The African National Congress government seems paranoid about disaffected minorities staging a counter-revolution, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday.
One example of such fears was the sudden disbanding — announced by President Thabo Mbeki in 2003 — of the rural commando units, he said in his weekly newsletter on the DA’s SA Today website.
The commandos had prevented violent crime and stock theft in the countryside for decades.
”No reasons were given [for the decision] and no alternative suggestions were considered,” Leon said.
The implementation of the Firearms Control Act is another example.
Not only has this been extremely inefficient, but it ”suggested that the government is more concerned with getting legal guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens and less concerned with taking illegal guns away from criminals”.
Recent events in the police force suggest it is becoming increasingly politicised.
”Allegations have surfaced that the Cape Town City Police under [Bongani] Jonas have become involved in suppressing internal ANC protests.
”Meanwhile, Afrikaans is being phased out of SAPS [South African Police Service] communications in the Western Cape, and the hiring and promotion of white and coloured SAPS officers has virtually stopped,” Leon said.
Most astounding of all was a raid by military police and the SAPS, in February this year, on the South African Museum of Military History in Johannesburg.
”The police treated the museum as if it were not a collection of military hardware and memorabilia, but rather an illicit stockpile of stolen armaments. The museum’s curators were never prosecuted for any crime.
”It seems that the ANC government is paranoid about some kind of ‘counter-revolution’ carried out by disaffected minorities,” Leon said.
There are many other conspiracy theories doing the rounds.
”The president seems to think that foreign-funded non-governmental organisations are out to undermine the government. He and his health minister apparently still believe anti-retroviral drugs are really poison in disguise.
”Meanwhile, former deputy president Jacob Zuma and his followers believe they are the victims of a plot by President Thabo Mbeki and his acolytes, in which … even I have been linked via various false e-mails suggesting my collaboration with assorted sinister elements.
”And several judges in the Western Cape believe there is a shadowy plot to oust Judge President John Hlophe.
”Commonly and consistently, all of these conspiracy theories believe that a secret cabal of ethnic minorities — white, Xhosa, Afrikaans, whatever — is acting to undo the country’s democracy.”
In truth, however, the ANC’s paranoia reveals less about the shape of South African society than it does about the ruling party itself, Leon said. — Sapa