State’s security paranoia deflects class strife

ONE OF the city’s longest-running acts of post-liberation class warfare is based on a conflict in the constitution. Or that’s how it feels.

Chapter 2 Section 12 (1) of the Bill of Rights says everyone has the right to security, which includes the right to be free from all forms of violence. But Section 21 (1) says everyone has the right to freedom of movement.

Not much exemplifies the battle over who’s more liberated, like road closures.

Barricades have been opening and slamming shut throughout Joburg for about 15 years. This is an essential part of political hedging by the rich whose lives are all about eliminating risk.

But this week, as tales of how to keep power emerged from the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) lekgotla, the issue again got a front-row seat.

The ruling party is clear this time. It puts pressure on President Jacob Zuma to enact legislation on foreign-controlled security companies. And that’s not only in residential areas. The NEC also wants government to relook companies con- tracted to guard, for example, national keypoints.

It’s the word “foreign” which, of course, indicates a tired trajectory of politicians’ paranoia, if not madness. It’s usually situated in the bogeyman of the CIA – hustled into sight by many a minister and spokesperson who has run out of ideas on how to make excuses for delivery work.

“Its massive employment of foreigners poses a national security risk. The fact that the private security industry is in possession of an excessive amount of capacity also poses a national security risk,” says the lekgotla’s peace and security commission report.

That sense of persecution may well be replicated in the Private Security Industry Regulation Amendment Bill, which awaits Zuma’s signature.

But the report, which feels very spy versus spy, contains the key element which is also at the heart of class strife over closures in neighbourhoods like Malanshof, where residents argued for years over their boom.

The NEC says the best way of stopping the villains in high-collar coats from stealing all our secrets, is for government to use its own resources for security. That has long been the answer to bringing an end to road closures, too, with activists like the Open City Forum insisting no one but the SAPS can run a closure. But we know they can’t.

Last year, a tamer policy was approved by the city which said that no one could be forced to ID themselves before entering public roads.

With dozens of applications pending, it had taken about 10 years to be signed off, but now the rules seem clear. Remote controls are out. One gate must be constantly manned with full access. Other gates may have limited hours, but need to be accessible 24/7, and guards are forbidden from searches.

In the US, some enclosed communities are called “edge cities”. Here, the hope in the new scheme was not to further entrench the divide between rich and poor, while still giving people the right to feel safe. With at least 2.83 mil- lion people living in an area of about 1 626km in Joburg, that’s very generous. It’s also a hell of an ask. Space is tragically unequal, and desperation high with unemployment at about 30 percent.

There can, then, be no doubt that closures using private security are still the primary means of securing segregated development – updating apartheid planning, but along non-racial lines.

The NEC’s report should perhaps have focused more on how to reconstruct that ill social compact than on its institutionalised paranoia.

Yet, one well-integrated community in Observatory is proving there is an illusion of freedom once behind a boom. Its security whatsapp group rarely has a mention about so much as a hosepipe getting stolen. Fully secured, its concerns are instead who is going to feed the stray dog at the entrance, load-shedding and accidents on the main road.

It’s a pretty carefree guide to what suburban life in the city should be like.

But, CIA or no CIA, that’s still a mirage for most.