Stop the brutality or face a lockdown revolt, experts warn

Experts have warned that if left unchecked, military and police brutality during the national Covid-19 lockdown could ultimately give way to a revolt.

However, South Africans had only themselves to blame for the wave of brutality sweeping the nation by the security cluster, political analyst Ralph Mathekga said, and noted there was no point in blaming the ANC when people had given away their power.

“This thing would not be so terrible to bear if idiots had not been released on the streets. It just shows again, South Africa has never moved away from it’s tradition of securitising a socio-economic problem,” said Mathekga.

The national disaster declared by President Cyril Ramaphosa was a state of emergency, Mathekga said, as many rights had been removed from South Africans with barely a bleat, including by media.

“I don’t know if our journalists feared being declared unpatriotic at the beginning of this thing. When the Democratic Alliance originally asked where the oversight committee was, people dismissed them, as did established media houses.”

A man in Alexandra died on Friday, reportedly after he was severely assaulted by soldiers for drinking in his garden. Police have since opened a case of murder and were on Monday awaiting the results of a post-mortem examination to determine the cause of the man’s death.

The allegations against the soldiers come on the back of mounting calls for the state to rein in its forces, and after the Independent Police Investigative Directorate last week confirmed it was investigating 12 “Covid-19 related” cases.

A military sociologist and the head of Stellenbosch University’s department of sociology and social anthropology, Lindy Heinecken, said yesterday that the combat-ready troops deployed to South Africa’s streets over this period were simply not trained for the job.

“They’re trained to kill,” she said. “They are socialised to behave in a certain way. The military has a specific culture which supports aggressiveness and callousness. And with this, also ‘otherness’. For you to be able to kill someone, that person must become the enemy.

“Where they start overstepping their boundaries of authority – and this is seen as abuse – what follows is a loss of trust and then a loss of respect and then a counter-response.”

The Institute for Security Studies’ (ISS’) Johan Berger echoed many of Heinecken’s sentiments.

“This is new to everybody, including the police,” he said yesterday. “I don’t think they’ve ever had a situation – at least not in the last number of decades – where they were expected to enforce regulations that had to do with a health threat such as Covid-19.”

Of the alleged incidents of police brutality during the lockdown, Berger said this was “unacceptable” and also called for stronger condemnation.

“We need our leaders to speak out on these abuses,” he said.

“If they don’t, what this then creates in the mind of many is a subtle sense of ‘approval’ of heavy-handedness,” he said.

Berger also called for “visible action against those who use unlawful force”.

“Apart from having them suspended while cases are investigated, there need to be public statements telling everyone they have been suspended,” he said.

The SA National Defence Force, (SANDF) in response to questions from The Citizen yesterday confirmed that “an incident took place in Alexandra on Friday, 10 April, that led to the opening of a case at the Alexandra police station against the SANDF”.

“The SANDF will cooperate with the ongoing police investigation. The SANDF reiterates that its members are expected to act within the confines of the law during this difficult period as they enforce the lockdown regulations and help save lives in support of the police. Any action outside the law will not be condoned.”

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

– Additional reporting by Amanda Watson

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