Whether you follow the Good Book or not, there are parts of that literary treasure that are pure poetry, giving us rhythm, beauty, emotion and resonance that speak to our current travails. Such as this verse from the Book of Judges 24: “In those days there was no king in Israel for everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.” Forget Israel and “those days” and welcome to Mzansi.
I don’t think many South Africans realise how crucial this week might be for the future of our democracy. Here you have a former president, allegedly one of the most corrupt and incompetent in our country’s history, threatening to take down our young and fragile constitutional democracy to save his own skin. Surrounded by a rag-tag bunch of supporters, styled as “Zulu regiments” (I know, I too thought such displays of a militaristic tribalism were behind us), and a dishevelled group of so-called war veterans (I know, there was an actual war?), the threat goes way beyond Nkandla.
The apex court delivered its judgment on Jacob Zuma's fate. For reasons I do not understand, he found a way of appealing to another court. The minister of police, Bheki Cele, hoped for direction from the courts. There is no king in Israel and one man does that which is right in his own eyes, without any consequences. President Cyril Ramaphosa is quiet and instead of the government acting on its constitutional responsibility, as in a real democracy, the ANC made all sorts of political calculations about the desirability of action.
Here’s the deal: if for some reason Zuma ends up escaping prison, then the credibility of the courts will be shot once and for all and the foundations of our constitution shaken to their core. Why? Because this fear of the big man in politics will prove one thing — that we are not all equal before the law. It will demonstrate again that we are no different from other African countries where big men and not the courts decide who goes to prison and who does not. Angry voices in the media are correct: if any other person had welcomed and addressed gatherings under the level 4 lockdown regulations, Cele’s hat would have arrived on the scene before his motorcade. Arrest or not, we've already proven we make exceptions for big men.
It’s not just Nkandla. The Sunday Times reported a few days ago that almost 10,000 teachers in Gauteng refuse to be vaccinated for various reasons, one of which is the fear of being injected with the mark of the beast. Vaccination is voluntary, replied the minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga. Listen, when somebody threatens the health of other teachers, as well as staff and children in a school, then “voluntary” goes out of the window.
If you want to take the risk in relation to your own health, go ahead. But you have no right to threaten the lives of others. It has always been strange to me that people with strong anti-vaccine views would dutifully strap on seatbelts in a plane or a car for a simple reason: in the case of turbulence or an accident your body is, quite literally, a flying threat to others, let alone yourself. No complaints there.
It is time to stop this lawlessness. The department of basic education should make it clear that if as a teacher you refuse to be vaccinated then you lose your job, pure and simple. You are a health hazard to others in the environment. In making hard policy decisions it is science that matters, not your superstitions. Still, this is a democracy in which you can believe anything you wish, but you cannot do that at the expense of others’ health and safety.
And please, this is not the flu, it is a super-deadly virus that has taken away more than 62,000 lives at home and about four million worldwide. Every friend and family member who has survived Covid-19 has been quick to tell me that this illness is no joke — the worst experience of their lives. The rest are dead, so I have not heard from them.
We stand at a crossroads as lawlessness descends on our country from the classroom to the courtroom. It is time for leadership (“kings”) to step up and implement the laws of the country to protect our democracy and the lives of its people. The Constitutional Court judges did their courageous duty, but their lives are also at risk if, as with rogue nations in Latin America, they are seen as impediments to ongoing corruption and the open defiance of the rule of law.
Our constitutional future might well depend on what happens this week.
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