July Unrest reports reek of cadre effect

The absence of intellectual fibre in the cadre-deployment diet has reached dangerous levels.

The Chapter 9 institutions, particularly, have been so starved of cerebral nourishment through the appointment of ANC apparatchiks that they have long lost any credibility they might have had.

This week’s release of findings into what is euphemistically called the 2021 “unrest” in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng confirms that erosion.

The reports by the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and the Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Rights Commission (CRL) demonstrate that what were intended to be, the bulwarks of democracy, are enfeebled and barely sentient.

The CRL report is so poor it’s barely worthy of mention. Two-and-a-half years of effort have produced a 24-page document more reminiscent of a primary school class project than a serious inquiry by a state institution.

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One step up from this shallow garbage is the HRC’s much more slickly produced 252-page report.

The HRC strives for literary cachet by incorporating in the name of its report, July’s People: The National Investigative Hearing Report into the July 2021 Unrest in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the title of Nadine Gordimer’s 1981 dystopian novel, July’s People.

July 2021 riots, July’s People? Geddit?

Even more jarring is the HRC’s key conclusion that there is no evidence that the 2021 unrest, which President Cyril Ramaphosa described as “attempted insurrection”, was linked to the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma for contempt of court.

While the HRC concedes the two events coincided exactly, this was merely a “[blurred] intertwining … an intersection [that] led many to conclude that the two are related”.

ALSO READ: No link to 2021 July unrest, but Zuma arrest a ‘trigger’

This assertion is a jaw-dropping rejection of the findings of the expert panel which covered the same ground as the HRC in 2021.

Where the HRC report meanders through reams of “maybe, could be, who knows?” sociological analysis to avoid exacerbating divisions in the ruling party, the expert panel was far more critical.

It identified Zuma’s incarceration as the event that “lit the tinderbox” in a “ripe environment” of poor service delivery, unacceptable living conditions, a sickly economy and persistent poverty.

It warned that “as a matter of national security”, the ANC should address the degree to which “internal differences within the governing party” contributed to the violence.

“Some of those who took part in the violence, looting and destruction appear to have been politically motivated people angered by the sentencing of Zuma to 15 months’ imprisonment,” the expert panel wrote.

ALSO READ: July unrest: SAHRC finds no link between Zuma’s imprisonment and 2021 riots

“They were responding to the national shutdown calls and the mobilisation of the radical economic transformation forces.”

The HRC report doesn’t even address these core issues. When he gave evidence to the HRC, Ramaphosa was not once probed about his assertion that the violence was an “attempted insurrection”.

Nor was he or any of his ministers questioned about the ANC’s statement that it had evidence identifying a dozen senior ANC members – presumably from the RET faction – as the chief instigators.

The HRC is far more interested in sociology than accountability. At its core, July 2021 apparently wasn’t about despicable traitors. It was about the forces of history.

“The unrest was a wake-up call … a confrontation with the reality that the Bill of Rights must be realised … particularly for those to whom the same rights were deprived by the colonial and apartheid governments.”

So, there it is. Another HRC mission on behalf of the ANC successfully carried out. Instead of Zuma in the dock, we have Jan van Riebeeck.

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