David Letsoalo
“Tell no lies, and don’t spin it.” These words spun in my head this past week as I was replaying the recent mayhem whereby the country literally went into flames after the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma.
The act of jailing former president Jacob Zuma is, frankly speaking, something that no one would have expected, especially for the crime of contempt of court following his failure to appear before the Constitutional Court.
The fact is that before this conviction by the Constitutional Court, Zuma had never been convicted of any crime. However, the court of public opinion has already convicted him of corruption, state capture, theft and so forth. His detractors continue to sponsor the narrative that he and his allies are thieves and that “the ANC has never sent anyone to steal”, and therefore, they argue, it is wrong for people to protest against his arrest.
The immediate reaction by authorities, who appeared to have been caught completely off guard, was to take a cynical or dismissive attitude to this reaction as mere “acts of criminality” detached from the jailing of the former president. The protests or reaction of the people supportive of Zuma entailed unprecedented levels of destruction, including the looting of shops and malls predominantly in parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. I fail to understand why authorities saw the need to de-link these acts from the imprisonment of Jacob Zuma.
The truth is there for all to see. We are faced with the backlash over the jailing of Zuma. Period. And we failed to anticipate the scenario and what the implications for the jailing of the former president would be. It is ironic that even the court in its judgment hinted at the man’s influential stature and public support. A point which, in the court’s “wisdom”, necessitated the type of sentence that was meted out to him: a custodial sentence of 15 months in jail.
But did we need to experiment with him to prove to everyone out there that we have a functional constitutional democracy characterised by the “rule of law”, “equality before the law” and “constitutional supremacy”? In the process, we seem to have ended up in suggestions of the supremacy of the constitutional court rather than the Constitution, which was argued by his legal team in the ensuing rescission application last Monday.
As I write this, the ruling on this application is awaited. In this vein, I found the remarks by Moeletsi Mbeki worth digesting in that they challenge our uncritical application of Eurocentric laws. He argues that there is a need to weigh the benefit of jailing Zuma against the cost of lives and destruction following that step. As a matter of fact, the number of death cases resulting from this mayhem had risen to more than 300 by the end of this week.
Burying our heads in the sand is not helpful. It must be clearly stated that the calamity and mayhem experienced in the country are the result of the political contestations within the ANC. I have said on a number of occasions that it’s important to be concerned about what is happening within the governing party as its actions stand to be transposed to the society.
In other words, what happens within the ANC is most likely to impact on the lives of ordinary citizens across the board, whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, like the proverbial grass that suffers in the fight between two elephants, it is the ordinary citizens that bear the brunt of these conflictual realities within the governing party. Instead of burying our heads, we should rather bury our egos and selfish pride and engage the issue of Jacob Zuma and anti-Freedom Charter economic policy of the ANC government openly.
We should not forget that this “rainbow nation” was born out of situations that entailed the most unfathomable challenges, which meant that some of the people that committed the most heinous of crimes were forgiven, kissed and feted. We have even embraced in our midst the most poisonous enemies from the ranks of our oppressor in the name of a façade of a rainbow nation, and we called it a Miracle.
May we please not spin this matter and create a shallow and misguided narrative that this is an act of “ethnic mobilisation”, the unpalatable, if not unfortunate, phrase used by President Ramaphosa? Following a serious backlash, the president smoothly backtracked on it. Are we embarrassed to call it a factional ANC mobilisation which has spilled over into the wider society?
Again, it is not really wise to dismiss this riotous situation merely as the work of criminals or rascals. Of course, there is looting and destruction of property which are expressions of angry and hungry people. It cannot be denied that most uprisings over history included acts of looting, vandalism and so forth.
In the milieu of poverty, unemployment, incessant Covid-19 lockdown and glaring racial and class inequality, calamitous situations are bound to eventuate. To add salt to the wound, all these occur in the context of crass materialism and ostentatious lives of opulence by the political fat cats or governing elite right in front of the faces of poor people. Few blacks have been accommodated at the dining table of our oppressors!
A number of questions inevitably arise in this context. Was the Zuma influence underestimated to the extent that the reaction of the people could not be anticipated? Before even asking about the intelligence services, Zuma’s arrest could not have been expected to precipitate zero-reaction. Of course, the contradictory messaging coupled with to-ing and fro-ing from figureheads in the security cluster and the presidency are not helping the situation.
I am, in this context, tempted to ask these crucial questions: Why is there this persistent narrative of the so-called nine wasted years instead of conceding to the dismal 27 years of failure to deliver the promised “better life for all”? Where is the good story to tell?
I am raising these questions so that, going forward, we rebuild our country from the ashes with an honest, open and informed position rather than convenient denials. This is a watershed moment for us to rethink leadership, policy and ideology. The riots have exposed the cruelty of capitalism and the economic vulnerability of our people. Black people have no control over the economy and their food security. It has become so clear as to the racial inequalities on many fronts to conclude that the post-1994 phase is a neo-apartheid dispensation.
The sustained racial inequalities which specifically condemn Africans in this country to a life of exploitation, hunger, humiliation, poverty, indignity and landlessness will continue to serve as a powder keg ready to be ignited at any moment. The attempt to describe the recent mayhem as “attempted insurrection”, “failed insurrection”, “attempted or failed coup”, “counterrevolutionary acts”, “acts of criminality” or whichever correct descriptor, will not change the factual matter. We need to learn, very fast, to separate rhetoric from facts. Lying to oneself is simply farcical.
So, what is the way out of this mess? We need to take (un)popular steps of confronting our economic system and recognise the important role that the state needs to play in the economy. Thus, the nationalisation programme becomes key in this regard. Can we strengthen the state-owned enterprises instead of “selling” them off to our friends?
Secondly, we need to relook at our leadership in government so that we don’t get unled or misled. We need to recognise our mistakes and carve a way forward informed by objective facts and realities. There is a need to craft a vision for a sustainable future and ask ourselves what will happen tomorrow in the post-looting phase.
As a response, we need to urgently stop the immediate surface issues such as looting and destruction of property, which are symptomatic of underlying problems in our nation. This neo-liberal policy trajectory taken by the governing party has proven not to be the tool to free our people from this pythonic constriction.
But most importantly, it has become clear that there needs to be a clear look into issues of patriotism and security, particularly as it pertains to the youth and our leadership.
Shall we rise from the ashes? This will certainly depend on the quality leadership expected from South Africans.
David Letsoalo is a Sankarist, an activist and Law academic