Vulnerability

Sitting behind this man on the bus, I enjoyed the beautiful modulations of his skull. My heart pounded as I felt how vulnerable, how breakable our heads are, we human beings who think we have it all together.

I am back-blipping because for the past few days I’ve been caught up in communicating with friends and family in South Africa. I first heard of the troubles from my daughter who lives in Gauteng, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. She wrote on Monday, “Mom, they burned supermarket and stole everything in supermarket what are we going to do about food and medication?” I write this on Wednesday, and I have not heard from her these past two days.

US media are not reporting on South Africa at all. International media blame it on riots instigated by followers of Jacob Zuma (former president currently jailed for corruption). However as the country slipped into chaos, another story became clear. These were food riots. As Langston Hughes wrote in “A Raisin in the Sun,” people cannot wait forever for the dream of sufficiency to materialize. Those who live in a state of extreme deprivation, who cannot imagine ever having enough to eat, will eventually riot. Covid has intensified these difficulties. And while the people are taking food, why not take whatever they can get? Why not take a fridge, a TV, a computer? If they cannot imagine ever earning enough legally—if they cannot get jobs, and the jobs they can get pay next to nothing—there is no hope; and when there is no hope for long enough, the moment will come when people take what they can get by any means possible. 

I have deep sympathy for the desperate rioters, and for the owners of shops that are burning down, and for the people who worked in those shops and now have no jobs, and for those who did not riot and now cannot find desperately-needed medication and food: for all of them. I have much less sympathy for those in government who have taken care of themselves and not the people who elected them; for the profit-gougers who priced bread out of the people’s reach; for the international corporateers who are far away and safe in their enclaves while the people suffer.

The riots may have begun as a response to Zuma’s jailing; but they continue because people are desperate.