Marikana, apartheid could be behind delayed army deployment – analyst

The ghosts of Marikana and apartheid-style authoritarianism could be behind the delay to deploy the army to assist to quell the ongoing looting and violence in the country, but poor leadership has also been blamed.

Most importantly, One South Africa Movement founder Mmusi Maimane pointed to the beginning of the end of the ANC-inspired liberation euphoria.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) put the blame squarely on absent leadership and lack of control under the ANC for the escalation of the violence.

Political analyst Dr Ntsikelelo Breakfast said government wanted to avoid being seen to employ apartheid-style heavy-handed tactics to crush the violence. Besides, the ANC was haunted by scenes of apartheid killings and the Marikana massacre.

But when the situation got out of control and the police were overwhelmed in handling looting crowds, President Cyril Ramaphosa had no option but to deploy the South African National Defence Force. Such a move, though welcomed, was seen as a little too late by opposition parties.

Breakfast, from Nelson Mandela University, said the protest was unrelated to service delivery but triggered by former president Jacob Zuma’s arrest.

“These protests have nothing to do with the structure of the economy, nor the power relations between the haves and the have nots,” Breakfast said.

“But there are people who are using social factors such as inequality and ownership of the means of production as a proxy in pursuit of a particular agenda.”

These were not protests triggered by lack of response to demands for service delivery. They were engineered by people within the ANC who are aligned to Zuma and are discontented about the turn of events within the party and the state.

The country was let down by the poor response of state security, which could have acted early and swiftly to prevent them from starting in the first place.

However, Breakfast said, the protests would have happened anyway because they appeared to be a grand strategy by the Zuma camp.

“It was either their way or the highway – either Zuma is acquitted or the country goes to the block.”

Professor Dirk Kotze, political scientist at the University of South Africa, said it was not necessarily true that the ANC was not in control but some parties, like the EFF, were making the government a scapegoat.

He said the EFF was frustrated because their target, Zuma, was not on the scene and they had not won concessions from the ANC on land expropriation in parliament.

Kotze said the police’s failure to deal with those who congregated outside the Zuma homestead in Nkandla had encouraged law-breaking, including a disregard for lockdown regulations. It created an impression that the police were slack, opening an opportunity for those with criminal intent to hijack the situation.

The police were scared following the Marikana experience and other post-1994 incidents to act firmly and timeously, hence they did not react to intimidation by some in Nkandla.

Maimane said: “What we are seeing now is the … end of the era of liberation-type politics – shortly of the ANC.”

The party’s factional battles were spilling out in the streets. Such a problem could be resolved by building a capable state where the rule of law was upheld for all citizens, he said.

The socioeconomic challenges people faced should be addressed so they were not vulnerable to being used in violent protests because they were hungry. But Breakfast said the blame could not be put squarely on the government because it faced a complex situation.

– ericn@citizen.co.za