Cele’s press conference should not have been to announce persons of interest

Police Minister Bheki Cele held a press conference to announce that the police have identified 12 persons of interest in relation to the more than 20 trucks burnt across three provinces recently to emphasise that there will be no repeat of the July 2021 riots and looting spree.

Well, there might not be a repeat of the riots because maybe people realised that losing their lives for a few looted items in defence of a lost political cause is useless, but the press conference itself and the burnt trucks are enough to remind everyone of that hopeless period.

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It doesn’t help that events conspired to have the Constitutional Court choose the month of July to announce the ruling that then commissioner of correctional services Arthur Fraser’s decision that former president Jacob Zuma be released on parole was unconstitutional.

Add constitutional delinquent Duduzile Zuma, former president Zuma’s daughter, tweeting pictures of burning trucks and declaring “We see you!” as if to encourage the lawlessness in commemoration of the July riots – and a proper commemoration is in motion.

Unfortunately the Jacob Zuma saga is no longer just about the former president’s very successful Stalingrad tactics to keep out of jail and avoid his day in court, it has become something more central to the very ability of South Africa to stay together as a functional state.

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It must be noted that the former president himself is not so powerful politically as to have the ability to threaten the security of the state, but he was central to the period that decimated the functioning of state intelligence, as well as providing a rallying cause for those who saw state capture as radical economic empowerment.

That Cele could only hold a press conferencere actively after as many as 21 trucks have been torched is a result of the void in police intelligence. And it is that void that allows the commemoration of those ugly riots.

The press conference should not have been to announce persons of interest – itself a foreign concept to law enforcement here – it should have been to announce that a syndicate planning to embark on economic sabotage had been arrested and was behind bars before even one truck was burnt.

That’s what proper police intelligence achieves. People who commit crimes are only frightened of one thing: getting caught.

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When the possibility of that is so diminished that it is obvious that getting away with criminal acts is commonplace, then the security of the state is threatened.

All those who crawl out of their irrelevance holes in July, like Carl Niehaus did, to scream “Wenzeni uZuma” and exhort lawlessness by letting arsonists know that “we see you!” only do that because they know that the capacity of the state to deal with them is greatly diminished.

That is why Zuma’s case is bigger than him as an individual. At this stage it is besides the point whether he ends up incarcerated or not.

What matters the most is that those who use him as a rallying point need to know that the state is steadily building the capacity to deal with them. Putting an octogenarian in jail just to make a point achieves very little, if all it does is to expose the weaknesses of the state.

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By all means he must face the law and be convicted if guilty, but it is equally important that government take away the platform of those who resurface, only to fan the flames of violence, by capacitating police intelligence.