We want to understand what happened, to really know what the catalyst was to the violence, to the burning, looting and shooting, how the barricades were put up, to the thousands of jobs lost, how the police didn’t come, how our worlds were set on fire. We want to understand how this happened? To this end we have been talking, debriefing, with the crafters and staff. We are told that there were instigators though we have yet to see them; when we do and can put a face to them perhaps then we can put this event to bed. Or was it just as one crafter describes it: “a foolishness that caught up with them at the end”, or as another said: “I didn’t understand why they did it…. If a person had to ask what was going on, to be honest I didn’t know”. Perhaps we will never know the full reasons why.

The events are now ‘over’ and we all pray that is so, as so many of us were left feeling lacking, we hated feeling scared and isolated and inadequate to the moment.  I love how one of the crafters put it: “I am not coping because life turned out to be difficult”. That to me sums it up perfectly, most of us are not equipped for that level of difficult!  I kept telling my husband that I am not equipped mentally and emotionally to deal with catastrophe, yet around the world many people in war-torn countries do, and it gives you an insight into that. In an instant I think everyone in South Africa – or at least KZN and parts of Gauteng – knew that Need to live in peace for ourselves and for our children.

Although the events are over and we “wish that something like this can never happen again”, is it more a case of “It seems to be passing but then again, we are not sure if it will truly pass”? It seems strange to all of us that as quickly as the events came to pass, they were suddenly ‘over’. We were all feeling like we were on level alert 10 and then suddenly everything is sunshine and roses. There is that feeling that “I am broken, things will never be the same again” and yet somehow everyone is at work, and everything looks normal on the outside – but inside are people crying and screaming the anger, grief and panic, the frustration and the sadness at what happened, or is it just me? I feel like something fundamental is broken, and it seems I am not alone as reading the many interviews, many felt the same.

When we asked crafters about how they felt these are the words they used: “shock”, “trauma”, “deeply hurt”, “worried”, “fear”, “shame”, “suffering”, “frustrated”, “disturbed”, “painful”, “sick”, “sad”, “unbearable”, “hopeless”, “scared”, “stressed” and “night mares”. I cried reading these words. I could picture each one in her home with her family huddled in a corner. One crafter explains how she will never forget the sounds of that night, the screams, gunfire, the sounds of chaos.

Many of the crafters we interviewed were locked in their homes, in fear. They struggled to get food that next week where local shops were burnt and looted, yet some communities had managed to get together to protect their shops. Food was rationed in many homes during that week of chaos as crafters could not leave their homes. Many members of crafters’ families directly lost jobs because of the looting, meaning less income coming into already stretched homes.  People talk about how little they had already, that Covid has been merciless, that many were surviving on the small orders and the government grant. A crafter explained how terrible she felt as she had taken in a street orphan and at times she could no longer feed her as there was so little for even her family; that this event has taken more, or left even less than there was before. Less jobs, less resources, more suffering. Many were exposed to violence and some innocent people were caught in that. Many now have neighbours who have lost family members in the riots and need to bury their dead.

 “I wish as a nation we could have done better and thought about this because we have really let ourselves down”. This statement by one of the crafters made me contemplate, as there has been much talk about ‘them and us’ during this time, yet here is one of our crafters who did not loot,  who was in her home fearing for her life and the lives of her children, too scared to take her sick child to hospital, suggesting to us that as a nation we could have done better, not they could have done better. She takes responsibility for what happened, and this is humbling.  Unless each one us strives to be a nation, an US, and take collective responsibility for what occurs we will not move forward. ‘Us and them’ is a way backward, and no one wants to go backwards.

She is so right, we all could have done better; better at caring for those in desperate need – we are the most unequal nation in the world, where 10 % of our population hold 65% of our countries wealth – Better at educating our youth, better at creating employment, better at caring for the old, the disabled and sick. We have to be better at holding our government and institutions accountable, we have to be better at prioritising which communities need the funds the most, and well, what the hell, just better all round!

We as a nation have to start thinking about tomorrow and the world we want for our nation’s children; we certainly cannot let them down and it looks like we will have to build it ourselves.

Yours Sincerely Paula Thomson

May all beings be peaceful

May all beings be happy

May all beings be safe

May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature

May all beings be free.

Metta meditation