Don’t just call it sabotage, act on it

When we look at the comments made by Transport Minister Blade Nzimande on the chaos which occurred on the N3 highway in Mooi River on Easter Monday, we must remember his background.

He is a communist and communist apparatchiks – in a pattern started by Lenin and Trotsky and perfected by Stalin – have been quick to characterise any form of dissent as “sabotage” against the state. So Nzimande’s description of the lawlessness at Mooi River could be viewed through that prism.

However, on this occasion, he is not being communist, or alarmist. He is being a realist.

What happened there can quite correctly be described as sabotage – or even terrorism, loaded though that term may also be. For protesters to block the country’s busiest highway on the busiest day of the year and inconvenience thousands of motorists and other people – and cost the country millions of rands in time and fuel wasted – is tantamount to sabotage.

To hold people hostage, which is effectively what happened, amounts to terrorism. Likewise, the knock-on effect, of frustrated people taking the law into their own hands and breaking traffic laws left, right and centre was also a consequence of this act of intimidation.

The protesters blockaded the road, which set off looters from the neighbouring area, who stole and destroyed in what can only be described as an orgy of anarchy.

This sort of thing is happening far too often in current-day South Africa… mainly because angry citizens see that this form of protest seldom has any consequences.

The government cannot allow this behaviour to continue. No country which wants to live in peace, and to thrive, can allow this sabotage.

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