This past week has been a difficult one for the people of the Free State.

Two young men were shot dead by police, 4 were killed in total, and 238 were injured in the violence that flared up in Sasolburg over the merger with Parys.

One of those killed was young Pule Thulo, known affectionately by his friends as "Tshepi", or "Iron" for those who don't speak Sesotho.

Thulo was of a similar age to Andries Tatane, and perhaps also, the many, many people with less publicized names who lost their lives in Marikana.

In my search for answers, I asked the Free State Police Commissioner to explain why officers used live ammunition on protesters. History may pass us by quickly these days, but we have not stopped mourning the dead of the province a little further north from here.

The police have probably never had the riot training, or the equipment needed to contain the volatile situation. In many respects they tried their best to protect the property and residents of Sasolburg under the most difficult circumstances.

For that, we owe the officers on duty and their families who selflessly support them in their public service our deepest gratitude.

Having said that, I could never condone the use of live ammunition on people who were not armed with the same weapons.

Had Premier Ace Magashule actually addressed an angry community desperate for answers from him, then perhaps things would have been different.

He is the country's longest serving ANC provincial chairperson and, more than anyone else, he understands how local politics work.

On Wednesday last week I went to the local public hospital where the people of the town lay injured. Many of them had not joined in the protests. Of course there were also those who were on the frontlines, mainly young men throwing stones, who lay here as well.

Mostly, though, I found despair in that hospital. It was the despair of people of who had staked everything, not out of choice, on the rural town they live in.

No one who comes from nothing can tell me they don't know what that feels like.

On that same day I received a vicious email from an angry woman who was shocked and apparently disgusted about whom I chose to visit in Sasolburg this week, and whom I chose not to visit.

She accused me of abandoning her side of the story, the town, because of my choice "to support criminals" by visiting patients in hospital and not business owners or peaceful residents.

As a nurse, she spoke of the fear of manning a clinic in Zamdela where the threat of attack on public institutions is so closely felt.

She expressed fear that the anger could be directed at her next time, if the basic supply of medicine, almost entirely out of her control, is not available.

I am a nurse by profession, so I know what it's like working in an under-resourced clinic where one can't be sure if you can help the next patient who walks in.

I am also from a rural town in the Free State, Phutaditjhaba, so I understand how the emotions of fear and anger can easily manifest as violence in a community desperate for progress. Growing up we called the enemy "Apartheid".

That's why I wouldn't easily dismiss people in hospital beds as "criminals" as this woman did in her mail.

That's not why I got into politics - to watch these same scenes of division and violence play out in rural communities, generation after generation.

From what I've seen, it is a politicized public service and politicized delivery that leads to desperate times where people kill each other for fear and anger that things may get worse

Nothing has changed from the times when unity around a common cause was once glorified. Those who care about our rural towns still need to find each other in times of division and strife.

The only way we will save the places of our birth, places that carry our stories and our heritage, is to unite against the suffocating influence of politics and patronage.

It does not take violence, and our actions need not be guided by the fear and anger that were so prevalent in everyone this week.

This is the type of progress we will need in order to prevent another generation of children from living in times of conflict without hope.

Patricia Kopane is DA leader in the Free State.

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