Injustice put into perspective

There is nothing which grates my nerves more than seeing the injustice of the World around me, and not yet being in the position to actively do something about it, for example, being able to strip someone of his human rights when he performs an act of barbarism like violently assaulting, raping or murdering someone.

Earlier this week was one of those days which really tested my faith in humanity.

This is South Africa, and being a “First World Country” on a Third World continent has it’s challenges.  Especially when the minority subjugated the the majority and treated the majority as second class citizens in their own country.

The relevance of this statement comes into play in modern South Africa where most days, you won’t have to search through a paper to find an article about some sort of violent crime which has taken place.  Most of these cases involve the majority of South Africans, yes, the black South Africans, and it is not because they are sub-standard people, but because of the failure which was Apartheid, which only got amplified by the failure of our current ANC led Government to address these issues for various reasons.

The majority of the South African prison populace are black, and as I stated before, not because they are bad people by default, but because the system created an environment for them to fail.  The system has successfully created people who don’t value human life. The so called Justice System and our very own progressive Constitution has failed us!

The reason I say this is because a human life in South Africa is worth less than R10, and our so called progressive Constitution hampers our Justice System from actually being effective and deterring such negative and inefficient criminal social behavior.

These broken people of our society are shoved into our already crumbling correctional services facilities which are overpopulated, under staffed and rife with corruption, just to be victims themselves again of another sub-section of the system which put them there in the first place.

Well, these are the normal people of South Africa I am talking about.  The “have not’s”, because if you are part of the few in South Africa who are financially well endowed, politically connected or some sort of a celebrity it seems that the normal Status Quo spares your from these horrors.

In 2009 South Africa ranked ninth in the World in terms of prison population with an astounding 160 000 inmates in 237 active correctional centres which was build to only facilitate 114 822 people.

While we struggle with overcrowding like this for the “normal” man on street, it seems, that when you are Oscar Pistorius or Radovan Krejcir that life on the inside is all but cramped and boring.

Today an article was release along with a video of the odd jailbird couple playing soccer and having enough space on their own.  It seems, that young Oscar has special needs because of his condition and that he can’t really walk around on his prosthetic legs and needs a wheelchair, hence he was moved into a section of the prison where only he and Radovan are kept, or should I maybe rather say entertained.

Once again, the “Have’s” has given the middle finger salute to the “have not’s” by clearly making a distinction between the way they get punished, and the way the “have not’s” get punished in jail.

The fact of the matter remains that both these men are killers in their own right, and they are enjoying a “day a the spa” compared to those other killers who didn’t have the luxury of fancy high paying lawyers to fight their cases on their behalves.

Where is the justice in something like this?  How much does “justice” cost, and is the only requirement to “find” justice a big fat cheque book?

I really feel pity for the people of our country suffering under this injustice, because it creates the perception that if you are wealthy and powerful that you can literally get away with murder, like for example, the “water tight case” against Shrien Dewani which in the end saw South Africans end up in this overcrowded broken system and Shrien walking away a free man.

This also creates the perception by the political elite who are financially well set that they are immune to criminal prosecution, well, if you have enough money and power of course, just ask our President Zuma and his ex-financial advisory, the terminally ill  Shabir Sheik who is most likely enjoyed a round of golf today.

It really gutted me, seeing Oscar and Radovan so casually enjoying their game of soccer while there are so many other men stuck in over crowded community cells where there is no privacy and where rape and violent assault is common.

For me personally, there is no justice in such a system, and I hope that my fellow South Africans will come to see this, and how deeply something like this impacts the mindset of an already broken people.

Fight against injustice where ever you see it, never stay quiet

Harsh Times, not only in South Africa, but the World

Things have been rough in the geopolitical sphere for a while now, but this most people have noticed to a degree I think since one can often hear them speaking about it in little groups, but as individual cases not linked together, and I am guessing, not totally grasping the influence in how it will define us as human beings in a time to come in the not so distant future I believe.

The gap between the “Have’s” and the “have not’s” are growing wider every single moment, never mind day.  

Oxfam has released a report stating that in 2016 the richest 1% of the population will own more than half of the World’s wealth. A staggering wake up call if one realizes that this means 80 of the richest billionaires will own the same amount as that of the bottom 50% of the Earth’s population!

How on Earth did we get to this point?  Where the gap is so gigantic and so unevenly spread?

Well, we forgot who we are, where we came from, and what our actual goal must be, and somewhere, along the journey we started out as wandering nomads, we forgot, or maybe just neglected the fact that we are all “stuck” on this little blue Goldilocks planet, and that we must evolve to explore beyond our current limitations.  Simply put, we stopped evolving and started devolving.

The dissident and the uproar of voices from the “have not’s” has been slowly, but steadily been climbing because of the steady flow of information in this digital age, the easy accessibly to this information, and also very often, misinformation.

Regardless of the misinformation, the tolerance for corrupt leaders who “lead” from a position of opulence is dwindling as more and more suffer the instabilities and unjust standards of living, or maybe I should say existence to which the majority of the Earth’s populace are subjected.

An example of this would be the grown disparity between the “have not’s” in South Africa, most of them from the “previously disadvantaged” who gained freedom through the efforts of liberators such and knowledgeable men like Mandela, Biko, De Klerk to name a few.  These “have not’s” as a majority group of the black populace of South Africa are mostly still disadvantaged, and little to nothing has changed for them since the end of Apartheid South Africa.

I want to stop a moment here to sketch you a picture of why these “have not’s”  will soon come into revolt against a system which is not working for them.

The Steyn City’s of South Africa is a glaring example of how the capitalistic way of life accompanied by globalization.  Of course these are not the only factor which brought to life the abomination of the “Have’s” and the “have not’s”  that is today the “Class Divide”, but this does not matter to the “have not”, because he does not care how it came to be, he just knows that it is unjust for him to live either in squalor, or to slave away at an average job, living an average life in order to maintain the opulent lifestyle of the “Have’s”.

Evidence in this can be seen in uprisings all over South Africa.  Yes, uprisings, not protests, because there is a very clear difference between the two.

A Protest is defined as the following:
“A statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something”

Where as an Uprising can be defined as the following:
“An act of resistance or rebellion; a revolt”

A few examples of the unhappiness about the normal run of the day Modus Operandi of the South African Government can been seen in the often, and very often violent “service delivery protests” which is going on around South Africa today, for example Marikana, Randfontein, Alexandra and for me, which was one of the most important and significant uprisings, the Ficksburg uprising, where a man I believe to be a true patriot towards the cause of the “have not’s” gave his life, Andries Tatane.

This is a phenomenon that is sticking out it’s head all over the globe, and with increased frequency.  People who are sicked and tired of the normal Modus Operandi of their own Governments and big corporations, this, compounded by rising crime rates, the increase in violent criminal behavior, the apparent perception of social decay and the loss of moral and ethical behavior with a very real increase in the costs of survival is opening up the eyes of the people to a great extent, where I believe that full on revolutions, the likes of the French Revolution and the Russian October Revolution is in our collective near future if things don’t change drastically.

Political turmoil all over the globe has pushed up the instability that we as a species experience, and this turmoil is mostly caused by our very own greed factor, the need to have more than one can use.

To quote a great man who has made a profound impression on my life:

“The miracle is this:  The more we share the more we have” – the late Leonard Nimoy

He also coined it in his role on board the Star-ship Enterprise in the movie Star Trek II : The Wrath of Khan when he said famously said ” Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”

This my friends is just a peep into the crisis we as a collective human race face. Only together will we be able to survive the onslaught on our humanity which we are going to face in the not so distant future.

Namaste