ANC YOUTH LEAGUE STATEMENTS ABOUT
MAKING WESTERN CAPE "UNGOVERNABLE" TREADING A THIN LINE
Adv Johan Kruger, Centre for
Constitutional Rights
The Centre for Constitutional Rights
noticed with utmost concern recent statements and an apparent
campaign by the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANCYL)
to make the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape "ungovernable".
Although the Constitution indeed guarantees the right to assemble,
demonstrate, picket and present petitions in a peaceful and unarmed
manner, when such demonstrations and petitions include threats to
destabilise a democratically elected government, such actions are not
only undemocratic and unconstitutional, but also possibly illegal.
On 1 August, the Dullah Omar region of
the ANCYL delivered a memorandum, (written on behalf of itself, the
ANC, the ANC Women's League, the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association
and the Congress of Democratic Taxi Associations), to the Premier of
the Western Cape demanding certain actions from the provincial
government. The memorandum, according to SAPA, threatened that unless
these demands were "positively responded to within seven
workings days...the young people and the above-mentioned stakeholders
will make this city and province ungovernable!".
ANCYL regional
committee member, Loyiso Nkohla, was subsequently quoted as
saying: "If the attitude [from the local and
provincial governments]is positive then we will report that to the
people but if it is not, we will shut this city down". As a
result, the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape provincial
government laid criminal charges, in terms of the Intimidation Act 72
of 1982, against the ANCYL and other organisations involved in those
threats.
The ANCYL's calls to disrupt governance
in Cape Town and the Western Cape were followed by renewed violence
in Khayelitsha and Philippi, and by an incident in which two people
were killed as a result of the stoning of a bus by protesters. More
recently, ANCYL protesters disrupted a community meeting in
Khayelitsha that was to be addressed by Patricia de Lille, the
Executive Mayor of Cape Town. Following the failed meeting, the mayor
cited the incident as an example of how the ANCYL was carrying out
its threat to make the city ungovernable.
The Western Cape ANCYL
regional secretary, Mfuzo Zenzile, subsequently replied that making
the province "ungovernable" did not amount to embarking on
violence. His statement, nevertheless, continued to echo the ANCYL
and Nkohla's call to make the province ungovernable - whether through
violence or otherwise.
These latest statements by the ANCYL,
as well as their continuous militant talk (such as a statement by
ANCYL deputy president, Ronald Lamola, calling for "an act
as forceful as war to bring it [land] back to the
Africans"), are not only disquieting, but also raise some
worrying questions: Do these threats reflect the ANC's tacit approval
of the actions proposed by the ANCYL?; alternatively, has the ANC
leadership lost control of factions within its movement?; or even
worse, has the ANC lost control over such factions, but still tacitly
supports some of their actions because they are in the ANC's
strategic interest?
The ANCYL's campaign to make the City of Cape
Town and the Western Cape ungovernable resonates with the threat made
on 1 July by the ANC's Western Cape leader, Marius Fransman,
that: "If the DA government of today does not want to
engage with the community directly, then we must revert to the same
tactics that made the "kragdadige" apartheid government
listen to us by ensuring united community mass action in defence of
our rights."
The ANC's failure to reprimand the
ANCYL for its calls for the destabilisation of a province inevitably
raises the question of whether the ANC tacitly supports such
statements and threats. According to ANC chief whip in Cape Town,
Xolani Sotashe, the ANC does not associate with "anarchy". If
so, why do they not reprimand the ANCYL when it makes statements to
the contrary?
It is interesting to note that the ANC was quick to
instruct ANCYL Limpopo chairman, Rudzani Ludere, to withdraw his
recent calls to disrupt, and throw stones at, the Limpopo provincial
government. ANC Limpopo secretary, Soviet Lekganyane, said that
Ludere’s statements "were harmful not only to the person
against whom they are made; but they also bring the organisation into
disrepute and are dangerous to the unity and cohesion of the
movement". It thus appears that the ANC does not hesitate
to insist on "unity and cohesion" and to reprimand its
members when they threaten to disrupt ANC-controlled provinces.
Secondly, if the ANC has indeed lost
control over factions within the movement, it would raise serious
questions over its own integrity and cohesion as a ruling party. A
recent research report by The Centre for the Study of Violence and
Reconciliation and Wits University entitled, The Smoke That
Calls, concluded that active and high-profile ANC members are almost
certainly playing a leading role in at least some of the protest
hotspots in Gauteng and Mapumalanga, often involving violence.
With
reference to the violence in Cape Town, ANC chief whip Sotashe was
most recently quoted as saying that "[w]e have picked up
some SMSes that...suggest the Youth League met and organised the
violence, but we have established that it was not [them]". Instead,
he insists that a "third force" must be blamed
for "destabilising certain areas, exploiting poor people
for their own agendas". Despite a denial by the ANC and the
South African Police Service (SAPS) interim announcement that they
have not yet found any link between the violence and the ANCYL,
obvious facts and inferences raise a disturbing possibility that
rogue factions within the ruling party might be using service
delivery protests to pursue their own agendas.
Finally, whether or not the ANCYL in
the Western Cape has been acting with the ANC's approval, the
organisation may have concluded that the actions of the ANCYL will,
in any event, promote its own strategic goal of winning back the
province. The ability to achieve its strategic goals though a
situation of plausible deniability and without being held responsible
for the actions of the ANCYL, would arguably be the best outcome for
the ANC.
The thread running through all of these
questions is whether the ANC is after all willing and able to govern
within the confines of the rule of law and a constitutional
democracy? The recent statements and behaviour of the ANCYL in the
Western Cape, viewed together with recent inflammatory remarks by ANC
Western Cape provincial leader, Marius Fransman, leads to the
conclusion that the latest surge of violence, especially in
Khayelitsha, was almost certainly not coincidental.
It is obviously
possible that some protests may well be related to service delivery
concerns. However, calling for the disruption of a democratically
elected government and promoting actions, often involving violence,
that are aimed at making any part of South Africa ungovernable, is
unconstitutional, undemocratic and almost certainly illegal. Apart
from criminal charges of intimidation already laid against the ANCYL,
their statements and actions may very well be treading a thin line
between rhetoric and sedition - the latter defined by the SAPS
as "unlawfully and intentionally taking part in a concourse
of people violently or by threats of violence challenging, defying or
resisting the authority of the State; or causing such a concourse".
Be that as it may, statements calling
for any legitimately and democratically elected government within
South Africa to be made "ungovernable", are irreconcilable
with constitutional democracy and should not be tolerated as
acceptable political discourse in a democracy based on the rule of
law. On the contrary, such statements should be condemned and
denounced, as those involved are not only undermining fundamental
principles of constitutional democracy - but are almost certainly
also on the wrong side of the law.
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