The Mail& Guardian recommends a deeply sceptical response to the rising tide of international hysteria over alleged al-Qaeda terrorists and planned acts of terror, which now seems to have infected South Africa. Al-Qaeda exists, and there is no reason to doubt that its operatives have carried out numerous attacks, mainly on American targets. But the reality is that levels of international terrorism have declined quite markedly over the past year or two. There is reason to believe that most of al-Qaeda’s energies are focused on driving the United States forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. And we should constantly bear in mind that certain political interests — including US President George W Bush in an election year and the Pakistani military junta — have powerful motives for hyping the international terrorism threat.
Reports in the local media that two South African Muslims arrested in Pakistan were planning to attack public buildings and tourism targets in South Africa should be viewed with the utmost suspicion. It is not impossible that the two men had links with al-Qaeda — the fact that they were arrested with Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, prime suspect in the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, certainly suggests some sort of connection. And the Cape Town bomb attacks by members of People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) underscores the fact that some local Islamic militants are stupid enough to soil their own doorstep. What is barely credible, however, is that an international terror network like al-Qaeda would target South Africa and its tourism industry. What possible motive could there be for alienating a prominent Third World critic of Western policies in Israel/Palestine and Iraq?
Media reports are entirely based on claims by unnamed members of the Pakistan security forces, well-known for their use of torture. One of the arrested South Africans, Feroz Ganchi, is a medical doctor who seems an unlikely participant in an alleged 18-hour gun battle with the Pakistani police. Media reports quote unnamed South African policemen as saying the two men had been under surveillance for a year. Why, then, were the Pakistani authorities not warned? And if the reports are true, why have the South African authorities unequivocally dismissed them? After all, the government was not slow to blame extreme Islamists for the Pagad attacks.
The fact is that Pakistan, unpopular throughout the Islamic and Third Worlds for its spearhead role in Washington’s “war on terror” since 9/11, has every motive for suggesting that another Third World country is threatened by al-Qaeda. The barely credible idea that Islamic terrorists would blow up the Union Buildings also serves US propaganda purposes.
Any doubt that terror scaremongering can have ulterior political motives should be dispelled by the recent “code orange” terror alert in New York City, Washington DC and northern New Jersey — the sixth in the US since 9/11. According to police sources, two of the five previous code orange alerts were based on fabricated intelligence. It has also been revealed that no “specific” intelligence from Pakistan was reviewed on the previous evening at CIA headquarters. Significantly, the decision to launch the alert was taken on the night of John Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention.
What is the next stop?
Since 2000 the former minister of housing Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele has pursued the M&G from the high court to the Supreme Court of Appeals and now to the Constitutional Court. What is the next stop? The International Court? And who’s paying? While the former minister will not say, it appears public money is being used to pursue a private agenda.
The minister felt slighted by a report-card published by the newspaper in 1998 and sued the M&G for R3-million, claiming that it had impugned her dignity. Though her case has now been defeated in the Supreme Court of Appeals, Mthembi-Mahanyele is seeking to overturn the finding that the report was reasonable and justifiable, this time in the Constitutional Court.
Is such a costly action necessary as the court also ruled that ministers do have a right to sue for defamation, a right of which an earlier judgement had stripped political office-bearers? It also reaffirmed the view that there is no hierarchy of rights; that the right to freedom of expression is not automatically elevated above the right to dignity. In this way, it affirmed dignity as a vital pillar of a South African constitutional state.
It also affirmed free and robust expression as vital to democracy; and it made important statements about accountability in public office. Judge Carol Lewis fleshed out the jurisprudence that protects freedom of expression and referred to a special defence of “justifiable” publication. It argued that “political speech might, depending on the context, be lawful even when false provided that its publication is reasonable … This is not a test for negligence: it determines whether, on the grounds of policy, a defamatory statement should not be actionable because it is justifiably made in the circumstances.”
And it established another important precedent for free speech and accountability by finding that representatives of the state are accountable to the public who have a right to call for explanations of conduct. “When they fail to do so, without justification, they must bear the criticism and comment their conduct attracts.”
Accountability is what the M&G stands for. We look forward to the debates in the Constitutional Court. And we’re paying our own bills.