Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
Cape Town - Many people are saying the show of force from the government before the EFF’s shutdown seems to be a somewhat misguided attempt to make up for its “unequivocal” failure to protect the people during the looting mayhem that engulfed KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July 2021.
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx famously observed: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”
Our choices to embrace or condemn the bogus EFF’s national shutdown, characterised by the spewing of propaganda and polarisation, are shaped, and even bound, by the histories and institutions we inhabit in our constitutional democracy.
And yet, they are still our choices. We are moral agents responsible for our decisions, even if we cannot entirely escape the matrix in which we make them.
And yet, so much of the conversation about the propaganda and polarisation assumes the opposite: that EFF, DA, and ANC politicians are impossibly bound to the needs and desires of their narrow constituencies and unable to resist their demands also to remove, or resist the removal, of President Cyril Ramaphosa from office.
Many – too many – political observers speak as if leaders in different sectors of society and the public at large have no choice but to accept the EFF’s disruptive and destructive strategy for maintaining its relevance in national politics; no choice but to apologise for its every transgression characterised by threats of intimidation; and now, no choice but to humour its attempt to destroy whatever little efforts of the poor to preserve their livelihoods in an environment where opportunities for participation in the formal economy are scarce.
But that is nonsense. For all the pressures of the base, for all the fear of Julius Malema’s populist agenda and his gift for ridicule, for all the bogus demands of uninterrupted electricity supply and the stepping down of Ramaphosa, it is also true that at every turn, political parties and organised labour unions have made an active and affirmative choice to embrace the worst elements of the current political party leaders – and jettison the norms and values that make democracy work – for the sake of their narrow political and ideological objectives.
Those objectives are nothing new. To the extent that the Ramaphosa-era political parties have an agenda to stay in office by denuding the masses of the power to make political choices, it is what it has always been: to be a handmaiden to the total domination of capital and elite politicians, to facilitate the upward redistribution of wealth and to strengthen hierarchies of class and status.
To those ends, the government has deployed the SANDF in full force nationwide to assist the police and other departments, not in fighting the criminal elements suffocating our communities, but to protect national key points necessary to ensure the luxury of the elite.
The Western Cape High Court granted an urgent interdict, directing the EFF and its supporters not to harm or threaten people and businesses and that the permitted march should comply with the law, including the Regulation of Gatherings Act and the terms and conditions of a permit from the City of Cape Town.
Also, on Friday, Cape Town Safety and Security MMC JP Smith said City officials removed more than 300 EFF posters advertising the party’s national shutdown protest.
On his social media accounts, he indicated that the party would be charged R154 200 for removing the posters “with any other additional services that may be required due to their proposed shutdown protest or for damages caused to infrastructure or property”.
In Johannesburg, the DA failed to declare the protest unlawful but secured an interdict against unlawful actions, similar to the interdict it won in Cape Town.
No wonder the EFF in the Buffalo City metro announced a watered down plan to shut East London, and cancelled its planned march from King Phalo Airport to the city hall, and said it would instead embark on protest action in different parts of the city.
The country’s busiest courts remain in a virtual lockdown, clogging up an already under-pressure court roll and leaving lawyers nationwide scrambling to establish which of their matters will be heard or postponed.
In the Western Cape, High Court Deputy Judge President Patricia Goliath, as acting judge president, issued a memorandum postponing all criminal matters set down for Monday to later in the week.
The postponements occurred without the accused’s presence. She also indicated civil cases set down for Monday “may proceed virtually at the discretion of the presiding judge”.
A similar directive was issued in Gauteng by Deputy Judge President Roland Sutherland, and in KZN by Judge President Thoba Portia Poyo-Dlwati.
What is striking, again, is the extent to which many political commentators refuse to accept the moral and political agency of Ramaphosa-era political party leaders.
If there is a threat to democracy, goes one argument, it is that these politicians have refused to compromise their priority of enriching themselves by abusing state resources.
And according to another similar argument, which I have expressed before, the DA’s rhetoric embracing democracy is undermining democracy.
Led by Malema and his many acolytes, the EFF, DA, and ANC leaders are poised to plunge this country into a political and constitutional crisis over their refusal to prioritise the needs of the people in their power-sharing deals in coalition governments.
They also refuse to acknowledge the impending increase in the numbers and influence of independent candidates in our legislative bodies.
We can treat it as a certainty that national shutdowns will occur in rapid succession before the 2024 elections –the only possible outcome, given the pieces at play.
Or we can treat it as what it is: a deliberate choice of the political elites to cling to power, and whose unwelcome influence we must end at the polls.
Nyembezi is a researcher policy analyst and human rights activist
Cape Times
* The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.