There is no way of knowing who is responsible for threats against Congress of South African Trade Unions president Willie Madisha. But given the mounting conflict between the union movement and the government, and perceptions in some African National Congress circles that Madisha is a dangerous radical, it is possible that state agents or members of the ruling party are involved.
The threats are not union propaganda. The M&G has known of them for several weeks. They include a cellular phone message to Madisha showing a cocked gun and the words “we know where you live”. There is also some evidence that union offices have been bugged.
To suggest that the harassment is the product of tension between the state and labour is not to imply it has official sanction. Indeed, it is almost inconceivable that South Africa’s able intelligence minister, Lindiwe Sisulu, would allow such a thing. What is far more probable is that spooks or party hardliners are freelancing, either out of excessive loyalty to the ANC or a misplaced desire to please their masters.
If government or the party discovers this is happening, it must stamp on it with the utmost vigour. These were the tactics of the apartheid security forces, and precisely the kind of state terrorism the resistance movement fought to overthrow.
But the ruling party has wider obligations in preventing abuse of power by its agents and supporters. It must place a Chinese wall between the security apparatus of the state and the political arena, so that the ANC’s objectives are pursued only by open and legitimate means. This rule was apparently breached earlier this year when Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete unleashed the police on political opponents of President Thabo Mbeki, on the pretext that there was a danger to the president’s life. It is understood that intelligence agents visited the home of dissident ANC MP Andrew Feinstein at the height of his battle with party chiefs over Parliament’s arms deal inquiry. There is also the unresolved matter of the alleged bugging of Democratic Party offices.
Equally critical is the political climate in the country. Paranoid responses to criticism and the hostile labelling of critics and adversaries are a fertile breeding ground for harassment and intimidation. A good start would be to excise from South Africa’s public discourse all hackneyed and largely meaningless “label libels” from the Marxist lexicon, particularly the terms “ultra-leftist” and “counter-revolutionary”.
Zandspruit xenophobia
Xenophobia finds no more fertile ground than that scarred by poverty and unemployment, as in the Zandspruit squatter settlement near Johannesburg. Thousands there eke out a precarious existence in shacks and hovels, and very few have jobs. If a Zimbabwean or a Mozambican resident of the camp has a job or even indicates that he or she is seeking one the cry can go up among South Africans: “They are stealing our jobs!” So it has been in Zandspruit with tragic results.
It is important that we do not lose sight of the role of poverty and unemployment in the death, arson and mayhem that occurred in Zandspruit this month. The indications are that unemployment there, for example, far exceeds the national average of about 36%.
Xenophobia involves the “othering” of foreigners or outsiders. It offers us a ready “other” to blame for any inadequacy in ourselves or in our circumstances.
But we need not wait for a solution to poverty and unemployment to address xenophobia. We need a campaign, led at the highest level, to convince people that xenophobia provides no solution to their problems. The statements by all parties in Parliament, the Cabinet’s condemnation of the Zandspruit attacks as a “crime”, and other appeals from church and other leaders have seemed to have little effect. Action by police on the ground has appeared ineffective.
We need President Thabo Mbeki to get out of his car in Zandspruit and engage with people there about why it wrong and wrong-headed to behave as many have towards their Zimbabwean neighbours. This should be the inaugural moment for an inclusive campaign involving all parties against xenophobia and racism of any kind. He will find there is a reservoir of goodwill among South Africans for such a campaign.
Modem operandi
Our president’s dalliances with science on the issue of HIV/Aids are now reaching scarcely expressible levels of absurdity.
He presents HIV/Aids, which millions of South Africans actually experience daily as illness and suffering, as if it is merely some sort of rumour spread to defame black people. As if it is a blood libel suggesting all black people are uncontrollably lustful and dirty.
Or Thabo Mbeki goes on to the Internet again and completely misunderstands (or is it wilfully misrepresents?) what he has read about the toxicity of anti-retroviral drugs.
We have had cause to raise serious questions about him before.
Is Thabo fit to own a modem?