The other day I asked the sales clerk at Exclusive Books to retrieve two books for me. One of my own, Learning Lessons, and one by a brilliant young UCT psychologist, Wahbie Long, called Nation on a Couch: Inside South Africa’s Mind. She first brought my book and with a long face and limp-wrist gave me my work. Less than a minute later the same woman appeared with Prof Long’s book, suddenly looking radiant and excited: “Now THIS book is really selling, hey!” We had a good laugh, but I know why the Long book is making waves.
It was 27 years ago this week (Monday) that Nelson Mandela uttered those memorable words at his inauguration as our first democratic president: “Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another ...” Three “nevers” were not going to be enough. We routinely abuse, humiliate, exploit and oppress each other.
The brutal violence against women and girls is staggering; by one count there were more than 120,000 victims of gender-based violence (GBV) on home turf during the first three months of lockdown. The eighth most violent city in the world is ours. In a corruption perception index, shortly after Madiba’s famous statement, we ranked a respectable 22nd in the world, but have since dropped to 69th; corruption, the president once said, has cost the country close to R1-trillion. Corruption, by way of reminder, is not a victimless crime. It takes vital resources away from the poor. Put bluntly, it oppresses the oppressed.
How did we become this way? What is wrong with us? And can we even get out of this downward slide to oblivion? Enter the psychotherapist who decides to put the nation on a couch. The patient is in distress, consumed by what Long calls “the monsters of our deep”. The past is consuming us as we turn on each other in a violent rage that is self-destructive. It is a violence born of shame and resentment that explodes in what we wrongly call “mindless violence”. It is only mindless because we do not understand where that rage is coming from.
Why, I asked the author, do our students burn on a Friday what they need on a Monday? Students on elite campuses explode because of what they experience as relative deprivation, something they would not have felt stuck in township schools where everyone shared the same circumstances. But what about the elite black students from schools such as Bishops in Cape Town and Johannesburg’s St John’s? They are not exactly deprived.
Here the online book launch discussion took some interesting turns. Perhaps it is their sense of guilt about their relative privilege in relation to less fortunate black family and friends that causes them to become activist leaders. It is a calculation they make to be seen as part of the fight or be deemed as “white”, someone wisely suggested. We are confounded by the burning of libraries and artworks, suggests Long, because we expect a rational explanation for what violent protesters do. Such behaviour is anything but rational and certainly not reasoned.
But are we not psychologising dangerous behaviour? Is the appropriate discipline, in this case, criminology rather than psychology? It is a question the author is very much aware of. He makes the point that the attempt to explain destructive actions does not mean condoning the same; there must be norms within which we are expected to act or the alternative is the tyranny of lawlessness. Fine, but then how do we get out of this mess?
Long brings to his analysis a strong sense of the material world. Unless we deal with the huge inequalities in our society, there is no chance we will be able to work our way out of our troubles. And unless we recognise those monsters that slay us, we remain in denial, with terrible consequences.
I was not yet convinced. Namibia had the Herero genocide and Mozambique the huge traumas of a long and tragic civil war. But the people there are not anywhere near as violent as South Africans. Are our monsters exceptional? Then Long makes an interesting point: our ability to narcissize our troubles. The way we process our pain is not only personal; it is very public. It is not only about the individual, but the group. We act out that historical pain in constant, never-ending acts of community or group protests, which are often violent.
To change our tomorrows begins with self-understanding as a nation. This is what makes this very accessible book, Nation on the Couch, so important and timely. Too much of what we write as columnists describes our broken country over and over again; too little is available that explains the state we’re in. Until that happens, the “never again” recitation will remain our lot.