SA’s spiralling social crisis: act or watch powder keg explode

With a government that has its head in the sand, unwilling to protect the poor and vulnerable from hunger or violence, the duty to act falls on every person and business – not just the trade unions. By

Tuesday, 23 August, marked the first anniversary of the shooting of Babita Deokaran. We honour her and regret it has taken a year for Gauteng Premier David Makhura to institute an independent investigation into her murder.

On Saturday, 20 August, in a country that has seemingly become an “assassination nation”, yet another leader of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack dwellers’ movement, was murdered.

Lindokhule Mnguni was gunned down in his home in the eKhenana settlement in Durban. He was 28 years old. The mother of his child was also shot and is in hospital. He is the third Abahlali leader to be killed this year and the 24th overall.

Lindokhule was killed because he too was fighting all that’s wrong in

SA: the economic and social disenfranchisement of poor people, who are expected not to complain but rather to prostrate themselves before criminal warlords who wear ANC colours in the same way Inkatha warlords such as Thomas Mandla Tshabalala used to murder dissenters in the 1980s and 1990s in KwaZulu-Natal.

Indeed, there is a connection. The warlords may have changed their party regalia, but not their spots.

The descent of KwaZulu-Natal should be a warning to the rest of South Africa about what happens when the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) faction of the ANC takes over, and when the rights of the poor are left unattended. Rule of law is dispensed with and replaced with rule of gun.

As Thapelo Mohapi, the general secretary of Abahlali, explained in a video, activists in KZN “have no hope and no trust in the justice system in SA, particularly the police who have shown no urgency in tackling the murders that have taken place in eKhenana”.

Civil society needs to show solidarity with Abahlali, but also to demand an independent investigation into the 24 killings and the reasons that underlie them. But the problem goes deeper.

A constitutional South Africa cannot allow its second-most populous province of 12 million people to be held ransom by political thugs, suppressing freedom of political activity and expression. This is even more important in the run-up to the 2024 elections, where the ANC’s electoral control of the province will be threatened.

It is democracy itself that is under threat in KZN, as veteran violence monitor Mary de Haas has repeatedly pointed out.

This is an issue that civil society and bodies such as the SA Human Rights Commission have to start to take extremely seriously.

For the past few months, the war drums of Operation Dudula and political parties such as ActionSA and the Patriotic Front have threatened to ignite a new outbreak of violent xenophobia, targeting mainly black people from other African countries. There has been a string of murders, arson attacks and intimidation. An atmosphere of constant threat has been created. As a result, many migrants are choosing to return home and face the threats of hunger and war in their countries of origin.

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Africa will hold us to account

Instead of the government trying to build an environment of tolerance and diversity, instead of distancing itself from these threats, instead of contradicting fake news that links the social crisis to migrants, ministers such as Aaron Motsoaledi and Bheki Cele have shamefully fuelled it.

There is another way to manage migration: the ANC needs to stop propping up and prolonging the lives of “comrade regimes” in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Swaziland and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where leaders rob their countries blind and murder and intimidate their opponents.

It needs to act decisively to mitigate the hunger and unemployment crisis in South Africa and across the region and to improve policing and law and order, as called for by the SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) and many other organisations.

Cost-of-living strike

Saftu, Cosatu and many working-class civil society organisations, including the TAC and Abahlali, held a national shutdown on Wednesday, 24 August.

The shutdown was to protest the escalating cost-of-living crisis, which is sparking strikes and protests from Mozambique to Sierra Leone and across the world. At a media conference on 21 August, Saftu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi asked: “Do we want to wait for the powder keg to explode or do

we act now?”

There is no doubt that South Africa’s social fabric is fraying – and fraying fast. Basic food prices keep rising. There are eight million people depending on the R350 Social Relief of Distress grant. Unemployment is at its highest yet. Health services are failing.

And yet South Africa’s rich get richer.

Vavi cited as evidence of the combustibility of South Africa the growing youth suicide rate (suicide is the second-most common cause of death in the 15- to 29-year age group), and the fact that “we cannot even protect girls from rape and violence when they are at school”.

It couldn’t get much worse.

Except it can.

The government’s response is to bury its head even deeper in the sand and go ahead with plans for more austerity that will be announced in October’s medium-term budget policy statement.

In the face of state failure to protect fundamental rights to dignity, sufficient food and life; its obstinate and unlawful holding on to discredited fiscal policies; and failure to stem massive corruption and tax evasion, Saftu and its allies are demanding a R1-trillion stimulus into social spending.

Predictably, organised business has complained about the strike’s damage to the economy and investment. But the economy is already broken, and so this is cold comfort to people shut out of the economy or ruthlessly exploited by foreign investment in mines or tech platforms such as Uber.

With the tacit agreement of business, organisations such as Saftu and civil society are being kept out of negotiating bodies such as Nedlac and bypassed in “social compact” and economic recovery negotiations.

So, Saftu had – and has – every right to exercise its constitutional right to protest. Further, the duty to act to protect the lives of the poor falls on every person and business in our country. Not just the trade unions.

Vavi says “it’s time to stand up and unite and force a change”.

In response to claims that migrants are causing the crime wave, he asks: “Who is responsible for law and order? Migrant labourers or the government?”

South Africans should be pleased the protests were organised by the trade union movement, which is open about its agenda and demands, rather than xenophobes or the ANC’s criminal RET faction.

Nevertheless, the greatest responsibility lies with the government to take measures to address the social crisis and restore the constitutional promise of a country founded on social justice.