Taxi association members disperse looters at the Chris Hani Mall in Vosloorus on July 14, 2021 in Ekurhuleni, South Africa. Policing, private security, taxi?members and community leaders battled to quell looters at the popular Chris Hani Mall. (Photo by Dino Lloyd/Gallo Images via Getty Images)
There is no place for the “masterminds” and “instigators” of the failed July 2021 “insurrection” to hide because the police will track down, arrest and prosecute them for crimes such as treason and inciting public violence, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday.
He made this promise during his five-hour testimony before the South African Human Rights Commission’s inquiry into the civil unrest.
The riots and looting claimed the lives of 353 people and destroyed scores of shopping malls, businesses and warehouses, costing the economy jobs and financial losses of at least R50-billion.
Ramaphosa told the commission how the state had been caught off-guard by the sheer scale and coordination of the unrest, saying that it had come like a “bolt from the blue”.
No intelligence was received to allow the state time to adequately prepare its forces to quell the unrest, he said.
He said his own expert panel – led by chairperson Sandy Africa, Mojanku Gumbi and Silumko Sokupa – had found that the state, which had a “hollowed out” security cluster as a result of state capture, had been lacklustre in its response and that the police had been hopelessly ill-equipped and untrained to tackle public violence of such a scale.
He also highlighted the government’s plans to improve intelligence reporting, capacitate the police with equipment, skills and training in public order policing, and to embrace community police forums and the private security industry as supporting resources.
Commissioners told Ramaphosa that many people who had testified at the inquiry had demanded justice.
The commission’s chairperson, Andre Gaum, said Ramaphosa’s expert panel report had raised concern that none of the instigators of the violence had been arrested, and had called for the president to inform the public of what he was doing to pursue any recent intelligence tip-offs to pursue suspects.
Gaum said a media report on 14 March had said an anonymous source had implicated a mayor, cabinet ministers and members of the Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans’ Association in planning the unrest.
Ramaphosa responded saying: “I saw the same report and what I can say is I know investigations are underway, the police have been investigating and I have shared this with the nation before, that investigations are underway.”
“Of course, everyone wants these investigations to be concluded yesterday but these investigations need to be given time because they are complex investigations,” he added.
“We should allow the police to conclude these investigations so they can come forward and say this is what we have found. I don’t know what they are finding, and if there are any charges that can be referred against anyone either for treason or fomenting violence and unrest, then the rule of law should take place.
“There can be no place for people to hide who have perpetrated these events that led to the killing of 350 people. Those who were responsible for planning and for instigating this unrest, the long arm of the law will find them. I am sure of it,” Ramaphosa said.
He said he accepted accountability for the incapacity of his cabinet and the security forces for being taken off-guard and not acting swiftly to deploy the South African National Defence Force to quell the insurrection.
“We have been very clear and unequivocal that, as government, we do take responsibility. We did that upfront without even mincing our words, without seeking to hide from it because there were lapses along the way which we have recognised and, as commander-in-chief, I do take responsibility. We have been through a really horrendous period, an era of real darkness and we want to emerge from this a lot stronger, so that it never happens again.”
He said the scale of the organised unrest and looting had come “as a bolt from the blue”.
“What this country experienced was not a popular uprising of the poor, as the peddlers of misinformation sought to characterise it at the time. It was not the bubbling over of discontent over an allegedly legitimate political grievance. It was an attempted insurrection,” Ramaphosa said.
“That economic infrastructure was targeted in the manner that it was, shows clearly that the intention was to bring our economy to its knees and thereby destabilise our democracy. Regardless of their intent, it was a situation for which we were not prepared. While there had been intelligence reports about the possibility of instability, neither the security services nor the government more broadly anticipated the nature, extent or ferocity of those events,” he said.
He added he had not seen any report highlighting the threat of the unrest.
The former state security minister, Ayanda Dlodlo, claimed in her testimony that she had provided intelligence to Police Minister Bheki Cele, who has vehemently denied receiving intelligence. She also said she had attempted to meet Ramaphosa at the time to discuss an intelligence report.
Ramaphosa said the state was now focused on renewal and building its intelligence, policing and security capacity. He said the state had identified the problems that had led to an insufficient police response, which included a failure to fill vacant posts, for example in crime intelligence, and a lack of equipment and training in public order policing.
“The other problem was over the years there has been a hollowing out of very good and capable people and we cannot discount the period of state capture and the impact it had in hollowing out and denuding our state of very capable people, some who left because they were pushed out and others who left out of exasperation. There has been a weakening of our components of the state,” Ramaphosa said.
He said a total of 12 000 police officers began public order policing training from April 1 and the state was now exploring how to work closely with community policing forums and the private security sector, which had three times the human resources of the police, to serve state security in a supporting role.
“We are regulating them and now we need to find a way that strength can be harnessed in the interest of national security. Whatever doubts we may have of some entities we need to sit down and see best how this resource can be utilised for national security,” Ramaphosa said.