The ANC is falling over its feet

Nazis! Nazis everywhere! Twitching their curtains! Preventing us from buying roast chickens! Crushing us under the jackboot of fascism!

Well, under the jackboot of the arbitrary regulations and extreme inconvenience. But still. Nazis!

I’m not sure when the Anschluss happened, but if the increasingly shrill protests are to be believed, the occupation is total.

The swastika flies over the Union Buildings and is strapped to the arms of millions of citizens, as actual fascism flowers in SA.

I saw it first on social media. People who objected to dog-walkers, or who were alarmed by more major breaches of lockdown regulations, were, I discovered, Nazis.

Even more dramatically, I learnt that those people who went to the lengths of calling the authorities were “the Gestapo”.

Since then that remarkable accusation — that any willingness to consider the merits of the lockdown regulations makes you Hitler — has raced with Blitzkrieg speed into the broader conversation.

At first, I found this alleged outbreak of Nazism quite confusing.

I mean, if your country has been occupied by an indiscriminately hostile foreign force that kills quite a lot of people without blinking; and the leaders of the resistance have decided that the best way to avoid being harmed is for everyone to stay indoors, away from the killers; and neighbours are informing the resistance that people are wandering outside, inviting the attention of said killers, are they Nazis?

Overzealous, possibly. Unpleasant, perhaps. But Nazis?

Since then, however, I’ve started seeing the use of the label as something to celebrate.

After all, if you’re invoking the blood-soaked name of the Gestapo to make a point about not being allowed to walk your dog, it suggests that you’ve lived a life wholly untouched by actual oppression, which, given the past 10,000 years, is really quite a spectacular achievement. So well done you.

Of course, this is not to dismiss the valid fears of people who worry about a slide into repression.

When a government starts passing restrictive regulations without explaining them citizens are right to be concerned.

We should be grateful that lawyers are bristling. But to cross over from vigilance into screams of “Gestapo!” serves nobody except those with opportunistic and reactionary political agendas.

Donald Trump’s secessionist tweets, calling for US states with stay-at-home orders to be “liberated” from their democratically elected governors, have found fertile soil in the minds of people who believe any attempt by the government to limit or restrict their freedom is Nazism run rampant.

“Liberty or Death!” is ringing out once again. Of course, thanks to Covid-19 liberty and death now come as a two-foryears one combo, but that’s for Americans to figure out in November.

The main problem with hyperbolic protests is that they get in the way of us seeing the crisis we face right now in SA.

Which is the same crisis we faced five weeks ago, and six months before that, and five before that.

Yes, some police officers have humiliated, whipped and even killed citizens during the lockdown.

And yes, police minister Bheki Cele has seemed to revel in his role of enforcer. But how is this any different to life before the lockdown?

In 2018 we heard the state had paid out R14.6bn in civil claims against the police in the 2015/2016 financial year, up from R9.6bn the previous year.

In 2019 the DA revealed that Eastern Cape police alone were facing claims of R2.3bn.

There are many excellent officers in the police service, doing the best they can with limited resources.

But it is also a fact that abuse, brutality and incompetence are inextricably part of the SA Police Service.

This isn’t new.

On Monday, the ANC outlawed the selling of freshly baked bread.

It explained that it is also a criminal act to sell a hot chicken, but presumably if you let it cool down it becomes legal. These are not Nazis. This isn’t the Gestapo.

Those monsters had a vast plan, an unshakeable belief in its importance and an unstoppable desire to see it carried out. Does that describe anyone you can think of in the SA government?

Of course not.

This is a state run by people who, at the best of times — when things are going only moderately terribly; when South Africans are only conventionally poor and hungry, or being abused by police the normal amount — can, on a very good day, rise to mere incompetence.

The people banning roast chickens and hot bread today are the same ones who were destroying Eskom or SAA last year, or gushing over state captors five years ago.

This isn’t fascism or communism. It’s just the ANC, following the only ideology it has consistently followed: trying to get through a day having shot off only one of its kneecaps.