kiosk dealt in M-pesa but did not take Mastercard, so I had no chance of buying water; I’d have to nurse the last tepid drops in my water bottle for a few kilometres further.

As we sheltered under the broad leaves of a tropical tree, I fell into conversation with a fellow journalist along for this field trip, a man from a certain Kenyan county Which Shall Remain Nameless (because I’d hate to expose my colleague to identification). We were both here to attend a conference along with delegates from countries right across Africa: Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Benin, Zambia and many more.

Like all the Kenyans I encountered, he was curious about South Africa. Surprisingly, many of them had a keenly negative take on our current administration: my first encounter was with a waiter who said: “Oh South Africa, yes, Jacob Zuma! He wants to be Adolf Hitler!” which I must admit took me back a bit.

The Man from Nameless County, like many of the delegates, resonated with us on the score of corruption: he told me how, in his county, the authorities proposed spending lots of money on a frivolous project, while the people angrily demanded piped water and good roads. Then he nodded and said: “Corruption, you know.” And I nodded, pursed my lips and traced an arc in the dust with my toe and said: “Boy, do I.”

In a twisted way, there was something warming about sharing our troubles…

No, I’m sorry, that’s not true. It was bloody irritating and frustrating and maddening, just as it was infuriating, for example, to hear a young African say, apropos the South Sudan eating itself alive: “Why can’t we learn from history?” and remember yourself wailing the same thing years ago.

And while it was heartwarming to find even your taxi driver keen to learn about South Africa (“So now tell me, please, and tell me the truth from your heart if you wouldn’t mind: do you feel that the people are really better off now than 20 years ago?"), it was slightly shocking to get your own country reflected back to you, as in an mirror, by other Africans.

This from a Tanzanian, a man from one of the most stable countries in Africa: “Oh, I love South Africa! I’ve been there, yes, a few times. On holiday, you know? Sun City, and the Kruger Park. And there’s a little park, I forget, it’s somewhere quite close to Sun City, very nice. What do you say? Pill…? No, I don’t remember. But very nice. But the people… so angry, so hostile. Mmm, yes, there is something very wrong.”

Over and over again, the journalists I was with, well-travelled men and women, painted the same picture, of a country whose heart has somehow been warped by – what? Rage, disappointment, fear?

I know what they mean. In Botswana recently, I saw women jogging alone at twilight. I’ve seen people in other countries close up their sidewalk stalls at night and walk away without fear. I’ve a friend who walks home to her Maputo hotel after midnight without fear. Afrikaans farmers trying their hand at the game in new countries talk of leaving half-built shells of farmhouses for months on end, quite safely. Only in our country do you feel so unsafe that suspicion of your fellow human being is encoded in your DNA.

It can’t be only our violent past that sets us apart. Remember, many of these countries have themselves have been through, in fact in some cases have only recently emerged from, very troubled times themselves. Why should South Africans be such hard, angry, tough cases? Perhaps it’s the huge inequalities in South Africa; perhaps it’s some other factor that’s less obvious.

Whatever it is, we need to heal, to reach the standards of personal warmth and welcome attained by many of our neighbours. Our culture of fear, violence and anger costs too much, on too many levels.

 - Fin24

 *Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitte


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