Democracy depends on accountability, and that depends on allowing ordinary people to vociferously criticise government and bring pressure to bear on it to change. The mere act of formally, though baselessly, laying a complaint of “treason” against such people is an attack on democracy itself, and should yield severe punishment.
My fourth and final (for now) response to Pierre de Vos on expropriation and confiscation will be published next week.
Treason to call for pressure on a criminal syndicate?
This week, however, it was reported that the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) were investigating dockets of high treason against individuals in the Solidarity Movement (and its affiliate, AfriForum) for ostensibly “spreading misleading information” in the United States about the situation in South Africa.
uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) “and other parties or individuals” – apparently including the disgraced and disgraceful Herman Mashaba – brought or support the charges, and are particularly focused on “misinformation” around the Expropriation Act and “the land issue.”
In 2021, Mashaba called the African National Congress (ANC) a “criminal syndicate.” Apparently trying to stop criminals from doing further damage is now “treason”. Who knew?
These charges are, of course, without merit.
Many a South African has lobbied international organisations and foreign governments over the years to pressure the domestic government to do or refrain from doing certain things. Whether it is a gay rights group making submissions to the United Nations about the treatment of homosexuals in South Africa, an environmental lobby asking the European Union to implement measures that would compel government to introduce climate regulations, or the ANC itself asking every country that would host them to sanction the Apartheid government, the list goes on.
Invoking foreign pressure on one’s government to change its ways is a hallmark of democracy.
Chilling effect
If dissenting groups in a democracy can willy-nilly be charged with treason the moment they begin gaining traction against the government of the day, with no repercussions for those who charge them, that democracy is necessarily unsustainable.
This cannot be normalised as a part of ordinary democratic engagement, because if it is, the obvious result is a chilling effect: dissenting groups will self-censor themselves for fear of being successfully victimised.
When someone brings a charge of treason – and it really should go without saying that such a charge should be laid by the government itself, but alas – it must be real, and it must stick.
But if it does not stick, the one who brought it must face serious consequences, without which the chilling effect will sap democracy of its substance.
Browbeating
The primary fear in this particular case is not that the patriots returning from Washington DC will end up in prison. They would need to be assigned exceptionally bad judges in all three levels of our judicial system for that to happen.
The concern, instead, are the costs associated with criminal defence.
Even if MK, Mashaba, and others know their case is hopeless – as they should – they are likely betting that the cost of defending against it would browbeat AfriForum and Solidarity into future submission. This is, again, why there must be consequences for these vexatious charges.
The laying of criminal complaints is not a legitimate area of democratic contestation, nor is it a manifestation of political expression.
Accusing someone of committing a crime, when stripped of its formalism, amounts to lobbying for violence to be committed against that person. For them to be thrown in cages, or if they resist, to be killed.
This is a serious matter, and if one utilises the laying of charges casually and without due respect for the occasion, they should be severely punished.
Sad indictment
One hopes the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is smart enough to not pursue the case against Solidarity and AfriForum.
It is not reassuring that the police minister, Senzo Mchunu – rather than dismissing the complaints – said that he took the charges “very seriously.” This comes just a day after AfriForum publicly exposed the minister for peddling misinformation about farm murders.
If the NPA does pursue the matter and the Solidarity Movement inevitably wins their case, the NPA must itself be sued for malicious prosecution.
It would be a sad indictment against South Africa’s post-Apartheid democracy if the prosecuting power was utilised to silence critics of what would then formerly have been “the government” but would have become “the regime”.
My message to the Solidarity Movement is simple: resist the chilling effect, be true to yourselves and to your constituency, and keep up the good work.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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