Dust settles, but serious questions remain
NOW that the dust has settled after a week of ugly protests where mobs looted and torched trucks and businesses in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng, serious questions have to be asked about the failure of the security cluster ministers to respond to the crisis.
Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, Police Minister Bheki Cele and Minister of State Security Ayanda Dlodlo should be held accountable for their inability to respond timeously to the biggest security threat this country has faced since democracy in 1994.
Frankly, President Cyril Ramaphosa should reshuffle his Cabinet and get rid of the trio if he is serious about keeping South Africans safe. If anything, the events of the past week have demonstrated to us that these ministers are not on top of our security situation. They were found wanting when it mattered most.
A lot has been said about the inability of the country’s spies to foresee the simmering tensions and the well co-ordinated attacks that followed after former president Jacob Zuma handed himself over to prison authorities in Estcourt. This is despite the fact that several messages were being circulated on social media platforms where people were threatening to plunge the country into chaos.
Cele, who has developed a reputation of biting off more than he can chew, was conspicuous by his absence while the country’s two provinces were on fire. The failure of policing will go down as the biggest feature of the government response to last week’s unrest. Wherever you looked, police were either absent, overwhelmed or part of the looting mob.
It is still baffling how Queen Nandi Drive warehouses in Durban were looted for three days straight, with not a single police officer in sight.
Mapisa-Nqakula’s decision to deploy only 2 500 soldiers to volatile Gauteng and KZN was laughable, to say the least. It was a clear sign that she did not appreciate the enormity of the situation. It should be remembered that 70 000 troops were deployed during level 5 lockdown last year. It was only after the intervention of opposition parties that the latest number of troops was increased to 25 000.
The violence and destruction we witnessed last week has exposed our state of vulnerability and if we want to fix these fault lines we cannot do it with the trio at the helm.