South Africa Burns
On Thursday 16 June in his address at the rally to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising President Jacob Zuma correctly made the point that “in 1976 not a single school was burnt”. He used this as the reason why schools, libraries, clinics and other public buildings should not be burnt down.
Of course he is absolutely correct it is a self destructive action to vandalise the very structures that are built for the benefit of the community. All the money that then has to be spent on rebuilding or renovating those facilities could have been more beneficially used to build additional facilities or upgrade the current ones.
Both Zuma and the ANC ignore the fact that it was at the 73rd Anniversary of the ANC on the 08th January 1985, where Oliver Tambo made a call to the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress (ANC) – Render South Africa Ungovernable!
The comrades escalated their actions to do precisely that, burning down schools and public buildings became the order of the day. The ANC have never taken effective action to stop this practice.
Unfortunately the ANC have never explained to their voters that this form of conduct is neither appropriate nor desirable in a constitutional democracy. In actual fact the ANC have encouraged their supporters to make both Cape Town and the Western Cape ungovernable on various occasions.
- May 24, 2010 The City of Cape Town erected 32 galvanised iron structures around the unenclosed toilets which are immediately vandalized, removed and stolen. ANCYL leaders, including Ward 95 Development Forum leader Andile Lili. ANC members were captured on television smashing the toilet enclosures. ANCYL members violently disrupted a meeting in Gugulethu and assaulted DA members and members of SAPS and threatened to “declare war” against the “minority government” in the City of Cape Town.
- May 25, 2010 ANCYL Dullah Omar region executive member Loyiso Nkohla at a press conference vowed to make Cape Town ungovernable and warned that council property would be vandalised or destroyed because the city had failed to provide proper services to informal settlements.
- May 26, 2010 Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille wrote to President Jacob Zuma drawing his attention to the violence and threats by the ANCYL and requested him to condemn these actions at the highest level and take firm action against the ANCYL members concerned. (Former Labour Minister Mdladlana and ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe were copied).
No response was received from President Zuma
- June 1, 2010 – 32 people arrested after a violent protest in Khayelitsha. Eight of them were arrested for public violence while 24 were arrested under the Gathering Act, for staging an illegal march. The Khayelitsha residents were protesting against the City of Cape Town’s decision to remove 65 toilets in the Makhaza settlement after enclosures around the toilets were vandalised by ANCYL members. Protestors burnt tyres and blocked roads with cement slabs.
The City of Cape Town laid charges against ANCYL members for illegally gathering in the Harare Townshi policing area and for inciting violence and malicious damage to property.
08 May 2012: Almost two years later Western Cape Director of Public Prosecutions informed the City of Cape Town that he had declined to prosecute.
- May 18, 2011 One day before the local elections former ANC provincial chairman Marius Fransman led a group of backyard dwellers, who the police had just evicted from land earmarked for formal housing, back on to the invaded area in Tafelsig. This was despite the City of Cape Town having obtained a court interdict to prevent the backyarders from erecting structures on the land. Fransman arrived in an ANC van with the party’s mayoral candidate Tony Ehrenreich’s face depicted on one side and President Jacob Zuma’s on the other.
- February 6, 2012 Affidavits are filed by DA councillors at the Caledon Police Station detailing bribery attempts by an ANC task team in Theewaterskloof municipality. Three people corroborated evidence of encountering John Michaels, a local ANC leader, Fezile Calana, ANC provincial Treasurer and Advocate Duncan Korabie, an ANC affiliate from Wellington, at the home of former DA councillor Catharine Booysen-Nefdt on 3 February 2012.
ANC Cllr John Michaels is quoted in one affidavit as saying that “we have a plan for every ward” that school-children will be used in Grabouw and informal settlement residents in the Villiersdorp area to make the municipality “ungovernable” and “to turn wards upside down”.
- July 27, 2012 ANCYL, the ANC, the ANCWL, the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association and Congress of Taxi Associations march to the Office of the Premier and handover a memorandum issued by the ANCYL (Dullah Omar region) on behalf of all organisations.
The memorandum contains the following threat: We demand that the abovementioned demands be positively responded to within 7 working days. Failure to do so the young people and the abovementioned stakeholders will make this city and province ungovernable! Amandla!”
- August 1, 2012 Premier Helen Zille and Executive Mayor Patricia De Lille formally lay criminal complaints of intimidation against the ANCYL and the four other organisations who issued the memorandum containing a public threat to make the city and province ungovernable.
- August 7, 2012 ANCYL Dullah Omar Region Chairperson, Khaya Yozi (also signatory on ANCYL memorandum of 27 July), repeated ANCYL threat of ungovernability on eNews Channel live interview at 17.15.
Violent ANC led protests took place almost daily until 13 August 2012.
- August 13, 2012 Senior ANC source stated that the ANC was at centre of protests: A Cape Argus article quoted a senior ANC official, who spoke on condition of anonymity: “Listen, of course ANC people in the communities are at the centre of demonstrating – they are councillors, community activists, etc, who organise at a local level, using SMSes, sure.”
On 14 August, 2012 in Parliament ANC cabinet ministers refused to condemn violent protests on the DA governed Cape Peninsula. Deputy international relations minister Marius Fransman, who was also Western Cape ANC chairman, told a National Assembly sitting that the “protests in the Western Cape were as a result of a lack of service delivery”. He and his colleagues refused to condemn these actions.
During the debate the Cope MP Alfred Kganare told the National Assembly the silence of the ANC could only mean its leadership approved of what the ANCYL was doing in the Western Cape. “They (ANC) must not complain when what they are doing here happens in the rest of the country.”
Earlier in the house, both the DA and Cope criticised the African National Congress for not commenting on ANCYL calls to make the city of Cape Town ungovernable.
“The youth league threatens ungovernability in the morning and denies its involvement in violent protests in the evening,” DA MP Debbie Schafer said.
Whenever the ANC cannot get its own way it resorts to violence. Eventually on 27 November 2013 a group of prominent South Africans, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Desmond Tutu and the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, wrote a public statement condemning a group of activists who they said want to make their part of the country ungovernable.
The statement read “There is at present an assault on democracy taking place in the Western Cape. The Provincial Government that was freely elected, and represents the democratic choice of the majority of the people, is under attack by politicians and activists who were not chosen by the electorate, who are attempting to make the City and Province ungovernable. This attack on democracy is a denial of everything the freedom struggle was about, and is being carried out in a dangerous spirit of hate.”
But the ANC continued with their unruly behavior and on 27 February 2014 ANC councillors chanted slogans, banged on desks and dumped documents on the floor of the city council chamber. Their undisciplined actions saw the meeting disrupted for hours as they objected to the draft budget. At one stage ANC Councillor Kuthula Mamba was dancing around the chamber with a makeshift AK477.
A year later on 19 February 2015 the state of the province address in the Western Cape legislature was suspended for two hours after the ANC raised a point of order on a ruling made last year. This was the same procedure that the EFF used in the National Assembly during the State of the Nation Address the previous week. Not surprising considering that the EFF was born from the ANC.
At the beginning of January this year Velaphi Khumalo an employee of the Gauteng department of Sports, Art and Culture and an ANC member posted on Facebook “I want to cleans this country of all white people. We must act as Hitler did to the Jews. I don’t believe any more that the is a large number of not so racist whit people. I’m starting to be sceptical even of those within our Movement the ANC. I will from today unfriend all white people I have as friends from today u must be put under the same blanket as any other racist white because secretly u all are a bunch of racist fuck heads. as we have already seen [all sic],”
Khumalo was suspended, on full pay, by the department pending disciplinary action.
An internal disciplinary hearing process ensued at which Mr. Khumalo pleaded guilty and committed to avail himself for corrective measures which include counselling. The Disciplinary Panel deemed it fit to issue him with a Final Written Warning.
Upon accepting the sanction Mr. Khumalo’s suspension will duly be lifted and he will be able to carry out his duties as a Sports Promoter, allowing the department to carry out its mission of getting Gauteng active.
Daniel Amos, 20 years old, found Velaphi Khumalo’s post disturbing and needed to be addressed outside the realm of social media. He opened a case of crimen injuria against Khumalo, after his Facebook post. To date no arrests or criminal case is pending.
Earlier this year we saw ANC MP Bongani Mkongi post a statement regarding the ‘Zuma Must Fall’ billboard in the Cape Town CBD. He posted that the ‘Zuma Must Fall’ billboard in Cape Town, as well as the building it is on and its occupants, to be burnt down.
The ANC reaction was to blame the opposition but not accept any responsibility. ANC spokesperson Moloto Mothapo reacted arguing that all South Africans committed to non-racialism, racial unity and nation-building must at all times reject deliberate acts of provocation and polarisation “driven by racist bigots both within and outside the DA”.
“The gigantic and expensive billboard, sponsored by the privileged and wealthy racists of the DA, had all the malicious intent to racially polarise and incite political tensions with a view to distract public attention from the increasing levels of racism both inside and outside the ranks of the DA,” Mothapo said.
As for the ANC Member of Parliament “Mkongi has stressed that he harboured no intention to either harm or cause violence, and has since publicly retracted and apologised for the post,” said spokesperson Moloto Mothapo
Of course Mkongi is still an ANC member and no charges have been laid against him, it is never the ANC’s fault. The response to the DA’s complaint to the ANC dominated Ethics Committee was that Mkongi was fined seven days salary, a reprimand in the House and instructed to undergo training on ethical usage of social media.
The bigotry directed at present cannot be a ‘surprise’ since it is the essence of endemic lawlessness inherited from the past and now sweeping the country from the top to bottom. I don’t think that I am far wrong. The ANC have never taught their supporters that making the country ungovernable is no longer an option.
Therefore, until the government start to show that breaking the law and violence is not tolerated, when people who either incite or cause violence and damage property are charged and prosecuted the government has to accept responsibility.
It is no good Gwede Mantashe adopting a PW Botha approach that it is a ‘third force’ or insisting “That is thuggery and it is not a protest of ANC members.”
Cyril Ramaphosa should stop trying to blame the current rampage in Tshwane as merely tribalism.
Writing in the Rand Daily Mail today, 23 June 2016 Gareth van Onselen wrote “If the Tshwane protests are not a revolt, it is difficult to say what they are. A decision was made, a leader imposed, the suggestion rejected and illegal protest followed. That is by definition a revolt. In the end it might not be a successful one but it is a response to power and authority deemed illegitimate in the eyes of those opposing it.”
It is time that the ANC realised that their chickens have now come home to roost.
They started it they must end it!
Until next time
CLIVE HATCH
This newsletter is published by Clive Hatch former Leader of the Opposition in the Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature and former DA Provincial Leader. These views are my personal views and do not represent those of any other person or organisation.
E-Mail: clive.hatch265@gmail.com
