Shadow of colonialism looms over policing in rural Eastern Cape:

Under the shadow of colonial history in the Eastern Cape stands a colonial town named Stutterheim. It lies about 70km north of East London and its position on the N6 highway between East London and Queenstown makes it an unmistakable edifice of British imperialism — as the strip from East London to Queenstown was declared a white corridor for British settlement.  

About 30km east of Stutterheim stands a cluster of villages named Mgwali. Its original purpose was the establishment of a mission station. And subsequently the still-standing Presbyterian Church was founded in 1857 by the first black South African to be ordained as a Presbyterian Church minister — Reverend Tiyo Soga. 

While the Presbyterian Church is a monument to the 19th century colonial project of civilising the native, it is undeservingly under that shadow of colonialism. Casting the shadow is a hamlet named Bholo Crown Reserve, some 13km south-east of Mgwali. Bholo Crown Reserve was carved out of the violently seized Ngqika Xhosa lands to reserve space for British settlement. Unlike their French counterparts, the English intended to settle in South Africa.

The practical effect of that colonial intention was the displacement of the Xhosa natives, precipitating the infamous British-Xhosa frontier wars. The list of them is too long to cover in this article, and peripheral to its scope.  Detailed historical evidence that Bholo, Lujilo and Wartburg mushroomed from colonially seized Ngqika lands can be found in the works of history professors Luvuyo Wotshela and Jeff Peires.

What is of significance to contemporary political analysis is the concomitant evolution of civilian security consciousness in colonial Bholo, and how the extension of Bholo police service to Mgwali is a safety and security, as well as a political problem. 

The evolution of settler security consciousness and the proto-type Bholo police force must have been causally connected to at least two intertwined phenomena. First, because the social life of the emerging British community was developing on seized land, it must have needed armed protection from the vanquished Ngqika Xhosa.

Second, the emerging settler economy was grounded on mainly confiscated livestock — in addition to the seized land. Again, Wotshela and Peires independently confirm the expropriation of Xhosa livestock, which was done with extreme prejudice and injury to the Xhosa natives in most cases. 

So, although the colonial occupation of Bholo hinged on militarism, it is vital to note that civilian policing must have developed separately, as a response to the threat of “counter-invasion” by the Xhosa in their attempt to recover their livestock; while the British army would be engaged on the frontier battlefields. 

Yet, history does not seem to discern that evolution as a separate colonial development. And the risk of this apparent omission is the impression that the establishment of Bholo Police Station was politically neutral. 

Furthermore, this conceptual decolonisation of present-day Bholo police station conceals the political sensitivity of repurposing it for Mgwali communities. 

It must therefore be emphasised that Bholo policing would have been intended to keep the native as remote as possible from the Bholo Crown Reserve’s borders — the so-called frontiers. To that end the native movement was criminalised as trespassing in the land from which they were forcibly alienated. It is in this historical context that the remote policing of Mgwali from the former colonial reserve is a political injury.

History might be silent on the association between Bholo Crown Reserve and the present-day Bholo police station. But that association is conceptually apparent, logically inferable and can be felt by the people of Mgwali. 

Mgwali is contending with operational obstacles which, albeit their location within colonial history, are measurable by today’s policing standards. 

For instance, the distance between Mgwali and Bholo police station, calculated from a point in Heckel using Google Earth, is 21.3km. And starting the calculation from a point in Heckel, not Mgwali central, is not a frivolous attempt to exaggerate the problem. 

Heckel is part of Mgwali communities which are putatively allocated to Bholo police station. This is a detail an investigator could miss if they relied on official documents or focus on the name “Mgwali” alone for their research. 

Even if the  insistence to start calculating from Mgwali central yields a favourable 13.5km, there is a hidden variable that places this distance outside the national norms and standards. 

That variable is the poor condition of the rugged, dirt and quarry-gravelled R352 road leading to and from Bholo police station. That it takes longer to cover the distance between any two points on this rugged road is not just a matter of logical inference. 

The community members who were interviewed for this article gave an average duration of 40 minutes to cover just the 13.5km by road.

Where Google Maps reveals such hidden variables is the time-distance ratio it measures to cover the direct route between Heckel and Bholo police station. The time duration is 21 minutes with an additional six minutes when the detour showing on Google Maps is activated. 

Yet, the actual distance between Heckel and Bholo police station is 12km. This duration should be shorter on a rural road in good condition, with no delaying heavy traffic or traffic control mechanisms such as traffic lights.

The base-line statistics are not covered in detail either. Worth mentioning in terms of regulations regarding reasonable access to, and allocation of a local police station are: (i) a police station should be located within 15km radius of the communities it polices and, (ii) a time window of about 10 to 15 minutes to respond to a crime in progress (ALPHA-CRIME) must be achievable.

The time variable alone shows that crime victims of Mgwali communities can wait up to at least 45 minutes for police arrival at the crime scene. That is a gross deviation from the South African Police Service (SAPS) baseline.

Notably, Mgwali is a special case because of its political sensitivity as a neo-colonial frontier. Otherwise, it is a case study in the context of national challenges facing safety and security across the country. 

On 3 April 2024, Business Tech reported that SAPS average response time to scenes of crime in progress is over 60 minutes in the Northern Cape province, whereas in the Gauteng province SAPS averages 11 minutes 56 seconds to respond to scenes of crime in progress.

The obvious conclusion is that Mgwali, like many other places across the country, is inadequately policed. And ordinarily this conclusion should end the story and serve as yet another statistic within the broad operational policing challenges in South Africa. 

But that is not how the measurements around access to police service are meant to be understood in this article. The measurements are meant to be understood in two ways. First, they are intended to show that policing in Mgwali is not historicised and politicised without appreciation of present-day operational norms and standards.

Second, they are intended to elucidate and strengthen the hypothetical argument that the alienation of Mgwali from Bholo police station is colonial and ipso facto a political problem. And since safety and security is in the Bill of Rights, the problem of policing in Mgwali puts the Bill of Rights under the shadow of colonialism. 

It is this colonial origin of Mgwali’s alienation from Bholo police station that makes the main thrust of this article more political than operational. 

Ironically, when black South Africans began to complain about their perceived failure of democracy to deliver, the standard response was to liken their attitude to slaves petitioning to be enslaved again. Yet, a neo-colonial frontier like Mgwali is like a hub of democratised colonial slaves — a politically injurious contradiction in terms.

It is granted that whenever the colour of the elephant in the room is black, that could be politically embarrassing in a democracy. But one of the “unsayable” yet thinkable issues is the toxically high degree of tolerance for black affliction — be it by proxy from urban black middle class or among the afflicted.

But until the elephant in the room is expelled from democracy, it must be animated and exposed. And so must be the shadow of colonialism. It must be exposed in order to energise the political muscle leading the charge to clear it from the skies of democracy. 

Mzwandile Manto kaB Wapi is an independent philosopher and community activist and Tembani Nicolas Vuna is the national chairperson of Mgwali Development Forum.

– The Mail & Guardian

State owes Nedbank R30 million for ‘hijacked’ R118m housing project:

The bank is threatening legal action to recoup the money owed on
the project

– The Mail & Guardian

Do women adapt better? Or just differently?:

In March, for International Women’s Month, I published an edition of this column titled, Are Women More Creative Than Men?. 

Women I interviewed felt that the answer was “not more creative but differently”. They pointed out that societal expectations have limited women’s creativity and its recognition and, despite that, their emotional intelligence and empathy and their ability to shift perspective and collaborate give them a special creative power.

Some people — especially women — thought the question was stupid, that we shouldn’t generalise based on sex, especially around something as esoteric as creativity, which expresses itself in so many ways.

So, of course, being a man, I thought I’d double down, in South Africa’s Women’s Month, to turn a similar lens on the question of adaptability. At the same time, I have learned a bit of a lesson, which is why the title of this week’s column is phrased as it is.

Let’s start by getting definitions clear. Adaptability is distinct from creativity although they resemble each other. Adaptability is the first step in the process of ACI (adaptability, creativity, innovation). 

In our Innotivity training, I define adaptability as the ability to be different from yourself, as opposed to creativity, which is about thinking differently from yourself, and innovation, which is acting differently from yourself. Be, think, act. Then get your results. 

The process begins with adapting to the situation — changing ourselves to meet changing needs or doing so ahead of time when we’ve foreseen them. None of the rest happens until we adapt first.

This year, LinkedIn called adaptability the most important skill in work, replacing creativity and, at least partly, fulfilling Alvin Toffler’s prediction in his 1970 book Future Shock that the rapid rate of change would make adaptability more important than reading and writing in less than 20 years.

Better late than never. A century and a half before that, Charles Darwin told us that adaptability was more important to human survival than intelligence, strength, or anything, and we didn’t really listen to him either. 

Cognitive, emotional and behavioural transformation is at the core of adaptability. The aim is to shift over here, with me, to create a different experience that leads to different results in the world outside of me.

Women are better at such shifts. They tend to use positive emotions to cope with stress, keeping them more mentally flexible, while men tend to hunker down and push through. 

As gender roles have evolved, women have had to continually redefine their identities, juggling career aspirations with family commitments and to be seen as human beings instead of women in the first place. Work-life balance, cross-cultural navigation, psychological flexibility and resilience are all important elements of adaptability that women excel at.  

“Women are chameleons,” says Noloyiso Tlali, a top executive I know. “We’re required to fill many different roles throughout a single day and we do it. Even in the face of external resistance and loud inner critics and imposter syndrome.”

Research backs this up, showing a direct correlation between women’s collaboration and empathy skills and their adaptive achievement. 

Boston Consulting Group and The Leadership Quarterly both conducted studies showing that companies put more women in leadership roles during times of crisis. This implies that women are considered better at adaptive leadership — although it also puts them on a “glass cliff” where failure is more likely and criticism and blame easier. 

For example, Mary Barra took over General Motors while the company was dealing with a massive recall that nearly bankrupted it. And Marissa Mayer became CEO of Yahoo! around the same time, managing to keep it alive while its relevance was disappearing. 

Even in politics, women have often been tapped to lead at times of polarisation. Take Theresa May during Brexit, or Kamala Harris in the US now. Men, at such times, usually lead us into greater conflict as the way to get us out.

The most surprising data I came upon while researching this piece showed that women have been socialised, more than men, to adopt a growth mindset. 

The creator of the concept of growth mindset, American psychologist Carol Dweck, led a study showing that parents are more likely to teach their daughters than their sons the importance of persistence — to repeatedly adapt and try again. 

And a piece published in Psychology of Women offered ample evidence that parents teach their girl children more skills related to overcoming challenges, seeming to expect them to have to make a bigger effort than the boys to forge their paths.

Teachers also tend to teach girls to lean more on attitude than abilities and to adopt more adaptive learning strategies. Women excel in collaborative problem-solving at least partly because they are taught to compromise.

Niven Postma is a South African expert on organisational politics and leadership. She points out that she, like other girls, was taught to play it safe and get good marks, while the boys were taught to play rough and take risks. Postma shared two powerful quotes with me.

Reshma Saujani: “We raise our girls to be perfect and our boys to be brave.”

Sallie Krawcheck: “The biggest mistake I’ve seen women make at work is that they treat work like school. They think if they put their head down and work hard, someone will notice and give them an A.” 

Adaptability permeates even female language, according to linguistics expert Deborah Tannen. We teach our boys to use their speaking to develop status and our girls to use theirs to develop rapport. 

Boys try to outdo one another with jokes and stories, while girls avoid putting others down and ostracise those who act superior — until high school, of course, when about 20% of them become part-time “mean girls”, according to, yes, actual studies of the mean girls phenomenon.

This all speaks to the idea that, from an early age, we teach men to be assertive while we teach women to be flexible. And I don’t mean like Simone Biles … although that too. I spent years in yoga trying to do the splits. Women are better at it.

Which brings us to the biology. The US National Academy of Sciences and Journal of Neuroscience have both shown that women have a stronger corpus callosum — the tissue that connects the two brain hemispheres — than men do. This facilitates multitasking and multiple interpretations of self.

In other words, men have a physical reason to find it harder to shift who we are to meet the moment. This may be why men feel a greater need to be bold, certain and firm in our identity. In creative thinking, this lack of personal adaptability is a serious weakness. 

If women are better at adapting, can we men catch up? Perhaps enlist women as our adaptability mentors, letting them teach us to embrace change and cultivate resilience so we don’t get left behind in the future of work? Perhaps look into the mirror and practice identity shifting? Maybe just get a brain transplant?

If we’re focused about it, we might manage to be as good at adapting as women are by November, which is International Men’s Month. But probably never.

Michael Brian Lee is an advisory board member of World Creativity and Innovation Week/Day and a Radio 702 creativity contributor.

– The Mail & Guardian

Submit and get free exposure here: Showcase Your Business | Advertise Your Special Offers.