By the time you read this column it will have been more than two months — going on three — since about 350 husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers and orphans lost their lives during what officialdom has lately characterised as civil unrest. Hundreds of others have been arrested for the alleged high crime of orchestrating the July mayhem.
The country is supposedly being asked to move on — to focus on containing the coronavirus pandemic, economic recovery and reconstruction and, of course, the all-important forthcoming local government elections set to take place on November 1.
Yet these 350 lives — people, with names and families — remain unrecognised. They have received no official (provincial or state) funerals. Luck be on their side, all, if not most, will have been laid to rest after their violent demise by now, though there was little or no support from the state regarding the funeral costs. After all, the country is relieved that the state’s law enforcement agencies played no role in their deaths, though they watched them perish mercilessly in stampedes and other circumstances.
Luck be on their side, few of them appear on the charge sheet associated with the hundreds facing criminal prosecution. Luck be on their side, a few years down the line, some, maybe all, of the victims’ families will learn from some low-key inquest about the details of how their loved ones died.
In the wake of this tragedy, which has been framed to favour the victors, the state rushed to cobble together explanations. Early comments characterised the mayhem as the work of ethnic mobilisation even though Gauteng (alongside KwaZulu-Natal) doesn’t neatly fit this description.
Medical parole
Worse still, supporters of former ANC and SA president Jacob Zuma have yet to distance themselves from the mayhem allegedly linked to his incarceration for contempt of court arising from his defiance of the Constitutional Court order to appear before the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture.
Zuma is newly back with his family after being granted medical parole by prisons boss Arthur Fraser as part of his discretionary powers — against the advice of the parole board. This has raised the ire of right-wing white advocacy groups led by the official opposition DA, which are tone-deaf about the repercussions of such a move.
Opportunistically, governing party politicians have come up with piecemeal initiatives to assuage concerns about real racial tensions that have been worsened, ironically, by the so-called new SA, which has seen racial inequality, unemployment and poverty increase. The so-called social cohesion drums, which have gone silent, will be beaten again in mid-December around Dingaan/Reconciliation Day.
Innocent bystanders, including churches and civil society, have been catapulted on to the centre stage of this governing party-inspired crisis: in an attempt to calm rising tensions, they have found themselves in the tricky position of having to call a spade a spade, not a gardening tool.
Whether forces or agents loyal to Zuma had anything to do with the July mayhem, most of the blame has to be apportioned to the ANC as the governing party. It has been 27 years since tens of millions of South Africans swept the ANC into power in the hope their support for the former liberation movement would transform their wretched lives into better ones.
Dominant narrative
After failing them over the years, this week the party is asking the same millions to give it another chance when they go to the polls on November 1.
The effect of the dominant narrative around these deaths — multiple times those of Sharpeville (1960), Soweto (1976), Boipatong (1992) and Marikana (2012) — has been to deprioritise, once more, black African lives.
The attempt to characterise the events of mid-July as acts of treason or common criminality has lessened the value of the lives of the deceased. By being caught up in a crime scene, minus the state’s involvement (not failure, according to apologists), they have themselves to blame, so goes this logic.
Since the July mayhem, the government has stopped updating the public about this tragedy, save for the odd court appearance by those suspected of having orchestrated the loss of life and destruction of economic infrastructure.
After public outrage about the composition and competence of his executive team, President Cyril Ramaphosa reshuffled his cabinet: he promoted defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, who defied his message around the riots and dragged her feet around troop deployments, to head parliament; he made state security minister Ayanda Dlodlo political head of public service & administration; and, yes, police minister Bheki Cele managed to keep his job even though the police’s response to the build-up to the mayhem was woefully inadequate.
Quite rightly, the government and the private sector have rushed to assist owners of affected businesses to quickly get back on their feet and save jobs. However, the plight of the families of the about 350 deceased, mostly Africans, remains unaddressed. Even activist law firms haven’t offered their services to the victims’ families.
In the circumstances — with no independent judicial commission of inquiry into the July events and the role of the ANC’s factional wrangling in them — the ANC, under whose watch these black lives were lost, is able to get away with it. Instead, white parties are after Fraser to get him to account for granting Zuma a medical parole.
The inescapable conclusion is that black lives don’t matter in SA. This shouldn’t be allowed. These black lives matter.
• Dludlu, a former Sowetan editor, is executive for strategy and public affairs at the Small Business Institute.
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