The Constitutional Court’s dismissal of the department of correctional services’ application for leave to appeal against a Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruling that Jacob Zuma must be sent back to prison has raised the spectre of more unrest.
Hushed conversations of parents in middle-class homes in Durban are filled with anxiety.
Most well-informed analysts say these fears are overblown. Mass riots are not initiated on anyone’s command. They happen when they happen, and the riots two years ago were not driven by support for Zuma.
Of course, they were detonated by the public breakdown in the rule of law when trucks were burnt with impunity and tiny groups of people claiming to be MK veterans attacked migrant-owned stalls in central Durban with the same impunity.
And of course these people were acting in support of Zuma, but they were tiny groups of people and there was never a single demonstration of mass support for Zuma. When a “shutdown” of central Durban was called in support of Zuma fewer than 50 people showed up. It was pathetic. The last time that S’bu Zikode of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack dwellers’ movement, called for a demonstration, more than 7,000 people showed up.
As the grassroots activists across Durban and academics with grassroots connections agree, the first few days of the upheaval two years ago took the form of a classic food riot. Later there was a turn to general looting and then targeted attacks on infrastructure within the general mayhem.
With mass unemployment and poverty now a structural feature of society there could well be more riots in future but there is no automatic connection between riots and Zuma’s fate. In fact, Zuma is not just yesterday’s man, he is widely reviled.
The problems of the armed and often violent political mafias that rose to power during Zuma’s time in office and mass impoverishment should be clearly disentangled. The impunity for the local mafias calling themselves “business forums” and the return to truck burning are a direct threat to society and the authority of the state and should be dealt with decisively. This requires high-level intelligence and policing work, both carefully insulated from the many powerful people in the police and the wider criminal justice system who are captured by the political mafias and the ANC’s rotten parts.
Intelligence services
No credible state can accept that trucks are burnt on a national road or that heavily armed men can openly shake down construction projects. This is an open, direct threat to national security and must be treated as such. The right arm of the state — its capacity for force and coercion — must be deployed with maximum urgency and effectiveness. This must include a vigorous attempt to investigate and arrest the shadowy forces that used the cover of the July riots to attack infrastructure.
Dealing with this should be a priority for intelligence services. There should be co-operation between the state and the parts of the private sector with relevant skills.
The problem of mass impoverishment and hunger requires an equally vigorous deployment of the left arm of the state — which provides social support to citizens. The people who took the opportunity afforded by the breakdown in law and order to help themselves to food are not criminals. They are desperate people who were swept up in the moment. In fact they are the victims of a fundamentally unjust society and require maximum support in terms of ensuring a basic income, food security, decent housing and services and, ultimately, some sort of resolution of the unemployment crisis.
The denizens of the middle class — the world of people that Steven Friedman calls the “insiders” — should be focusing on this with the same energy that they focus on corruption, potholes and the failing electricity and water systems. In the short term the rapid decay of suburbs may affect us more directly than the millions of young people languishing without work but our future is ultimately entwined. If millions of people have no stake in society they will not be permanently quiescent. SA will be unviable as a going concern unless it addresses mass poverty.
Ramaphosa is now often laughed at when he talks of social compacts, but while his dismal failure to build these compacts is disappointing, the idea of a social compact about poverty alleviation is valuable. Broad commitment is needed to address poverty, commitment that extends beyond the government.
Meanwhile we don’t know when the next riot will come. No-one expected the explosion in Tunisia that led to the Arab Spring when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in December 2010. We also don’t know what form it will take, and if it will raise any political demands. What we do know is that the desperation of the majority will certainly affect the better-off minority unless something is done to alleviate that desperation, and with maximum urgency.
The situation is severe in terms of the impunity enjoyed by the political mafias and the mass social desperation. We cannot respond to either crisis with a business-as-usual approach. Emergency measures are required. We need to be on something like a war footing, a war against social exclusion and poverty. Success in that regard is not impossible. Brazil made huge gains under Lula da Silva’s first administration, and Bolivia made similarly impressive gains under Evo Morales. If we can do the same, and simultaneously crush the political mafias that rose under Zuma’s corrupt reign, we will guarantee peace, and a future for our children.
• Buccus is senior research associate at the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute.
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