‘Lawless people surely forfeit their rights as citizens’

In the ’90s, as SA stood at the crossroads which would eventually lead to democracy, I interviewed General Tienie Groenewald, who, after retiring from the military, became a leading figure in rightwing politics.

He recalled that, as a newly qualified jet pilot in the SA Air Force in March 1960, he sat on standby in the cockpit of a Vampire fighter-bomber at Ysterplaat airbase in Cape Town; awaiting the order to scramble for a possible strike into the townships of Nyanga or Gugulethu, which were being torn apart by rioting in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre.

Fortunately, it never came to that – but it did indicate the extent to which the then National Party government was prepared to go to enforce law and order. Perhaps the Vampires would have been used to fly low, high-speed pass over crowds – in itself scary – but maybe they would have been authorised to open fire. Armed with 20mm cannons, the planes would have caused great damage on their “soft skin” targets … the human beings below. I thought of that this past week, as the looting and anarchy threatened to bring our country to its knees.

One of the main reasons it went as far as it did was because the authorities were like the proverbial rabbit – frozen in the headlights of Marikana. The ANC will do anything to avoid looking like the governments of the apartheid era. That’s why they seldom take action against violent protesters or looters, never mind illegals crossing our border. They prefer to “monitor the situation” and rely on “jaw-jaw” rather than “war-war” to deal with the situation.

As we have seen repeatedly over years – and which was confirmed as an ugly reality this week – this means a culture of impunity develops, because there are no consequences for even the grossest form of illegality. The cops did little. And, even when the ANC did finally commit the SA National Defence Force (SANDF), they tied soldiers’ hands. It was just more monitoring and no force to be used unless their lives were threatened.

But, a silly show of force followed after President Cyril Ramaphosa finally emerged from his political foxhole on Friday to visit Durban, when the SANDF de-ployed a number of Rooikat armoured vehicles. These are not intended for use against people in an urban setting and, other than running down protesters or forming a metal barricade somewhere, are next to useless in a riot situation.

None of this will have been lost on the instigators of the insurrection. They will have seen no security force unit taking effective action. That inaction may well usher in the next phase of revolt. On the other hand, a slaughter of even a few people may have been used to play the martyr card and may have inflamed matters.

Yet, there has to come a time when a government uses an iron fist, human rights notwithstanding.

When rioters and looters place innocent lives in danger – as they did in destroying clinics, doctors’ surgeries and even, in Durban, a dialysis unit for kidney patients, never mind those Covid patients who may have died because oxygen sup-plies were disrupted – then those lawless people surely forfeit their rights as citizens, including the right to life.