19/09/2026
The Violence We Inherited: Is Africa Fighting the Wars of Its Past? - An opinion piece by Mr Khayalethu Matanzima in his personal capacity.
Perhaps the violence tearing through our homes, streets and communities is not simply a failure of individuals, but the unfinished business of societies that were taught for generations that power is exercised through force.
There is something deeply disturbing about the violence that has become so familiar in South Africa, across parts of the African continent and the world in general.
A woman is killed by a man she once trusted. A young man is shot over a territorial dispute. A family wakes up to the sound of intruders breaking into their home. Children grow up surrounded by gang warfare. A taxi dispute becomes a murder. A disagreement between neighbours becomes a physical confrontation. Young people carry knives and guns as though they are ordinary tools of survival.
And increasingly, much of this violence is directed by Africans against other Africans.
We call it black-on-black violence. We call it femicide. Gang violence. House robbery. Xenophobia. Political violence. Criminality. Tribalism. Intolerance.
But perhaps we need to ask a more uncomfortable question:
What if beneath these individual acts of violence lies a much older wound?
This is not an argument that Africans are naturally violent. Nor is it an argument that colonialism and apartheid excuse the actions of today's perpetrators. They do not. It is an argument that history does not disappear simply because political systems change.
South Africa's own Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented how apartheid's racial and ethnic engineering destroyed and displaced communities, while the unequal distribution of resources produced profound deprivation in African communities. The Commission also recorded how violence increasingly penetrated communities themselves, with divisions along political, ethnic, linguistic and class lines becoming sources of conflict.
The legacy was therefore not simply economic. It was social. It was psychological. It was relational. It affected how people understood power, authority, masculinity, survival and even one another.
WHEN VIOLENCE BECOMES A LANGUAGE
For generations, colonial and apartheid systems normalised a society in which force could determine where people lived, where they worked, what education they received, how they moved and what opportunities were available to them.
Apartheid was itself a system of organised structural violence.
The consequences did not end on 27 April 1994.
The official TRC record recognised lingering physical, psychological, economic and social effects of repression and conflict. It also concluded that the damage had penetrated relationships between families, neighbours and communities and that South Africa required extensive healing and reconstruction.
This matters because violence is learned.
Children observe how adults resolve conflict. Communities learn what behaviour is tolerated. Young men learn what constitutes "strength". Families learn what must remain silent. Institutions teach people whether justice can be trusted.
And when generations grow up in environments where humiliation, exclusion, poverty and violence are normalised, violence can become one of the languages through which frustration and power are expressed.
That does not make the perpetrator innocent.
It means we must understand the ecosystem that produces the perpetrator.
THE UNFINISHED GEOGRAPHY OF APARTHEID
Walk through many South African towns and cities and history is still visible in the geography.
The wealthy and poor often live worlds apart.
Former townships remain spatially disconnected from economic opportunities. Former homelands continue to experience deep socioeconomic disadvantage.
The World Bank has described South Africa as one of the world's most unequal societies and has identified the strong spatial dimension of poverty as part of the enduring legacy of apartheid.
This creates a dangerous environment in which millions of people are expected to build peaceful lives while navigating unemployment, poverty, inadequate infrastructure, social exclusion and limited opportunity.
Poverty does not automatically produce criminals. Poor people are not inherently violent.
But persistent deprivation, exclusion and hopelessness can create conditions in which criminal networks, gangs, substance abuse and other forms of social breakdown find fertile ground.
The World Bank has previously described the relationship between poverty, violence and the apartheid legacy as interconnected rather than separate phenomena.
Perhaps, therefore, we have been too quick to ask:
"Why are these people so violent?"
Perhaps we should also ask:
"What kind of society are we producing, and what experiences are we reproducing?"
THE AFRICAN MIGRANT CARRIES A HISTORY TOO
There is another dimension to this conversation that South Africa cannot afford to ignore. Across our continent, millions of Africans have lived through civil wars, political instability, persecution, poverty and displacement.
Some have travelled to South Africa. Others have travelled to Europe, North America, the Middle East and elsewhere. Some arrived through formal immigration systems. Others crossed borders irregularly because survival does not always wait for paperwork.
Behind the statistics is a human being. A mother who left a war zone. A father who watched his village disappear. A young person who grew up hearing gunfire. A child who learned that home could become unsafe overnight.
South Africa continues to host refugees and asylum-seekers from countries including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. UNHCR notes that many live within urban communities and face challenges involving documentation, xenophobia and access to services. These people do not arrive in South Africa as blank pages.
They arrive carrying memories.
They arrive carrying grief.
They arrive carrying survival strategies.
Some may carry trauma.
And the same is true of many South Africans.
We must therefore be careful when we reduce African migration to "foreigners coming here to take our jobs" or reduce African violence to "these people are naturally violent".
Africa has exported its people because Africa has experienced wars, political instability, economic exclusion and displacement. The tragedy is that sometimes people fleeing violence arrive in societies already struggling with their own unresolved violence.
Then two histories of trauma meet.
BUT WE MUST NOT TURN TRAUMA INTO AN EXCUSE
There is a crucial distinction between explaining violence and excusing violence.
A history of oppression does not give a man permission to murder a woman.
Poverty does not justify robbery.
Apartheid does not justify gang warfare.
Migration does not justify xenophobia.
Trauma does not justify abuse.
And being a victim of history does not entitle anyone to become a victimiser.
This distinction is especially important when discussing femicide. Violence against women cannot simply be explained away as "historical trauma".
The World Health Organization identifies gender inequality and harmful gender norms as important drivers of violence against women. South Africa's first national GBV prevalence study similarly identified deeply rooted gender norms and unequal power relationships as important factors in the country's violence against women.
The conversation must therefore include patriarchy, masculinity, substance abuse, family structures, economic dependency, socialisation, policing, justice and community accountability.
History is part of the explanation. It is not the whole explanation.
PERHAPS WE ARE TRANSMITTING TRAUMA INSTEAD OF HEALING IT
This may be the most difficult question of all.
What happens when a traumatised society raises children without adequately processing its trauma?
Perhaps it passes the wound from one generation to another.
The abused child becomes an aggressive adult. The boy who grows up believing that vulnerability is weakness learns to express pain through anger. The young man who has never been taught how to resolve conflict reaches for a weapon. The woman who has watched violence being normalised may teach her children that violence is simply "how men are".
A community repeatedly exposed to crime begins to build walls instead of relationships. Fear replaces trust. Suspicion replaces solidarity. Aggression becomes masculinity. Silence becomes survival. And eventually, violence becomes ordinary. That is the danger. The greatest threat is not only that violence exists. It is that society becomes accustomed to it.
WE NEED TO REDESIGN THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
If our diagnosis is simply "bad people", our solution will always be punishment. Punishment has a place. Criminals must be held accountable. Victims deserve justice. The state must protect citizens.
But punishment alone cannot rebuild a damaged social fabric.
We need societal engineers. Teachers.
Parents. Traditional leaders. Religious leaders. Community organisations. Psychologists. Social workers. Healthcare professionals. Police. Courts. Politicians. Businesses. Sporting organisations. Universities. Media organisations. Civil society. Creative Industry. And, perhaps most importantly, ordinary citizens.
We need to deliberately redesign the environments in which children grow up. We need schools that teach emotional intelligence alongside mathematics. We need communities that teach conflict resolution alongside discipline. We need men who can demonstrate that strength includes restraint, responsibility and compassion. We need fathers who understand that their sons are watching them. We need mothers and fathers who understand that parenting is not merely providing food and education; it is modelling behaviour. We need communities that stop celebrating violent masculinity as evidence of manhood. We need to give young people alternatives to gangs, drugs and criminal networks. We need accessible psychosocial support for communities carrying generations of trauma. And we need to build relationships between South Africans and African migrants that are based on humanity rather than suspicion.
THE AFRICAN FUTURE CANNOT BE BUILT WITH YESTERDAY'S EMOTIONAL ARCHITECTURE
We cannot change the past. Colonialism happened. Apartheid happened. Wars happened. Displacement happened. Political violence happened. Families were broken. Communities were destroyed. And millions of people inherited consequences they never personally created.
But history does not have to become destiny. The question before us is whether we will continue transmitting the violence of previous generations—or whether we will become the generation that interrupts it.
Perhaps the most radical form of resistance today is not another confrontation. Perhaps it is healing. Perhaps it is teaching a child that disagreement does not require violence. Teaching a young man that crying does not make him weak. Teaching a girl that her body belongs to her.
Teaching parents that discipline does not require humiliation.
Teaching communities that an immigrant is a human being before they are a foreign national.
Teaching leaders that development is more than infrastructure—it is the development of human beings. And teaching ourselves that compassion is not weakness. South Africa and Africa need a new social contract: one built not merely around laws and institutions, but around how human beings treat one another.
We cannot police our way out of a crisis that is also social. We cannot legislate our way out of a crisis that is also cultural. We cannot economically develop our way out of a crisis while leaving broken families and traumatised communities behind. And we cannot heal society while pretending that history has no consequences.
The work ahead is therefore bigger than fighting crime. It is bigger than fighting femicide. It is bigger than fighting gangs. It is bigger than fighting xenophobia. We must fight the conditions that make violence socially imaginable, emotionally acceptable and repeatedly transferable from one generation to another.
That requires a concerted effort from every sector of society.
It requires us to rethink what it means to raise a child, to be a man, to be a woman, to be a neighbour, to be a leader and to be African.
Perhaps our greatest national project should be neither political nor economic. Perhaps it should be human. To build a society that is more patient, more caring, more nurturing and more capable of resolving pain without turning it into violence.
Because if violence is part of what history handed us, then healing must become part of what we hand to the next generation.
**We inherited the wound. We do not have to inherit the violence.**
