South Africa is ‘harvesting the bitter fruits of a counter-revolutionary insurgency that has long been germinating in the bowels of what we commonly call “state capture”’, according to the Thabo Mbeki Foundation.
It said in a statement that the ‘hallmarks of state capture’ were ‘the deliberate systematic denuding of state capacity that we have witnessed at SARS, SOEs, the weakening of forms of law enforcement’.
The Foundation added: ‘We recognise that our democratic state finds itself in a precarious position and that for many South Africans, the democratic dispensation has not delivered on its promise of better socio-economic conditions. A lot more and urgent work remains to be done in this regard.’
Hinting at instigation being a factor in the unrest, the Foundation urged ‘all South Africans and all sectors of our society to refuse to be misled and fall victim to masters of the dark arts designed to exploit our challenges as a people’.
It added: ‘Most importantly, we call upon government and law enforcement agencies to spare no efforts to bring to book all those found to be behind this counterrevolutionary insurgency.’
The ‘economic sabotage, wanton destruction of property and infrastructure we have witnessed cannot be accepted as incidental’, it said, adding: ‘We recall that the current situation was foreshadowed by open threats of civil war and unrest.’
‘The pressing socio-economic conditions of our people and the recent arrest of former president Jacob Zuma have served as a perfect set to mount an offensive against the state and the constitutional democratic edifice on which it is built.
The unprecedented avalanche of misinformation is well orchestrated to ensure that when the embers die down, this nation will be confronted with a population that has lost all hope and is in despair.’
The Foundation called on ‘the government and all social partners urgently to get together to design and implement short-, medium- and long-term Economic Recovery Plans, consistent with the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan tabled by President Cyril Ramaphosa in October 2020’.
[Image: Ricardo Stuckert, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57092834]