Let me start this thought with a disclaimer.
As I said in a previous piece, my heart bleeds for the ongoing deaths happening in the Middle East, mostly in Palestine.
The human toll being exacted by two immovable ideologies, is truly intolerable. And the world watching on, seemingly with folded arms, is infuriating, to say the least. And this is where the thinking must diverge away from that distant war zone, to focus on one closer to home.
It was truly heart-warming to see the swarms of people who came out to support the Palestinian cause a few weeks ago.
Young people with elderly relatives in tow were prepared to sit in traffic for hours, just so they could show their support to a cause close to their hearts. You could see the passion in their faces and hear the anger in their chants.
Here’s the problem I have with it. These thousands of people understood that their protest was unlikely to move the Israeli government and its ongoing assault on the people of Gaza. But they felt the need to protest anyway.
There is something to be said for the fact that they wanted their collective voices heard and their significant numbers counted.
They wanted everyone to know that they are aghast at innocent children being maimed and slaughtered every day. Young men simply trying to provide for their families are losing their lives at an alarming rate.
Nowhere is safe and not even emergency medical personnel are being spared, because nobody knows where or when the next bout of violence will suddenly erupt. Everything I just said also applies to the Cape Flats.
It has been in an ongoing war with itself for decades and it’s getting worse. People are being shot multiple times inside their own homes in front of their children.
Young mothers are being murdered in the streets, because they are witnesses. Hitmen on motorbikes are gunning down their targets in peak-hour traffic.
Stray bullets from sudden intense gunfights are still maiming innocent children at play.
Traumatised communities suffering from Stockholm syndrome are attacking police officers busy arresting murder suspects. It’s a dystopian hellscape that is playing out on our doorstep every day and can very easily destabilise our entire society.
While protests are unlikely to affect change thousands of miles away, I would venture a guess that it may just help when the challenge is closer to home.
Especially if we sustain the protest over a period of time and if the turn-out is the same.
Now that we know we can garner this kind of mass support highlighting unjust wars on the other side of the world, we should be able to rally even more support for our own. Right?