It is difficult to identify a beneficiary of this week’s forced removal from Alexandra, the densely populated, dirt-poor township that is surrounded by the villas of Johannesburg’s filthy rich.
Yes, Alex’s population does need to be reduced to give any who remain behind the chance to have reasonably decent housing and services, and healthy lives. But the way in which the removal was carried out is unlikely to contribute towards this outcome. There was no meaningful communication or consultation between the Gauteng government’s Department of Housing and the people who faced removal. The families affected were confronted by ill- and untrained security staff, many of them just collected off the streets and dressed in a security company’s nondescript red uniform. These “security officers” behaved like rabble. They threw stones at residents, opened fire at them, assaulted some of them, and then proceeded to break down their homes and load them on to trucks. But for the restraining influence of the police at the scene, there might have been loss of life.
Those moved were then dumped in the open, on unprepared land some distance off, without shelter or services, and with little, if any, regard given to breadwinners’ abilities to commute to their places of work and children’s ability to get to school. If those who decided that these people should be removed wanted to create an incentive for them to return, they could have done no better than this. It is thus very difficult to see what good, if any, this removal has done for those who were removed or those who have been allowed to remain behind. There will be no reduction in Alex’s population and no resultant improvement in social provision locally. It is similarly difficult to detect what good it has done the African National Congress, at home or abroad. Who would have thought that an ANC government would, or could, show such disregard for people? In a place like Alex, which is steeped in ANC politics and lore? Many domestic ANC supporters have had difficulty with these questions. And many abroad, long impressed by ANC claims to a superior political morality, have been similarly troubled. The ANC is largely responsible for embedding in our national debate a culture of human rights. This is precisely the ethos that should have guided the Alex removal and should govern future removals. And it is something on which the Constitutional Court may well express an opinion in the future. Rudimentary attention to human rights would dictate that the government recognise that those facing removal have legitimate interests and rights among them the right to dignity and respectful treatment. It would require that the people affected be consulted on every aspect of the move and its consequences. It would necessitate that significant consensus be reached on the move and that the removal be carried out without violence on the part of the state or those contracted by it to help in the operation. And it would require that, wherever people are then placed, they have accommodation and services, including adequate transport to their places of employment or education. Rudimentary attention to human rights would probably also guarantee fewer idiotic statements of the kind that emanated from ANC representative Smuts Ngonyama this week that hooligans among those being removed were responsible for the violence.
We were there. We saw what happened. Ngonyama, Gauteng housing MEC Paul Mashitile and the ANC councillor for the ward in Alexandra where the removed people lived were nowhere to be seen on the day. Shameful Tshwete
The drama of the interaction between Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete and the Portuguese-speaking community has diverted attention from the message intended. The protest march by the Portuguese community was a plea to the government to redouble its efforts to combat crime a plea that has come from all corners of the country, and from black and white South Africans. The government response to this plea was characteristically paranoid. Again, the ruling party demonstrated an inability to understand that we live in a democratic and constitutional state. Moreover, the government’s appallingly bad handling of this protest almost threatened diplomatic relations between itself and the government of Portugal. It seems government’s petulant defensiveness, also evident in its response to Peter Hain’s reservations about South African policy towards the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, regularly skews its judgement. Three issues emerge. First, the right to protest should not be linked, as Tshwete sought to do, to the historical origins and past conduct of those protesting. Nowhere does the Constitution say that people can protest only if they protested against apartheid.
Second, such fractious and hysterical responses from government do not augur well for the future. If the ruling party can respond in this fashion when its political dominance is not under threat, what might we expect when (as it surely will one day) the political balance tilts in others’ favour? Conduct of the kind we see from the ANC can come only from people who are insecure and unsure of the power they wield.
Lastly, even if the memorandum was a little aggressive, we expect the government to show maturity and leadership. We expect it to shrug off minor slights. The infantile response of the minister appealed to the basest ethnic prejudice. His veiled threat that the “masses” might deal with the Portuguese community was shameful.
Should we be surprised that there is growing racial polarisation despite the assurance that we are all Africans?