A Man On A Shack
In the middle of all the shock and horror we see splattered across our tv’s, laptops and smart phones, I felt an astonishing shift of emotions when I saw the news about a man throwing his child off a roof. Humour me and momentarily discard all the other current affairs that tear at our emotions, the chemical warfare, the government corruption and scandals, the rampant crime statistics and the political hate speech, and just isolate the moment in Port Elizabeth where a man stands on a corrugated iron shack roof threatening to throw his child to her possible death. It is hard to do. Harder still is to filter the moment further and to go beyond assessing the situation through angry eyes or from any racial stance. Resist the urge to pass judgement on his parental abilities or his seemingly blatant disregard of life. Don’t even rally up your friends to condemn the barbaric nature of what you have seen. Wipe your opinion slate clean and understand that what you are witnessing is a moment that epitomises loss and desperation.
I believe that each and every person that sees that image is prone to slapping their moral compass all over it and, with a mix of repulsion and self-affirmation, will condemn it and then confirm that they would never be capable of such actions nor would they ever place a child in harms way. The point where this scenario is challenged most, is where the condemnation is voiced from the security of offices and homes and by those that have never – and will never – experienced being stranded with nowhere to go.
With clear conscience I can say that there have been times when I have not had two cents to rub together and yet, while scratching the last of the Bovril out the jar to spread on the last few pro vita’s, I have had a couch or bed to sleep on under a roof supported by brick walls. What a difference that makes. The man on the shack was about to have that one piece of security that he had to shelter his family in, removed. The place he called home and had without a doubt built by hand himself, was about to be demolished and reduced to scrap without compensation. This is a level of devastation, disillusionment and desperation that few can comprehend. I know I can’t. For this reason I do not absolve him of his crime against his child but I certainly question where it went wrong and how it ended up this way.
Those who get votes on the back of empty promises and those that throw grand parties and rallies with colourful hand-outs are to blame. Those that feed the corruption and maladministration in the departments empowered and mandated to give basic quality of life to those that need it most are to blame. Those whose very beings are filled with sickening greed and those who choose self-enrichment and nepotism over result driven decision making, are the ones to blame. Shame on them but their shame has long since fallen away and unfortunately it also has no tangible effect in the life of the man on a shack. For all the evils and poor decisions this man is guilty of, the government of the land on which he stands has failed him. It has also failed his wife and his daughter.
He now stands in a court of law answering to charges of the attempted murder of his daughter when his real crime is being defenceless to secure a flimsy structure for his family to live in. He stands in a court where rapists, robbers and murderers are convicted daily and does he really deserve to be among them because of circumstances beyond his power? What is a man supposed to do when he is not allowed a space no bigger than an office, where he can bed down for the night with his family? Before anyone suggests that he should go out and find an honest job and earn the money to pay rent on a registered and legal property, just consider the extreme case of a family that has nothing. Nothing. Forget about privilege and forget about social classes, the reality is that there are families that have nothing and they deserve something. Not the pittance they might beg for, not the alms they may earn, just simply a shelter for the nights. The simplest truth to this situation if it is simplified to the max, is that all humans should have the right to put a pillow down somewhere. Not by force or by threat, not by theft or by deceit, but just by virtue of being a human.
Whatever the courts may decide, the verdict means nothing to anyone unless the situation is addressed and never again is a one year old child, her father’s last line of defence.