Amid the chaos that has descended upon the country in the wake of Jacob Zuma’s incarceration, South Africa’s leaders have a lot to answer for. The present unrest has deep roots.
Distressing scenes of rioting, looting, destruction of property and casual murder have shocked us all. Starting in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in the wake of the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma, these so-called ‘protests’ spread like wildfire over the weekend. They razed entire shopping malls and business districts as far afield as Johannesburg and Pretoria, and are threatening to spread across the country.
The damage from these riots will be counted in billions of rands, tens of thousands of jobs, and many lives. Businesses will have gone up in flames, and their owners’ lives with them.
A few thoughts come to mind, watching the unfolding tragedy from the relative safety of my home office. In no particular order, let me elaborate on a few of them.
The dogs of war are out
The official opposition on Monday called upon the president to call out the Army and recall Parliament, saying that the Constitution permitted its deployment in these circumstances.
They’re right. It does. But needing the defence force to be deployed against citizens is not a sign of a society at peace with itself. On the contrary, it is an extremely dangerous tactic that could easily escalate violent confrontation instead of quelling it.
Not much later, a media statement by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) reported that the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure, which is chaired by the South African Police Service (SAPS), had called out the defence force to assist police in KZN and Gauteng.
Not since the late 1980s has it been this common to see the full might of the military directed at South Africa’s own citizens. The army were called out to help enforce pandemic lockdowns, with deadly consequences. Now, it is being called out to quell riots.
This is the job of the police. ‘The objects of the police service are to prevent, combat and investigate crime, to maintain public order, to protect and secure the inhabitants of the Republic and their property, and to uphold and enforce the law,’ reads the Constitution.
It also says: ‘Only the President, as head of the national executive, may authorise the employment of the defence force … in co-operation with the police service,’ and the president must then promptly inform Parliament of all the details.
I’m sure the former oversight will have been rectified by the time you read this. Ramaphosa was expected to address the nation last evening, perhaps to declare a state of emergency, but at the time of writing Parliament had not been recalled.
Blood on their hands
The SAPS were widely criticised for their failure to act against the Zuma supporters who gathered at Nkandla prior to the former president’s arrest last Wednesday, in blatant contravention of Covid regulations, and in blatant challenge to the authority of the courts and the police.
Moreover, Zuma’s supporters openly and repeatedly warned that they would make the country ‘ungovernable’ if the public face of graft and corruption was jailed.
Being forewarned did not make the SAPS forearmed, however. It has been slow to respond to the escalating unrest. Its actions appear to have been entirely reactive, and quite impotent in the face of violent mobs.
Yesterday, the SAPS proudly issued a statement announcing the arrest of 62 people in KZN and Gauteng ‘in response to incidents of opportunistic criminality and violent protests’.
This stands in stark contrast to the 478 suspects arrested between 7 and 11 July in my own as-yet peaceful backyard. Most of the arrests were for petty crimes and breach of Covid regulations. It seems you’re at far greater risk of being nabbed by the cops if you’re having a wee nip than if you’re out violently ‘protesting’.
Several of Zuma’s supporters ought to be charged, forthwith, with inciting violence. As Adriaan Basson wrote for News24, there is blood on the hands of Zuma family members, notably his children Edward, Duduzane and Duduzile, as well as on the hands of sycophants such as Zuma’s pet chihuahua, Carl Niehaus, his deputy gangster, Ace Magazhule, the OG, Tony ‘WaBenzi’ Yengeni, and his spokespuppet, Mzwanele ‘Jimmy’ Manyi.
Amusingly, Manyi pointed to the DA’s call to deploy the army and the ANC’s response by doing so as evidence that the ANC is nothing but a lapdog to the opposition, suggesting that his disgraced patron is the true leader of the freedom movement.
Julius Malema, struggling to remain relevant, is also playing with fire: ‘No soldiers on our streets!’ he said on Twitter. ‘Otherwise, we are joining. All fighters must be ready… they won’t kill us all. We need a political solution to a political problem, not soldiers.’
For the leader of a political party to threaten to join violent looters would be unthinkable in any normal country. It would not be survivable. Malema must fall, but he won’t.
According to a letter circulating on social media from the office of the Chief Justice there have been credible threats against judges, their staff, their homes, and their courts, underscoring the erosion of the rule of law for which Zuma’s henchmen must take responsibility.
Civil unrest
South Africa is not a stable country. The rapidity with which this violence spread demonstrates that it would be a fairly simple matter to overthrow the government and plunge the country into rule by tribal chieftains, crime gangs and war lords. Equally, it would be a simple matter to provoke a full-scale civil war.
The South African Police Service (SAPS) has been conspicuous only by its absence and impotence in the face of the looters. This suggests that despite the government’s mile-wide authoritarian streak, its actual control over the country is pretty fragile.
These protests have very little to do with protesting Zuma’s imprisonment, or with freeing Zuma. He is not incarcerated in shopping malls. This is no storming of the Estcourt Bastille. The mobs are liberating big-screen televisions and boxes of booze, not the former president.
As if in tribute to the looter-in-chief, the mobs are drunk with naked greed and lawless thievery.
The unrest also has much deeper roots. Many commentators and analysts have, over the years, warned that the country’s deteriorating economy, persistently high unemployment, and blatant enrichment by corrupt elites could lead to widespread and worsening civil discontent and unrest. Tribal conflicts that predate the advent of democracy, as well as widespread xenophobia, create further fault lines along which violence can spill out.
In my very first anti-lockdown column, I predicted ‘injuries and deaths due to civil unrest, rioting, and the army’s attempts to suppress the population’.
The traumatic economic hardship brought about by harsh and often gratuitous lockdown measures accelerated the country’s decline and division, adding much tinder to the tinderbox. Zuma’s arrest was merely the spark.
Political leaders who tolerated and normalised corruption, who established legal structures that enabled elite enrichment while the majority remained poor, who failed to deliver basic municipal services to the majority of the people, who stubbornly pursued an outdated socialist doctrine that goes against everything that made liberal democracies so successful, who played factional party politics instead of tackling the country’s problems, who persisted with authoritarian master plans and bureaucratic control instead of allowing a free, vibrant economy to grow and create jobs, and who blame all the consequences of their actions on foreign imperialists or historical colonialists, have a lot to answer for.
They ought to be held accountable for the calamitous events now unfolding in our cities and neighbourhoods. Turf the delinquents out!
Self-defence
Several videos circulating on social media depict concerned shop owners, staff and residents forming impromptu self-defence units, armed with rifles, shotguns and handguns, warding off masses of violent looters.
I won’t link to the videos, for fear of exposing its subjects to prosecution for vigilante actions. After all, while the police are unable to protect their neighbourhoods and their shops from the rioters, the missing-in-action general with the hat will surely pop up to arrest those who acted assertively in self-defence.
There are even reports that the SAPS, overwhelmed, have been asking local communities for backup.
Standing between criminals and the property they would destroy, these brave civilian defenders underscore the point I’ve been making in previous columns about the right to be armed for purposes of self-defence. When law and order falls apart, we’re on our own as South Africans. Protecting our lives, our loved ones, and our property will fall to us. Bheki Cele isn’t coming to save us.
Disarming a civilian population should never be contemplated in circumstances where the government is unable to protect the people from out-of-control violent crime.
Where is this headed?
I don’t pretend to know where this will end. The violence and destruction will probably get worse before it gets better, if it gets better at all. Either way, the cost in lives, and the damage to South Africa’s fragile economy will be ruinous.
South Africa is ripe for a political realignment, but in such lawless circumstances, it is very hard to predict how such a realignment might unfold.
Hopefully, this is a temporary outburst that will subside, or succumb to the joint efforts of soldiers, police and law-abiding civilians. Turning away from the ANC’s authoritarianism and destructive economic policies would be far less painful if the country did not get destroyed first.
Perhaps the ease with which thousands descended into violence, and the lack of resistance to the blatant looting, signals the start of a slide into anarchy, indicating that South Africa has become a failed state.
However this develops, the standard-bearers of economic freedom and liberal values must be ready to put their conception of a just, peaceful and prosperous society front and centre as the country struggles to find a new direction. Because a new direction it surely needs.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend