On Thursday 22 March 2018, The Albert and Nokukhanya Luthuli Peace and Development Institute launched, and held its first colloquium. The topic of the colloquium was, Understanding The Culture of Violence as an Impediment to Development: Peace and Development as The Foundations For South Africa’s Future Advancement.
I was asked to do a presentation based on an article I published in The Thinker last year. You can find the article here: http://www.thethinker.co.za/resources/72%20THINKER.pdf. It’s called South Africa: A History of Cultural Violence.
The presentation and event in general went very well. It was empowering to interact and communicate with individuals of various ages and affiliations who share some common ideas and understanding.
Some difficult topics were discussed openly; many South Africans refuse to even accept, let alone even discuss some of these issues, especially without degrading to name calling and insults.
Here are some things that were openly acknowledged , and discussed.
- South Africa is a violent society. Both physically and structurally.
- South African violence runs very deep historically and structurally.
- The above point means there are no easy solutions to South African violence. Throwing police, PMCs, and military at everything just won’t cut it.
- South Africa is an extremely racist, sexist, and classist society.
- South African violence won’t go away if the above three issues, along with their nasty cousin inequality, are not meaningfully dealt with.
- As Government and the Private Sector tend to fluctuate in their effectiveness, citizens likely need to take some matters into their own hands.
- One such was is reaching out and interacting with Civil Society (we have various NGOs and activist groups) to heal South African society.
- Strong Civil Society institutes may provide some kind of buffer against Government and Private Sector failure.
- South Africans as a whole need to educate themselves more on peace studies, as well as learn how other societies with violent pasts, have instigated strong measures to ensure the cycle of violence and generational trauma does not ensue perpetually. Hint: there’s a reason America still has Nazis, while Germany does not. It’s pretty much because the Germans used their brains, and made Nazism illegal. Duh!
Here’s a link to the notes on my presentation. Oh, and don’t forget you can follow and support me directly via Patreon (it’s more music and fiction orientated currently), if you like what I do. Gotta throw that in there hehe! We still live in a capitalist society, and money doesn’t grow on trees. Meh!
The Dark Cow 