Digging even deeper - Structural Violence
Continuing from my
previous blog posts, this is the fourth installment in a short series
discussing the massacre of a few weeks ago at a Lonmin mine in Marikana , South
Africa
In my previous posts I
have discussed the most obvious levels first:
1. DEMOCRATIC
PRINCIPLES; and
2. HUMAN RIGHTS.
Then the previous post
started digging a bit deeper into....
3. A CULTURE OF
VIOLENCE
In this post, I will be digging even
deeper… and this is where I start to really step on people’s toes…
4. Exploitation and ‘Structural
Violence’:
Taking
another look at my admonishment in the preceding post to ‘build peace’ rather
than ‘increase security’ (i.e. arm yourself/ protect your property/ militarise
the police further…): peace theorists have coined the term ‘structural
violence’ for the systematic exploitation, repression, and inequality of
certain groups of people within a society. In other words, discrimination and
exploitation are forms of violence
embedded within socio-political systems, because they harm people - they rob
people of their rights to reach their full potential, or often even to live a
healthy life.
As
I am sure most of you know, life is seldom a ‘level playing field’ as we would
like to think of it – hard work and a good education (even if these can be
accessed by all) are not necessarily all you need to ‘make it’ in this world.
Even more disheartening to those of us who believe all people are actually equal,
is the fact that most societies throughout history have been intentionally
structured in such a way that some people benefit from the exploitation and
marginalisation of others (e.g. slaves, women ‘in their place’ etc.).
But
how did we get here? Why are we discussing ‘structural violence’ and injustice
in the so-called NEW South
Africa
Instead,
almost twenty years later, we are still living separate and unequal lives, for
the most part… and all of us are the losers in this. Even the wealthy and elite
– they/ we have lost the chance to live in community
(refer to my previous discussions about ‘security’ and ‘community’). South
African democracy is now 18 years old - and rebellious… Having finally figured
out that ‘daddy’ isn’t going to provide, people are taking to the streets in
droves in ‘service delivery protests’ …and ‘big brother’ doesn’t have their
back… the police are more likely to shoot them than protect them from those who
would prey upon them.
No
hang on, the start of it all goes way, way, way back… to apartheid’s little
spoken of roots: ENGLISH colonial legislation and policies – started by the
first British Governor, Cecil John Rhodes (yep, the guy everyone lauds as a
hero of sorts in our history) – to protect MINING interests. Did you know that
‘apartheid’, although passed by Afrikaner government just a few decades ago, in
essence goes that far back? Seriously. Go read up on some South African history
if you don’t believe me.
All
the inequality and discrimination we have come to think of as the ‘baby’ of
‘apartheid’ actually stems from the need for cheap labour, and for forcing
people to be and work where you want them to… mostly in the mines, after gold was
discovered in such abundance in this country. Yes, IT ALL STARTED WITH THE
MINES. At least the systematic (read: intentional, organised, set up)
discriminatory policies. So the massacre at Lonmin mine a few weeks ago is
actually not terribly surprising, when placed within its historical and
socio-political context, now is it?
What
many do not realise, is that the global economic system today is also
intentionally ‘neo-colonialist’ and exploitative – designed (they didn’t just
happen) to extract resources from so-called ‘third world’ countries, to benefit
the rich, so-called ‘first world’ countries. It is ‘neo-colonialist’ because it
is a ‘new colonialism’ - a legacy of the colonial days - with the imbalance of
power remaining in the form of unfair trade relations and ‘neoliberal policies’
enforced by the World Bank and other International ‘powers that be’.
These
‘neoliberal’ policies take the form of stipulations attached to foreign aid or
investment in so-called ‘third world’ countries, that governments do not invest
in infrastructure or anything that would benefit their own people, in order to
‘attract foreign investment’ and service their ridiculously unjust (because
they are based on the unfair trade relations just mentioned) debts to the
‘first world’.
In
this way, the rich countries keep getting richer, while the poor countries have
been set up to fail from the start, so surprise, surprise, they are failing –
politically, economically and socially. And the more unstable and incapacitated
they become, the more easily the ‘first world’ and its transnational
corporations and mining interests can prey upon these resource rich countries.
Feel
free to look into this further as I haven’t the time, energy or space - it
would take a semester in ‘development studies’ - to explain this to you
properly (and it makes for grim and terribly disempowering reading, I can
assure you). Suffice to say, the world is not a ‘level playing field’ AT ALL.
And certain powerful parties (read: transnational corporations and MINING/ OIL
interests) are running the show to benefit them,
not the rest of us pathetic little worker bees, and certainly not the
marginalised and dispossessed...
Have
you ever stopped to look at those words closely – marginalised and
dispossessed? Yes, they are implying another party is involved – doing the
marginalising and dispossessing. The poor or ‘underprivileged’ weren’t somehow
designed that way, they didn’t choose to be that way, it was done to them. By whom, do you think?
Sadly,
taking the preceding discussion further, to nauseating levels of honesty – by us – even though most of us are not
running or profiting from these greedy
transnational corporations, nor the extractive
mining companies [extracting more than mineral resources – they extract immense
social and environmental value from places too, then simply move on once the
area is too devastated to yield anymore…like parasites… to go and feed upon the next unsuspecting community
misguidedly looking for ‘development’].
However, we buy the products that these
corporations and mining companies are supplying. We live the ‘high’ life, at the expense of the actual lives of people who often struggle to earn enough to eat, let alone buy the products they
make (or slowly kill themselves mining for components for our cars, cell phones
and computers). Like those miners. Who were striking for better salaries and living conditions. Who were SHOT.
No
one should profit from the misery or exploitation of others. And certainly loss
of life should never be looked upon as necessary or legitimate to protect
economic interests, mining interests, political interests, selfish interests or
‘lifestyles’ … Good grief, how has it come to this – I find myself actually
explaining this to people…?
Hopefully
you, dear reader, do not need any convincing of this. Most of us don’t. But
most of us also don’t inform ourselves of the injustices being committed in our
name. Lives sacrificed to support our
lifestyles. I started off writing
this mini-series with a lot of self-righteous fury about ‘those mining
companies’…but I have been left with a terribly bitter taste in my mouth,
remembering again (like G.K. Chesterton) that the problem with the world is… me.
In my next posts, I will continue
this discussion by exploring the reactions of my fellow South Africans a bit
further – at least the aspects that have amazed and concerned me.
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