We have been captured by predatory elite, and it’s the poor who pay

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WE ARE living in days of growing crisis. The crisis manifests in all kinds of ways. It is not only about President Jacob Zuma, as reprehensible as he is. There is a broad drift towards a kind of authoritarianism that often has disturbing echoes with fascist politics.

We have seen neo-fascism in Black First Land First, the propaganda project for Zuma and the Guptas. We have seen it in the elements of the student movement that have developed an intolerance so extreme that they have successfully had the works of anti-apartheid black artists removed from UCT.

We have seen it in the attacks on migrants in the streets of our cities – attacks that seldom, if ever, result in prosecutions. We have seen it too in the public protector’s flirtation with a Nazi and the rise of anti-semitic conspiracy theories.

But we have also seen it in the brutality with which the state often governs the poor. The Marikana massacre shocked the world, and rightly so. But there is also an everyday state violence against the poor that, cumulatively, has claimed more lives than Marikana.

Here in Durban the violence at the Glebelands hostel has been devastating. The violence mobilised against the urban poor has also been extraordinary. Evictions and protests often result in death. In most cases wider society is silent.

How many religious organisations, civil society organisations or academics speak up when a poor black person is murdered by the state?

There is a general complicity with the disposability of black life. Astonishingly, the same people who will be rightly outraged by the murder of a black person at the hands of the police in the US will often be silent when black people are murdered by the police in South Africa.

If we cannot arrest this slide into a kind of social fascism, we are in serious trouble. The old story about a frog in slowly boiling water not realising that it is heading to its destruction is apposite. But there are certain moments that should jolt us out of our complacency. Marikana was one such moment. The march of shack dwellers against state violence in Durban on Monday was another.

But the response of the ethekwini Municipality to that march is also a deeply disturbing moment, which should lead us to stand up and say “enough”.

One might think that, in view of our past, the city would be committed to engaging protest in a consultative, democratic manner. One might think they would make every effort to listen to engage the poor. But one would be wrong.

What the city announced, in the wake of a huge protest by its poorer citizens against state violence, is that it had bought Casspirs and armoured vehicles, to police the poor. Municipal policing is being militarised.

Those of us who are old enough will remember that in the 1980s there was a campaign to get the army out of the townships. The idea that the state would be re-militarising the governance of the poor would once have been unthinkable.

But the unthinkable has now become a reality. This is one more of those moments when people of conscience must stand up and say: “No! Not in my name”.

Zandile Gumede has failed as a mayor. But just as the problems of our country are much bigger than the failings of Zuma, the problems of our city are much bigger than the failings of Gumede.

The mayor must take responsibility for the deaths of shack dwellers at the hands of the state and for this turn towards the militarisation of the governance of the poor. She must apologise and stop the madness.

But we need to look deeper and ask ourselves how it came to be that a democratically elected government thought that a military solution to poverty was the best way forward.

The fact of the matter is that the biggest beneficiaries of the city’s housing programme have been private families. It has made them obscenely rich. It has not addressed the needs of the poor.

Corruption is not about the Guptas. It happens at all levels of society and at every level it is the poor who pay the highest price. Our state has been captured by a predatory elite at every level.

The most urgent question we face is how to achieve this fundamental change. The answers are not clear. The EFF emerges from within a toxic mix of corruption and authoritarianism.

The DA is, as the whole tweet saga has shown, simply not credible. The much-vaunted Numsa moment doesn’t seem to have to come to much.

Across the board our leaders have failed us. If they are not corrupt or racist, they are flatfooted.

This is a time of decision, a time in which our character as individuals and as a people will be judged by future generations.

This is a time for ordinary people, all of us, to refuse to accept the theft of our democracy. This is a time to stand up, to see clearly and act firmly.

We simply cannot go back to a system in which the poor, the majority, are ruled by the military.

Buccus is a senior research associate at ASRI, a research fellow at the UKZN School of Sciences, and the academic director of a university study abroad programme on political transformation.