Nairobi mall attack could have happened in Sandton

IT IS always difficult to know what to say after an event of gargantuan horror. Often all I can do is sit and watch it unfold on TV. Sometimes even that hurts too much.

It is the ordinariness of the setting for the terror attack at the Westgate Mall in Kenya that struck me harder than anything else.

I saw images of men and women running for their lives — some cradling their young children in their arms — past Mr Price Home and other familiar retailers.

There’s one particularly powerful image, of an armed Kenyan policeman standing on an escalator while a group of people, hands in the air, walked down. These people were just going to the mall to buy stuff. Some may have ducked in for just a moment.

Shopping malls are the grandest cathedrals to our sterile, prepackaged and safe consumerist culture, and we do not expect anything dangerous to happen in one at all. People leave their tweens there with a fistful of money, secure in the knowledge that bad things do not happen in malls.

We just do not think of them in that way. I could not escape the thought that this could have been Rosebank Mall, or Sandton City, or Melrose Arch.

Responsibility for the attack has been claimed by al-Shabab, a Somali extremist group with ties to al-Qaeda.

As I write this at least 69 people are confirmed dead and 63 more recorded missing in the ongoing mall siege.

At least 150 have been wounded.

The New York Times called it one of the most chilling terror attacks in East Africa since the US embassy bombings in 1998.

The president of Kenya lost family members in the attack. Officials from Canadian, British, French and South African governments confirmed that citizens from their countries were among the dead.

And with a few clicks, you can find hundreds of people on Twitter who have lost friends or family.

“The mall, called Westgate, is a symbol of Kenya’s rising prosperity, an impressive five-storey building where Kenyans can buy expensive cups of frozen yogurt and plates of sushi. On Saturdays, it is especially crowded, and US officials have long warned that Nairobi’s malls were ripe targets for terrorists, especially Westgate, because a cafe on the ground floor, right off the street, is owned by Israelis,” the NY Times said.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility via a series of Twitter posts. The organisation said it was retaliation for a 2011 offensive that pushed its fighters out of key areas of Mogadishu, the Somali capital. Since June 2006, foreign troops from Ethiopia, Kenya and other countries have fought to keep the government in the city. When it became obvious that the insurgents could not win an outright war, they formed an alliance with al-Qaeda and adopted its hit-and-run tactics on the occupying forces and civilian targets.

An offensive by African Union troops to prop up a government in the horn of Africa has touched people around the world.

I must make it very clear that I hold no fort for al-Shabab, or indeed anyone who thinks that murder is an acceptable political tool. Terrorism is the worst of our evils — precisely because the purpose of a terror attack is to evoke fear and rage and thoughtlessness. And what does fear and anger lead to? (In the same breath, I must commend the calm way that the Kenyan government has handled the situation thus far.)

“What comes next?” always seems like a terrible question to ask in these situations. When the Sandy Hook massacre occurred in the US in December last year, I thought that America was finally ready to ask serious questions about its gun policies. Apparently not. That conversation died very quickly under a chorus of “too soon”. The politicians got involved, and things got muddy very quickly. The US has not passed a single law that makes it harder for crazy people to get guns, since then. The massacres have continued.

It seems to me that the time has come for us to talk. About everything. Globalisation may have brought us American iPhones and Japanese cars, but it has also made every regional conflict a global one. We can no longer dismiss a conflict or problem as distant. Wars in the most far-flung corners of the earth come back to us. They affect us, and thus demand our attention. Ignorance is a luxury we can ill afford.

Let’s bring this home. South Africa has a very problematic relationship with Somalia. You will remember the shameful xenophobic attacks that happened in 2008, and recall that the most targeted people were from East Africa. When, at the beginning of 2013 it seemed like history would repeat itself. Somalia’s Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon appealed to our government to protect Somali nationals.

I do not believe we responded well at all. Have we made ourselves a target for some future horror?

We have troops in Eastern and Central Africa, where the world’s most punishing conflicts are happening. I’m not asking us to pull out. I believe we have a duty to help where we can. But I don’t think that we can afford to ‘forget’ about what happens out there as ordinary citizens. It needs to start influencing our thinking. It needs to affect our decisions. Not because we’re afraid or because terror works, but because that is the higher consciousness we need to enter. We know more now, and cannot continue to act as if we do not.

Nairobi could have happened in Sandton City. It could still. You might think that this kind of thing will never touch you, but it could. Not facing that reality moves it into the realm of “might happen”.

I am not a religious man, but I have prayed so much for Kenya in this time. I wish for strength and comfort and hope for them.

Sipho Hlongwane writes for Business Day