The Uncontainable Thrill of Looting

I have never looted anything in my life; I simply lack the right amount of courage, and my class position – precarious as it might be – has not taken me down that path. Not yet anyway. I am also far removed from government tendering processes that could have allowed me to loot state resources and when it comes to the looting of land and people that is foundational to the formation of this country, the African continent and indeed the world, I am obviously not a beneficiary of that little venture. Even though I do not have experience of having looted anything, I have however, witnessed very closely, the uncontainable thrill that comes from the type of looting we have seen in South Africa in the last few days.

I was seven years old when a coup against the Prime Minister of the Ciskei government, Lennox Leslie “LL” Sebe resulted in demonstrations and looting in the country’s second largest township, Mdantsane, in 1990. Sebe’s regime had been hard-handed against the one million citizens of the Bantustan and he had declared himself “president for life” just to let everyone know that he had no intentions of ever leaving office. Not only were the unfortunate citizens of the Ciskei dealing with the everyday realities of apartheid but they were also faced with this imposed overzealous dictator whose own brother, Charles Sebe, had found him so intolerable that he tried to overthrow him. Charles Sebe’s attempt was not very successful and it took the young Brigadier General Oupa Gqozo to remove “LL” from power. That day resulted in scenes similar to what we have seen in the last few days in the country.

Lennox Leslie Sebe

Of the eight of us who lived in a four-roomed house in Mdantsane, half were teenage boys who were generally obedient kids but even they could not resist the lure of the looting that erupted that afternoon. I do not recall how or when they left the house but memories of their return are forever etched in my mind. After the rest of the family had spent the day watching the events unfold in another section of the township with our neighbours, my cousins returned home with their loot and stories of their adventures. We were relieved to see that they had escaped the chaos mostly unscathed and were curious to see what each of them had managed to find. They proudly took us through their shopping goods which, to my memory, included a vaskom, rolls of toilet paper, two thin blankets caked with broken eggs and washing powder, a bag of flour and a single sneaker whose companion they had no hope of ever finding. They had grabbed whatever they could, they told us, and although they had regrets of having missed out on electrical appliances – and there were times when they were afraid for their lives, they were mostly overjoyed that they had managed to find something. Their excitement was pulpable and for months thereafter their stories of the looting circulated in the household amidst fits of laughter and an indescribable thrill. My seven-year-old self wished so hard that I could have been there myself.

As children, we spent a lot of our time daydreaming about shit we did not have. One particular game involved us taking an old glossy magazine and turning it slowly as each of us rushed to claim whatever was on the page. “Ndim lo!”, “Yeyam le ndlu!”, “Kokwam okukutya!”. We wanted the material things we saw and also desired to be the white people who appeared in those magazines. You became the butt of jokes if you mistakenly hedged your bets on a page filled with text instead of images of food, a fancy house, a car or a white person. If it wasn’t that game then whenever a plane or helicopter flew above us, we yelled orders for all the types of food we wanted it to bring us back on its return. “Usiphathele ivosh, neezwitsi, ne cake!” we screamed until the plane disappeared.

Like other children, we used our imaginations to escape the parts of our reality that were bitter, to protect ourselves from the collective trauma of being Black and poor under apartheid. “Yhu, kumandi ukuba muncu kanene” our parents would say, envious of our transcendental abilities, which they did not possess in as much abundance.

The imagination however, can only carry you so far. Sometimes you need something tangible to grab at for one fucking moment of your life in order to fill up the cupboards and the existential void in your soul, and if looting is the thing that will do that, then looting it is.

I do not know the reasons that motivated every single person who was involved in these recent riots and I am by no means discounting the intelligence reports about the masterminds behind these events, but if my recollections of my cousins’ expeditions 30 years ago are anything to go by, then there are some who needed food as much as they needed to feel seen, heard, alive… Human.

This article was sub-edited by Bongiwe Tutu. Contact her on: bongiwe.tutu@gmail.com