President Jacob Zuma at the memorial for slain South African soldiers.
President Jacob Zuma said in Pretoria at the memorial service of the slain members of the South African National Defence Force: "Matters of military tactics and strategy are not the ones to be discussed in public … No country reveals and discusses its military strategies in the manner that South Africa is being expected to do."
The president was right. We cannot be privy to military tactics nor strategy as the general public, no matter how liberal a government is. But the president chose not to answer the question. Instead, he lectured us.
Thirteen brave soldiers died and we don't know why they were deployed to the CAR in the first place. It is understandable that the country would be at an emotional high point and it is time for our leaders to keep cool heads.
As head of state, the memorial was a good opportunity for Zuma to rise above the fray and tell us he would be getting to the bottom of this debacle. Instead, the government's need to defend itself led to mudslinging between it and the media, opposition parties and critics.
We are really not that interested in the strategies and tactics. The one thing that truly interests us is why our soldiers were sent to the Central African Republic. We have been told that they were sent there as a protection force to the trainers.
The president then chastised the press for questioning the reasons for sending soldiers. In his speech, he said: "The problem with South Africa is that everybody wants to govern." He might as well have said: "To hell with one of the Freedom Charter's most important tenants: 'The People Shall Govern'."
The people shall question. And they should, until they get the truth. But we should be careful not to think that there is only one answer. The truth should not only be our preconceived ideas.
Democracy demands that we view our leaders with a healthy dose of suspicion and scepticism. We can't believe everything they say. Thomas Jefferson put it very well when he said: "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."
If we bend and fail to ask questions, we would be guilty for the result. As Jefferson also said: "Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
In his book, A Clash of Kings, George RR Martin's sharp-tongued character Lord Tyrion Lannister was speaking to a member of the king's council who was upset about priests in the city claiming that the new king was a product of incest. In an effort to silence them, the council member suggested the priests' tongues should be cut out.
Tyrion demurs, saying: "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
It is true that it is not necessarily the public that demands these answers, nor does the government's critics necessarily represent the public in any democratically elected sense. But what they lack in representation they make up for by raising the questions that need to be asked. Government should be careful not to show that it fears what its critics have to say.