By Danford Mpumilwa
It would take around seven years after the 1994 democratic elections — which brought the African National Congress (ANC) to power in South Africa — for me to set foot in that land once defined by apartheid.
I was headed there to attend a conference on international criminal justice at the University of Johannesburg — or ‘UJ’, as the students call it. That was in September 2001.
I flew into Johannesburg and checked into a house-cum-lodge in the decent suburbs near the university. But before I could attend to any official business, I decided to first visit the famous Soweto — the South Western Township, which, as the name suggests, lies southwest of the city.
My main mission was to visit the Mandela Museum House, catch a glimpse of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s residence and stop by the historic square where, many years ago, the Boers mowed down protesting black students during the infamous Sharpeville massacre.
Indeed, I managed to do all of this within one hour. Without a doubt, the sprawling township has a very rich history of the long struggle by black South Africans against apartheid. Its renowned Vilakazi Street enjoys the unique distinction of being the only street in the world with the historical residences of two Nobel Peace Prize laureates: Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
At the end of the tour, I asked my guide whether he could take me to one of the famous shebeens — local beer taverns — where I could sample the local lagers and, in particular, the well-known local brew, umqombothi.
He was hesitant at first. But as a compromise, we ended up at a nearby cosmopolitan shebeen where locals and tourists alike were enjoying drinks and snacks. He later told me that many shebeens were rather dangerous places, especially for a foreigner like me.
And yes, they were — even for locals. Then, as now. How else could one explain the senseless killing of 23 revellers, the Saturday prior to my visit, at a bar in Soweto? A group of men arrived in a minibus taxi and began shooting randomly, killing people and wounding several others.
Earlier that very day, a similar incident had taken place in the eastern city of Pietermaritzburg. There, two men drove to a bar, went inside, and opened fire indiscriminately — killing four people and wounding eight — before fleeing.
Just weeks earlier, 26 young men had died mysteriously at another bar in the coastal city of East London.
Coincidentally, only a week earlier I had conducted a brief research project on the worrying and rising statistics of gun violence in the United States. But now it seemed the continent — and South Africa in particular — was facing the same scourge. The World Bank reports that gun crime in South Africa is high by international standards.
The country was, and still is, experiencing a similar number of gun-related fatalities per capita as the United States. South Africa’s overall homicide rate is among the highest in the world — at 33 people per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020 — and still rising.
No wonder President Cyril Ramaphosa was furious after the tragic Soweto incident. And rightly so. It truly does seem that there is a curse of gun violence in South Africa.
