OPINION We know only too well that violence has always been a part of the South African landscape judith_february
Post-apartheid South Africa has had its fair share of burning. In May 2008, Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave, a 35-year-old Mozambican was burnt alive during xenophobic violence which flared up on the East Rand. He was to become known as ‘the burning man’. Justice never came for Ernesto Nhamuave. An inquest found that no one could be held accountable for his death.
In 2016 students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal burnt part of their law library in anger. Law students burning books, let that sink in for a minute, just as UCT students burnt artwork during the #FeesMustFall protests. At the time it was justified as a reasonable means of speaking truth to power regarding free higher education and ensuring that colonial artworks were destroyed in the UCT instance. Both incidents left many understandably outraged and uncomfortable.
But there is more to this. We know only too well that violence has always been a part of the South African landscape; physical violence, the violence of language and name-calling and the violence of dispossession. From Peter Mokaba’s cry to ‘Kill the boer! Kill the farmer!’ to former President Zuma’s ‘Bring me my machine gun!’ violent imagery is regularly invoked in our politics.
Interested only in the patronage network, the ANCYL said the burning of books would take place to defend Magashule. The ANC issued a statement condemning the disruption of the launch and Parliament, through its presiding officers, issued what was probably the most strongly worded statement condemning the ANCYL’s conduct. Similarly, individual ANC members like Jackson Mthembu and Derek Hanekom issued statements of condemnation.
Ramaphosa needs to watch his back and tread carefully lest his reform project is completely jeopardised by those corrupt actors within the ANC. And so, his seeming reluctance to take on members of his own party is part of this painstaking ‘long game’ the president needs to play to ensure his electoral victory provides him with enough clout to deal more decisively with the corrupt Zumarites post 8 May.
More than that, however, this is a moment for Ramaphosa as President of the Republic, to condemn the ANCYL’s actions for what they are - an attack on our democracy. Ramaphosa is the president of a constitutional democracy. He either condemns the burning of books and defends all of our right to say and write what we like, or he sides with those who seek to make this an authoritarian state.
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