Phoenix inquiry via the SAHRC is a bad joke

A feminist, a minister, and a recycled politician walk into a room.

“Give us three million bucks and three weeks and we’ll tell you why at least 359 people died, R50 billion of property was damaged and 150 000 jobs were put at risk.”

No, this is not a riff on an old joke. The SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), a fully owned subsidiary of ANC (Pty) Ltd, has been delegated by Cyril Ramaphosa, CEO of the aforesaid, to determine the cause of the July
public violence.

There are only three commissioners, no investigatory staff and already obvious, a clear agenda.

The feminist is Commissioner Philile Ntuli. She has two higher degrees in gender studies and her biography states “my life’s work focuses on women’s relationship with the state”.

The minister is a part-time commissioner, Reverend Chris Nissen, ordained in the United Presbyterian Church.

Nissen is a lifelong ANC activist and was once the party’s MEC for economic affairs in the Western Cape.

The recycled politician is the head of the triumvirate, advocate Andre Gaum. For 14 years he was an ANC MP and served briefly as deputy minister of education in former president Zuma’s Cabinet.

The first aim of this hopelessly underpowered team is to establish the causes of the unrest. It should also determine the cause of the racially motivated attacks, the cause of any lapses in law enforcement and the “role played
by social, economic, spatial and political factors”.

Just in case you haven’t yet caught on to what preordained direction of scapegoating this is going, Gaum is frank.

“The focus,” he says, “is on the numerous incidents of race violence.”

The entire charade is classic Ramaphosa sleight of hand. Instead of a fully fledged judicial inquiry — such as that headed by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo into state capture, which has taken three years and cost almost R1bn — Ramaphosa hopes to distract public attention from the real causes of the riots by examining a single microcosm.

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And much safer than a judicial inquiry is to deploy the party’s lackeys at the SAHRC. There is good reason for Ramaphosa’s move.

To dig deeply and evenhandedly into the entire equation, instead of just this particular subset, would be to risk an ANC political implosion because it would reveal the involvement of the Zuma-supporting radical economic transformation faction in triggering the violence.

Instead, all the ANC’s investigatory zeal has been diverted to Phoenix, where 33 alleged looters (black) were allegedly murdered by vigilantes (Indian). While the deaths were undoubtedly horrific, there’s no great mystery here.

It is laudatory to seek to unravel the many social, political and economic roots of SA’s perpetually violent society, but this is not the SAHRC’s objective here.

Albeit bloody and tragic, the Phoenix inquiry is a political sideshow that allows the government to advance two agendas: the “pernicious prevalence of racism among minority groups”, and the ANC’s intention to drastically limit citizen firearm ownership.

To discover the truth behind the 33 tragic deaths in Phoenix and the 320 that occurred elsewhere — cannot be done the cadre-dominated SAHRC. The SAHRC is a political tool and a bad joke