CITY OF PRETTY London Riots

The past few days have been utterly surreal. I spent four serene days isolated from the media on the border of Wales at the Big Chill festival listening to music and sleeping under the stars. The morning that we leave the festival, my friend says to me that the beauty of camping is this exact ignorant bliss – the world could be ending and we would never know. With London being half the world, it’s like he willed his wish.  

I read about the riots for the first time in the Metro paper, a daily free handout I pick up at the train station. I figure that, by nature, the tabloid style of the paper sensationalised the series of events that took place in London on Saturday and Sunday night. On first encounter, it’s difficult to make a personal connection to these events – even though I live in the UK, they seem far away from my reality. Like the xenophobic attacks in South Africa two years ago, I can see the kicked-up dust in the distance but I can’t smell the burning tires. Not greatly affected by decisions of the government, I sit comfortably between the best of both worlds. I have choice.

Arriving back in London, I am still oblivious to the extent of anarchy. It’s only when we walk from the station to our house in Hackney that it is starting to feel too close to home. We joke that the yobs are coming to get us in Hackney as we pass a boxing shop owner boarding up his windows. That night, I struggle to fall asleep as choppers soar above my bedroom and the bellow of gunshots ricochet through quiet residential streets. I am good at dramatising, but this is real life. Less than a kilometre from the house, Mare Street is being looted by a 500-strong mob of teenagers. Similar scenes are spread all throughout London. The police are powerless, outnumbered, doomed if they act with force and doomed if they don’t.

The next day there is a post-apocalyptic silence on the streets of Hackney. Most shops don’t even open for the day. On Oxford Street the world seems peaceful as tourists carry shopping bags and business is as usual. Then I notice the one-to-one police civilian ratio, as the Met has increased their numbers from 6000 to 16000.

‘We will fight this sick society with all that it takes’ says David Cameron. Today’s edition of Metro encourages us to stay off the streets as rumours spread of an impending curfew. I cycle down an empty Mare Street in the afternoon to take pictures of the aftermath, but all that’s left are boarded-up shop fronts – the efficiency being the reminder that this is the first world. The facade has been put up to cover London’s shame, but the damage runs so deep that no amount of plywood can make it disappear.

Moving to London relieved me of the daily annoyance of hearing Malema’s name in the headlines, South Africa’s political uncertainty, the corruption and devastating divide between rich and poor reinforced every day when rolling up my window to deny that streetkid his plea. Out of sight and out of mind. The riots in London are not dissimilar from the xenophobic attacks back home. Both are bred by anger, frustration, disillusionment, disrespect, neglect, decay and a disconnect from the decision makers.

In England, frustrated kids are smashing windows and grabbing sneakers, clothes, LCD TV’s - it’s not the struggle to eat, it’s the struggle to keep up with what promise (or lack thereof) has been sold to the next generation. The new university rate policy has made tertiary education so elite that only the richest will be able to afford a degree from 2012, with the rest paying off debts for the rest of their working lives.

In South Africa, hungry women and men are channeling their anger into torching immigrants who are supposedly stealing their jobs, led by a government that exploits illiteracy to gain voting power. In my opinion, the ethics are the same.

The riots have reminded me that although I am currently living a life of jet-set hedonism entirely engrossed in my own agenda, evading my responsibility towards my fellow country men and women can only be a temporary solution. I am no politician nor am I particularly patriotic, but assuming an opinion from afar is almost more detrimental than not having an opinion at all.