The general consensus is that the piece, which draws a link between Pistorius's shooting of Reeva Steenkamp and the endemic violence that characterises our national culture, is poor journalism and full of unfair generalisation."The new South Africa has turned out to be no harmonious band of colors," Perry writes. "Behind the latest in intruder deterrents for the elite, or flimsy barriers pulled together from tin sheets and driftwood for the poor, South Africans live apart and, ultimately, alone."
Perry certainly errs on the side of the poetic. The connections that Perry makes, between the Battle of Blood River and gated estates, between internecine ANC battles, xenophobia and Afrikaner mistrust of English-speaking whites, are reminiscent of the kind of writing that emerged in the first flowering of rainbow nation mania after Nelson Mandela's release. Still, there is a current of truth in lines like "If South Africa reveals its reality through crime, it articulates its dreams through sports".Nothing Perry has written is especially controversial. We say far worse things about ourselves all the time.But we are stung. Though we routinely engage in collective handwringing - Marikana, Anene - we do not like to read about ourselves through the eyes of others, not when those eyes are narrowed in criticism. Americans should look at themselves and their own culture of shooting little kids in classrooms is the most common response to the piece, the typical "Yes but they're worse" retort we cling to when self-soothing in the wake of yet more bad news.
