By Sello Hatang:
Hangry is one of those modern words that makes us smile. It describes that moment when hunger robs us of patience and reason. We become irritable, emotional and quick to lash out. But perhaps hangry has become more than an individual condition. Perhaps it has become the emotional state of our nation.
South Africa is not simply hungry for food. It is hungry for jobs, dignity, safety, justice and hope. High unemployment, widening inequality, deepening poverty, persistent corruption and collapsing public services have created a society where too many people feel abandoned.
Communities have pleaded for intervention for years. They have watched factories close, businesses leave, infrastructure decay and opportunities disappear. When those cries are ignored for too long, frustration inevitably seeks an outlet.
As I often remind myself, a hungry society is rarely just fighting for bread; it is fighting for dignity.
That does not mean every expression of anger is justified. Nor does it mean we should dismiss that anger simply because it makes us uncomfortable. The temptation in moments like these is to choose sides. One side dismisses the lived reality of citizens who have endured years of neglect and insecurity. The other ignores the humanity of those who become the targets of that frustration. Both responses leave us poorer.
The reality is that South Africans have legitimate concerns about crime, lawlessness and the failure of the state to enforce its own laws. Hijacked buildings have become centres of criminality. Human trafficking networks continue to exploit vulnerable people. Illegal mining syndicates, extortion rackets, drug trafficking, vehicle theft, counterfeit goods, illicit trade and organised crime have flourished in many communities. These realities cannot simply be wished away or labelled as imagined fears.
However, another truth deserves equal attention. These criminal enterprises do not operate in isolation. They often rely on the active participation or protection of South Africans themselves. Corrupt officials, dishonest businesspeople, compromised law enforcement officers and willing collaborators create the conditions in which organised crime survives. Criminality has no nationality. It recruits wherever greed finds a willing heart.
I strongly believe that crime wears no passport. Corruption speaks every language.
If we reduce a complex crisis to blaming an entire nationality or community, we risk solving nothing while damaging everything.
Government carries a profound responsibility here. For too long, many communities have felt unheard as they raised concerns about porous borders, weak law enforcement, unemployment and organised crime. When legitimate concerns are ignored, they do not disappear. They accumulate. They harden. Eventually they spill over in ways that threaten the social fabric itself. Listening earlier is always less costly than restoring trust later.
At the same time, we must resist the dangerous temptation to suspend Ubuntu until conditions improve. Ubuntu is not something we place in storage during difficult seasons and retrieve when life becomes comfortable again. Once compassion is deliberately abandoned, restoring it becomes far more difficult than we imagine. Wounds deepen. Distrust becomes inherited. Children learn suspicion before they learn kindness. The suspension of Ubuntu does not come with a guarantee that it can be restored.
This is precisely why we must separate criminality from humanity. Those who commit crimes must face the full consequences of the law, regardless of where they come from. Equally, those who have committed no crime should never lose their dignity simply because they share a nationality with offenders. Justice becomes strongest when it remains individual rather than collective.
History reminds us how quickly fear can become prejudice, and how prejudice can become violence. Nations seldom lose their soul overnight. They lose it gradually, one compromise at a time, one hateful word at a time, one act of indifference at a time. Before long, what once shocked us becomes ordinary.
The greatest fires are often started by words before they are fuelled by flames.
South Africa has always been at its best when it refused simple answers to difficult questions. We can demand secure borders, effective policing, accountable leadership and decisive action against organised crime. We can insist that corruption be uprooted wherever it exists and that those entrusted with enforcing the law do so without fear or favour.
We can acknowledge the pain and frustration of neglected communities without allowing that pain to consume our shared humanity.
May we be careful not to spread fires that will burn the soul of our nation. There are enough people willing to inflame anger. May we become those who carry both truth and compassion. For if hunger can make a nation hangry, only justice, dignity and Ubuntu together can make it whole again.- @NewsSA_Online
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