South Africa needs leaders of the ilk of Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani (above), Walter Sisulu, Beyers Naude, Steve Biko, Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela and Chief Albert Luthuli. Photo: File
The country of Nelson Mandela, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Oliver Reginald Tambo, Stephen Bantu Biko and Beyers Naude is on the brink of collapse, while President Cyril Ramaphosa dithers, almost paralysed by indecision.
To save the “beloved country”, as it was described by author Alan Paton, Ramaphosa, by virtue of being the country’s commander-in-chief, is permitted by the Constitution to declare a state of emergency when governance appears to be at risk of being hijacked by the forces of evil pervading the country.
It is no secret that the government has not only lost its shine, its credibility has been tarnished, and has been for years — even during the salad days when the ANC was the dominant political force enjoying huge popularity among the electorate.
Ramaphosa must be in the forefront; he must muster the courage to restore the credibility of the government to give South Africans hope that there is something to salvage and fight for, if not pride.
He must use the constitutional tools accorded to him to help the country to reset; to get it on a better footing, essential for a less restive society.
In terms of the Constitution, a state of emergency may be declared when “the life of the nation is threatened by war, invasion, general insurrection, disorder, natural disaster or other public emergency, and the declaration is necessary to restore peace and order”.
There is no war in the conventional sense. There is, though, a war of another sort — a war to ward off the mafia embedded in the state, deeply enmeshed through agents of darkness eating off the democratic state elected by the populace through corruption and malfeasance.
Ramaphosa, as head of the state and government, must act extraordinarily. He must declare a state of emergency, to reset and to make a new beginning, cleaning up the parasitic pseudo-state that is behaving like a leech, feeding off the democratic state.
In this country, we would be fooling ourselves if we pretended not to know the role played by mafia operations within the government. They come in many guises, including the construction mafia and contract killers, or izinkabi, hired to kill for political ends.
These are illegal, and must be tackled head-on. Section 37 of the Constitution provides for the president to declare a state of emergency. Such a declaration, and any actions taken, are effective for a maximum of 21 days unless extended by the National Assembly for up to three months at a time.
Today, the country is in dire straits. Ramaphosa ought to be thinking along those lines.
Violence is endemic; weapons of death are in the wrong hands. This explains the prevalence of robberies in big cities, towns, villages and suburbs in the country.
Criminal activities are spiking. People fear for their lives — children, women, men, older people, are all at risk. In many instances, they are attacked and killed with impunity, with police doing very little to intervene, with crime intelligence almost non-existent.
Researched and anecdotal conversations in the townships, suburbs, villages and other places suggest that people do not trust police officers for a variety of reasons, including a lack of effectiveness in fighting crime and the inability to bring to book the perpetrators of crime in satisfactory ways.
There are regular articles in the media describing police maladministration and misconduct, such as brutality, corruption and the extraction of bribes from perpetrators of crime to cause “the dockets to disappear”.
In addition, police officers are often seen as an extension of the corrupt government system, and because of this reality, they are tarred with the same brush.
Because of a lack of focus, and being beaten to the punch by criminal syndicates, police officers are often unable to resolve complicated criminal cases.
Given all of these factors, no president should sit on their hands while the country lurches from one crisis to the next, with signs of ungovernability as stark as they have become for most South Africans, particularly the poor who have little or no resources to protect themselves against criminal actions.
Many South Africans have the feeling of being on a runaway train moving at an uncontrolled speed towards a precipice; of being alone while “the police conclude their corruption-laden underworld activities”, if the recent media briefing over KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s allegations of corruption in the police force is to be believed.
The alleged rotten potatoes in the South African Police Service could be a threat to the maintenance of peace and stability and should be identified and prosecuted.
But the process must be preceded by the declaration of a state of emergency — an act that would help to clean up the corrupt criminal justice and political systems.
Mkhwanazi alleged that the police minister, Senzo Mchunu, has ties with criminal gangs and that he closed down an elite police unit investigating political murders.
He also told the media, and South Africans, that he had uncovered a drug cartel “with tentacles in the business sector, prison department, prosecution service and the judiciary”.
The country is at war — at war with itself, not with external forces threatening to invade us.
A political system that is tolerant of corruption, malfeasance and bad leadership will prove to be the country’s downfall.
The corrupt “comrades” found in the country’s state-owned enterprises; in municipalities and metros; in the national parliament; in the provincial legislatures; within religious sectors; in business are the reason why we need the imposition of a state of emergency, if only to help the country to reset.
Why did we have the Nkandla scandal? Why did the ANC not shout to the high heavens and recall the president who was putting a smudge on the organisation’s brand?
Yet the ANC leadership chose, by its silence, to be complicit in the malfeasance and corruption of the day.
The ANC brand, built over many years of the liberation struggle by upright leaders of the ilk of Mandela, Tambo, Chris Hani, Walter Sisulu and Chief Albert Luthuli, has been smudged.
South Africans are sustained by a fading hope.
The destruction of a democratic state is possible when we all sit on our hands and do nothing to stop those who are hellbent on corrupting and destroying it.
Ramaphosa has a duty to protect it, to protect Madiba’s project of social justice for all. The Constitution confers such power.
Declaring a state of emergency might be a necessary evil, even in a democracy, to bring the army into the country’s criminal hotspots, helping the police bring to book those who undermine the democratic state.
Jo-Mangaliso Mdhlela is an independent journalist, a former unionist, a social justice activist and an Anglican priest.