IN THE KILLING FIELDS
Political murders have long been a dreadful,if largelyignored, problem in SA. There is the chance that they may become more frequent, and feature higher up the food chain, as uncertainty increases
Wisdom has it that the fish rots from the head. In SA, that would seem true enough. But whatever the political decay at our democratic core, it is on the periphery of our democracy that the final manifestation of the disease afflicting us is to be found. It is death. SA is now a country where we assassinate those we oppose.
As we fall from Olympus, the question we ask is: how far do we still have to descend?
That has now been answered. It ends with murder, and we hit the bottom some time ago. Not so much an early-warning sign as a final diagnosis.
On October 31 last year, Kwazulu Natal premier Willies Mchunu announced the establishment of the Moerane commission. Its terms of reference say it is to report on “the underlying causes giving rise to the murder of politicians in Kwazulu Natal”.
Headed by advocate Marumo Moerane SC, it has a budget of between R10m and R15m and is required to deliver its final report, “no later than 12 months after the date of the proclamation”.
At the time of its establishment, Mchunu could point to 20 political killings that government records showed had taken place in the province in 2016.
The victims included 12 ANC members, three members of the National Freedom Party, three members of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and two members of the SA Communist Party (SACP).
At the end of May this year, the number stood at 33. The unrelenting problem forced new police minister Fikile Mbalula to announce the establishment of a police task team consisting of members from the
Hawks, Crime Intelligence and Special Investigating Unit to probe political killings in the province.
He said such killings had “reached [an] unprecedented and appalling level” and should be “condemned in [the] strongest possible way”.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has in the past adopted a more phlegmatic attitude. “The reality,” he has said of the killings, “is that selection of candidates for council is always a life and death issue.”
That it is. And the problem is far bigger than Kwazulu Natal, though it would appear to be the epicentre.
The Institute for Security Studies has said there were 71 killings related to politics between 2006 and 2014. The Wikipedia page dedicated to political killings in SA lists 53 people, but it doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2014. Independent researcher and crime specialist David Bruce estimates there have been 450 politically motivated murders since 1994, a claim repeated by the SA Local Government Association.
Occasionally these cases make it to court. Even more infrequently there is a full trial and it is possible to glean, from proceedings, some of the forces behind the crimes. Often what is at play boils down to nothing more than a position, typically that of a local councillor, and the salary it pays, always with some factional interest in the background.
After a short break, the Moerane commission will continue listening to witnesses this month. It represents a welcome change in attitude to a longstanding problem, on the part of the ANC. But no-one really seems to care. An SABC clip of one of the first witnesses to appear before the commission, on March 30, showed an empty hall behind him, with rows upon rows of seats in which no-one sat.
It is remarkable that a modern constitutional democracy can hold a commission of inquiry into nothing less than political assassinations, with next to no interest from the media. It is true that the commission has generated a headline here and there, but it has gone by largely unnoticed. In the age of Oscar Pistorius, you have to wonder why that is.
Part of the reason, no doubt, has to do
What it means: With an estimated 450 politically motivated murders since 1994, this is now a problem that needs our attention
with the extent of the turmoil at the top. The revelations concerning President Jacob
Zuma, his inner circle and their relationship to the Guptas are now developing at an exponential rate, to the extent that it is almost impossible to track them all, let alone properly contemplate their significance.
The prospect of 200,000 new e-mails detailing the nature of the Guptas’ vampiric hold will only worsen the problem. And that is before one gets to the multitude of other calamities, from the state of the economy to that of education, that have SA in a general state of panic.
There is, then, an element of crisis fatigue. But that alone does not explain the lack of interest in the problem. It is a kind of denial, perhaps, a coping mechanism. Certainly an honest look in the mirror necessitates a series of damning questions about local politics and the state of our constitutional dispensation. This is, as they say in the US these days, not normal. Not by a long shot.
The problem might be confined to the periphery at the moment, but you get the sense it is coming to a bigger stage soon enough.
Last week, EFF leader Julius Malema tweeted: “WARNING: The @SACP1921 should strengthen security detail of Solly Mapaila, the old man is not happy at all with him & anything is possible.” (Mapaila, the SACP’S second deputy general secretary, has made a number of attacks on Zuma and on state looting.)
Former Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has spoken of receiving death threats. Likewise Mantashe, human settlements minister Lindiwe Sisulu, former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas and ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu.
One is loath to make a prediction like this. But, then, given all the available evidence and the proliferation of this particular kind of slaughter, it would seem foolish to ignore the signs. In 2013, I wrote of the growing number of these kinds of assassinations: “Slowly but steadily, as they become more prevalent and are consistently met without consequences, so the phenomenon will make its way up our power hierarchy. In time it will inevitably arrive at the top.”
That the problem is intensifying is hard to dispute. With the ANC’S December conference and a decidedly uncertain 2019 election on the horizon, there is every prospect of yet
more political instability and chaos to come. All of which is worsened by a general climate defined by a failing economy, high unemployment and the latent anger that seems to permeate the SA psyche. Uncertainty breeds anarchy just as surely as economic growth engenders calm.
If that ever happens, it will quickly refocus the SA mind. Then the key questions will get some real attention. They range from the specific (whether these are isolated incidents or some co-ordinating force links them) to the general (can we call ourselves a modern democracy when political assassinations are part of our democratic culture?).
The ANC government tends to act only in a crisis. The Moerane commission seems an earnest enough attempt to get to the root of the problem, at least in Kwazulu Natal.
But it would be a mistake to think it a solution. There is a political culture at play. In Kwazulu Natal it draws on a long history of political violence, particularly between the ANC and IFP. But it extends far beyond that and always the ANC is the common theme.
In turn, murder might be the ultimate form but it would be a mistake to divorce it from a general culture of violence and intimidation. Assassination is simply the final solution for an attitude that manifests in many other ways. The media remains littered with stories of branch meetings devolving into physical mayhem, of offices being burnt to the ground and hundreds of other different forms of intimidation and coercion.
As the ANC collapses in on itself, one of the by-products is not just the disintegration of political control but politics itself. It reverts to some base manifestation of power. It is one where might is right and brute force, not ideas, determines one’s prospects.
It is important and necessary to focus on the decay at the head. Just as true is that it is dangerous to forget it is all one fish. It is democratic pretence that allows us to evaluate the ANC executive through a constitutional lens. There are rules and procedures, systems and laws that help us order the chaos just enough to believe it can be understood and contained by best practice. Pan out to a wider view, and that perspective is of little help. On the periphery of our democracy, the rules no longer apply.
There are killing fields out there. This commission could be the first of many. We should pay it far more attention.