Liberty security: how much should be sacrificed? Winning essays from The Economist/Shell competition

Whole Earth, Winter, 2002

It is hard to imagine that here, sitting on a smart hotel balcony on a hill above Johannesburg as Dali Thambo (son of Mandela's fellow-prisoner, Oliver Thambo) wafts past in a bright yellow kaftan. Johan has interrupted his negotiations with the Reserve Bank to take us to lunch. "People are always complaining," he says, staring out over the forest of Johannesburg with his cool, blue eyes. "They complain about crime. They complain about the exchange rate. In 1994, people were preparing for civil war. They were building bunkers for the war. But it never came. Now we're complaining about exchange rates. We couldn't have dreamed it would be this good."

What happened to the vengeance? Where was the apocalyptic retribution? This is the real question for the world to ask of South Africa. Some say that the African majority could not organise a civil war. "These people don't even know how to hate sufficiently," said one farmer in the Free State. Rwanda and Yugoslavia tell us that it does not take a great deal of skill to arrange a bloodbath. So why did South Africa not follow suit? The general restraint shown by the African majority since 1994 perhaps speaks of a respect for life which Africans cannot have learnt from their Apartheid rulers; a recognition of our common humanity.

In 1996, Cynthia Ngewu told the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission how her son was shot dead by the South African police. He had twenty-five bullets in his body. Ngewu told the Commission how she saw the dead body of her son, Christopher Piet, on the evening news, being dragged by a rope tied around his waist. She said:

   This thing called reconciliation ... if I am understanding
   it correctly ... if it means this perpetrator, this man who
   has killed Christopher Piet, if it means he becomes human
   again, this man, so that I, so that all of us, get our
   humanity back ... then I agree, then I support it all.

Cynthia Ngewu makes me quiet. In Ngewu's mind, her humanity and the humanity of the man who killed her son are one and the same. She is human through the otherness of others. The alternative is separateness: high walls, carefully chosen holiday destinations and security passes; a long and sterile life. How much freedom should we trade for our security? I suggest we turn the exchange on its head. When I move to South Africa, I will exchange some of my security to become part of a country where a woman who has lost her child may speak as Ngewu does, where freedom is other people, where one is every day caught up in the imperfect, heart-stopping, striving bundle of life. I am neither brave nor foolish. I simply believe the exchange rate is excellent.

As the sun sets on Phuthaditjhaba, a small boy runs up the hill by the side of the road. He is wearing shorts so big he has pulled them up to his shoulders, an arm down each trouser leg. From the valley comes a drumbeat of hooves as a tall horse gallops through the dusk shadows, bare but for a slim, young boy. The boy waves one hand above his head and yells as he flies past a group of stern-faced mothers with babies tied to their back, and a pick-up overflowing with local men and children. The taxi driver was right.