SOUTH AFRICA
South Africa: 'Babylon' and the murder of Lucky Dube
Percy Ngonyama, Durban
2 November 2007
The murder of South Africa’s reggae icon Lucky Dube on October 18, in an attempted car hijacking — one of South Africa’s most common crimes these days — has been condemned by all. The African National Congress (ANC) government has urged the nation to unite against the scourge of crime threatening “our democracy”. For opposition parties, Dube’s killing is further proof that crime is out of hand. As a deterrent, some have called for the reinstatement of capital punishment. There is a general feeling that the four “monsters” who recently appeared in court in connection with the crime should “rot” in jail. Typically, however, the debate remains very narrow and shallow.
Lucky Dube first became a household name in the 1980s during the dark days of Apartheid. Because of his daring consciousness-raising poetic lyrics about social ills and injustices, which gained him international acclaim, a number of his songs were soon included on the Apartheid government’s list of prohibited “inciting” songs. The list included “Apartheid” by the late Peter Tosh, whose music and statements had a profound impact on Dube, and “Jo’hanna” by Eddy Grant. While Dube constantly reiterated that he was not a “Rastafarian” in the truest sense of the word, there is no doubt that he shared the Rastafarian contempt for the “Babylon system”, the hegemonic criminal capitalist establishment.
Dube’s killers should be brought to book. However, the sad reality is that in the “new” South Africa, like in all class societies, the real criminals whose horrendous crimes are responsible for the suffering of many are never prosecuted. Instead of being forced to account in one way or the other, CEOs of big corporations that pollute our environment resulting in life-threatening illnesses such as asthma and cancer, and global warming, which is now posing a threat to the very existence of the human species, subject desperate workers to risky working conditions to further fatten their wallets, receive accolades for their “valuable” contribution to the “booming” economy.
As a tribute to the socially conscious, justice- and peace-loving Lucky Dube, we should seek to broaden our definition of “crime”. We need to understand the strong connection between South Africa’s neoliberalism-induced very high unemployment rate, unheard of for a middle-income economy, and its rampant crime. Sociologists and other social scientists agree that whenever the unemployment rate goes up so does the crime and suicide rates, among others.
Moreover, ironically, the main reason the police are losing the “war on crime” in South Africa is because of the ANC’s neoliberal “belt tightening” austerity measures and cuts in social spending. Not only the police service, but the entire understaffed and under-resourced public service sector is collapsing, and is characterised by shoddy service, which begs the question, “Tax man: what have you done for me lately?” posed by Dube in one of his award-winning classics. When the handsomely remunerated chief of police, by his own admission, is “friends” with alleged drug smuggling/human trafficking mafia kingpins, it is extremely naive for anyone to expect the poorly paid and unmotivated lower ranks of the police force to be immune from the bug of corruption, correctly identified as one of the main factors behind police inefficiency.
Reinstating the barbaric death penalty can never be the solution. Let us rather send to the gallows the “Babylon” system that on a daily basis breeds more heartless car hijackers who have little regard for human life, and is the cause of all the social ills that Dube sang about.
