It is important to see that the controversial latest draft of South Africa’s Anti-Terrorism Bill is not a response to local threats or conditions, but a distant echo of September 11 2001. The destruction of the Twin Towers was a terrible event. But the United States has an infuriating habit of assuming that its interests are the world’s interests, and its national woes crises for the world. It has no right to internationalise its USA Patriot Act by expecting other states to introduce excessive security laws, in breach of human rights norms and unwarranted by their political conditions.
In a strict sense, the pressure on South Africa to enact anti-terror legislation flows from the United Nations’s Resolution 1373, which declared international terrorism a threat to world peace and security. On the strength of this, the Security Council used its powers to impose a mandatory duty on all member states to adopt laws and submit to a compliance reporting routine. The overbearing influence of the world’s superpower could be seen in the rapidity of this response — within three weeks of 9/11 — and the fact that the mandatory duties imposed on member states had no warrant in terms of the UN Charter. As Unisa’s international law specialist André Thomashausen has pointed out, the 9/11 outrage fails the test of an “attack” as defined by the Charter, since it was not carried out by a state.
Thomashausen points out that of the 14 states in the Southern African Development Community, only South Africa and Mauritius have enacted new anti-terrorism legislation. Taking the view that they are under no compulsion to legislate, other regional states have told the UN’s Greenstock committee that their existing criminal law and procedures are sufficient to deal with terrorism. In other words, South Africa has gone the extra, uncalled-for mile.The policy of overkill extends to the drafting of the South African law. Thomashausen argues that the Anti-Terrorism Bill is the only attempt anywhere in the world to introduce “terrorist acts” as a new criminal category, without defining them. The one definition, an unlawful act “likely to intimidate the public or segment of the public”, is so vague and all-encompassing as to apply to any public violence or unlawful protest. The other refers to offences under international conventions unknown and inaccessible to the South African public, five of which the country has not ratified. The effect, he says, is to “incorporate into South African law international treaties to which South Africa is not even a party”.
The threat posed by the Bill to our hard-won human rights regime has been well documented by the Freedom of Expression Institute and other watchdogs. Two instances are its veiled reintroduction of detention without trial through special bail procedures, and the special powers of search, seizure and interrogation accorded the police once a person is suspected of a “terrorist act”.
Raising additional questions about such measures is the fact that existing South African law has been sufficient to crack the only significant terrorist movements to have sprung up since 1994 — People against Gangsterism and Drugs and the Boeremag. If there are others yet undetected, or which may emerge, the answer surely lies in good police intelligence and forensic work. Enacting a law that flies against the trend towards greater freedoms for South Africans is not the answer.
As has been evident in the case of Israel and the US, it is states with a penchant for terrorism that obsess about terrorist threats.
South Africa took a principled stand against the US invasion of Iraq earlier this year, condemning military action in the teeth of heavy pressure, and calling on the Non-Aligned Movement and the African Union to hold the line. This country has also consistently opposed excesses perpetrated by Israel in the name of rooting out terrorism.
In this context, its excessive zeal for a law that appears to violate the country’s Constitution and puts us in the same ideological camp as those we have condemned makes no sense.
Tune in to popular opinion
PJ Powers, Ringo and Lucky Dube should listen carefully to what is going on in the outside world. They, and many other South African musicians, should not take it for granted that there are not critics out there who might have a different view about what they get away with on the air, and a rather strong way of expressing it.
This week we read about an incident in Manila, Philippines, in which a man was stabbed in the neck at a party by a fellow guest because he had failed to sing the Frank Sinatra classic, My Way, in tune during the karaoke session. The hopelessly tuneless singer died on the way to hospital.
While not in any way condoning this manner of articulating popular criticism, we must nevertheless see this kind of reaction as being of significance in a world where the perception is that, for the most part, anything goes — especially in the music industry.
For example, we have many so-called musicians who have been hopping about to the gospel beat, taking audiences for a pious ride while indulging in diabolical pursuits after the curtain has fallen. They must not expect to be able to fool all of the people all of the time — as a certain American leader once said (when Americans still had leaders).
Someone might just be out there with splicing scissors that might not be to their liking.