LONDON LETTER: Spineless leadership creates a whirlwind of violence

THE irony of hundreds of thousands of South Africans migrating to Europe for a ‘safer life’ over the past two decades is pretty stark at the moment.

Okay, I am one of them, and I make no apologies for that.

Any reader of this column will know that I still love Africa and my choice 16 years ago was an economic one for my young kids as much as concern over the crime rate that was rocketing at the time.

But now, with bloody terror attacks on the streets of Paris in November last year and Brussels last week, questions can legitimately be asked: how safe are the suburbs of Europe?

So far 164 people have died for the crime of drinking latte in a cafe, standing in an airport queue, attending a concert, shopping in a kosher supermarket or just walking on the pavement at the wrong time.

And with known jihadists among the million-odd ‘refugees’ streaming from terror-riddled counties into Europe at the moment, an equally legitimate question is will this get worse?

I think most of us here know the answer to that.

When I left South Africa in 2000, one of my biggest concerns was the official reaction to the crime wave at the time. At best it was a straight denial that it was bad; at worst it was considered payback time against wealthier South Africans, despite the fact that the overwhelming number of victims were the poorest of the poor.

Crime in the suburbs was a fraction of the violence in the townships, but obviously that did not make headlines.

Soft approach

Sixteen years later, my biggest concern in Europe is that the official reaction to the current terror attacks is virtually the same. And if another idiot wheels out his piano to play ‘Imagine’ or tweets ‘Je suis Bruxelles’ in effete support of those murdered, I think I could be capable of a crime myself.Indeed, just as South African leaders failed to deal with crime in the late 1990s, European leaders are equally culpable with terrorism. Consider this interview that Monsieur Jan Jambon, the Belgian Interior Minister, had with CNN:

‘The majority of young Muslims are well integrated into Belgian society.’

But Jambon admits his government has more to do to make some feel at home in their own country, given that a sense of alienation can leave them open to the threat of radicalisation.

‘We’re talking about third- and fourth-generation [immigrants]; these youngsters are born in Belgium, even their fathers and mothers are born in Belgium, and still they are open for these kind of messages. This is not normal – in the US, the second generation was the President; here, the fourth generation is an IS fighter – so that is really something we have to work on.’

Taking the blame

Basically what he is saying is that it’s ‘our’ fault, not the perpetrators. ‘We’ have to work on it’. That means the ordinary people; the couple drinking their coffee one minute in a Parisian café and waking up the next wondering where their legs are.

Or that guy attending a rock concert in Paris and seeing blood sprouting from AK47 bullets in his girlfriend’s chest. Or the Belgium airport worker whose spine is shattered and will never walk again.

That’s what depresses me the most. Europe’s leaders, instead of saying ‘enough’ and taking the fight to the monsters responsible, say ‘we’ ordinary people have to work harder.

It’s not just in Europe. In Nigeria ordinary people are told they have to live with the fact that every so often Boko Haram will kidnap their daughters to become sex slaves.

In Pakistan, ordinary citizens are told that unfortunately now and again some Taliban goons will kick down a school door and behead the teacher in front of the class.

According to President Obama and David Cameron, this is all ‘entirely random’.

That’s the future Western leaders are offering my children: Spasmodic violence will become an ordinary condition of ordinary life, but don’t worry, they’ll do their very best to restrict it.

The rightwing is on the move in both America and Europe. And only an idiot cannot guess why.

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