HOW VIOLENCE AND ANGER HAVE BECOME INSEPARABLE IN SD

Sir,

By the time you read this article someone somewhere in this very kingdom will be threatening someone with violence just for stepping on their toes or they are angry at the guy driving slowly in front of them, they might be angry at government for doing this or not doing that, you might also be angry at me for writing this article. The big question is do any of the above amount to taking someone’s life?

That is how low our tolerance to frustration has become in our society. Some psychologists say most people get angry more easily now because they are easily frustrated and have a low tolerance for inconvenience, failure and annoyance. A Malawian friend of mine asked me the other day why Swazi people are so angry and I said to him it is because he is in  Swaziland, he should go to other countries and ask the same question.
But the fact is that vindictive behaviour based on anger makes us as small as those who have victimised us.

If you have been following most cases of violence recently, you will find that in most of the cases anger and frustration were the catalysts. Anger surrounds us every day. It’s in our politics, it is in our sports (raging fans and officials of the losing team assaulting the referee for some perceived wrong done to their team). It is in our schools (bullies taking out their anger on other pupils). It is in our homes (spousal and child abuse result in calls being made to the police or the media daily).

 It is in our streets (senseless murders born of anger are born every day) just the other day on my way to one of the country’s towns I witnessed an altercation between a customer and a kombi conductor. The bone of contention was that the kombi had passed the customer’s destination which he had not communicated to the conductor.

The customer was angry at the conductor and drew an okapi knife in full view of the other commuters demanding that he gets off the kombi so he could teach him a lesson for not stopping at his designated stop.
Had it not been for the driver who apologised to the angry knife-wielding customer, the poor conductor would be history now. It is clear that we spend most of our energy on anger for all the negative or rather wrong reasons. Imagine what would become of our beautiful kingdom if we can all transfer the anger we have to positive things and say we have had enough of poverty, we have had enough of HIV/AIDS, we have had enough of injustice, inequality and violence and we are standing together as a nation to making our country a better place. If we can channel our anger to this course, I promise you Vision 2022 can be a walk in the park. Yes it is true anger can lead us to challenge and change.

Samora Makama, Mbabane

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