Non-violence: A plea for consistency

It is time we start thinking deeply about violence again. Then again, when has there been a time in South Africa that we should not have thought deeply about violence? That which we call South Africa was constituted through extreme violence. Ours is an immensely violent space. But at this moment we seem to have found an address for our call for non-violence. In a society as violent as ours, yet with a deep history of non-violent activism as well, calling for non-violence should not be considered strange. But why do we have such a struggle to do this consistently?

Two things are lying open, coming to my attention, through the great system of sharing which is the contemporary networked society, at about the same time (although being moments about a day apart). On the one hand reports that Shaeera Kalla wareports that Shaeera Kalla was shot in the back with rubber bullets 10 times. Yes, one more moment of the horror that was the past few weeks, but through the random fact that I learned of this moments after sending the Powerpoint for a brief presentation containing an iconic photo of her leading a march about a year ago, a presentation that I’ll have to give in a foreign space tomorrow morning, this horrific moment forces me to stop. On the other hand a call, drawing broadly on Martin Luther King, for students to maintain the moral high ground and wage a non-violent struggle.

I’ve always been drawn to non-violence resistance, and while I acknowledge that it continue to be a slow learning curve for someone formed by a deeply violent culture, and a church open in its support for violence, I continue to be convinced that this is indeed what I am committed to. Why? I guess I could make long and sophisticated arguments, and I don’t deny that they are needed, but the short version is probably that it is a remnant of my WWJD spirituality, and the conviction that indeed, non-violence and deep peace was indeed central to what Jesus was about, even when elaborated in more complex arguments, remain fundamental to my conviction.

But for all of this pious conviction, piety which hopefully overflow far beyond the walls of the sanctuary, I’m left tasking a bit of bile at much of the calls for peace amidst campus protests. The inconsistencies is becoming unbearable.

With all the horror we expressed after Marikana, few who mouth non-violence were campaigning active demilitarization of the police, and even of progressively reducing police carrying and using of weapons. We seem incapable of imagining a society which express absolute horror at every moment of police brutality, yet we have a rich repertoire of language to express our outrage at the kid who picks up a stone. We are convinced that students should not respond to violence with violence, yet lack the capacity to imaging a response to vandalism (I do not deny that there was instances of vandalism and intimidation, and I cannot condone this) which does not involve state-sanctioned violence.

We insist on non-violent strategies, yet we fail to consider our own role in this. Non-violent strategies rely on the ears, the conscience, the heart, of those of us who are touched by these actions. 15000-20000 students marching to the union building in an act of non-violent protest rely on the fact that government, business, civil society, academics, and churches will in this action take note of their concern and give the kind of weight needed to shift the priorities of society. How do we call for non-violent strategies without putting our bodies into positions which allow these actions to be successful? While we might differ on the details of policies every moral fiber in our bodies should acknowledge that it can never be justified that financial means determine access to or success in education. Yet every piece of research will tell you that financial means is directly correlated with access to and success in education, also higher education. We are faced with a deeply moral concern, a fight for the soul not only of universities, but of our society: education, a key foundation of a healthy modern society, has increasingly become a commodity. We talk about education as an investment, about increased salaries as a return on investment, yet when students become the conscience of us all, forcing our attention onto the deep inhumanness of our society, we fail to give the needed weight to insure that this concern is addressed. And then we express our disgust when a different strategy is used. We like quoting King, but we forget that “a riot is the language of the unheard”.

And then we haven’t started talking about the ongoing inconsistencies in how we respond to immediate moments of violent action verses the ongoing systemic violence. We claim it is about violence, but when economic exclusion result in directly shortening the lifespan of a vast portion of the world and the country we call for slow processes of development. When student activities risk destruction to property we call for the immediate response of security forces. My pointing this out should in no way condone the moments of setting light to property, of breaking a window, but how do we call on the moral conscience of students when our own moral conscience has become totally numb to the ongoing brutalities and overly aware of the moments on transgression? Such a distortion, obviously not disconnected from the function of the images that we see flowing through our facebook feed (it is difficult to take a photo of a board of directors buying land which results in an old women needing to walk even further to get access to clean water, taking a few years off her life), should, is nothing short of a crisis of discernment, and for those of us who are religious in general and Christian in particular, it is nothing short of a crisis of faith.

Yes, I acknowledge that I struggle to imagine a world without the monopoly on violence that we have given to the nation state. But how many rubber bullets will we justify through the argument that “some students were vandalizing property and intimidating fellow students”? How many bombs dropped from planes will be justify through the reminded that there was someone that strapped a bomb to their body. And in which world to be expect that our moral call for non-violence will be heard while we bracket the state from that call? If I heard Jesus correctly then indeed violence is not part of the agenda. Indeed, Jesus did think that the Kingdom will not come through the use of violence. Jesus also walked close to those who differed from him on this point. And Jesus, it would seem to be, was clear that it was the oppressive violence of occupying forces that was of deeper concern (Dominic Crossan’s The Greatest Prayer is simultaneously historically helpful and spiritually nourishing in this regard).

In this violent society there might be few things we need more than a commitment to non-violence. But in this distorted society there might be few things which disrupt the quest for non-violence and peace more than our inconsistent insistence on non-violence.

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