Marikana Commission: Riah Phiyega's impossibly hazy memory

National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega appeared at the Marikana Commission on Wednesday to clarify questions on how decisions were made from the top. Instead, she further tarnished the SAPS position in the inquiry, painting top officers as uninterested in operational matters and effectively laying the blame at the feet of ground commanders. By GREG NICOLSON.

Riah Phiyega listened to chairman Ian Farlam. “You swear that the further evidence you give to this Commission will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” In a floral skirt, teal blouse and blazer, with matching pearl earrings and necklace, Phiyega agreed.

The national police commissioner appeared in front of the Marikana Commission again on Wednesday for the last time before the inquiry wraps up. As the top cop in August 2012, when 34 mineworkers were killed in a single day and 10 people were killed in the preceding week, Phiyega's testimony is crucial to the Commission's goal of pursuing truth and restorative justice. She is ultimately responsible for the police operations. She's also the link between alleged political influence and SAPS actions.

On Wednesday, however, Phiyega stonewalled Farlam who for most of her appearance quizzed her on issues that either hadn't been resolved or had come to light since Phiyega's previous lengthy appearance. To most questions, she simply said she doesn't remember what happened over two years ago. In her silence, she painted a picture of a leader unwilling to cooperate with the inquiry, senior police officers who failed to perform their duties, and an SAPS that has tried to mislead the Commission.

Farlam wanted to talk about the extraordinary meeting of the police management forum on 15 August when top provincial and national officers discussed Marikana. It was in this meeting when the decision was taken to implement the disperse, disarm and arrest plan the next day, which ultimately led to the massacre. Incredibly, the police didn't hand over any evidence of the meeting nor mention it when they made their submissions to the Commission. It only came out later.

“You're now seriously stating we would be in error if we find SAPS didn't cooperate [with the Commission]?” Farlam put to Phiyega. Only after a third party pointed them towards the meeting did the Commission find out about it. There was nothing untoward, she claimed, and when requested, they admitted the meeting took place. “It certainly appeared to us to be a secret when it came out at a later stage,” said Farlam.

Phiyega agreed the Marikana strike was the most challenging public policing situation during the democratic era, but she could not remember details of the meeting which approved the plan to tackle it. In the hour-long session on 15 August 2012, North West Provincial Commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo made a presentation for 10 to 15 minutes and the SAPS from different provinces also discussed sharing the necessary resources for the operation. Beyond that, Phiyega said she didn’t have a “photographic memory” and could not remember “pedantic details” about what happened in the meeting.

“It's very important for us to know why the decision was taken to proceed on Thursday morning,” said Farlam. “It's important for us to find out was exactly was said.” Phiyega didn't help, but she was clear about what didn't happen in the meeting. While most of the country's provincial police commissioners were present, some of whom come from policing backgrounds, Phiyega said no specific details of the plan to confront the mineworkers were discussed before it was approved.

“Are you seriously suggesting that the meeting endorsed the proposal without knowing what the details of the response were?” asked Farlam. Phiyega's response was that police know how to conduct disarming operations and they're are essentially the same. She said this despite two officers being hacked to death when a disarming operation went wrong on 13 August. Incredibly, reflecting on the meeting on 15 August, Phiyega could not recall any of the country's top police officers raising the fear of further bloodshed while they decided to approve the plan.

While shocking, it also seems extremely unlikely given the volatile situation in Marikana at the time and widely publicised problems with policing protests. Yet if Phiyega acknowledged they knew and spoke about the dangers, the next question is, so why did they implement the plan, or why this plan, and why wasn't greater precaution taken?

Farlam, however, seemed shocked. “The fact that the proposal was endorsed by the meeting, the fact that the people there all agreed to make resources available as required, surely means that they cannot evade responsibility and say, 'We knew about the plan. Sure go ahead. We'll make resources available. And if it goes wrong because it's managed badly or defective planning, that's nothing to do with us.' Surely there comes a time when responsibility must rest with those people in that meeting as well.”

He was equally surprised that Phiyega had no recollection of a conversation with SAPS expert witness Cees de Rover about political influence on police decisions at Marikana. “My questions have been straightforward on the issue; the answers have not been,” De Rover said last week, claiming Phiyega was evasive. Farlam said surely she would remember being asked if political pressure played a part in the death of 34 people in a day. Phiyega said she couldn't remember and refused to engage the chairman's questions.

Already evasive and difficult, the national police commissioner's credibility was shot when Farlam brought up the review panel. When Phiyega had appeared at the Commission before, she was asked whether the SAPS had established a review on certain issues related broadly to Marikana and Phiyega said she had not. But when a police hard drive was analysed, it emerged a review panel had been established and Phiyega's signature was on the call up instructions. No evidence the panel existed was voluntary handed to the Commission by the police despite their commitment to do so with all relevant information at the start of the inquiry.

It is impossible to look at Phiyega's cross-examination on Wednesday and believe she's being honest.

While she plays the amnesia card and tries to distance the country's top officers from the details of the plan to confront the miners, she opens up herself and other officers to allegations of incompetence and dereliction of duty. But by doing so she shifts the greater responsibility to the commanders on the ground who she says the SAPS relied on.

Phiyega is also putting a wall between the police and the politicians who got involved in Marikana. Last week, De Rover, a policing expert who has worked in over 60 countries, said he couldn't fathom a situation where politicians were not involved.

If there was any doubt that Phiyega was untruthful, Advocate Dali Mpofu showed her the transcript between the SAPS's Mbombo and Lonmin's Bernard Mokoena on 14 August 2012. In relation to the police ending the strike, the two speak of Cyril Ramaphosa, Julius Malema, the pair's relationship in the ANC disciplinary committee, problems with Malema potentially ending the crisis, and nationalisation of the mines. Asked about the political nature of the discussion and whether it is legal for the SAPS to use policing operations to influence party politics, Phiyega responded, “What's political about this?”

“They could have used different words, but what I hear is people who are interested in ending a protest.”

Let us say it once more: It is impossible to look at Phiyega's cross-examination on Wednesday and believe she's being honest. DM

Source: Daily Maverick

South African court convicts men of murder attempt on Rwandan general

A South African court found four men guilty on Friday of an attempt to murder an exiled former Rwandan general in front of his home in Johannesburg.

The general said the attack was ordered by Rwandan president Paul Kagame.

Two other suspects were acquitted for the shooting, which took place in 2010 and that injured Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, the court said.

Nyamwasa, a former top aide to Rwanda's president, fell out with him in 2010 and fled to South Africa where he was granted political asylum. Nyamwasa and others accuse Kagame of ordering two attempts on his life. They also accuse him of ordering the murder of another critic of the Rwandan government, colonel Patrick Karegeya, who was a former Rwandan spymaster. Karegeya was found strangled in a Johannesburg hotel in December last year. Karegeya, who was also exiled in South Africa, was Nyamwasa's friend and former colleague.

Rwanda's government has denied any involvement in the attacks.

Karegeya's nephew, David Batenga, said he was pleased the four men were found guilty but discouraged that the other two were not. Sentencing is set for 10 September.

Rwanda's government has been praised for making impressive progress in the delivery of public services since the 1994 genocide. However, Human Rights Watch says freedom of expression is tightly controlled and that the government has threatened critics, and obstructed opposition parties and independent civil society.

In Rwanda on Friday, two senior army officers were charged with inciting the public against the government. Brigadier general Frank Rusagara and colonel Tom Byabagamba were also charged in a military court with illegal possession of firearms and spreading falsehoods. The two were arrested last week.

Byabagamba once was the commander of the elite force in charge of Kagame's security. Rusagara, who retired from the army last year, had recently served as the defence attache at Rwanda's diplomatic mission in Britain. His driver, retired sergeant Francois Kabayiza, was also charged.

Source: The Guardian

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement: The ANC Must be removed from Office

For nine years our movement has boycotted elections. We have been clear that no political party represents the interests of the poor and that it was necessary for us to build our own power in order to present our own needs and demands to society. In these nine years we have won many victories but most of us remain in shacks. Twenty years of shack life is a disgrace in a democracy.

Corruption is also a disgrace. In Durban you get nothing without a membership card for the ANC. All development goes through the councillors and their ward committees and ANC branch executive committees. Development is there to make ANC leaders rich and to control the rest of us by only making it available to ANC members. Development is not for the people. This kind of corruption is a disgrace in a democracy.

But an even bigger disgrace is the repression that we have faced from the ANC, its members, its leaders and its assassins. They have banned our marches; attacked our marches; arrested us on trumped up charges; assaulted us in detention; used armed men to drive us from our homes with police support; used death threats, attacks in our homes and torture in police stations to intimidate people to manufacture evidence against us; detained us for months and months while we wait for a trial that gets thrown out of court because there is no evidence against us; used their anti-land invasion unit to evict us for political reasons and beaten and shot us in our communities. Senior members of the ANC and the Municipality have made public death threats against us. Two activists were assassinated in Cato Crest last year and another, an unarmed teenage girl, was executed by the police.

We cannot go on with this level of repression. As everyone knows we are not the only people who face this kind of repression. We all know about Andries Tatane and all the others murdered by the police on protests. We all know about the Marikana Massacre.

In Durban court orders are just ignored by the Municipality and so the courts cannot protect us. Mostly the media and civil society tend to agree that because we are poor and black we are automatically violent and criminal and too stupid to think our own politics and so we do not get that much protection from the media and civil society either. We have some valued comrades on the left among the middle classes but mostly this left just wants to bus us into its meetings so that it can look credible without having any interest at all in our struggles, our ideas or our safety. NUMSA asked us to support their march in Durban but they have not shown any concern to support us when we face repression. The EFF also asked us to support their march in Durban but, like NUMSA, they have not supported us when we face repression. So far our experience of both these organisations is that they are operating like the left NGOs – we are treated as if our only role is to provide the large numbers of people that they need to be bussed in to justify their politics.

Because we cannot carry on like this we took a decision to vote against the ANC. We did not want to split our vote. We decided to collectivise our vote in order to make it stronger. Our main priority was that the ANC must be removed from office. We knew that this will not happen in this election but we were still clear that if we can weaken the ANC then we must do that. Also we knew that if we collectivise our vote all the political parties will know that there is a large bloc of votes that will be available at the next election for the party that does the best job in opposing repression and takes the best position on shack settlements.

We decided that all political parties except the ANC would be invited to make a presentation to the movement. Some of our members did not want to invite the DA to make a presentation as they are known to represent the rich and, in Cape Town, they are no different to the ANC when it comes to illegal and violent evictions. However we debated this at length and decided to invite them to make a presentation on the grounds that the removal of the ANC was our first priority and the weakening of the ANC was our second priority.

The DA, EFF, NFP and WASP all accepted the invitation to make a presentation to our members at the Diakonia Centre on 25 April and they all came and made their presentations.

The delegates to that meeting then returned to their branches to discuss the presentations there. We met again on 2 May and held a general meeting. At this meeting the general leadership did not vote as their role was to facilitate the meeting. The rest of the delegates voted and the results were as follows:

2 - undecided
2 - WASP
16 - EFF
26 - NFP
146 – DA

The DA and the EFF returned to witness the voting. WASP did not return. The NFP arrived three hours late with lots of car, bodyguards and their senior people. But by that time we were already dispersing.

The whole meeting was recorded on video and this video can be made available. Even those who were very disappointed with the results agree that it was a highly democratic process. The collective discipline of a democratic organisation requires that we all accept this outcome. Of course this decision is only for this election and it does not bind our members in Cape Town. When the next election comes we will again decide whether or not to vote and, if so, which party to vote for.

The main reason why the majority of the delegates supported the DA was because they wanted to have the strongest possible opposition to the ANC to put the maximum pressure on the ANC and to prevent it from doing what it pleases – which includes murdering us. We negotiated a legal agreement with DA which commits them to support some of our more basic demands. We hope that they will stand up for these issues and that they, and all other parties, will realise that if they want the support of the shack dwellers they will have to support us rather than see us as a problem to be eradicated or forcibly removed from the cities and taken to the human dumping grounds.

We will vote, as one bloc, for the DA tomorrow. We will not take membership of the party, we do not endorse its policies and we will continue to insist that no one can hold a position as an elected leader in our movement if they join a political party. We do not love or trust the DA. Already they are telling lies about our choice and we are not surprised. We have made a purely tactical choice. We will certainly continue to organise against all and any attacks on the poor in Cape Town by the DA government there.

One of the lies that is being told is that the DA are saying that we have endorsed them for this election in the Western Cape. This is not true. Our Western Cape branch has endorsed our decision to make a tactical vote for the DA in KwaZulu-Natal. Our Western Cape branch has not decided to make any collective vote for any party in this election.

Over the last nine years we have protected our autonomy from NGOs very carefully even though we do work with some NGOs. Now that we feel that it is necessary for our safety and our ability to continue to organise to use our numbers to make deals with political parties we will protect our autonomy from political parties in the same way.

Our politics puts people first. We cannot do nothing but wait for socialism to come one day in the far distant future. Our children are dying from diarrhoea right now, our old people and disabled people are dying in shack fires right now, we are being evicted and disconnected right now and we are being beaten and shot during evictions and disconnections right now. We been repressed, and even murdered, right now. We have to act to do what we can to make our members’ lives better right now. We have to act to protect our ability to organise and to sustain our living politics right now. This does not mean that we have given up on our vision of a world where land, cities, wealth and power are shared fairly. We call this a living communism and we remain committed to it. But we also remain committed to the human beings that we are now and to our families, neighbours and comrades. We will make what deals we have to make to protect our politics and improve our members’ lives right now but we will not give up on our political vision. We represent thousands of people who live in shack settlements. Those people who sit in university offices and NGO offices only represent themselves. Their children are safe. Their lives are not at risk. They are free to put ideology before people because they are not accountable to oppressed people and because they are not themselves oppressed people. But the fact that we do not enjoy that freedom does not mean that we have given up our politics. It means that we are searching for a practical way forward in a difficult and dangerous struggle.

The new Abahlali electoral position has offered us a lot to learn about. There is a lot to learn about party politics and its dirty campaigning tactics. There is a lot to learn about the deeper politics of our time. And, yes, there is a lot to learn about who cares and doesn't care about the struggles of the poor and the working class.

Ideology and principle are vital but if they both fail to house the homeless and rescue the repressed and recognise the humanity of the inhumanized then the oppressed are not doing any harm to anyone in trying to emancipate ourselves by taking practical action now to keep people safe and to make their lives better while always keeping a bigger vision of freedom and justice in mind.

We share a sadness that we have had to make this decision. Very few people outside the movement have been witness to what we’ve been going through in the hands of the ANC. We do not have words to explain the pain many of us have gone through. We do not have words to explain our pain of twenty years of shack life and all the state repression that has come to us when we stood up for our humanity. Last year we came to the ceiling of hopelessness. It was clear that we are people that can be freely killed. The stress that this created led to some intense internal conflicts. We knew that we could not carry on with our old politics. Our new position has enabled us to rethink our struggle. It may not be the perfect way but it brought a robust discussion about us that was seriously trying to find ways of creating a new hope from no hope.

We are not surprised at the way some people on the so called left have reacted on our position. We are not surprised at the usual lies from the usual people on the internet. Many people and organisations on the left do not accept that we have the right to think our own struggle and to make our own decisions. They think that because they are on the left they have the right to tell us what to do. We do not accept this. These people see our decision as stupid and as a sell-out while they are nowhere to be seen in our times of great difficulty. It makes us to think that such people enjoy our suffering or even benefit from it. Why will people who claim to be in our support judge us instead of contacting us to first understand our decision? It may be a wrong decision but the reality is that we cannot deceive ourselves purposefully on our pain. Why should we be made to struggle in a way that is only designed to try and impress other people simple because they say that they are on the left? We will never do this. Our members must live in shacks and they must try and survive repression. Their organisation is theirs and it will be directed by their decisions. We have never compromised on this and for this we have always been attacked by the regressive left that only want us to take their money so that in exchange we can arrange for people to be bussed into their meetings. This is not emancipation. It is another kind of oppression.

Is the left doing enough to care about our struggle? Or do they see our struggles as projects from which they can prove and debate their findings and analysis rather than as a struggle to genuinely confront the forces of darkness? Our decision aims at trying to keep the space open for us to liberate ourselves by making a tactical move. We do not love the DA or agree with its policies. Why do people who failed to condemn the ANC attacks on us get so angry with us when we try to punish the ANC by making a tactical vote for its enemy? Maybe for these people it is better for us to be oppressed by the ANC than the DA. For us it is better not to be oppressed. Some of the left is just like some of the development NGOs and some of the state. They want to experiment on us, to use us for their own projects. We say no. On this there is no compromise. We continue to say ‘talk to us, not for us’ and ‘think with us not for us’.

Our position remains honouring those who have supported and who continue to support us. Since we all don't know the answers in this struggle to humanise the world we will keep hunting and trying. Sometimes we will make wrong decisions but at least we offer debate and learning for ourselves and all our friends and comrades.

The ANC are a serious threat to society and to right of the poor to organise freely in this society. They must be removed from office and until we can remove them we must do all that we can to weaken them.

For further information and comment please contact:

Mnikelo Ndabankulu on 081 263 3462
Zodwa Nsibande on 082 902 2960
Thembani Ngongoma on 084 613 9772
Nono Majola on 074 803 1986

Source: Abahlali baseMjondolo

Limpopo's fierytale: the people vs. the police, Armageddon style

On the day Robert McBride secured a nod in Parliament to lead police watchdog Ipid – and while more denials were heard by the Farlam Commission – news broke that officers in Limpopo shot dead two more protesters in a chaotic stand-off. This brings to eight the number of protesters killed this month alone. ALEX ELISEEV asks what it will take to make the police realise that its relationship with communities across South Africa is in a fiery tailspin.

The numbers are as mad as the story is startling: One satellite police station in the Relela village outside of Tzaneen, Limpopo. Twenty officers defending the outpost. Between 1,500 and 2,000 protesters “attacking” the station with stones and petrol bombs. Some 2,050 rounds of rubber bullets fired before the switch-over to live ammunition. Fifteen officers injured in the battle. Three of them left in a critical condition. Nineteen police cars damaged or destroyed. Two protesters shot and killed during the clash.

The images flooding your mind right now are probably closer to what South African soldiers endured in the Central African Republic rather than what police officers should be dealing with in a war-free, democratic country.

The question that pierces through all those figures is: how angry does a community have to be – what kind of hatred must be festering – for hundreds of people to come together and overrun, by force, their local police station? To try to obliterate the place that houses men and women who’ve taken an oath to protect you. We know too well the evil that lurks inside a mob, but this was an outright storming of a sacred castle.

Unlike with the Marikana bloodbath, there were probably few or no cameras filming the latest clash. The details still have to be investigated by the same organisation that Robert McBride – one of the country’s most controversial policemen – will soon be leading. But even on the police’s own version, what happened in Relela does not belong in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Granted, what happened there was not a routine service delivery protest over water or electricity that spiralled out of control. The circumstances were different. A local woman was killed and mutilated and the community wanted those responsible to be arrested. Police took a couple of suspects in for questioning but when they were released, their neighbours went on the rampage, burning down their homes. When the police intervened, a teenage boy was shot and killed. His death, in turn, became the magnet that drew the crowd to the Relela police station on Tuesday night.

Limpopo police claim that anyone in the same situation (the situation the officers were in) would have done the exact same thing. The crowd had broken through into the station’s courtyard and were out for revenge. Judging by the damage, there’s every reason to believe that the officers may have been genuinely terrified and thought their lives were in danger. They probably were. Those attacking the station were committing a criminal act. There’s also evidence that the police officers did their best to push back the mob, using thousands of rounds of rubber bullets.

But the issues here run much deeper, the main one being: how did it get to this? How did we reach a crisis which the police, and police minister Nathi Mthethwa, think they can talk their way out of? (Which, of course, they can’t).

Too much blood has been spilled. Too much horror witnessed. The list has been mentioned over and over again: Marikana, Tatane, Macia, Mothutlung, Durban Deep… For way too many people the police have become the enemy.

The cold, hard truth is that the level of violence we are seeing now is the consequence of earlier decisions. Decisions which ranged from bad to catastrophic. Remember the “shoot to kill!” and “maximum force” rhetoric spewing out of Bheki Cele’s mouth (which went viral). Or the decision by Jackie Selebi to reconfigure the Public Order Policing, leaving it in shambles. And, as a show of force, the re-introduction of military ranks.

But worst of all have been the decisions, one after the next, to send in civilians (political appointments) to lead the police. The latest, by President Jacob Zuma, was Riah Phiyega, who has so far had a disastrous run (some of it was not her fault, and some of it was).

The Institute for Security Studies – the think tank which the police loves to ignore – says all indicators show that police brutality is rising, public trust in the service is deteriorating and there doesn’t seem to be any real plan to reverse either of these trends.

Asked whether we can expect more bloodshed, the ISS’s Gareth Newham says: “I hope not. But we will continue to see growing anger and discontent and a breakdown of the relationship.”

He adds: “Warnings were ignored and now we’re seeing the consequences.”

The reality on the ground is complex. The balance between crushing violent crime or policing tense protests while respecting human rights is a delicate one. No one is saying it’s easy. Then there’s the politics, corruption, shadowy alliances and the unholy mess in units like Crime Intelligence (which Phiyega is now trying to clean up).

The time has come for drastic action. Possibly a complete overhaul of the Public Order Policing (POP). The unit needs an injection of officers and strong, accountable commanders. A message needs to cascade through the ranks that says that anyone who steps out of line, who loads up their shotgun with buckshot or fires without an order, will be punished. Officers need to be better trained. And all of this needs to be communicated to the public so that perceptions can begin to change. Maybe even hold a public commission of inquiry into the POP, diagnose the problem and fix it.

It’s time for Mthethwa to go beyond sending out media statements and praying with families of victims. He needs to take meaningful action. It’s time for President Jacob Zuma to step up. If he can find the time to congratulate Ladysmith Black Mambazo on a Grammy or the Bantu Church of Christ on its centenary, spur on the Matrics or defend eTolling, he can get stuck into this crisis. And by that we mean do something more than establish a task team. After all, the storming of a police station is about as close as you can come to true lawlessness.

Newham describes what happened in Relela as a “new development”. It’s much more than that. It’s a wake-up call, a short in the circuit of democracy. A signal that the relationship between police and civilians can’t be that of a state of war or a violent occupation. History teaches us how people, countries, respond to that.

When Phiyega visited the community on Wednesday, angry residents were shouting at her, demanding to know who gave the order to kill? She did her best to restore calm to the area, but she was up against a hostile crowd.

The police may be under attack, but they have to start earning back the trust. Showing the public that they are not the enemy. When what happened in Relela becomes a reality, you’ve waited too long to act. DM

Source: Daily Maverick

ANC at 102: when the revolution eats its own children

There are few people who can talk about the state of the ANC without sighing and shaking their heads. The transition from a liberation movement to a political party in government has not been kind – the organisation appears to be on a mission of self-destruction with lure of power and wealth tattering its fibre, and factionalism and patronage constantly diminishing its stature. The ANC has been able to reach the grand age of 102 because of the strength of its leadership and its popularity throughout its lifespan. But now it is difficult to hold up the ANC in 2014 against the organisation with a progression of heroic leaders which took power in 1994. Most bizarre is the way it has turned on itself. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY.

Lieutenant General Sean Tshabalala died of a broken heart. His body was found in his locked office at the police headquarters in Pretoria on Christmas Eve. Tributes at his memorial service and funeral tell the story of a once proud Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) soldier and one of the first line of VIP protectors when the ANC returned from exile, withering in a state of depression after being marginalised by the police management.

A furore erupted after Tshabalala’s funeral where former national police commissioner Bheki Cele revealed a list of 18 names of former MK combatants serving or formerly in the South African Police Service who were allegedly on a target list, presumably of the current national commissioner Riah Phiyega and her political bosses. Tshabalala’s name allegedly topped the list. His friends and former colleagues had earlier told of Tshabalala’s heartbreak at being shifted sideways from Protection and Security Services division of the police to the information technology division and later to a non-job at the police inspectorate.

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa acted swiftly to meet with some of the people on the list and dismiss the claims as rubbish. Phiyega denied knowledge of the list. However, the perception exists that experienced ANC and MK members were being steadily hounded out of the security services since President Jacob Zuma won power at the ANC’s Polokwane conference.

There has been a deluge of early retirements and resignations from the Department of State Security, the military and the SAPS in recent years, most of which involved people who served in MK or ANC intelligence structures during the liberation struggle. Some of these people went into exile in their teenage years, some were involved in dangerous intelligence missions at great personal cost, some were trained in the camps under the ANC’s most iconic leaders.

Their departure from the security services has been a curious phenomenon. Zuma, formerly head of intelligence in the ANC, has always seen security and intelligence as high priority. But after the recall of Thabo Mbeki, it would seem that paranoia set in and people perceived to be loyal to the former president were systematically weeded out, irrespective of their skills, service to their country with distinction or role in the liberation struggle.

Cele is well aware of the purge because he was instrumental in implementing it while he was national commissioner. In one case, he called a high-ranking officer who was on a mission abroad immediately back to the country and informed him he was being transferred to another job. It did not take long for the officer to resign from the police service. Cele was also the one who transferred Tshabalala out of the Protection and Security Services division.

Tshabalala, unlike most of his comrades, stuck it out in the police despite being sidelined – a decision which probably eventually cost him his life. Shortly before his death, Tshabalala had received a letter transferring him to the Northern Cape province (viewed as the Siberia of deployments), and this is possibly the reason his depression became too much to bear.

Tshabalala is just one of many of people whose lives have been destroyed by the organisation they dedicated their lives to. Others have been able to move on with their lives but their disillusionment with the ANC is profound. For many of them, the ANC was not just a political organisation but a way of life, a reason for being. To see the organisation self-destruct is worse than a family feud or divorce because they had chosen the ANC over their families and their own safety when they joined the struggle.

There are various explanations for the purge. The first is that ANC people in the security services would refuse to use state institutions to fight power battles in the party. There is always the risk that loyalty to the ANC would outweigh loyalty to the individual in power, which could lead to instructions being ignored, undermined or disclosed. The theory goes that this is why Zuma and Mthethwa saw use in Richard Mdluli – as a person who worked for the apartheid era police, he has no affiliation to the ANC and is loyal only to those who pay his salary.

The second theory is that the security ministers felt threatened by the seniority, knowledge and experience of the commanders serving under them. In terms of ANC hierarchy, many of the officials were senior to the current batch of ministers and this was a source of tension, particularly when there were differences of opinion on operational issues. But while there might have been underlying resentment, it would be strange if Zuma allowed the security services to be depleted of loyal and experienced officials on the basis of his ministers' inferiority complexes.

The third theory is more complex. A former senior member of the security services says the success of South Africa’s transition was partly due to the fact that security of the country was in the hands of the “doves”.

“This ensured that national security was based on human security. Now the focus is on state security. For the first time, security is now in the hands of the ‘hawks’, just like during the Apartheid era when the hawks saw a red (communists) under every bed. So we have come full circle with the hawks again in charge,” he said.

He said the current crop of hawks are fixated on external threats to the country, such as from foreign governments, imperialist forces and lobby groups, and they trade on conspiracy theories. “The real threats to the country are unemployment, inequality and poverty, and our failure to deliver. But anyone who puts forward that view is hounded out, marginalised or made redundant.

“They do not want to hear about our own failures; they prefer nonsensical stories about plots against the president, like what was in the Mdluli report. The plot is the failure of delivery. That is the biggest threat to national security,” the retired member said.

The theory is consistent with how the state and ANC views the personal security of the president and the state as interchangeable – as exemplified by the handling of the issue of the security upgrades at Zuma’s Nkandla estate. But the retired security official says people often overlook how the Constitution defines the governing principles around national security: “National security must reflect the resolve of South Africans, as individuals and as a nation, to live as equals, to live in peace and harmony, to be free from fear and want and to seek a better life”.

The Constitution says nothing about the President and his Cabinet receiving special protection in their homes and cars as a principle of national security but dictates that ordinary people should be “free from fear”. It would appear that the organisation which drafted this Constitution has these days lost sight of these principles.

To the ANC at 102, it would seem, people, even their most experienced and dedicated comrades, are expendable. It has become a pattern that factional battles need to be fought till one group is hounded out and the organisation belongs only to the victors. From branch to national level, battles are fought for dominance of leadership positions, and those who lose are treated as pariahs and purged from positions in the state.

At the ANC national conferences, voting for the top six positions and the national executive committee takes place according to slates, dependent only according to loyalty to those who control the faction. As a result, the organisation is controlled by the winning faction and those outside the faction are marginalised, irrespective of their seniority, credentials or what they have to offer the party or the country.

Both Mbeki and Zuma appear to believe that the best way to protect their presidencies is to surround themselves with loyalists who tell them what they want to hear and fight off dissent on their behalf. It is this very tendency which builds resentment in the ANC and leads bad decision-making.

As the ANC celebrates its 102nd anniversary, it is also in the process of compiling its lists of representatives to serve in Parliament and the provincial legislatures. The list process is also likely to be defined by factional politics, with loyalists able to get higher on the lists and stand a better chance of becoming a member of Parliament. Those who refrain from factional battles or who campaigned against Zuma’s second term at the ANC’s Mangaung conference are less likely to be elected.

But there are also a number of people who are declining nomination because they cannot in good conscience agree to serve the ANC in its current state. “It is a bloody nightmare for us,” said one high-ranking member who has declined nomination.

He said if the party was serious about its future and that of the country, they would ask the president and other ANC leaders steeped in scandal to step aside. “But in the NEC, few can stand up and impose their integrity. The rest will be found wanting themselves,” he said.

Others, however, believe that they should remain in the fold and the ANC will self correct at its next conference in 2017. But what is the likelihood of it and how much damage would have been done by then? With the organisation a shadow of its former self now, what will it look like with four years still to go under the current leadership?

Despite the many problems in the ANC, there are only few people who are able to speak up and confront the issues besetting the organisation. The leadership seems to believe that the organisation is resilient and can withstand the scandals and strife. And those who do speak out are treated as disgruntled elements that should be disregarded. ANC and South African Communist Party veteran Ronnie Kasrils wrote in The Guardian last year: “The ANC's soul needs to be restored; its traditional values and culture of service reinstated. The pact with the devil needs to be broken”.

The ANC simply ignored him.

And so, Africa’s oldest liberation movement turns 102 on Wednesday. It is a momentous occasion for the organisation with a proud history and iconic leaders to still be going strong and enjoying the support of the majority of South Africans. While the current leaders mark the occasion with celebratory rallies, doubling as campaign events, many people will be looking on from the outside, mourning for days gone by when the ANC was a home for all.

Perhaps it is normal for any political organisation to find itself unable to keep its soul once it gets touched by the spoils of uninterrupted power. It has happened many times before, and it will happen many times in the future. What is surprising, though, is how history always fails to teach the ones at the top. At 102, the ANC is drifting into the darkness, increasingly disconnected from the lives and reality of those they are sworn to protect: the masses that continue to exist in the tough reality and fearing a hopeless future. DM

Source: Daily Maverick

In South Africa, Lethal Battles for Even Smallest of Political Posts

OSHABENI, South Africa — It was, by all accounts, an ordinary small-town political meeting. The leaders of the local branch of the African National Congress gathered in September at a convent here to discuss candidates for a newly vacated seat on the ward council, the lowest-level elected position in South Africa.

When it was over, Dumisani Malunga, the local party chairman and the front-runner for the seat, stopped at a friend’s house for a late meal of chicken curry. As he and another party official, Bheko Chiliza, drove home at 9:30 p.m., a gunman fired into their car. Their bloody, bullet-riddled bodies were later found sprawled on the ground beside the white Toyota hatchback.

Mr. Malunga and Mr. Chiliza were the latest casualties in an increasingly bloody battle for local political posts in South Africa. Dozens of officials, including ward councilors, party leaders and mayors, have been killed in what has become a desperate, deadly struggle for power and its spoils.

The killings threaten to tarnish the image of the so-called rainbow nation, whose largely bloodless transition from white minority rule to nonracial democracy has made it a beacon of peace, tolerance and forgiveness.

Amid rising corruption and waning economic opportunities, political killings are on the rise. Here in KwaZulu-Natal Province, nearly 40 politicians have been killed since 2010 in battles over political posts, more than triple the number in the previous three years, according to government figures. Over the past few years, dozens more have been killed in provinces like Mpumalanga, North West and Limpopo.

The A.N.C., once a banned liberation movement engaged in one of the 20th century’s most important struggles for justice and human rights, is now in power, and it has come under harsh scrutiny for the rampant poverty, deep inequality and widespread unemployment plaguing the country. A wave of wildcat strikes that began in August, and the lethal crackdown against them, has fueled anger at a party seen as increasingly out of touch and whose leaders appear only to seek to fill their pockets.

That is a stark change from the A.N.C.’s early days, when people risked their lives and freedom to join the party and its fight to end apartheid. But in recent years, the party has sharply increased recruitment of new members, with little consideration for who joins and why.

Many new members come in search of wealth and power. Fewer than half of South African’s young black adults have jobs, and many lack the basic skills to find work after years of attending substandard schools in townships and rural areas. For these youths, politics is a seemingly certain route out of poverty. The rise in corruption has fed the belief that political posts mean kickbacks and contracts.

In the ranks of public servants, the post of rural ward council member in a speck of a town like this one would seem no great prize. The job pays about $150 a month, and its occupant must digest a steady diet of complaints from residents about the most fundamental ailments afflicting South Africa: schools that do not teach, taps that do not deliver water, crime that the police seem helpless to stop, jobs that are impossible to find.

But ward councilors are also a conduit for development projects in their areas, and they can influence the awarding of government contracts. The potential upside — earnings from bribes or surreptitious deals — is high.

“Due to the high rate of unemployment, people look for any opportunity to create an income and capitalize on it,” said Mzwandile Mkhwanazi, the regional chairman of the A.N.C. in the area that includes Oshabeni. “They are influenced by levels of poverty. They come up with any ways and means of getting money.”

Such changes in fortune explain why the post of ward councilor in Oshabeni, an impoverished town nestled in rolling hills about 15 miles inland from the Indian Ocean, was so hotly contested. When the woman who held the post died of illness in August, many local politicians were eager to throw their hats into the ring.

One of them was a young taxi driver named Sfiso Khumalo, the leader of the local branch of the A.N.C.’s Youth League. But Mr. Khumalo did not have a very good reputation, fellow Youth League members said. He was hotheaded, they said, and had spent nine years in prison for theft.

“We knew him as a stealer,” said Gcinile Duma, the secretary of the Youth League. “He had been in jail and was with the wrong kind of people.”

Other members of the local A.N.C. branch’s executive committee said they were worried that Mr. Khumalo was not a suitable candidate.

“Some people get into politics for the wrong reason, only for money,” said one local party leader who did not want to be named discussing party business. “Sfiso Khumalo was not looking to help people, only to help himself.”

Standing in his way was Mr. Malunga, 42, the party chairman and a popular local figure.

“People liked Dumisani and saw him as a good leader,” Ms. Duma said.

On Sept. 9, Mr. Khumalo attended the meeting at the Daughters of St. Francis of Assisi Convent to declare his candidacy. There was no open confrontation between Mr. Malunga and Mr. Khumalo, people who attended the meeting said. But when Mr. Malunga was found shot to death near his house, few doubted who was the prime suspect.

“We told the police, ‘We know who did this. It was Sfiso Khumalo,’ ” Ms. Duma said.

After two days of investigations, the police arrested Mr. Khumalo, who promptly confessed that he had conspired with a local businessman to have Mr. Malunga killed. On Sept. 18, Mr. Khumalo was sentenced to 22 years in prison. The person accused of being his co-conspirator is still in court.

In a statement, the leader of the A.N.C. in KwaZulu-Natal condemned the violence and the culture it springs from.

“The A.N.C. can ill afford the development of the culture of the underworld, criminality and violent elimination of opponents,” said the provincial chairman, Zweli Mkhize. “Neither can the A.N.C. afford the association of political appointment to self-enrichment where ascendancy to office is not linked with capacity, competence and dedicated service to our people.”

Party officials paid for Mr. Malunga’s burial, and his brick and stucco grave looks lavish next to the unadorned earthen mounds in the family graveyard that hold his father, brother and nephew.

Mr. Malunga’s mother, Sizakele Malunga, has already buried 5 of her 11 children, but losing her youngest son was a special blow, she said. Mr. Malunga lived with her and kept her company in her widowhood.

“I am lonely, but nothing will bring him back,” Mrs. Malunga said. “I just try to make the time pass without him.”

Mukelwa Hlatshwayo contributed reporting.

Source: New York Times

Murder attempt signals ugly turn in North West

THE murder attempt on African National Congress (ANC) North West provincial secretary Kabelo Mataboge on Thursday night signalled an ugly turn of events in the embattled province, amid the possibility of a parallel provincial nominations conference on Friday, in preparation for the ANC’s national elective conference in Mangaung next month.

The SABC reported on Friday morning that unknown gunmen opened fire on Mr Mataboge when he arrived at his home in Mafikeng on Thursday night.

ANC North West spokesman Kenny Morolong said in a statement on Friday that police were "investigating a case of attempted murder".

The incident followed controversy on Thursday after the two opposing ANC factions in the province — one led by Mr Mataboge and another by provincial chairman Supra Mahumapelo — disagreed on the venue for Friday’s provincial nominations conference.

The group led by Mr Mahumapelo preferred a hall at Hartbeespoort Dam, while those supporting Mr Mataboge were pushing for the gathering to be held at the Civic Centre in Mafikeng.

Mr Mahumapelo has been the chief campaigner for President Jacob Zuma’s second-term bid in Mangaung, while Mr Mataboge has been associated with the group campaigning for Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe to replace Mr Zuma.

Mr Morolong on Friday called on "members of the public with information to approach the law enforcement agencies", and for police to expedite their investigation "so that culprits of this hideous act are brought to book".

Source: Business Day

Behind Sunday's incident in KwaMashu - Mangosuthu Buthelezi

Dear friends and fellow South Africans,

Sunday's incident in KwaMashu, in which SAPA reporter Mr Giordano Stolley's car was torched, costing him a new laptop, two hard drives and family photographs, is not quite what the NFP would like to portray it as. I thank God that the reporters, Mr Stolley, Ms Bawinile Ngcobo and Ms Mpume Madlala, were unhurt. My sympathies are with them over this terrible incident.

What they experienced needs to be placed in context.

There will be a by-election in KwaMashu next Wednesday, to fill the seat left vacant by the murder of the IFP's Councillor in that ward, Mr Themba Xulu.

Last month, on a Friday night, Councillor Xulu was abducted in KwaMashu by five men posing as police officers. On Saturday, as his distraught family awaited news, IFP supporters gathered in KwaMashu to surround them with support. Fears were rife that Councillor Xulu's abduction was politically motivated and that he had fallen victim to thugs affiliated to the NFP.

The Minister of Police, Mr Nathi Mthetwa, visited KwaMashu that Saturday, calling for calm and reassuring the community of a police presence. As the Minister left, Ms Celiwe Shezi, still wearing her IFP T-shirt, was gunned down near the train station. An NFP KwaMashu Councillor - a member of the NFP's National Working Committee - was arrested for her murder.

The following morning, Councillor Xulu's body was found, riddled with bullets. IFP leaders again called for calm. That same day, the IFP's Mr Bongani Lushaba was murdered. Mr Lushaba was a father of eight children.

A week later, IFP supporters were gathered outside Ntuzuma Magistrate's Court, where the NFP men accused of killing Ms Celiwe Shezi were on trial. In full view of the police and the media, a leader of the NFP - a member of the NFP's peace delegation - took out a gun and shot dead an IFP supporter, Mr Siyabonga Dlamini. Mr Dlamini had been a witness to Councillor Themba Xulu's abduction.

For weeks, leaders of the IFP implored people to stay calm, not to retaliate or seek revenge, and to assist the police with investigations. Tensions simmered in KwaMashu, with fear, grief and righteous anger pervading the community.

Then, last Sunday, IFP Councillor Mthembeni Majola was attacked by three armed men while travelling with his son. Thank God, they survived the hail of bullets. The following day, the IFP's block chairperson in KwaMashu, Mr Sihle Menzi Biyela, was gunned down in cold blood.

As the IFP's eThekwini Caucus leader Mr Mdu Nkosi said, "We keep telling our members to calm down, but we continue to bury members."

There is no question that the violent attacks over the past two months were meant to intimidate the IFP's members and supporters in KwaMashu, through the clear message that neither the police nor the media can offer safety. No one can stop our assailants.

Under these volatile circumstances, just days after their block chairperson was murdered, IFP supporters in KwaMashu saw the NFP's leader, Mrs kaMagwaza-Msibi come rolling into town in a convoy of some 30 vehicles, ready to campaign for their votes in next week's by-election.

As Mr Giordano Stolley pointed out, her presence in KwaMashu was far from wise. Community members took up bottles and sticks and loudly expressed their desire for Mrs kaMagwaza-Msibi to leave. Shots were fired, but who fired those shots is unclear. It may have been the people wielding sticks and bottles, or it may have been the extensive entourage of the NFP leader's bodyguards.

Regardless of the facts, Mrs kaMagwaza-Msibi has jumped on her high horse accusing the IFP of creating a "no-go" area. Any thinking person's response would be that the NFP has created it themselves. Have your leaders kill a few people in a community, then see how welcome you are when you arrive to electioneer.

Mrs kaMagwaza-Msibi is milking this incident for all it is worth, and then some. Police have been unable to verify her allegation that a woman was killed, or that two other cars were torched.

I am amazed at her accusation that, "Now everyone can see the IFP for what it really is." What it really is, is the party she grew up in and led as National Chairperson for years and years, until she grew tired of waiting for the top position. What the IFP really is, is the party she did her utmost to divide and split, through lies, treachery and even a failed court bid.

The IFP's supporters in KwaMashu are a community of angry, fearful residents in a situation of immense and on-going tension. They have been attacked and murdered. They have been killed in front of the police. They have been living in fear for their lives for months on end.

The NFP created this powder keg and Mrs kaMagwaza-Msibi lit it.

I am not justifying the vandalism that took place on Sunday. I am pointing out that we are dealing with people who have been under duress for months. Outbursts like this cannot be unexpected.

Weeks ago, I asked Mrs kaMagwaza-Msibi to go to her people and call for an end to violence, just as I was calling for peace among IFP supporters. This was the groundwork that needed to be laid before our two parties could come together and seek a resolution to the tensions between us. Instead, she arrived to campaign for the NFP to take over where the IFP's leader lay dead.

The IFP does not believe in "no-go" areas. We operate within the rules of democracy and the electoral system. We will therefore ask again that our supporters in KwaMashu remain calm and refrain from acting on their distress. Our supporters know that the IFP is a party of non-violence.

But we also know, just as Mrs kaMagwaza-Msibi knows, that you can only push people so far. The leadership of the IFP will remain the fence holding in our people's emotions. I ask the leadership of the NFP .to stop being the dog that runs up and down outside the fence, inciting those emotions to burst.

I hope that Mr Giordano Stolley, Ms Bawinile Ngcobo and Ms Mpume Madlala will look deeper into what happened on Sunday and ask why KwaMashu really erupted.

Yours in the service of our nation,

Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP

Issued by the IFP, November 27 2012

Source: Politicsweb

NFP top brass split on sanctions against murder accused leaders

National Freedom Party (NFP) leaders are divided over whether sanctions should be taken against the two high-ranking party leaders and councillors currently in the dock on separate murder charges.

On Friday, the provincial executive committee (PEC) expelled Mzonjani Zulu, both as party member and councillor in eThekwini, and also decided to suspend Bhungu Gwala as a member.

But the national leadership of the party was said to be against this, and has called a meeting on Tuesday where it is to discuss the issue with the provincial leaders.

Gwala is suspected of being involved in the murder of IFP supporter Celiwe Shezi at KwaMashu hostel on October 6, while Zulu was charged with the murder of another IFP supporter, Sya Dlamini.

The latter was shot dead in full view of the police outside the Ntuzuma Magistrate’s Court, allegedly by Zulu, with the incident being captured on camera.

This happened on October 15, shortly after Gwala and his two sons made their first court appearance at the court in connection with Shezi’s murder.

Apart from serving on the eThekwini council, both Gwala and Zulu are national working committee members.

But on Monday the national leadership of the party said that only the national executive committee (NEC) had the power to expel any member from the party.

“We have to remember that there is only one membership of the party,” said the NFP’s secretary-general, Nhlanhla Khubisa.

The national leaders said that lower structures of the party could only make recommendations for someone to be expelled.

Party president Zanele kaMagwaza-Msibi said while she detested violence and was in agreement with the PEC that such actions could not be condoned, she said she felt that the constitution of the party had to be followed.

“We also need to take into consideration what happened at the court [in the case of Zulu],” she said, adding that TV footage showed that Zulu had taken steps back as he was allegedly being attacked.

But Vusi Khoza, the provincial secretary, was adamant that the provincial leadership’s decision would stand.

Asked if the PEC had informed Gwala and Zulu of its decision, Khoza said letters had been written to the two men.

“We understand that they are currently in police custody, but we wrote letters and these were delivered to their home addresses,” Khoza said.

He said it was only Gwala who could appeal the decision after the conclusion of his court case, but said the same did not apply to Zulu.

“With Zulu it was clear that he shot someone in full view of the media and the police. It was not for us to consider whether he was being attacked or not; it is for the court to consider.”

Khoza said Zulu’s actions at Ntuzuma had brought the party into disrepute.

Source: IoL

In the wake of Marikana, ANC pushing a self-destruct button

As police raided the hostels of Lonmin miners it looked like the ANC had once again chosen force over discussion. It’s nothing new, but this specific raid will be what we remember as the beginning of the party’s decline. By GREG NICOLSON.

This weekend’s crackdown on the settlement of Nkaneng should come as no surprise. In the last few years, as service delivery protests have engulfed townships and informal settlements across the country, the ANC government has stood behind the state-sponsored violence and intervened only when absolutely necessary.

The tale feels like a cliché. Something triggers a store of long-held grievances and the community fortifies its thoroughfares with burning tyres. After the police arrive they eventually decide the protest cannot continue and attack the toyi-toying group. In their nyalas, the cops first teargas the community in a drive-by and then conduct a series of arbitrary arrests that follow a hail of rubber bullets.

The smell of teargas, stab of rubber bullets and the humiliation of violent raids further enrages the angry mob. The stakes are raised and the more violent and disaffected members of the community remain, seeking ever more destruction.

Between police and protestors lies a dark silence. The cops don’t care why people are on the streets, burning the little they have access to while government officials are too scared or don’t care enough to mediate promptly. When they finally arrive and offer the slightest semblance that they give a damn about the community’s concerns, the protest often subsides.

It seems obvious that a leader should immediately attempt to listen. But in the silence of a community on fire, before government officials are forced to react, lies a deafening reality of the disconnect between our most marginalised and their elected leaders, usually from the ANC.

These protests, similar in root cause to the ongoing Lonmin strike, regularly occur because of poverty, corruption and unmet expectations. People are tired of living without adequate shelter. They know it’s unfair they can’t access decent health services. They want electricity and water plumbed into their homes and they want an effective and transparent billing system. They are tired of the forced humiliation that latches onto poverty. Worst of all, they’re disheartened seeing their children grow up to live in exactly the same desperate conditions.

Law and order needs to prevail in Marikana and no more deaths can be added to the toll. But this weekend’s move by the police and army into Nkaneng is all too reminiscent of the response to service delivery protests over the years. All too often the ANC has let police shoot first before even asking why protests are occurring, let alone engaging in meaningful discussion (however long, risky or arduous it need be).

It’s symbolic of a larger problem. The ANC aims to “end Apartheid in all its forms” and “fight for social justice and eliminate the vast inequalities created by Apartheid”, but too many examples show that it’s no longer the party of the people. A litany of betrayals and failures stain the party’s successes (which primarily include a massive service delivery rollout and making a dent into transforming the system of racial exclusion) while its internal power plays and the venality of members erode the foundations established by some of the most inspiring leaders of the 20th century.

The ANC’s June policy conference proved the party knows what’s hurting South Africans – poverty, inequality, unemployment and the ills flowing from the combination. We’re sure its members also care deeply – who wouldn’t when the stories of many South Africans are tragedies?

But the party is too distant from those we expect it to represent. President Jacob Zuma’s insulting and incredulous comments about visiting a township and realising there are poor people struggling to survive is testament to the disconnect. ANC MP Rose Sonto confirmed this last week when he disagreed with opposition parties in the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources, saying, “We can’t go and talk to a crowd with suicidal tendencies.”

Dangerous, yes, but strikes and protests are messages sent when other avenues of communication fail. Instead of provoking miners with further police antagonism, the ANC needed to work with union leaders and mine management to increase engagement until leaders trusted them. Zuma has sent an inter-ministerial force, made a visit and established a judicial inquiry, but it’s not enough. ANC leaders aren’t giving Marikana the attention it deserves. Simply, they have failed to lead when the country was wailing, desperate and distraught, for leaders.

The problem the party faces, however, is that even if it had the resolve to provide leadership it’s so removed from disaffected communities it would have struggled to get a platform. The miners have been too hostile, and like many others across the country seem to believe the party has broken too many promises, its members too corrupt to trust.

Instead of proving them wrong, the party has distanced itself from the workers and failed to show it understands their concerns (at the same time it has lambasted the capitalist miners it has been so happy to accommodate all these years).

So in an attempt to control the situation the ANC offered the same response it has to service delivery protests: it sent in the police. That response is nothing new, but while the party hides, the Marikana massacre will go down in history as the moment everybody knew the ANC was no longer a party of the poor, no longer a party of the working class and no longer a party that could claim to represent the majority of South Africans.

The National Executive Committee has discussed Marikana at length, said Secretary General Gwede Mantashe. It’s looking at ways to address the causes of the disaster and may come up with creative solutions involving partnering with mining companies to improve the living conditions of workers.

One can only hope the party can, but one has to fear it has once again stoked unrest and it might be too late. The ANC may still be in power. It may still have the votes, but things change. They always do. And it’s moments like these the historians will remember.

Source: Daily Maverick

SACP backs probe of ‘contract killings’ on KwaZulu-Natal coast

THE South African Communist Party (SACP) in KwaZulu-Natal has added its voice to calls for a dedicated police team to be established to investigate the "contract-killing industry" in the province, after the murder of two more African National Congress (ANC) branch leaders on the south coast on Sunday night.

There has been a spate of murders of political leaders in the province over the past year, mostly of ANC and National Freedom Party (NFP) leaders at branch level, and most cases remain unsolved.

"It is high time that … people put their heads together irrespective of political affiliation and come up with a strategy of ridding the province of the contract-killing industry," SACP Moses Mabhida provincial secretary Themba Mthembu said on Monday.

ANC provincial secretary Sihle Zikalala said that Oshabeni branch chairman Dumisani Malunga and branch secretary Bheki Chiliza had been shot and killed on Sunday night after a meeting. Political analyst Protas Madlala said the killings come barely two weeks after political parties in KwaZulu-Natal had held a joint summit to find ways to end politically motivated killings.

"We are very concerned with the killing of our comrades. This is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated," Mr Zikalala said.

Police spokesman Capt Thulani Zwane said no arrests were made. In July, ANC councillor Wandile Mkhize was murdered in a drive-by shooting near his home in Margate. Nhlakanipho Shabane, who was with him at the time, spent three weeks in a coma before dying in hospital. Two men have been charged in these murders.

Since the beginning of last year the NFP has lost 21 members to assassinations, which appear to be politically motivated. Mr Madlala said political leadership at local government level represented easy access to wealth in areas where unemployment was high and this might be behind the spate of murders. He said the latest killings did not appear to be linked to the election of new ANC leaders in Mangaung at the end of the year, as KwaZulu-Natal was the one province that was united in its support of the current administration. Mr Mthembu said the SACP in KwaZulu-Natal also firmly supported the current leadership. Mr Madlala said there was an "industry of people earning a living from this". Such people were also likely to have been involved in taxiindustry related killings. "Where is the intelligence in all of this?"

In eThekwini, the ANC’s biggest region in terms of number of branches, the cost of providing protection such as bodyguards for city councillors rose to R18m in the 2012-13 financial year from R2m the year before, and the city wants to increase this allocation even more.

Source: Business Day

Life for IFP councillor killers

Three men have been sentenced to life in prison by the Mtunzini High Court for the murder of an IFP councillor, KwaZulu-Natal police said on Monday.

"Bongumusa Ngema, 27, Douglas Ngcobo, 36, and Sanadu Phiri, 22, were convicted of killing Mfanafuthi Elliot Maphumulo in Gingindlovu," Captain Thulani Zwane said.

The men were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday.

Zwane said 50-year-old Maphumulo was attacked and shot four times on February 25, 2009. Police later found his body in bushes near his house at the Mananda Reserve.

Source: Times Live

Marikana murder charge withdrawal: the first glimmer of sanity

The NPA seems to have regained a small sprinkling of sanity – it looks like the charges of murder against 270 protesting Lonmin miners will be withdrawn. Yet a number of so-called experts and scholars are still claiming, although feebly, that the charge could have held water. Let’s not kid ourselves – the law is perfectly clear.

The decision by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) preliminary to withdraw charges of murder against 270 Marikana miners for the killing of 34 of their colleagues by the police was the only remotely rational course of action to take. It is probably too late to save the NPA from becoming the laughing stock of most South Africans and people across the rest of the world, but the decision seems like a glimmer of rationality in a sea of madness.

Yet it is more than surprising that the NPA is maintaining its original decision to charge the miners was legally sound. It’s like a child denying that he ate his mother’s chocolate cake when he has chocolate icing smeared all over his face. Even more surprising is that a legal academic from Wits has argued that, theoretically at least, the miners could be convicted of murder under the common purpose doctrine.

According to these defenders of the NPA, the decision was legally sound because the state would only have to prove that the miners were present at the scene of the killing and aware of an attack on the police; that the miners intended to associate with those attacking the police and had manifested their sharing of the common purpose by some act; and lastly that the miners had the intent, in the form of dolus eventualis, by showing the miners foresaw the (reasonable) possibility that someone may be killed by the actions of those in the crowd who provoked the police to shoot and kill some of them.

Could these views have been animated by a blinding animosity towards the miners; or by a fear of the protesting (black) hordes; or by an unexamined belief that the miners deserved to be punished collectively because one or more persons who took part in the strike had allegedly killed two police officers? Or have those who made this decision to prosecute or defended it – even if only on theoretical grounds – not studied the relevant legal materials properly?

The leading Criminal Law textbooks (quoted approvingly by the Constitutional Court in its judgment on the common purpose doctrine) illustrate that the doctrine is used to impute the criminal conduct of some members of a group to the whole group who had the common purpose to commit a crime. Burchell and Milton define the doctrine as follows:

Where two or more people agree to commit a crime or actively associate in a joint unlawful enterprise, each will be responsible for specific criminal conduct committed by one of their number which falls within their common design. Liability arises from their ‘common purpose’ to commit the crime.

Similarly, the other Criminal Law guru, Snyman, points out in his textbook that:

the essence of the doctrine is that if two or more people, having a common purpose to commit a crime, act together in order to achieve that purpose, the conduct of each of them in the execution of that purpose is imputed to the others.

This means that the 270 miners could only be convicted of murder if the conduct of one of its members could be shown to have caused the death of the 34 miners and if all the other requirements for common purpose had been met. Given the fact that the police actually shot the 34 miners, it is unclear how the conduct of any of the miners could have cause the death of their comrades.

For a successful prosecution, the state would have to prove that the miners made common purpose with the police with the intention to have their fellow workers killed. It is only where the miners can be shown to have had a common purpose with the police that the conduct of the police (who actually killed the miners) could be imputed to them. As none of the miners actually killed anyone on the day of the massacre, it would help little to prove they had a common purpose to protest or even to attack the police, because none of them were involved in the killing of the 34 miners.

That is why the Constitutional Court confirmed in the Thebus case that a group of people who are not co-perpetrators could only be found guilty of a crime with assistance of the common purpose doctrine if they were aware the crime was being committed and must have intended to make common cause with those who were actually perpetrating the crime. The crime in this case being the killing of 34 miners by the police, it would be impossible to prove that the miners made common purpose with the police to kill their fellow miners.

In any case, even if this was not so, and even if the state only had to prove that the miners acted with a common purpose with one another by walking in a group towards the police and that this led to the shooting that killed 34 of their comrades, the state would never have been able to prove the involvement of the 270 miners in this common purpose. As the Constitutional Court warned, it is the

duty of every trial court, when applying the doctrine of common purpose, to exercise the utmost circumspection in evaluating the evidence against each accused person. A collective approach to determining the actual conduct or active association of an individual accused has many evidentiary pitfalls. The trial court must seek to determine, in respect of each accused person, the location, timing, sequence, duration, frequency and nature of the conduct alleged to constitute sufficient participation or active association and its relationship, if any, to the criminal result and to all other pre-requisites of guilt. Whether or not active association has been appropriately established will depend upon the factual context of each case.

How would the state ever prove that the 270 actively associated with the one person in the crowd who allegedly shot at the police? Merely being proven to have been in the crowd might have been sufficient to be convicted of murder by one of the members of the crowd during the Apartheid years, but those days are long gone. The Constitutional Court decision makes this abundantly clear. More is required now, and the state would never have been able to meet this more stringent evidentiary burden.

But apart from the evidentiary problems, there is still the problem that none of the miners had actually set out to kill their comrades. Neither had any of the miners killed any of their comrades. The police did that.

To overcome this problem, those who argue that the decision to charge the miners with murder was legally plausible say that all the miners could be guilty of murder if one of them had shot at the police because the person who shot at the police could be found guilty of murder and his guilt could be ascribed to all of them via the common purpose doctrine. But this argument conflates the requirements for common purpose with the requirements for intention.

Those who defend the NPA (as well as the NPA itself) wrongly invoke the 1981 judgment of the Appellate Division in S v Nhlapo and Another, where a guard was shot and killed – possibly by a fellow guard – in a gun battle with robbers. The court stated that the robbers – who were ready to use their guns to overpower the guards – must have reasonably foreseen that someone could get killed in the robbery and therefore possessed the necessary intention for murder (in the form of dolus eventualis). The court therefore convicted the robbers of the murder of the guard – even though the state had not proven that any of them shot the guard.

The problem is that this scenario is entirely different from what the police claimed happened at Marikana. The Nhlapo case did not deal with the common purpose doctrine because all the robbers were co-perpetrators: they all had guns, were prepared to use them, and then reasonably foresaw that someone would be killed. The actions of one robber were not imputed to other robbers via the common purpose doctrine: they were all charged because they had taken part in the shootout. Their actions caused the death of the guard and they reasonably foresaw that it could.

But the actions of all 270 miners did not cause the death of the 34 victims. At most, the actions of one miner who shot at the police could arguably be said to have caused the death of others. To hold otherwise would be to criminalise the behaviour of every member of a crowd of protestors, where the behaviour of one of the protestors might have contributed to the death of someone and where that protestor had reasonably foreseen the possibility that his actions would lead to the death. It would, in effect, abolish most of the requirements for criminal liability for anyone taking part in a protest march and would be so invasive not only of the right to protest freely but also of the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, that it would undermine the very essence of our Bill of Rights.

Unlike those robbers, all of the 270 miners were not armed with guns. They had not all taken part in a shooting match with the police. They were not co-perpetrators going out to overpower the police. Arguably, one of those in their midst had a gun and shot at the police. They could therefore not have been guilty of murder because they had no intention to kill their comrades. To hold otherwise would be to use the common purpose doctrine in a situation for which it has not been designed and for which has not (and never will be) approved by our courts.

In any case, even if this was not so, no court in South Africa is ever going to find that the miners should reasonably have foreseen the possibility that the police would start shooting at them with live ammunition and would kill 34 of their comrades because one among them had a firearm.

We live in a democracy. We have a right to expect the police to obey the law and use minimum force, as they are required to do by the Police Act. We cannot and should not ever accept that it is reasonable to foresee that the police would use maximum force and would shoot and kill 34 protestors because one of them happened to have been armed with a gun. For a court to hold otherwise would be for it to hold that it is reasonable for the police at best to be untrained, bumbling, and bizarrely incompetent or, at worst, to be malicious, vengeful, law-breaking thugs.

It is a pity that some in the NPA seem to have forgotten (or might never have noticed) that we indeed live in a democracy now, and that we can reasonably expect the police to obey the law.

Source: Constitutionally Speaking

South Africa after the Marikana massacre

The police massacre of striking miners at Marikana is a watershed for post-apartheid South Africa and for the international class struggle.

It demonstrates in the starkest form imaginable that the perspective of “black empowerment” and the “National Democratic Revolution” providing the basis for overcoming economic and social oppression has failed utterly. The central lesson of Marikana is that the fundamental division within society is class, not race.

The African National Congress, having come to power in 1994 as a result of immense sacrifice and revolutionary struggle by millions of workers, has revealed itself to be every bit as ruthless as its white predecessors in enforcing the most brutal exploitation on behalf of the major global corporations.

The ANC sent in the police to shoot, kill and maim striking workers whose sole crime was to fight for the right to live as human beings and not beasts of burden. Now, after the police have killed 36 and wounded another 78, some 270 imprisoned strikers are being charged with the murder and attempted murder of their colleagues under Apartheid-era “common purpose” laws designed to blame the victims for “provoking” police violence.

The Marikana miners are paid less than $500 a month for living in squalid communal huts and working in hazardous, back-breaking conditions for the UK-based Lonmin, extracting platinum that sells for over $1,400 an ounce. Their fate, worse still, is shared by millions in what has now become the most unequal country in the entire world.

Meanwhile the ANC has spawned a grasping layer of black bourgeois, with a reputation for unparalleled corruption and repression. It is synonymous with terms like Black Economically Empowered (BEE) companies and “tenderpreneurs”—those who have enriched themselves by acting as front-men for the transnational corporations or who have used their control of the state apparatus to secure a direct role in exploiting the working class.

Even as charges were being brought against the arrested miners, South African Minister of Mining Susan Shabangu was reassuring “our investors, incumbent and prospective” at a gathering of mining executives in Perth, Australia, that President Jacob Zuma is “determined to isolate bad elements in our society.”

The ANC in turn relies upon its partners in the Tripartite Alliance—the South African Communist Party and the COSATU trade union federation—to impose the dictatorship of global capital and the South African bourgeoisie upon an increasingly restive population.

The Stalinist SACP insisted throughout the struggle against apartheid that black majority rule of a capitalist South Africa was a necessary stage in an eventual transition to socialism. It has portrayed COSATU as a bastion of working class power within government that would guarantee this transformation.

Events have proceeded in an entirely opposite direction. For services rendered, SACP leaders were granted key roles in the post-apartheid regime and a share in the spoils of office. COSATU and its affiliated unions have functioned as an industrial police force and a mechanism for the self-enrichment of the bureaucracy.

Philip Hirschsohn, Professor School of Business and Finance at the University of the Western Cape, pointed out last year how the trade unions have taken on “oligarchic characteristics.”

The position of shop steward has become a mechanism for securing management positions, as part of the “emergence of entrepreneurial and career unionists,” with SACP membership a favoured “stepping stone” for “access opportunities in managerial ranks or in government.”

Former NUM leader and high-ranking ANC politician, Cyril Ramaphosa is now the 34th richest man in the whole of Africa, with a net worth of $275 million. One of his many companies has a contract to supply labour at Marikana in a form of indentured slavery. He is paid R12 000 ($1500) per worker per month by Lonmin, but only pays his workers R4000 ($500) per month.

Its role as an adjunct of management has meant that NUM membership has declined to less than 50 percent of employees in many mines; most of these are skilled white collar and surface workers. The strikers at Marikana are either members of the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) or not unionized at all.

The NUM, COSATU and the SACP have all called for police to clamp down on the strikers, defending the massacre and urging the suppression of the AMCU. NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni said of the Marikana massacre that, “The police were patient, but these people were extremely armed with dangerous weapons.”

This has not prevented the pseudo-left groups internationally from opposing the necessary break from COSATU and its affiliated unions, without which any struggle against the ANC is impossible.

The South African affiliates of the Committee for a Workers International, the Democratic Socialist Movement, instead urge “workers in both unions to demand united solidarity action, beginning with a local general strike” and ending in a “national general strike”—all presumably led by the NUM and COSATU.

The Socialist Workers Party in the UK is more despicable still, writing on August 17, “Whatever its intentions, AMCU has sometimes been used to introduce disunity at a time when workers face big challenges. It would have been better for the workers who formed the rival union to fight among the NUM rank and file and shift its policies from below.”

Support for the NUM and COSATU is support for the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance government. It is support for the continuation of capitalism and imperialist oppression.

The theory of Permanent Revolution provides the political basis for the workers and youth of South Africa to conduct the life-and-death struggles that lie ahead. The evolution of the ANC is a graphic confirmation of Leon Trotsky’s insistence that bourgeois nationalist movements, tied as they are to capitalism and organically opposed to ending the brutal exploitation of the workers and poor farmers, are incapable of carrying through the struggle for democracy and liberation from imperialist domination.

The working class, mobilising all the oppressed rural and urban layers, must break with the ANC and its defenders in the SACP and the trade union apparatus and build their own socialist party.

A workers government must be established to take the entire economy into social ownership and utilise the vast natural wealth presently monopolised by the super-rich to meet the needs of all for decent jobs, housing, education and health provision. This revolutionary struggle must be extended throughout Africa and internationally through the construction of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world party of socialist revolution.

Chris Marsden

Source: World Wide Socialist Web Site

Assassinations, Disappearances, and Riots: What’s Happening in Mombasa?

The international community’s attention to Kenya has been sharply focused on the upcoming March 2013 elections and preventing the type of horrific ethnic violence that surrounded the 2007 election. But other things, big things, are afoot.

On Monday, August 27, Muslim cleric Aboud Rogo Mohammad, who the United States had placed on its sanctions list in July, was gunned down in Mombasa, Kenya. The death sparked outrage from the Muslim community and led to violent protests. Rogo’s death followed a spate of other suspicious disappearances, as well as the death of another Kenyan who was alleged to have been involved in terrorist-related activities.

It’s uncertain who the assailants have been, but many suspect Kenyan government involvement, with some witnesses saying the abductors identified themselves as police.

To gain a better understanding of Rogo’s death and the Mombasa riots, I spoke with Al Amin Kimathi, a human rights activist who is the chair of the Muslim Human Rights Forum in Kenya.

Could you provide a description of your organization, the Muslim Human Rights Forum, and the work that it does?

The Muslim Human Rights Forum is a human rights organization based in the Muslim community, but we work with all civil society groups working on minority rights. The Muslim Human Rights Forum has focused a lot of attention on counterterrorism and human rights monitoring, which focuses on Kenya and the East Africa and the Horn of Africa regions. I work extensively on these issues and have been involved in counterterrorism and human rights investigations in the region, collaborating with local and regional civil society groups.

There are news reports out of Mombasa that a controversial cleric, Aboud Rogo Mohammad, was gunned down on Monday, August 27. At the time of his death he faced charges relating to terrorist activities. Since then there has been rioting in Mombasa. How much is known about what happened to Rogo, and who killed him?

The Muslim Human Rights Forum had been monitoring the legal proceedings against Rogo, as well and other terrorism-related trials in Kenya. Of those cases, around six defendants have disappeared before Rogo met his demise. Rogo and a colleague, Abubakar Shariff Ahmed, had concerns about their safety even before Rogo was killed. He reported his concerns to the police after someone attempted to abduct the two men while they were on their way to a court appearance in July. Then, about a week ago, Rogo reported to MHRF that his son was accosted by people who identified themselves as police from the Flying Squad, which is a unit that deals with motor vehicle theft and armed robberies. However, Rogo’s son was convinced they were really counterterrorism agents and identified them as having been involved in Rogo’s previous arrest. The police told the son that they were looking for his father and warned him not to give them a hard time or any headaches like his father did. Rogo had also recently been put on the U.S. sanctions list. In response, Rogo’s lawyer wrote a letter to the Kenyan government requesting what information the U.S. had against Rogo. The lawyer warned that he thought Rogo’s listing on the sanctions list could lead to his disappearance.

It’s difficult to say who killed Rogo. But when you look at circumstantial evidence, the pattern of events, the modus operandi, and the audacity with which the killing took place, it all points to the hand of the state. For example, in April of this year, activist and Islamic preacher Samir Hashim Khan and Mohammed Bekhit Kassim were abducted in Mombasa in broad daylight while on public transportation. Witnesses saw the two men taken away in two white Toyota Probox station wagons and, based on their behavior, the abductors were police officers. The body of Khan was found two days later 150 kilometers from Mombasa off a highway. His body was badly mutilated. Kassim, the other man, has still not been found or heard from. [Author’s note: Kenyan officials have denied involvement in Rogo’s death and instances of disappearances.]

Have there been incidents like this in the past? Why did this incident in particular spark rioting?

Rogo’s death was the immediate event that sparked the riots. But there were also demonstrations—though not bloody—when Samir Khan’s body was found. So there has been a build-up leading to the riots. The rioters were saying “enough is enough.” The disappearances and killings, taken together led to the riots.

What is the situation like in Mombasa currently? How bad is the rioting?

Behavior on both sides, the police and civilians, has been pretty bad. Rioters have gone to the extent of killing a man near a mosque in Mombasa. On Tuesday there was also a hand grenade thrown at police. Three churches were also torched down on Tuesday, and the churches are demanding compensation from government. There’s also been an unprecedentedly high-level of looting in Mombasa, including the burning of business and vehicles. This continued for two days. Then there was calm most of today, Wednesday, but there are now reports of one or two dead and several injuries from a grenade attack on police, which brought a renewed round of confrontation between police and rioters.

As for state security forces, in the Majengo area of Mombasa, which is the epicenter of rioting, the General Service Unit (GSU) mounted house-to-house searches for Muslim youths and rounded them up and put them into trucks. Twenty-four were taken to court this afternoon [Wednesday], but it’s not yet known what happened to others. The police also raided a hospital where Rogo’s wife was, and heavily armed police came onto the streets by the time Rogo was buried—which was 3 hours after his death.

This strong police presence so soon after the death didn’t go over well with the youths. It led to exchanges in stone throwing, tear gas, and live ammunition. There’s a lot of very high tension in Mombasa and the tension is spreading to Nairobi, though there aren’t any riots or demonstrations in the capital yet. But, for example, in a low income neighborhood, Pumwani Majengo, which has a large Muslim population, plainclothes police from various units have surrounded it. Pumwani Majengo is an area that authorities fear harbors al Shabaab members and they allege it’s a base for the Muslim Youth Center. [Author’s note: The MYC is an organization that a UN report labeled as contributing to recruiting for al Shabaab and setting up operational cells in Kenya.]

Has the situation gotten better, or will it get worse?

I am concerned that the situation will get worse after Friday prayers, where the youth might try to escalate their protests. Muslim, Christian, and political leaders have been urging calm, but the Mombasa youth is not following suit. The leaders who the youth listen to have not been sufficiently brought into the outreach efforts. Meanwhile, the police are being overly cautious, and are bringing out heavily armed units, which is enflaming the situation. There are fears of interreligious conflict if the situation isn’t properly handled. We are seeing very heated debates on the social media. The fact that churches were targeted is evidence of religious tensions. But Muslim and Christian leadership are trying to cool the tempers.

In your view, how should the government respond to these instances of killings and disappearances?

Now that the killings and disappearances took place, an investigation is needed. Prosecutors announced that there will be an investigation into Rogo’s death. The investigation will include people from the Kenyan Law Society and Kenyan Human Rights Commission. An investigation with independence and impartiality is a move in the right direction. Previous investigations without those qualities haven’t proven effective. There’s not a lot of credibility in them. The Muslim Human Rights Forum is calling for a Commission of Inquiry with judicial authority to inspire more confidence in the investigation. Also, Kenya must provide assurances that it does not use extrajudicial means to conduct its counterterrorism operations. Officials must be prosecuted is they were involved in any of those acts.

There has been a lot of debate in Kenya, starting all the way back in 2003, about passing an anti-terrorism legislation that would be discriminatory towards the Muslim community. This debate has picked up steam again and a bill is now with parliament for review. Some government officials say the bill has been amended to respond to its critics. Do you still have concerns with this bill?

I believe that we do need anti-terrorism legislation, but it must conform to the new constitution, including the bill of rights, and international human rights standards. In the past, civil society has prevented the adoption of anti-terrorism laws because of what they allowed the state to do. Currently, the draft bill still gives too much power [to the state], allows for no oversight, and allows for too many derogations of rights. Provisions on seizing property, intercepting communications, and clamping down on organizational activities goes against the freedom of assembly. There’s no judicial recourse for the law’s enforcement, and it criminalizes the lawyer-client relationship. I’m also concerned that the bill could be used not just for counterterrorism operations, but also to suppress political opposition. There are also a lot of newly discovered natural resources, like oil and gas, in Muslim populated areas, and there is concern that the laws could be used against Muslims in order to reap the benefits of those resources. We want to see provisions in the bill that punish unlawful counterterrorism activities. Anti-terrorism authorities have to be held accountable for their actions.

How do you view the role of international donors, such as the U.S. or U.K., in Kenya’s counterterrorism efforts?

In many ways, the Kenyan government has, in the past, overhyped terrorism to bring in donor funding, which then makes the Kenyan government take actions to show the donors that it’s doing something. Nonetheless, the donor community should be focused more on the social dynamics that result in terrorism rather than a militarized response. Specific attention should be given to marginalized populations, such as areas in northeastern Kenya with strong Muslim and ethnic Somali populations, the Coastal region, and poor neighborhood in urban centers, all of which are deprived areas needing economic assistance.

Source: ReliefWeb