Recently watched a YouTube
clip about two young Zimbabweans at the receiving end of the most heinous and
brutal savagery that made the whipping scenes from that disturbing movie ‘12 years a slave’ look like a friendly
pat on the back. Their crime, an allegation of livestock theft, judged, sentenced
and justice meted out instantly. A group of bulky-looking black South Africans
had menacingly encircled these defenceless and visibly traumatised young men
and taking turns to physically break them in one of the most distressing and
gruelling scenes of violence ever seen. The despair, the forlorn sense of
defeat, the hopelessness and helplessness was heartbreaking to watch. The
gloom-ridden despondent dearth of hope and the evident emotions of despair are
unsettling. One of the young men had been
tied to a rope and he was suspended from a tree by his testicles. And on top of
that was repeatedly whipped to a pulp whilst the gathering community jeered and
cheered. The trauma was so significant to the point that he could barely cry
and all he could do was groan and whimper. The two young men are mercilessly
tortured for over an hour until their tormentors were all physically exhausted
and the young men were then set upon each other, forced to maim one another
with threats of being sliced by machetes if they refused. Reluctantly the young
men had to and did exactly what anyone thrust in their situation would have
done, that is survived. It is a harrowing and distressing depiction of the
hideous face of xenophobia in the Rainbow Nation.
Now this begs the question,
is Africa just a developing continent never to be a developed society? The
burning tyres round the neck of many a wretched Zimbabwean souls in South
Africa, the gut-wrenching televised scenes of Mad-Dog dragging a hapless Muslim
off a bus and devouring them alive in a very disconcertingly distressing act of
cannibalism in the Central Africa Republic and countless reported and
unreported incidences continent-wide. Where is the compassion, the conscience
and that degree of self-control that separates us from animals?
There is a sense of denial
in terms of accepting responsibility and accountability for such actions by
society collectively. Compassion, philanthropy and empathy are the hallmarks of
any nurtured and matured society. How any society treats the most vulnerable,
how any society accepts the most vulnerable and how any society welcomes the
vulnerable from outside is what distinguishes it from the animal kingdom. A
degree of self-control and that empathic outlook sets us wide apart from beasts.
This is not about governments and this is not about politicians but about that
unique entity called society. This is about what individuals or groups of
individuals collectively are prepared to do and prepared to forego to attain
that level of a developed society. This is not about industrialisation or
technological development, but societal responsibility. The two Zimbabwean
young men were brutalised senselessly in the full glare of society and for over
an hour not a single soul raised any objections to the barbarity and savagery
exhibited by the tormentors. What really is a developed society?
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