In due course, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration will announce leadership changes in the security agencies to try to bolster the bodies that failed to stop the mayhem that resulted in the deaths of nearly 400 people in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July 2021.
By rights, heads should roll, but the tinkering is unlikely to involve either police minister Bheki Cele or police commissioner Khehla Sitole, who are embroiled in a destructive cold war that is having a detrimental effect on policing and police morale.
A fortnight ago, days before his state of the nation address, Ramaphosa released the findings and recommendations of a three-member expert panel he commissioned into the looting and violence of July 2021, which coincided with the imprisonment of his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, for failing to honour a subpoena to testify before the state capture inquiry.
The panel’s report confirmed the obvious: the police were spectators at the crime scene, were woefully unprepared, lacked credible intelligence to fashion out a response and, worse, didn’t work with intelligence. In many cases they were hopelessly outnumbered.
This occurred despite the fact that Zuma’s supporters were gathering in huge crowds at his Nkandla homestead beforehand, breaking all Covid-19 protocols, and threatening violence against anyone who dared arrest him.
Ramaphosa told the nation a week ago: “The expert panel found that cabinet must take overall responsibility for the events of July 2021. This is a responsibility that we acknowledge and accept.” Sadly, he appears to be the only one in that cabinet — and frankly in the governing ANC — who ever accepts any responsibility for mishandling things. At the beginning of his tenure, Ramaphosa’s regrets were refreshing and held promise for course correction. Now, thanks to his colleagues, these statements are starting to sound hollow.
The rest of the cabinet, especially the security cluster ministers (Cele, former defence minister and serial offender Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and former state security minister Ayanda Dlodlo), have yet to shoulder any responsibility for their role in enabling the mayhem that destabilised the country and wiped R50bn from the economy.
In fact, they spent days scrambling for excuses, and one of them even openly contradicted Ramaphosa’s characterisation of the unrest. Instead of taking responsibility and showing regret and humility during the hearings of the Human Rights Commission — which resumed in Johannesburg this week — they adopted a defensive posture and pleaded ignorance. This week Cele reluctantly admitted that days before the mayhem that engulfed Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal there was an ominous sense that something was brewing, but that it was a gut feel and no actionable intelligence was shared with him.
The report’s authors point to the other difficulty SA faces — the role of ANC factional battles in destabilising the country. They note: “Perhaps the most significant input made, which we heard several times, was that what appears to be factional battles in the ANC have become a serious source of instability in the country. This is a matter of great concern, and the reasons for this need to be identified sooner rather than later.
“For their part, the security services are uncertain about how to effectively address this convergence of violent criminal conduct with mainstream politics, given the correct posture taken by the country to ensure that political activity stays free of state security interference.”
This is a vital yet disturbing observation that needs to be further canvassed, as has been argued in this column before. The ANC’s internal battles have become a threat to social stability. Intra-party contestation, such as the selection of party candidates for government posts, is all too often accompanied by violence and even murders of candidates. This was the case before the November local government elections, and the party’s renewal project is again facing stiff resistance from the anti-Ramaphosa faction.
Even after the death of so many people — the exact number is not known because the government stopped updates days after the mayhem — the faction loyal to Zuma has failed to condemn the unrest, and instead seeks to explain it away. Soon after the unrest Ramaphosa reshuffled his cabinet, sending Dlodlo to public administration, moving state security to his office and swapping Mapisa-Nqakula with speaker of parliament Thandi Modise in the defence portfolio.
Over the past few months he has been making further changes, including asking minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele to be the political head of intelligence. But two critical agencies — the State Security Agency and police crime intelligence — still have many vacancies that have been filled on a caretaker basis.
Cele has survived the cull so far, but his effectiveness in the job has been blunted by the ongoing wrangling with Sitole. Attempts by both men to downplay their bad blood have failed to inspire confidence in the police service, which seems to be losing the war to criminals. Having failed to stop the July mayhem and resultant deaths and injuries, the pair are unlikely to bring to book the perpetrators of these crimes and bring closure and justice to the victims’ families.
Ramaphosa’s choices are clear, but not simple. Accepting collective responsibility for the July events is a commendable start. The culprits — Cele, Mapisa-Nqakula and Dlodlo — need to be instructed to publicly do so too.
As a matter of priority, Ramaphosa needs to lance the boil his party has become to society by commissioning an independent probe on the threat posed by ongoing factional strife in the ANC. Piecemeal changes to the security cluster will not accomplish much — a complete overhaul is required. He is going to have to choose between Sitole and Cele.
• Dludlu, a former Sowetan editor, is CEO of the Small Business Institute.
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