It is a grim irony that the survival of a senior police officer in an assassination attempt should be treated as a cause for cheer, when it is in fact a stark illustration of how far South Africa has fallen. The attempted killing of yet another state official is not an anomaly, but a symptom of a deeper rot. We are witnessing the slow, agonising collapse of the social contract, a process that historians will one day liken to the late Roman Republic’s descent into praetorian chaos.
The would-be assassin’s bullet missed its target, but it struck a nerve in the body politic. The question is not whether the officer will recover, but whether the state can recover its monopoly on violence. The regional stability of southern Africa, already fragile, now trembles on the edge of a precipice.
The ruling party, mired in corruption and factionalism, offers platitudes while the machinery of law and order corrodes. This is not a crisis of leadership, but a crisis of legitimacy. The officer’s survival gives us a brief respite, but the next bullet may not miss.
And when it does, we shall have no one to blame but ourselves for our collective decadence.
