South Africa: Headed Towards Totalitarianism?
There is much turmoil at the top in South Africa today. A messy succession battle in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) rages, during which intelligence services have been increasingly politicized to serve the aims of competing factions. The constitution is under fire, as are other democratic institutions from an increasingly powerful party apparatus to which the state is subservient. Indeed, since the ascent of the ANC to power in 1994, the line between party and state has increasingly become blurred.
A new, innocuous-sounding General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill fits into this context. On the surface, this change makes perfect sense: who wouldn’t want a streamlined intelligence structure curtailing duplication and cutting out wasteful expenditure? The bill provides for a merger of the domestic National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the foreign-oriented South African Secret Service (SASS) into one organization.
However, as several South African journalists have pointed out, the bill concentrates a lot of power in the hands of Minister of State Security Siyabonga Cwele and others seeking to increase government power, leaders who often use it in service to a specific ANC faction.
For example: since 2005, the NIA has been something of a political football used by the backers of former President Thabo Mbeki and current President Jacob Zuma against each other as they fought for the presidency of the ruling party — the ANC — and the presidency of the country.
Notoriously, former police Crime Intelligence head Mulangi Mphego provided classified material to Zuma’s lawyer Michael Hulley. The information included conversations between Leonard McCarthy — the former head of the Scorpions, an elite organized crime busting unit within the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions — and Bulelani Ngcuka, the former national director of Public Prosecutions. On the basis of this information, Hulley scuttled President Zuma’s corruption trial. This paved the way for Zuma’s ascent to the presidency.
There are other indications that the politicization of the intelligence community is continuing apace, and that the ruling ANC has a seemingly privileged relationship with the intelligence community. Responding to media reports of irregular tenders being awarded to then ANC Youth League President Julius Malema, in February 2010 Malema claimed he had secret documents detailing a vendetta against him and others supporting Jacob Zuma ostensibly compiled by state security agencies. This prompted President of the Congress of the People (COPE) Mosiua Lekota to declare:
In terms of our law, no private citizen is entitled to have access to State information, especially not information which is often classified. The revelation by Mr. Malema that he is in possession of a State intelligence document suggests that this private citizen has free access to what otherwise is State property from which all private citizens are excluded. COPE is entitled to demand an explanation from President Zuma and the Minister of Intelligence why this special dispensation is accorded to Mr. Malem.
In a similar vein, leader of the opposition United Democratic Movement (UDM) Bantu Holomisa raised questions as to why NIA was trying to undermine the political opposition during local government elections in 2011. According to Holomisa, NIA agents approached a UDM candidate and offered him remuneration to serve as an agent for NIA within the UDM organization.
It would seem that the current bruising leadership tussles in the ruling ANC party are also causing deep divisions within the intelligence community.
Minister of State Security Siyabonga Cwele, who is very close to incumbent President Jacob Zuma, wanted some senior ANC leaders to be spied on. The heads of his intelligence services, Jeff Maqetuka (heading the State Security Agency), Gibson Njenje (heading the NIA, and Moe Shaikh (heading the SASS), all defied the order. Consequently, all three have left the intelligence services.
In 2006, then-Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils received a report from National Intelligence Coordinating Committee (NICOC) pointing out that that the majority of serving intelligence officers “ … had been active in the struggle against or in defense of apartheid during the Cold War. The experiences and training of this era had inculcated a culture of non-accountability of intelligence and security services, and a no-holds-barred approach to intelligence operations.”
Over the past few years, South Africans were confronted several times with the reality of the intelligence services undermining the country’s hard-fought-for democratic institutions. The communications of the judges of the highest court of the land — the Constitutional Court — were intercepted by the NIA, while other NIA agents sought to stop the prosecution of former National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. Meanwhile, journalists exposing the corrupt leases practices within the South African Police Services (SAPS), like the Sunday Times’ redoubtable Mzilikazi wa Afrika, had their communications eavesdropped on by the country’s intelligence services.
The centralization currently taking place in intelligence structures bodes ill for the future of this democratic state. The drums of totalitarianism beat ever louder.
Hey, the have to beat out Zimbabwe at it.
Did anyone seriously think South Africa would turn out to be a success story? Really? It was just a matter of time before communism and race would swallow it whole. And when the dust settles, the white settlers and Europeans will be blamed. Name one country in Africa that is thriving at a level they should be after they were “liberated” from white rule. Like Haiti, for the most part, they are stuck in another century and cling to the same excuses.
Communism is just a handy cover for those in power and who want to be in power. They are all gansters and thieves who want to steal everything they can and gain power over their fellow countrymen. It is all about race, sub-Saharan Africa is what it is and is capable of nothing better. They sould have never been given freedom, they are just being who they are, savages with a veneer of civilization.
It reads as though South Africa is returning to tribalism. Imagine that. Anything else would have been the anomaly. Next subject.
Dr. Solomon,
Not to play the cynic but regarding SA’s continuing descent of supposed Democracy, this is/was expected.
For the end game spells the ultimate power is PROVIDED/WITH/FOR the People.
Myopic, self-serving politicians and their hands-out for scraps, what have YOU done for ME lately useful idiots are the loudest, more apt for violence than their counterparts.
The African continent, much of SE Asia/ South America and a frighteningly high number of U.S. politicians and citizenry’s sole being, end game is, ‘GIMME GIMME’.
I worked with many South African mechanics, pilots etc., in Mali – another, ‘industrialized African country’ whereas they’ve been working THOUSANDS of miles from their home, family due to preferential treatment to those with darker melanin. Dwarfing the U.S.A’s AA/EEO program.
Sad indeed.
Hardly a surprise, the abstraction of political power into institutions and principles of government away from simple personal/family/clan-type loyalties is a highly tenuous good very specific to the modern political spheres of Western Europe and the Anglosphere in particular. It’s the product of many centuries of political and intellectual development particular to that pat of the world.
It is one of our follies that we believe it to be a universal human preference which is the default in absence of an “oppressor”. The assumption that South Africa post-Apartheid would suddenly be Canada or the Netherlands was as silly as the idea that Egyptians and Syrians aim for Western-style democracy in their uprisings.
Anyone with half a brain always knew the ANC’ers would drive South Africa off a cliff. The only surprise is that they’ve needed this long to do it.
Detroit, the new name for South Africa, for all the same Zimbabwe reasons. All the smart money is long gone and what you have left are the financial scavengers picking the bones clean. A Zimbabwe shit hole in the making where the UN and the rest of the world can sit back and watch the human slaughter in complete surprise. Like the once engine of America South Africa is being reduced to economic rubble.
Has any passed this along to Ruth Vader Ginsberg yet? This is what happens when you have a constitution with three hundred pages of ‘positive’ rights and a team of community organizers running the show.
Yon beat me to it
It is not only in the intelligence services of South Africa that there are serious problems. There is hardly a single department of government in that country that is not characterized by corruption and incompetence. Democracy is worthless in South Africa – the majority of voters are so naive that they keep believing the government that there is somehow a silver lining in the dark storm clouds that are threatening the country with a deluge.
A friend claimed that Mandela was jailed for bombing schoolchildren, Palestinian style.
True or not?
He was jailed for several things, but not something like that. He was in prison when the Church street bombing occured, which did get his blessing.
One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter, right? IMO, for Africa, Mandela did his best. It is the communist idiots that have run things behind hime that are mucking it up.
TIA we used to say.
I beg to differ. Mandela IS a communsit idiot.
I’m pretty sure the meaning of life for South Africa’s rulers and ruled is to “cleanse” the country of its white devils.
You know, I’m fine with that. But I better never see or hear another commercial begging for money for starving children. And if I hear another do-gooder talking about how they dug a well for these people I’ll scream! How hard is it to use a shovel and dig?
Lolly, I’m going to start a new charity. It will be named Project Rathole: “Do you have too much money? Want to pour it down a rathole? We can help!”
The Afrikanners should take it back…before it’s too late.
South Africa: Headed Towards Totalitarianism??
A very dumb question.
African society, like Arab society is tribal based, and tribal societies are totally incompatible with a representative democracy UNLESS all the members of a given nation belong to the same exact tribe.
This is why you see no true representative democracies in black Africa or in the Arab world that work worth a damn.
A good example is the former Yugoslavia which was cobbled together via coercion by Tito and Stalin. They forced the Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, etc. to “live” together by imposing the religion of communism upon people who simply could not wait to kill each other. Well, after about 50 years of waiting, they did just that.
Look also at the former Czechoslovakia; the Czechs and Slovaks simply did not agree on anything, other than to split up. Their cultures were incompatible.
Look also at present day Belgium; the Flemish (Dutch) and French Belgians simply have nothing in common. That nation is really two nations and each nationality wants ZERO to do with the other. Belgium is not long for this world either.
And finally, check out the present day USA, in which the notion of a “melting pot” went down the toilet with the ascension to power of the 60s communist radicals. This country is also not long for the world as the Mexicans will decide one day – in S. Calif – that they no longer want to be part of the USA and either join Mexico or become an independent nation. If the several million mexicans in S.Calif decide to do this, there is absolutely nothing anybody can do about it. Of course, with Obama in office, he would simply just encourage them to go their own way.
The Europeans simply drew up boundaries in Africa to suit their own needs. If the Europeans had never interfered at all in Africa, today Africa would consist of 1000 “nations” each composed of a unique tribe; and they would still be living more or less as they did in 1800.
Repesentative democracy – let’s face it – developed because of the rise of Protestantism; a distinctly WESTERN EUROPEAN invention (informed, of course, by the Greek democracy of 1000 years before) that valued INDIVIDUAL freedom, effort and success. This it totally opposite to that of the tribal (communistic) notion of working together for the benefit of the members of YOUR OWN TRIBE (not the benefit of other tribes).
S. Africa, like almost all of black Africa, cannot abide representative democracy because this would require that benefits (and sacrifice) be divvied up INDEPENDENT of tribal affiliation. That will never happen.
JA for African ‘tribalism’ read Racism and similarly for the Indian Cast System’ ,which too, is just another for of Racism. Racism is not the prerogative of Whitey.
The problem I have with this argument is that at one time EVERYBODY was tribal – including white people. So what was it about white people that allowed them to evolve past this? Anyone? Bueller?
Yes, at one time ALL people had tribal cultures but as you say, not all have moved beyond that and certainly not all have moved to representative forms of government.
Why??
Frankly I do not think anyone really knows. One can speculate that it was a confluence of events – the Protestant Reformation, the invention of the printing press, the spread of literacy and knowledge, and of course favorable geographic features that allowed interaction amongst formerly disparate and isolated groups thus accelerating the spread of commerce and technology.
But many societies have had the above attributes and have never gone beyond “tribal” thinking; e.g., N.Korea, Russia, Cuba, most African and Arab nations. And many nations have almost no natural resources and have done very well (e.g., Holland, Denmark).
Your question basically speaks to the more important issue of why some countries succeed and other seem to be basket cases forever (success/failure defined as an adequate standard of living for the vast majority of a countries’ citizens; for instance Canada is a “success” and to this day, Russia is not).
Just because an opportunity exists, does not mean that everyone will take advantage of it in the same way. Some will use it to advance themselves and let others alone; others will use it to advance themselves AND screw over and prevent others – or kill them – from pursuing success.
That is just the way it is. There is no simple answer to your question and frankly, I do not think anyone knows the answer to your question. For every example you can supply that such and such conditions must exist to insure that a country “moves on,” you can find numerous examples that defy any “rule” or “conditions” you specify.
A wholly unsatisfactory answer, I know.
There is not one country in Africa , with the exception of Botswana, where the population is better off now than they were under the wicked Colonialists. Colonialism ended over 50 years ago and Africa continues its downward slide into the constantly tribal warring,ungovernable, Racist, slave taking nightmare it was before Whitey arrived . Only this time Whitey wont be there to help and guide them.
What do you mean “headed” Kemosabe? Show me a democracy in Africa. Show me a successful black national leader(one who improves the economic lot and liberties of his people) anywhere.
PTL – the answer is Botswana. But that is the only stable democracy in Africa. It is a very poor country though.
Zuma, like the rest of the bugling idiots that try to rule South Africa are just baffons of the highest order
“Bugling idiots?” Actually, I like that better than what you probably meant to say. The image greatly amuses me. Dankie, maatjie.
Subsaharan Africa?
Looking at the modern day American political scene – tribal totalitarianism, once restricted to Africa, seems to have become quite “vogue”. I would love for someone in the media to sit down with Al Sharpton, and ask him exactly what it would take for him to declare the US free of racial discrimination. The man is a racist and I suspect anyone who did not grow up in Afrikaner South Africa, does not understand the difference between a segregationist, and a racist. The Dutch colonial settlers in Southern Africa never attempted to enslave the native peoples. They initially wanted to co-exist in peace with the native tribes, Kwa-Zulu Natal was actually sold to one of the Afrikaner pioneers (Pieter Retief), by the king of the Amazulu (Dingane). After the sales agreement was concluded, the Zulu king (Dingane, who incidentally killed his brother Shaka-zulu to steal the “throne”) invited Retief and his followers back to his “kraal” (Afrikaans for stinking sh..thole)where he promptly disarmed and killed Retief and his followers. That was the start of segregation, directly translated as “apartheid” or “segregasie”, in Afrikaans(language). This happened in 1838, is well recorded, and was also confirmed by the English adventurer, Cornwallis Harris, in his period book, The Wild Sports of Africa. The Afrikaner (descendants of colonial Dutch) people quickly realized that the laws of “white” civilization did not apply in Africa. The “white” civilised concept of ownership and responsibility, of trust and honesty and of pride in handiwork, did not, and does not fit into the broader survivalist culture of tribal totalitarianism, as found in Africa. Do a little search on “the death of Johannesburg”, very interesting. My point: white South Africans never hated black South Africans en-masse. Everything their own structured and well-developed organizational approach,inovation,planning and provision for the future, produced (alien concepts to native Africans), were shared to the benefit of all who were lucky enough to share in white man’s South Africa. White man’s (Apartheid) South Africa saw a time of prosperity for native tribes, unknown in Africa before. Low crime rate, higher life expectancy, relative peace and prosperity. White South Africans knew the rules as well as black South Africans; look after each other, be fair, share, but do not integrate – keep your own culture alive. The pre-94 segregation laws were as strict whith whites, as it was with blacks, a black man was not allowed in an area marked “white only”, but equally, a white man was not allowed in an area marked “black only”. Anyway – what’s the use – Yes Africa is on a road to nowhere, and sadly, the next colonialists are bound to be Chinese – and they are not as God fearing, fair and tollerant as the Afrikaner Boers were (to their detriment, it now appears).