Enthusiasm goes a long way
‘Because we are dealing with so many people, there are those whose enthusiasm gets ahead of them,’ the president says about state brutality.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of the police has sharpened the focus on inescapable realities: American society places a perilously low value on black lives. It is deplorable that almost 70 years since racial segregation was abolished in America, people of colour are still routinely slaughtered for the colour of their skin. We will not be cowed, to remain silent in the face of the lynching of black people wherever they manifest.
There is surely nothing to contradict in the above sentiments. But the context makes those words risibly hypocritical. I have extracted them verbatim from a statement issued by the ANC – the very same ANC that is yet to express remorse for the deaths of 11 black South Africans during police and military actions to enforce the Covid lockdown.
The very same ANC that has yet to manage a single criminal conviction stemming from the police shootings of 34 black South African mineworkers at Marikana in 2012. The very same ANC that has yet to deliver justice to the families of 144 mostly black South Africans who died in the 2015 Life Esidimeni outrage.
One of the befuddling aspects of Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidency is how gently the media treats him. This week the president conducted a virtual press conference with the leaders of the SA National Editor’s Forum. Presidential charm carried the day.
Nobody asked about the 11 dead black men killed during lockdown. Nobody asked why an ANC government opposed a court application by the family of Collins Khosa, killed for the heinous crime of having a drink in his backyard.
Nobody asked about 230 000 arrested for petty lockdown infringements. Nobody asked about the dozens of police officers arrested for trading in confiscated alcohol and illegal cigarettes.
Most obviously of all, nobody asked the president why he never once during his addresses to the nation directly addressed these matters.
The closest it got to the nitty-gritty was a question on contradictory government communications around the cigarette ban. The police demanding a till slip from anyone caught with cigarettes, conceded Ramaphosa, was a “graphic example” of “over-enthusiasm”.
He had “very clearly” stressed ... “because we are dealing with so many people, there are those whose enthusiasm gets ahead of them.”
This elliptical allusion to state brutality will be scant consolation to the families of the 11 killed. But at least they now know that their brothers, fathers, husbands and sons died not because of poor training, ill-discipline or brutishness. It was something more benign – an “over-enthusiasm” that caused well-meaning servants of the state to “get ahead of themselves”.
The president also went unchallenged when reiterating the claim by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma that the backtracking on lifting the tobacco ban was in response to 2 000 appeals.
It transpires now that there were only 1 535 submissions, of which almost half had nothing to do with smoking and almost a quarter opposed the ban.
Just 454, not 2 000, supported the ban.
This anomaly is not because Dlamini-Zuma exaggerates shamelessly or fibs relentlessly. It’s just natural over-enthusiasm. So cute in a septuagenarian.