South Africaportal |
The Constitution of South Africa protects all basic political freedoms. However, there have been many incidents of political repression, [1] dating back to at least 2002, [2] as well as threats of future repression in violation of this constitution leading some analysts, civil society organisations and popular movements to conclude that there is a new climate of political repression [3] [4] [5] or a decline in political tolerance. [6]
It has been argued that repression peaked during the period of the Jacob Zuma presidency, with some analysts linking the increase in repression to the influence of the 'security cluster' under the Jacob Zuma presidency. [7] [8] It has been argued that Zuma "enhanced the coercive capacity of the state" [9] and that he focused on "building a state based on fear". [10] It has also been argued that repression has affected poor people's organisations most seriously but that repression directed against poor people has been systemically under-reported in the media. [11]
Serious concern has been expressed about police brutality in South Africa. [12] [13] Sipho Hlongwane, writing in Business Day, has argued that "South Africa is a brutal police state." [14] According to Greg Marinovich "The police are acting with impunity. Their political masters are acting with impunity. In the South Africa of 2012, if you are poor and without political clout, you are on your own." [15] Amnesty International has expressed serious concerns about brutality, including torture and extrajudicial killings, at the hands of the police in South Africa. [16] [17] Ronnie Kasrils has argued that there has been a "descent into police state depravity" under Jacob Zuma. [18] It has been observed that "Torture is routine practice in South Africa's police stations and prisons". [19]
The country also has a serious problem with political assassinations. [20]
It has been claimed that senior ANC politicians are responsible for the repression of grassroots activists. [21] In 2012 Bishop Rubin Phillip said that "a dark night is settling over our country as the light of our democratic dawn dims". [22]
Under Jacob Zuma the ANC expressed open opposition to media freedom. [23] Serious concern was expressed about the proposed Media Appeals Tribunal and Protection of Information Bill which, if passed, would significantly reduce press freedom. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [9] [29]
There have been a number of reports of serious intimidation of journalists. [30] In 2007 the Freedom of Expression Institute and The Mercury newspaper reported a death threat against a journalist in Durban by controversial local businessman Ricky Govender who claims close links with Jacob Zuma. [31] In Durban in 2009 the editor of The Mercury, Philani Makhanya, laid a charge of intimidation against S'bu Mpisani, a politically connected contractor for the housing department in that city who had allegedly threatened the newspaper for its investigations into his activities. [32] In Port Elizabeth the branch chairperson of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Nceba Faku, called for party supporters to burn down the offices of the local newspaper the Daily Dispatch in 2011. [33] In 2012 Piet Rampedi and Adriaan Bassoon, journalists at the City Press , were subject to various threats and forms of intimidation while covering a story on corruption by Julius Malema. [34] Also in 2012 ANC supporters publicly burnt copies of the City Press newspaper in Durban. [35]
Poet Mbongeni Khumalo has claimed "that his no-holds barred lyricism attracted the attention of state security". [36]
In 2012 leading figures in the ruling party called for a painting, The Spear , to be destroyed and publicly endorsed the defacement of the painting.
There have been a number of independently documented cases where the constitutionally protected right to protest has not been honoured by the state. [9] [37] [38] [39] [40] One particularly well documented instance occurred in Durban in 2006 [41] and another in Cape Town in 2012. [42] [43] It has also been claimed that the right to protest has been summarily denied to shack dwellers on the East Rand. [44] It has been argued that not just ANC controlled municipalities, but also opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) ones, engage in unlawful bans on the right to protest. [45] It has also been suggested that recent judicial interventions amount to a de facto curtailment of the right to protest. [46] It has been argued that there was an increase in the unlawful banning of protests after the 2012 Marikana massacre [47] and that this has taken the form of a de facto "state of emergency". [48]
The police, which were demilitarised after apartheid have been remilitarised [49] [50] and some politicians have encouraged the police to 'shoot to kill'. [51] In the view of some analysts this has contributed to escalating repression. [50] [52] Concern has also been expressed at use of tactical response teams to contain popular protest [53] and at the idea that the army should support the police in containing popular protest. [54]
In 2010 journalists Mzilikazi waAfrika was arrested at the offices of the Sunday Times. Charges against him were later dropped. [55] waAfrika's phone was also unlawfully tapped by the police. [56] In July 2012 Nic Dawes, Sam Sole and Stefaans Brummer, journalists at the Mail & Guardian, were questioned by the police following the publication of a story alleging corruption by senior ANC leader Mac Maharaj. [57]
There have been numerous incidents of repression against grassroots social movements [58] and activists have alleged arrests on trumped up charges [2] and assaults at the hands of the police. [59] For instance it was reported that Ashraf Cassiem from the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign was assaulted by the police in 2000 while resisting an eviction [60] and that S'bu Zikode and Philani Zungu from Abahlali baseMjondolo were arrested and assaulted while on the way to a radio interview in 2006. [61] In September 2010 four residents of Hangberg, in Hout Bay, near Cape Town were shot in the face at close range by police with rubber bullets leading to the loss of their eyes. [62] In February 2011 two protesters were killed by the police and a number subject to torture in Ermelo. [53] In January 2012 it was reported that Ayanda Kota was assaulted in the Grahamstown police station. [63] [64] In August and September 2012 strikers and community activists in Marikana were subject to sustained police harassment, including a large number of fatalities. [65] In October 2012 activists in Makause, on the East Rand, reported death threats from the police. [66] In December 2012 it was reported that in Wesselton, Mpumalanga, police were engaged in sustained collective harassment, some of it violent, of a local community. [67]
There has been general concern about police torture in South Africa, [27] [28] [68] which has been described as "occurring en masse" and "spiralling out of control". [69] In 1996 Kevin Kunene, founding chairman of the KwaMbonambi Environmental Group, was tortured by the police. [70] Organisations such as the Landless People's Movement [71] have documented cases in which activists and protesters have been tortured. [72] [73] There were media reports of police torture of activists in Wessleton, Ermelo, in 2011 [53] [74] [75] and in Marikana in 2012. [76] [77] [78]
People Killed by the Police During Protests
The worst instance of lethal police violence in response to protest since the end of the apartheid era in South Africa is the shootings of 34 striking miners at Marikanan near Rustenburg, which have come to be known as 'The Marikana Massacre', during the Marikana miner strike on 16 August 2012. [5] [79] [80] [81]
The ICD has reported a rise in police violence against protesters since 2010 [82] and a number of unarmed protesters have been killed by the South African Police Service since 2000. [83] Four people were killed by the police during protests between 2000 and 2004, two in 2006, one in 2008, two in 2009, three in 2010 and eleven in 2011. [84] The media have reported at least 27 police killings of protesters and bystanders (not including the 34 people killed in the Marikana Massacre) and a number of killings by private security guards since 2000.[ citation needed ]
The Right2Know Campaign has documented several instances in which activists have been harassed by intelligence structures. [155]
Organisations such as the Landless People's Movement, [156] Abahlali baseMjondolo [157] [158] [159] and the Unemployed People's Movement [160] [161] have been subject to armed political violence by groups claiming to represent the ruling ANC. The Makause Community Development Forum have also claimed to have been subject to state sanctioned violence by an ANC aligned 'mob'. [66] There have also been cases where ANC supporters have disrupted protests organised by independent groups. One example of this was the attempt to disrupt a protest by the Moretele Concerned Communities Association in May 2012. [162] It has been argued that the violence associated with the Marikana miners' strike in August 2012 began after officials of the National Union of Mineworkers murdered two strikers. [163]
Grassroots activists have been reporting fears that they may be killed since at least 2002. [164] There have been reports of death threats against activists in Ermelo (2011), [165] in Grahamstown (2011), [166] in eTwatwa on the East Rand (2010), [167] and in Durban (2006, 2009, 2012). [158] [159] [168] [169] [170] [171]
In July 2012 Alpheus Moseri (68) collapsed and died following an assault by MK Veterans at a lecture given by Jacob Zuma. [208] [209] In October 2012 COSATU President Sidumo Dlamini called for MK veterans to use "their guerrilla military skills to work with us on the ground to defend this movement and our revolution as a whole" [210] In November 2012 it was reported that MK veterans had made threats against Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. [211] In November 2012 it was reported that armed men claiming to be MK veterans stormed into an ANC branch meeting on the East Rand and threatened to shoot members of the branch if they did not nominate Zuma for re-election. [212]
According to Barney Pityana "we are beginning to see the emergence of party (or presidential) militia in the guise of the Umkhonto weSizwe Veterans, who are the new Gestapo with a fascist agenda." [213]
In Durban in 2013 the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo secured five High Court injunctions against evictions which were "systemically ignored by state actors who have repeatedly torn down the shacks of local residents". [214]
According to Zwelinzima Vavi, COSATU Secretary General, "The [ruling] party unfortunately has adopted in our view an unnecessarily hostile posture to some progressive civil organisations and coalitions, painted a number of organisations with the same brush and has tended to take the view that they are the product of external agendas." [215]
KwaZulu-Natal is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu and Natal Province were merged. It is located in the southeast of the country, with a long shoreline on the Indian Ocean and sharing borders with three other provinces and the countries of Mozambique, Eswatini and Lesotho. Its capital is Pietermaritzburg, and its largest city is Durban. It is the second-most populous province in South Africa, with slightly fewer residents than Gauteng.
Cato Manor is a working-class area located 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) from the city centre of Durban, South Africa.
Abahlali baseMjondolo is a socialist shack dwellers' movement in South Africa which primarily campaigns for land, housing and dignity, to democratise society from below and against xenophobia.
The "Third Force" was a term used by leaders of the ANC during the late 1980s and early 1990s to refer to a clandestine force believed to be responsible for a surge in violence in KwaZulu-Natal, and townships around and south of the Witwatersrand.
Sibusiso Innocent Zikode is president of the South African shack dwellers' movement, which he co-founded with others in 2005. Abahlali baseMjondolo claims to have an audited paid up membership of over 115 000 across South Africa. His politics have been described as 'anti-capitalist'. According to the Mail & Guardian "Under his stewardship, ABM has made steady gains for housing rights."
Kennedy Road is an informal settlement in Durban (eThekwini), in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Formed in the late 1970s or early 1980s, the settlement was mentioned by the African National Congress (ANC) after the end of apartheid but amenities were not improved. The site is mostly not connected to sanitation or electricity. Dissatisfaction with local councillors led to 2005 protests including a road blockade, out of which the shack dwellers movemment Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) formed. In 2009, an AbM meeting was attacked resulting in two deaths and a court case. More recently, the municipality has improved facilities and promised to relocate inhabitants.
No Land! No House! No Vote! is the name of a campaign by a number of poor people's movements in South Africa that calls for the boycotting of the vote and a general rejection of party politics and vote banking. The name is meant to imply that if government does not deliver on issues important to affected communities these movements will not vote.
The South African Unemployed Peoples' Movement is a social movement with branches in Durban, Grahamstown and Limpopo Province in South Africa. It is often referred to as the Unemployed People's Movement or UPM. The organisation is strongly critical of the ruling African National Congress government.
South Africa has been dubbed "the protest capital of the world", with one of the highest rates of public protests in the world.
Willies Mchunu was the 7th Premier of KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. He was previously a Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for the Department of Transport, Community Safety, and Liaison in the province. He is a member of the African National Congress and the former chairperson of the South African Communist Party (SACP) in KwaZulu-Natal and is a member of the Central Committee of the SACP. He is seen as a close ally of former South African President Jacob Zuma.
The attack on Kennedy Road in Durban, South Africa, occurred on 26 September 2009. A mob of men armed with bush knives, guns and bottles entered the Kennedy Road informal settlement searching for leaders of the shackdwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM). They looted shacks and threatened residents, before attacking a hall where a youth meeting was happening. Two people were killed and around a thousand were displaced. In the aftermath, AbM representatives such as S'bu Zikode went into hiding and thirteen AbM members were arrested.
Michael Sutcliffe is the former municipal manager of the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, which includes the city of Durban, South Africa. During his time in the position he was widely reported to be a controversial figure amongst Durbanites and was the target of popular protest in the city.
There have been a number of political assassinations in post-apartheid South Africa. In 2013 it was reported that there had been more than 450 political assassinations in the province of KwaZulu-Natal since the end of apartheid in 1994. In July 2013 the Daily Maverick reported that there had been "59 political murders in the last five years". In August 2016 it was reported that there had been at least twenty political assassinations in the run up to the local government elections on the 3rd of August that year, most of them in KwaZulu-Natal.
In March 2013 around a thousand people occupied a piece of land in Cato Crest, Durban and named it Marikana after the Marikana miners' strike. Mayor James Nxumalo blamed the occupation on migrants from the Eastern Cape. He was strongly criticised for this by the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo who said that "The City Hall is red with blood".
Bandile Mdlalose was the general secretary of the South African shackdwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. She is now the President of the Community Justice Movement which operates in some informal settlements of Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal.
Nqobile Nzuza was a resident in the Marikana Land Occupation in Cato Crest, which is part of Cato Manor in Durban, South Africa. She was a member of the shackdwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo.
Nkululeko Gwala originally from Inchanga in KwaZulu Natal, was a resident of Cato Crest, which is part of Cato Manor in Durban, and a supporter of the Marikana Land Occupation (Durban). He was also a prominent member of the shackdwellers' social movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and chairperson of their Cato Crest Branch. He was assassinated on 26 June 2013.
Ayanda Ngila (1992–2022), was a land activist, a prominent leader in the shack dweller's movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and deputy chairperson of its eKhenana Commune. He was assassinated on 8 March 2022.
The eKhenana Commune is a prominent land occupation in the historic working-class area of Cato Manor in Durban, South Africa. According to the Socio-Economic Rights Institute "The eKhenana settlement is organised as a cooperative in which residents collectively run a communal kitchen and tuck shop, theatre, poetry and music projects, and care for a vegetable garden named after the late Nkululeko Gwala [assassinated in 2013] as well as a poultry farm named in honour of the late S’fiso Ngcobo [assassinated in 2018]. The Commune has solar power and is also home to a political school that residents named the Frantz Fanon School, as well as the Thuli Ndlovu Community Hall [Ndlovu was assassinated in 2014]. The Commune has suffered sustained political repression, including multiple arrests and three assassinations in 2022.
Lindokuhle Mnguni was a land activist and a prominent leader in the shack dwellers' movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. He was chairperson of the movement's youth league as well as the chairperson of the eKhenana Commune. He was a leader of eKhenana's food sovereignty project which sought to make the commune more self-sustaining and independent. He was assassinated on 8 August 2022.
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