Why worry? My grandfather used to offer an answer that you might be quite familiar with: “If you worry, you die; if you don’t worry, you also die. So, why worry?”

If I were asked this question before, I would most likely have offered a similar response to my grandfather’s – if it were not for an anonymous poem that I came across recently, which is simply titled ‘Why Worry? – An Irish Poem’, which I reproduce below:

Why worry? In life there are only two things to worry about:
Whether you are well,
or whether you are sick.
Now if you are well,
You have nothing to worry about.
And if you are sick,
You only have two things to worry about:
Whether you get better,
or whether you die.
If you get better,
You have nothing to worry about.
And if you die,
You only have two things to worry about:
Whether you go to heaven,
or whether you go to hell.

Now if you go to heaven,
You have nothing to worry about.
And if you go to hell, you’ll be too busy shaking hands with your friends,
that you won’t have time to worry.
So why worry?

Talking about ‘Why?’ . . . I vividly recall a poster in Punkie’s dormitory room, just opposite the corridor from my own. Punkie was a nickname, the reason for which I can no longer recall, and Google offers little insight other than that ‘punkie’ is a small two-winged fly or midge, which bites and then sucks the blood of mammals.

In Punkie’s room was a poster. It was a black-and-white poster. It was a true image. It was not a drawing or abstract image. It was a photo from a time when photos could not be altered with the ease which they can be today. It was a photo taken during the South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and also as the Angolan Bush War.

The photo depicts a soldier with his rifle up in the air, touching both the palms of his hands, which have been elevated above his head. At first sight, you might confuse his raised arms as having been raised in victory, throwing the rifle in the air. In fact, the photo is taken at that exact moment when the soldier, apparently charging at his enemy, was shot. The force of the bullet stunted his charge and he raised his rifle above his head in a seeming reflex action.

Headlining this poster was a singular word, with a question mark – Why? This poster had a lasting impression on me, and I still think about it on occasion. Memories of the photo were once again triggered by the present blockbuster movie, Dunkirk.

I wonder why anyone would be willing to fight in a war and sacrifice their life in the process. Theirs, not the life of anyone else.

My grandfather resides in Florence, Italy, on the banks of the Arno river, and has been since July 17, 1944. He resides in the South African section of the Florence War Cemetery, a Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground for the dead of World War II. The small white gravestone has a simple inscription: ‘His duty nobly done. Ever remembered. Sarah, Nico and Leon’. I recall my grandmother telling me that, on his demise, there was an instruction to urgently telegraph no more than ten words for the gravestone. That’s military efficiency for you.
He fell, fighting on the side of the Allied forces. He fought for the British crown. Many did. Yet, 42 years before, he had lost family through the Kimberley Concentration Camp employed by the British, with deadly effect, during the Anglo Boer War of 1899 to 1902.

My surviving grandfather of World War II emphasised, verging on overemphasising, that there was nothing mystical about war. “It’s the mere resurgence of a primitive and primal instinct,” he would tell me. “War merely inflicts pain, it resolves nothing,” he would add.

And those that returned from the war. The individuals. They were no heroes. They got medals of various descriptions. For the willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice. They were willing to give their lives, ultimately for someone else’s financial and economic gain. All wars are fought to derive financial and economic gain. I challenge you to name any war that was fought for purely religious or moral reasons.

All this makes me think that South Africa is a country that is currently at war with itself. A war that merely deprives all its citizens. If you think there are winners, think again. The accumulation of ill-gotten gains is not the insignia of winners. It is a badge of the greatest human dishonour. It is of human travesty.

The South African war is a war that is fought under many guises. The guise of economic transformation. The guise of radical economic transformation. The guise of empowerment.

So, for who or whose financial and economic gain is present-day South Africa inflicting war on itself? And why?