Individual and Collective Recovery from Human-Caused Disasters

On 29 September 2021, I gave a keynote address entitled "Individual and Collective Recovery from Human-Caused Disasters: Lessons from Political Violence Around the Globe". The keynote was delivered to the Institute for Disasters Mental Health Conference which this year had the theme of "From 9/11 to Covid-19, Lessons from Two Decades of Disaster Responses".

This IDMH conference, hosted by State University of New York (Online), brought together a roster of expert presenters from across the US to review how much has been learned about incorporating mental health needs into emergency response, and to look ahead to where we can. My keynote explored lessons from managing political violence for mental health in disaster settings.

A war on terror or a war on reason

India defies description, especially after you spend only a week there and in one city, Delhi. Delhi is a great city of the world, embodying dozens of cultures, old and new. The city survives on teeming markets selling anything from bananas to electronics and a modern financial sector that is expanding rapidly.

The Indian economy has been growing at an annual rate of 8% to 9% recently, the second-fastest expanding economy in the world, behind China.

However, when I first arrived in Delhi, the signs of this new economic giant were hard to spot. The airport was underdeveloped – OR Tambo International Airport, in Johannesburg, makes it look like a small regional airport time-warped in the 1960s. At first glance, the city looks like it is more in decay than development. Crumbling buildings, beggars and poorly kept streets with children in gutters and thousands of people peddling cheap small items is the norm.

However, as I acclimatised to the bustling capital, I started to see development everywhere. In the middle of a row of rundown buildings and behind people, cars, animals and bicycles are upmarket clothes stores, software companies and international banks. Once you start to head out of the city, it becomes even more evident: new shopping malls, office blocks and modern apartments for sale. This is a country on the move, although still with a massive underclass.

Billboards advertise "the lifestyle you want", complete with pictures of compact apartments, swimming pools, fully equipped with 'German kitchens' and a photo of a smiling family, which invariably includes daddy, mommy, son and daughter. The influence of the West is pervasive and growing.

However, it is not only the Western lifestyles that is being imported. Ethnic strife, marked by what George W Bush would call the 'war on terror', is also notably present in India.

This was made all too real on the last night of my stay, when a series of five bombs exploded across Delhi, killing 25 people and injuring over 100. Two of the bombs went off fairly close to my hotel. I had eaten in the bombed district and driven through the area numerous times. The attacks were claimed by a group called the Indian Mujahideen, which is said to be linked to al-Qa'ida.

Immediately following the blasts, eerily familiar debates began playing themselves out on television. Was the government tough enough on radicals, asked the media. And the word 'terrorism' was thrown about by the Indian government in a way reminiscent of a US Republican convention or Sunday lunch on the Bush ranch.

Of course, the bombs in Delhi are acts of terror. Blowing up innocent people is immoral. But is it helpful to lump every act of terror in the same boat? Those setting off the bombs and world governments are equally guilty in that.

It is comfortable for governments to frame all extreme acts of violence as being about the war on terror. Such language justifies tough military action and tighter police control, while often diverting attention from other problems, such as poverty, structural discrimination and long histories of political tension. Governments seem to take perverse pleasure in being part of the global 'war on terror' club.

The alleged perpetrators also like to oversimplify matters. In an email from the Indian Mujahideen, the bombs are said to be a response to the "hostile hatred" of Islam and justified punishment for the "sins" of the people.

But when did global politics and political ideology become so simple?

Bush wants us to believe that there is only one war, and the bombers that there is only one justifiable struggle.

The rise of the totalising discourse is of great concern. Surely, it denies complex local politics, individual power struggles and massive cultural variations in how the so-called war on terror plays itself out. Painting everything with the same brush is not only lazy, anti-explanatory and culturally vacuous, but dangerous.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 3 October 2008 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Simple lesson from 9/11 and reprisals

A few months after the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York, I visited the site where the World Trade Centre once stood. I was drawn to it out of a desire to turn the almost celluloid television event that was Hollywood-like in its magnitude into reality. On one level my visit did this. The enormity of the calamity was immediately apparent. The gaping space where the 110-storey Towers once stood was a poignant marker of the size of the disaster. The heart-rending messages on the fence surrounding the site and posters of the missing a reminder of the human loss.

At the same time, however, my visit was decidedly unreal. Tourists clamoured for the best view of the site. Some disturbingly posed for photographs smiling in front of the rubble. An array of tasteless souvenirs were up for grabs. You could procure a roll of Osama Bin Laden toilet paper with the message 'Osama Kiss My Butt' for a few dollars. The pyre was still smouldering and people were making money. Nothing felt sacred about the place. It was a sad mess.

9/11 Memorial Under Construction
Rebecca Wilson / CC 

Recently, on a trip to New York, I found myself drawn to the space again. I was hoping for something different a few years on. I arrived at the site via the newly-renovated World Trade Centre station, a large clean area with stainless-steel finishes. The whole site was cleared, contained and ready for development. The hawkers had been shunted elsewhere. Signs urged visitors to keep the site special and not to buy any items. Makeshift memorials and posters had been removed. Memorial plaques had been erected, listing the names of those killed. Of course, there were tourists, even those posing in front of the site. But tourist buses shuffled people on and off the site without much commotion. Everything seemed more subdued and ordered.

But something remained amiss and reality still felt distorted. This might be inevitable, considering the site is in the midst of an energetic city with little time for reflection. The scale of the devastation remains overwhelming. The attacks are also still recent. How can we memorialise history while it is in the making?

But the most startling realisation I had on my second visit was that, although Ground Zero now seems more ordered, this too was an illusion. The mess has not gone away but has been transferred elsewhere, namely to Iraq and Afghanistan. What makes this worse is that the US reprisal attacks, especially on Iraq, regardless of the commercial advantage to various US concerns, really boils down to misguided revenge. In fact, the whole sorry situation, from the attacks on the Towers to the US invasions, reek of vengeance justified by a whole range of perverted moral claims.

These claims seem tragic in the true meaning of the word. In literature a tragedy is a story in which a character is reduced to ruin because of moral flaws in their character. There are those who feel that the US has reaped what it sowed; its penchant for interfering in the business of other countries, commercialism and exploitation has meant that it finally got what it deserved. Equally, the "you are either with us or against us" mentality advocated by George W Bush is used to justify any action against those labelled as morally-bankrupt 'terrorist', no matter the consequence.

But, really, it is the mentality behind both of these views that is deeply tragic. They teach us nothing about how to deal with fundamental difference constructively and they do not enhance our ability to address complex social problems one bit.

As I walked away from Ground Zero for the second time, the message I took away was simple: two wrongs just don't make a right.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 8 April 2005 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

You can kill burglars...can't you?

"You can kill burglars," screamed the UK tabloids. Such headlines were promoted by a comment by Sir John Stevens, the outgoing police commissioner, that the public should be allowed to use whatever force is necessary against intruders in their home. His statement was swiftly followed by a pamphlet produced by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Crown Prosecution Service reaffirming that "reasonable force" can be used against burglars.

Much public debate then ensued about what householders can and cannot do if someone breaks into their home. Radio talk shows ran tiresome debates about the acceptability of belting someone over the head with a baseball bat when they make off with your television.

The frenzy about it hardly matches the degree to which it is a major social problem in the UK. What is fascinating about this issue in the UK context is how it has even made it into the news. In the past 15 years there have been eleven householders prosecuted for excessive use of violence against intruders. Of these only five were prosecuted for using violence not deemed self-defence. One of these prosecutions included a man who set a trap for a burglar, captured him, beat him to death and then set him alight.

According to the British Crime Survey, the total number of domestic burglaries in England and Wales in 2002/3 was around 974 000. This means in the UK the average homeowner has a roughly one in a million chance of ending up in court associated with the use of excessive violence against an intruder.

So what is going on?

On one level the hysteria is closely linked with the UK elections that will take place in May. The focus on this issue is another dimension of the growing politics of fear that pervades the West. Highlighting the rights of citizens helps convince the electorate that the government is on their side and will allow them to enforce their individual rights at any cost.

But on another level something more sinister is afoot. While the public debate what their rights are in a fair fight with a burglar, the British government is busy whittling away at their more substantive civil liberties.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 was quickly cobbled together by the British government. This new law meant that foreign nationals could effectively be detained without trial at the discretion of the Home Secretary. Twelve individuals have been detained on this basis since December 2001. But last month the House of Lords ruled that such practices were not consistent with European human rights law. The response from the British government was astounding. Since they can no longer detain people without trial in prisons, the government decided to seek legislation that will put terror suspects under house arrest using 'control orders'. Such orders would entail suspects not being able to leave their homes, banning them from the use of phones or the Internet, electronic tagging and the enforcement of curfews. Under these proposed plans both British citizens and foreigners suspected of 'international or domestic' terrorism could be detained as a 'preventive' measure without charge or trials potentially indefinitely. In other words, while the debate rages about what rights people have in their home, the British government is drafting legislation which will erode rights and turn houses into prisons.

Now if there is one thing South Africans can teach the British about it is prisons, and specifically the vagaries of detention without trial. In the 1980s in South Africa over 80 000 people were detained without trial, some for up to two-and-a-half years. Although it may be argued by some that the practice temporarily removed some alleged threats, in the long run it served as a tool to create anger and animosity, and fuelled cycles of violence. The practice left a generation who had little respect for the law because they had only ever experienced it as partial and inconsistent. Is Britain heading the same way? Only time will tell what the full impact of the control order and associated proposals will be, but right now, the message is loud and clear. The law is there to be manipulated by government and European human rights laws disrespected.

The youth, in this case mainly young Muslim men who are the most likely victims of the proposed laws, will grow up seeing the law as a weapon to be used against them. As a consequence the law will be resented and not respected. Treat people with respect and the chance of them respecting you is all the more likely. Treat them as terrorists without a fair trial and more terror will be the result. Instead of creating a safer world through laws that promise more security, greater levels of global insecurity will prevail.

Copyright Brandon Hamber, February 2005. "Look South" Column published on Polity on 25 February 2005.

Forget the war on terror, it's morals that count

It was a strange time to be in Boston in the midst of the US election. The tension was palpable and the support for Kerry-a native son of the city-pervasive. Right up until counting started the mood was optimistic. Early exit polls suggested a Kerry victory. But very soon it all started to turn for the Democrats. By 5:30am on election day, as I sat glued to the television abandoning my plans to observe the downtown Kerry “victory” rally, it was all but over. Bush was going to win.

The following day the usually lively city seemed melancholic. Over breakfast, hotel patrons spoke openly about their disappointment. Some told me they were embarrassed to be an American. They felt isolated and that they were living in another universe to their Bush-supporting compatriots. That evening in a shop I greeted an attendant “Hi. How you doing?”

His response: “I'm looking for a new country to live in,” his words indicative of the deep ruptures that now exist within the US.

Sometime on Wednesday, President Thabo Mbeki officially congratulated George Bush. He wished him well and “fervently” hoped for “greater world stability and peace under his leadership”. No one noticed. The US is a country that is wrapped up in itself these days despite its military exploits abroad. Those of a liberal persuasion-or at least a sizeable proportion of the 56 million people or 48% of the electorate who voted for Kerry-are struggling to figure out what went wrong and what is going on. Much soul searching is being done.

When asked what issues mattered most in choosing a president, survey data in the New York Times revealed that “moral values” ranked top with economy and jobs, followed by terrorism and the Iraq war. Seemingly issues such as tax, education and health care were seen as less important. A swathe of Americans feel that the moral world is crumbling about them. A strong, principled leader that can oppose abortion, stem-cell research, and gay marriage is what they feel is needed. Just over half of voting Americans feel that Bush is such a person. To the remainder, Bush as a moral icon is laughable, given his warmongering overseas.

Meanwhile, Mbeki, in his message to Bush, appealed for “renewed support for, and interest in Africa and the developing world, reform of world institutions and an era of multilateralism marked by a concerted drive to deal decisively with the challenge of poverty and underdevelopment”. It is hard to imagine that this is even on the map for the US right now. A conservative revolution is on the march.

It is easy for those from a liberal perspective to write this off or treat Bush supporters as if they are misguided bible-bashers. But the problem is more complex than that. It is time to face the fact that the right-wing in the US is organised. They moved door-to-door securing their position. The Bush campaign utilised 1,2 million volunteers with four times as many workers in Ohio than 2000. They sold “Faith, Family and Flag” and the majority of the electorate bought it.

This suggests that many fear some sort of global moral vacuum that they think the Republicans can fill. Such views litter internet chat rooms across the US. As one Bush supporter put it: “I'm sorry but I don't lose sleep over Iraq. What I do lose sleep over is my children's future in the immoral cess pit that this country is becoming”.

We all want a safe and decent world; one that embodies good values. This is why Bush attracted the vote of some moderates as well as his traditional neo-conservative and Christian fundamentalist supporters. But their votes have endorsed, whether knowingly or not, an approach whereby the language of moral values will continue to be used to hide a value-free political and economic agenda.

The politics of morality is a new global battleground. The results can be disastrous. Estimates put the death toll in Iraq as anywhere between 20 000 and 100 000 civilians. These people were killed in the name of freedom, democracy and to allegedly make the world a safer place.

But who has really benefited from this “moral” campaign? Mostly those who sell weapons, reconstruction contractors and private security firms, many close to the Bush regime. The Bush administration has, in Iraq's most vulnerable moment, tendered it off to the lowest bidder with no discernible benefit to its indigenous economy. Defence contracts worth 76 billion dollars, for example, have been connected to nine out of thirty members of the US Defense Policy Group.

In South Africa we cannot ignore these developments. The influence of the Bush administration is going to be felt more than before in the coming years. Negotiating investment may soon not only be about crude economic negotiations alone. Is it possible that South African constitutional approaches to issues such as gay marriage could be on the table in future trade talks? As South Africans we must not simply beg for investment or bend over backwards to get it no matter the cost. We need to unmask what is going on and ask what the “real” price of investment might be.

This is particularly important given that the language of morality may also find resonance in conservative parts of Africa. Think of the views of some African churches on homosexuality. Will these confluences of interest be used to open more economic doors into Africa for Republican-aligned companies that give little back to local economies? We cannot simply dismiss the right-wing any more or get away with taunts of imperialism. Poking fun at Bush's gaffs on the podium is not enough. A serious analysis of the politics of morality and conservatism and its implications for the developing world is desperately needed. Supporting moral values sounds benign but we must ensure that the debate on morality is detached political projects.

It is time for a renewed interest in the US. We need to reach out to those who do not want morality used negatively. It is time for new alliances with liberals and progressives in the US, many of whom feel besieged in their own country right now. After all, there are only about 1 400 days to the next US election.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 19 November 2004 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.