In the Eye of the Storm

by Dr Raymond Perrier · May 17, 2015

The image of �the eye of the storm� is that when there is a storm going on it looks frightening from the outside and it is even more terrifying if you are inside it � but strangely, if you are right at the very heart of it, life is calm.

The Denis Hurley Centre in Durban, which found itself in the eye of the storm. (Photo: Barker Sky Imaging)

The phrase was used as the title of the autobiography of Bishop Jeffrey Robinson, the Anglican bishop in America who found himself in the middle of an international controversy a few years ago.

He comments on how for him life for the most part carried on as normal: leading prayers, visiting parishes, baptising, confirming, marrying, burying.

I found myself using this phrase �the eye of the storm� when friends, from as far away as Australia or as close as the northern suburbs of Durban, expressed concern for the Denis Hurley Centre, of which I am the director, and its staff during the recent outbreak of xenophobic violence in and around the city.

When events like this happen, for the most part we all have to rely on what the media shows us, and principally what we see on the TV news. The complexity of a situation has to be delivered in a digestible two-minute package that covers introducing the story, interviewing some people affected, showing images, having the opinion of an expert and ending with speculation on what might happen next.

You have already spent almost two minutes reading this piece so far, so that gives you a sense of how immediate TV coverage has to be.

Not surprisingly, the TV will focus on what is most dramatic, most sensational, most visual and most arresting. Whether what they show is in any way representative of the situation is another matter entirely.

So I was intrigued to compare and contrast what I personally observed on the streets of Durban with what was being fed to the country (and eventually to the world) about the situation. Of course, what I observed was not representative either, but at least my version was not edited just because it would make good copy or punchy TV.

As you read my comments below, please do not think that I am trying to diminish the very real suffering experienced by some people, nor the general sense of fear that prevailed. These incidents cannot be dismissed lightly. But what I am trying to do is put the TV pictures into the perspective of what I saw around me.

I did see for myself a steady stream of people arriving at our centre over the first few days, having fled their homes. In the end, through the Refugee Pastoral Care of the archdiocese of Durban, we provided emergency housing for 178 people.

That is a distressing number, to which we need to add the thousands who were housed in camps in Isipingo and Chatsworth.

But on a conservative estimate there are many hundreds of thousands of �foreign nationals�� living in Durban who � though less comfortably than before � continued to live in their homes, talk to their neighbours and visit their local shops.

And I did see at first hand the very difficult conditions that displaced people have had to live in, given the need to find emergency accommodation. None of us would willingly share such cramped quarters with people we do not know, fearful of stepping out of the door. But there are conditions of poverty that thousands of people � South African and non-South African � endure day in and day out in this country without prompting visits from high-level politicians, church leaders or NGO directors.

And I also saw violence. When dropping off a family at one of the emergency shelters I found myself skirting the most serious outbreak in central Durban with crowds of people and gunshots and shuttered shops. And then on one occasion this came right to our front door as a group of men chased each other along Cathedral Road with sticks and pangas. There was screaming and shouting until the police moved in, very quickly, and calmed the situation. This was definitely too close for comfort.

But the rest of the time on the streets of Durban it was �business as usual�. Not as much business � a number of shops, foreign-owned and locally-owned, were reluctant to re-open � and not as many customers, people inevitably avoided the city for a few days. But this was not the Durban war zone that was being projected to the viewing public.

The reason why the media play out the extreme version of the story is understandable. If this were not what we viewers wanted, then they would not give it to us; so we have some responsibility too.

When we hear about a story do we immediately want to see the violence and the gore�the old saying in TV newsrooms was: �If it bleeds, it leads.� Do we not then encourage the TV editors by consuming this version of events so avidly and switching off at boring stories of general misfortune?

And when there is an incident on the street, or an accident on the road, do we feel the need to stand and stare and possibly make things worse by adding to the sense of chaos and panic? What exactly is the impulse that makes us take out our cellphones and take photos and videos to post them on the Internet? Is this going to help peace or reconciliation?

I worry even more that�at some level and unintentionally�we were even encouraging these young bullies by providing an audience for them and giving them a justification for their violence. After all, they were not just mindless opportunistic hooligans; they were a social problem that warranted debate on TV and headline coverage in the media.

The media coverage has achieved one good thing: it has triggered immense generosity from South Africans who�keen to show that such xenophobic violence is not the real spirit of the nation�have gone out of their way to deliver food and clothing and blankets for those in need. The mountain of gifts at our centre for distribution to those affected is just a part of the outpouring that we have seen from across the community.

As human beings we often respond well to emergencies wherever they are. That generosity should not be taken for granted and should not go un-thanked. We respond because we are touched by the extreme suffering of a particular group.

But I wonder if that makes it harder for us to be touched by the everyday suffering of many more. Charities that raise money for the poor (and I have worked for several) know that emergency appeals get a response that ordinary appeals rarely match. So they have to dress up ordinary poverty and drudgery as if they were like an emergency, and that just desensitises us more.

Let me close with an edifying tale, all the better for being true.

A photocopier salesman from the suburbs was due to come in to see me but phoned anxiously, having seen the TV pictures of downtown Durban. I reassured him that all was safe and that, in fact, it was a good day to come in since it was calm with so much less traffic.

Within five minutes of his arrival, the incident that I described above erupted outside our front door. I instructed that we �lock down� the whole building, keeping staff, patients and visitors in the centre for their own safety, and also to make sure that we did not add to an already chaotic situation.

So my fearful young, white photocopier man was locked inside too, for two hours, while he anxiously phoned in reports to head office. I feared he would never want to have anything to do with church groups or the city again.

But instead, the next weekend, he went to volunteer at the refugee camp set up in Chatsworth, �so inspired� was he by what he had seen in the Denis Hurley Centre that morning.

Now, I wonder if we can persuade him and his friends to come every week and help us feed 400 homeless people�