Bleak future beckons as state loses monopoly on legitimate use of force

AmaPanyaza and Gayton McKenzie’s informal militia illustrate contempt for the post-1994 democratic order

Political philosophy has the occasional moment of clarity. The sociologist Max Weber ’ s 1919 lecture “Politics as a Vocation”, delivered at the University of Munich, is one of those moments. In the lecture, Weber defined the state as “a human community that [successfully] claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”. Legitimate, in this sense, doesn’t equate to moral. Dictatorships and other morally reprehensible states successfully claim dominion over populations. There are three forms of legitimacy for Weber. The first is traditional: for example, kings harking back to ancient custom or divine anointment. The second is what Weber terms “charismatic”, and in SA’s context that means the winner of the popular vote.

The third and most important is, as Weber put it, “domination by virtue of ‘legality’, by virtue of the belief in the validity of legal statute and functional ‘competence’ based on rationally created rules”.

Weber’s definition has endured because it identifies the bedrock of the world’s current singular form of social and political organisation; the state has the sole legal right to use physical violence. The SA state’s claim to the monopoly derives from the legal legitimacy of the constitution and the political legitimacy of democracy. The judicial architecture restricts, at least in theory, the scope of the state’s violence.

A failed or failing state is one that doesn’t have or is losing the monopoly over the legitimate use of force. The rump government, Al-Shabaab and a host of clan militias in Somalia are claiming the monopoly and with a whole lot of bang .

So important is the monopoly that a state’s entire legal and security elements revolve around it. The essential role of a state’s functionaries is the maintenance of the monopoly.

Enter Gayton McKenzie. WhatsApp videos emerged in early January of the Patriotic Alliance (PA) tooling up and “defending” the SA-Zimbabwe border. Party members had handguns and at least one had an assault rifle. They yelled at migrants swimming back to Zimbabwe and the message was clear — the PA was ready and willing to take over a function of state.

Of course, the PA is a fairly marginal party. So there’s the temptation to dismiss the whole thing as a media stunt. McKenzie needs the attention to get votes to continue his usual coalition practice of extorting parties with an actual democratic mandate.

Yet giving in to the temptation to ignore the armed intervention is like lighting up a lockdown special after a long-haul flight while standing in a puddle of petrol. For what McKenzie has done is raise a militia and challenge the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of physical violence.

There are different kinds of militias. You have formal ones within, and loyal to, the state such as the National Guard in the US and apartheid’s Commandos. McKenzie’s informal militia is of a particularly nasty bent — armed individuals outside of state and set on achieving a particular political organisation’s end.

We’ve had that before. The right proper fascist Ossewabrandwag had its Stormjaers back in the ’40s. But the broader problem is that the PA isn’t alone. When the “commander in chief’s” idea of a cracking good political rally includes the firing of a machine gun, the notion that the EFF has militia tendencies is hardly unwarranted.

The now disbanded Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) was connected to the Jacob Zuma faction of the ANC. In an oft-quoted 2009 remark the organisation’s deputy secretary, Ramatuku Maphutha, said MKMVA “soldiers are deployed all over the country and are waiting to be activated from the trenches to fight the National Prosecuting Authority if they fail to drop charges against Zuma. We will not hesitate to take him by force to the Union Buildings.”

MKMVA members were frequent attendees at Operation Dudula’s xenophobic marches. Nhlanhla “Lux” Dlamini, the then warlord of Dudula, quite proudly wore camo, as did many of its members.

Dudula spokesperson Isaac Lesole said in 2023 that “we want to demilitarise Operation Dudula. We know the military angle did not appeal to a lot of people. Now we’ve taken a new posture we need to guarantee that we can still achieve a lot without people being militants and killing or kicking things. As a political party, we are governed by a different set of rules.”

What all of these militias have in common is a direct rejection of the notion that the democratic state of SA has a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. All of them have, through declaration or action, illustrated their contempt for this fundamental of the post-1994 political ordering.

Even though there is the element of the absurd at times — consider Carl Niehaus donning MK kit — the effect of just the rhetoric alone is corrosive. The notion of achieving political ends through violence, mostly the kicking and kicking out of foreigners, is becoming normalised. The state’s claim on the monopoly is getting weaker.

A couple of societal factors are assisting the corrosion. Some political parties are internally violent, including chair throwing and assassinations, and this culture is externalising. Perpetual crime — everything from murder to drunk driving to blasting out music at 3am — means a widespread disregard for the law. It is an amenable context for militia creation.

Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi has taken the ruthless game to another level with the amaPanyaza. He created a poorly trained force of 6,000 “crime prevention wardens” outside of the law. Only after they hit the streets did he move to make them legal. When a cabinet minister, either Bheki Cele or Ronald Lamola, did not support Lesufi’s drive to legalise his wardens, Lesufi threatened to finish the minister’s career. The threat worked.

Politically speaking, the amaPanyaza are not beholden to the bureaucratic system but to Lesufi himself. In other words, a formal militia within the Gauteng provincial government whose loyalties to the state, rather than to an individual politician, cannot be assured.

McKenzie, Lesufi, Maphutha, Dlamini and Julius Malema’s attacks on the state’s claim to the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical violence bring us closer to a bleaker future. Societies in which militias feature significantly tend to be hellish, especially when the militias turn on their founders and each other.