In the realm of law and order, SA is a country of press releases and words of condemnation – but no action. Our leaders are very quick and spectacularly articulate on condemning acts of violence and intimidation.
They are extraordinarily poor on ensuring that the law-enforcement agencies are skilled, empowered, free and confident enough to bring the thuggish and unlawful acts of the hypocritical so-called Economic Freedom Fighters to court.
Last week, the EFF, in its usual thuggish fashion, tried to intimidate and threaten public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan while he spoke in parliament. As usual, these champagne socialists and peacetime revolutionaries positioned themselves to beat up an older man. The presiding officer did a good job to get them hauled out.
A lot of statements were issued afterwards.
National Assembly speaker Thandi Modise’s excellent public relations machinery issued a statement expressing her “disappointment and a strong condemnation”.
The ANC chief whip’s office said “this uncouth behaviour by EFF members of parliament is not only repulsive, but is an insult to South Africans from all walks of life”.
Yet will the EFF’s thuggery be punished? I doubt it. The EFF will continue in pretty much the same vein because they have done it many times before with impunity. The most depressing aspect of it all is that no ANC MP will raise their hand in a year and ask the ministers of police and of justice why there have been no consequences for this thuggish behaviour.
That’s because large chunks of the ANC are happy with this state of lawlessness. A lawless environment allows for ANC luminaries like Faith Muthambi (she who sent the Guptas confidential cabinet documents) to go unpunished for their misdeeds, you see. So the cycle of lawlessness deepens.
These misogynists and hypocrites are the first to bring out the victim card. They are victims of everyone and everything except themselves.
It’s not the first time that the EFF, ideological children of Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF Youth Brigade and Jacob Zuma’s populist politics, have resorted to intimidation and violence.
Their leaders insult and threaten violence all the time. They set off guns in broad daylight, as EFF leader Julius Malema did recently. They set their Tonton Macoutes on women journalists. They beat up cops. They beat up journalists, as Floyd Shivambu has done. Violence is their stock in trade. Their factory of lies on social media is extremely busy. Once their crazed, fact-free mob of Twitter zombies comes for you then you will know what the words moron and idiot really mean.
After unleashing violence and chaos on campuses across the country in the guise of Fees Must Fall, the EFF brigade and its cult-like retinue are now frequently bleating about the consequences – very few, in my opinion – for those who have been identified and incarcerated for their violent acts. This is not activism. This is incitement to chaos and war by a cohort of elites who romanticise violence.
These misogynists and hypocrites are the first to bring out the victim card. They are victims of everyone and everything except themselves. They glorify poverty while sipping Veuve Vliquot. When their hypocrisy is exposed or pointed out they claim they are victims of some bogus Stratcom conspiracy. They gleefully dip into the funds of poor people via VBS Bank. Then they claim they are being victimised. The truth of the matter is that anyone who puts the levers of power in the hands of the EFF is naive. They are nothing but a front of the kleptocratic school of governance. They want total state power, rule by violence and a Big Man, with an added dollop of theft from state enterprises and government in the name of empowerment. In short, these are people who are just one short hop from Idi Amin.
Gordhan was right when he said after the (failed) attempt to intimidate and possibly physically attack him last week: “What you’ve witnessed is a defence of state capture, because one must ask what is it that motivates ordinary members of parliament to engage in such intimidatory tactics? And the question you, ourselves and the public must ask is what do they have to hide?”
What, indeed? We must be told. We won’t be, though. Instead we will be insulted, threatened or even beaten up. That’s the EFF way. The snouts of the EFF have been in the same smelly state capture trough as some of the ANC leaders’. In fact, the attack on Gordhan is the manifestation of what many of us have known all along: the EFF is nothing but an extension of the Zuma-Ace Magashule faction of the ANC. That is why they are so obsessed with protecting the defenders of state capture. Just like Zuma, to stay out of jail they are doing absolutely everything they can to undermine the judiciary, the independent press and parliament.
You have been warned.
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