They build our cities

Give them respect for every human value.

Morning prayer, 14 June 2025

Making our way from the airport to our homes was stressful. It took longer than the flight itself. The two-lane highway that opens the journey promises a smooth journey but we soon entered darkness and chaos. It was late but there were virtually no street lights although there are places in the city where the lights are on – during the day.

We were swallowed up in a scramble of kombis and cars coming from all sides pushing their way forward, inch by inch. There were people everywhere. In the surrounding darkness a few police were visible in the general melee of men and women trying to cross the road, trying to find some car that would stop and take them home. All human courtesy was abandoned in a struggle to arrive.

If this was a temporary thing or we were at war, people would be patient, orderly and helpful to one another. But it is not temporary. It has gone on for months, years – and it is getting worse. The most painful thing about the whole situation is that we seem incapable of doing anything about it. We know there are solutions. But those who build and run our cities appear to lack the will to act.

They never come to this cauldron of teeming humanity manoeuvring in the darkness. They live in suburbs, away from the stifling confusion, where they can rely on their own means of producing light and their own vehicles which can avoid the jungle.

The question that arises is a simple one. Why are the citizens unable to call those who build and run our cities to account? There are places on the planet where citizens would not tolerate such a situation for a moment. But with us there is something missing.

Fifty years ago Steve Biko awakened his fellow South Africans to something he called ‘black consciousness.’ He was pointing to a new way of being a person, of being someone fully alive, fully free. Grasp your dignity, he said; realise you have power to make a difference. Don’t just sit on your hands in helpless apathy.

If we are not feeling well, we do something about it. Otherwise we will get worse and eventually die. That is true for us as individuals. It is also true of us as a society.