With a government that abandoned the poor, it’s no surprise they looted
Both spontaneous and planned violence are the ANC's fault
The entire country is still shocked by the violence that erupted after the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma. That our government was caught napping the whole world can see. President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “This is not who we are.”
To say “this is not who we are” is to suggest that those who looted shops and burned infrastructure are not South Africans. That is wrong; the looters are us. The question we must answer is how did we become arsonists, looters and vandals?
It is obvious to every discerning observer that there are two elements driving the violence: organised and spontaneous. The government has hinted that there is a trained element that is targeting strategic infrastructure. Its nerve centre includes some members of the Zuma family.
A few days into the violence, Duduzane Zuma distributed a video of himself from Dubai, showing a line of march to his ground forces in SA. He told them that the goal of their violence is to “reset, redistribute and rebuild over the next three years”. He also assured them: “We have taken over.”
Indeed, Duduzane, Edward Zuma, their jailed father and the Guptas are all members of the ANC. The conclusion therefore is simple: the command centre of the organised element behind the violence is a faction in the ANC. In other words, our country is being destabilised by the ANC. Let there be no doubt: the biggest threat to SA’s political stability and progress is the ANC.
If South Africans do nothing about their political threat, the ANC will do to SA what Zanu-PF has done to Zimbabwe. That is the organised element behind the violence that has gripped our beautiful country.
The second element is spontaneous, although it too is linked to the ANC as SA’s biggest liability. The vast majority of the young people who looted shops did not even know that Duduzane has “taken over” the country from Dubai. Looters simply saw an opportunity to get something out of the chaos. Suddenly, an uneducated 20something-year-old who has never worked and who lives in a shack saw the possibility of owning a fancy TV set or fridge. Others facing starvation could not miss the opportunity to get free food.
Those are young South Africans who were spat out by the ANC’s dysfunctional education system. In other words, they are the ANC’s hopeless children.
During apartheid, the nationalist government built and used state-owned companies to provide jobs for poor whites, mainly Afrikaners. The question is: what did the ANC build to provide jobs for poor blacks? The answer is nothing. We know from the history of all revolutions that people who are hungry are easy and ready material for all manner of instigators. Why must we be surprised when South Africans who are unemployed and hungry loot and vandalise?
There is no doubt that the violence will at some point die down. But there is also no doubt that the same or worse violence will visit us again if we still have millions of unemployed and hungry people. If we hope for a more secure future, there is an unavoidable question we must answer: what will we do to dwindle the ranks of the under-classes in our society?
Given that it is the ANC that has brought us to where we are, the party cannot be part of any solution. This leaves the people of SA with one political option: to get rid of the ANC as a governing party. The first and most urgent task for a new leadership would be to rebuild our broken public education system. Kick Sadtu out of the running of our schools, improve discipline and reorient the curriculum towards technical skills that are useful to the world of work.
The second thing is to get rid of government’s tender system, and let the state do things for itself. That would starve tenderpreneurs and create permanent jobs for millions of poor people. The third and most important task is to reform the state and create a friendly policy environment for the private sector to thrive.
If you think what we are proposing is impossible to do, have a look at east Asia. SA must learn from countries like South Korea if it hopes to have a secure future.