Beaten With Broken Policies

The times and The Times have made this very clear. Poor people are tired. Their rage rises higher each day. The government officials know it. The almost sentient fist of the government, the South African Police Service is armed and ready, waiting for something to happen. It is a tentative, tense and taut time in the South African streets. I wonder who is aware. Truly aware at what we've constructed through repetitive insistence on bad policies. Does it truly make sense to tax someone who makes less than ZAR50 a day (on a good day). Someone who's slept in the filthy Warwick Triangle Market all night just to make 30 bucks the next day. A taxi to Inanda is 12 Rands, and it's too much to ask someone who needs to eat, drink and smoke to spend almost half of their money on transport, then to further tax them for the pittance they make.

It's sick. As in, it is a pathology. The policies are machines to produce pathology. They drive the grounded further in, hoping to bury them in their own filth. This filth is also reproduced and nurtured by terrible service delivery on all basic and even more complex aspects.

Basics first: WATER. ELECTRICITY. SANITATION. None of which are in any functioning order in the space that is making the City of Durban millions of Rands. Why shouldn't I be angry? Why shouldn't ugogo wami (my granny)  lose her head when they take her deep fried hakes and haul them into a bin, telling her she's here illegally. Why is legality costing the poor more than anyone else? Does not the one who has the least have the most to lose? They're hurting us. And does anyone like being hurt? Only those who can afford the decadence of healing. The clinics and pharmacies in the Market,Durban area are shit! They're surrounded by filth, swill and criminal degenerates with nothing to do but sell bad weed for a whoonga (a heroin, marijuana and rat poison cocktail drug) fix later.

Those stalls weren't empty a few days ago. There were people plying their trade there. Selling airtime, selling fruits or gambling over dice and cards. Further up this totally ill-sized pavement is a pool table. THere's not a tap to wash hands, the toilets don't work, and to the right, behind the fence, are taxis taking staff and job seekers up to Westwood, Westville, Edgewood, Pinetown, Kwandengezi and so many other places. And by the way, the space where these many taxis rank up is about 30 to 40 meters squared. Silly billy behaviour. And when we get pissed by the shoddy, atrocious standards of living...

They send in the guns.

I guarantee you, Market is never this unpopulated. The place is a hive of activity usually. Come rain or shine. But they've been making it hard to feel safe. Yes, the Police, supposed protectors of the public and servants of the law-abiding, make safety go away.

The rage is not enough. We obviously need more riots, more damage, more statements made with fire and disobedience. Because we've tried just selling, just commuting. We've tried just.  I man suggests, as this wonderful taxi at the Rank for taxis to Pinetown says:

( As an aside,on the top right, peeks the Homeopathy Clinic at Warwick Triangle. )

I call for unadulterated, unapologetic damage upon them. Get their offices. Get their parliaments. Burn them. Because they're killing us. In Joburg, the same is happening. They call it cleaning up Joburg. They evict and beat us. They make life difficult for commuters, making us late for work. They damage family financial continuity. They are actually and literally wounding quality of and preservation of life.
I am riled up, but the worst has come and for the poor it keeps coming. They will beat you, evict you, take and destroy your wares until you comply to their impossible requests. Repetition. Much like a bank asking you to pay to open a closed account because you don't have any money. Nonsense based on nonsense, supported by nonsense policies. This must end. I really hope they kill me soon, cause this city is going to see some serious upheaval if they don't. EFF and all the other political movements are not moving fast enough. Sorry, guys.


#MarketDbn, #chaoticfront