Hostage situation: Chickens come home to roost

After being held hostage at Irene’s Saint George’s Hotel by military veterans, Minister of Defence Thandi Modise tried to downplay the severity of the situation that she, together with Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele and her deputy Thabang Makwetla found themselves in.

“We did not feel our lives were in danger,” she said.

That might be true, but it took the police’s Special Task Force to rescue them.

They might not have felt in danger but they were – and the situation could have easily ended in tragic bloodshed. Sadly, these are simply the ruling party’s chickens coming home to roost.

One of the issues central to South Africa’s negotiated settlement was how the new government was going to deal with members of the various liberation armies of the different parties that sat down at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa).

Processes were set up for the demobilisation of these liberation armies and integration into the South African National Defence force.

The minister of defence was, in fact, a general in the SANDF and participated actively in the process to iron out glitches of merging guerrilla armies with the country’s army.

The process was not smooth because it involved merging not only liberation armies, but also the armies of the independent homelands.

The biggest mistake the ruling party made was that while it pursued the formal and official process of integrating these forces into the single national defence force, a faction of the leadership of the ruling party felt it necessary to politically control the uMkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA).

Like the youth and the women’s leagues, a faction of the ruling party always made sure it had the military veterans in its corner to bolster its chances of being in total control of the mother body.

The MKMVA was turned into a political tool, with sometimes ridiculous consequences.

It has become a running joke that the people now demanding R4.2 million each from government and feeling so entitled to it that they decided to hold three ministers hostage are in their 30s and 40s.

Some of the veterans that have been paraded at political rallies do not look a day over 30, basically not a day older than South Africa’s democracy, and yet they look to be compensated to the tune of millions of rands for “the sacrifices made in the liberation of this country.”

There is nothing wrong with having a veterans’ association for nostalgic purposes within the ruling party. But to then recruit that committee and make them feel entitled to run the mother body and convincing young former members of what used to be called self-defence units and to give them an official title of being military veterans was just inviting trouble.

During the standoff between Modise and the veterans, a voice was quite audible amidst the chaos.

“We don’t care what you do to us, arrest us or kill us. We’re not leaving here until this is sorted.”

This might be an unpalatable truth for these entitled veterans: being in the struggle was never a contract of employment or pathway to unearned riches.

The factions within the ruling party that thought it convenient to maintain a private army under the guise of honouring freedom fighters must now accept that their chickens are coming home to roost.

And what better time to make these demands than just before an election to make their leaders jittery.