Goodbye liberty, hello police state

A colleague of mine remarked yesterday that if you turn off the sound of the television during the news and watch the “service delivery protests” it reminds one starkly of the apartheid protests in townships, complete with burning tyres and policemen gunning down civilians (granted, it is with rubber bullets).

It might perhaps be an exaggerated comparison, but I don’t think it is the only thing currently playing out in contemporary South Africa reminiscent of those dark days of our country’s history. Of course there are those within the opposition party ranks who lament the appointments made by President Zuma in the security cluster as being tantamount to stuffing it up with comrades and benefactors, charging that the country is being turned into a “police state”. I don’t know, yet, where I stand on this issue. Perhaps, just maybe, Kasrils is right in supporting the state security Shaik-up, it is too early for me to say really.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, however, does not imply adopting a “wait-and-see” approach. I think it is not only prudent but also necessary that we remain vigilant, adopting a “see-and-see” approach (not to be confused with an ANC approach, it’s apolitical). It is crucial that we guard against the undermining and trampling of hard-won constitutional and democratic gains, and there are a few worrying developments in this regard.

First there’s “shoot to kill”, which apparently, as so many other things said by politicians, is a creation by the media, a figment of their sensationalist-driven imagination. Of course, as we heard over the weekend, it was not long before this was taken seriously and we saw the tragic, preventable, brutish and unnecessary loss of innocent civilian life in Mabopane (the details are still clouded in mystery and the police officers involved are of course innocent and remain unsuspended and uncharged). In some way I can understand why the president would claim he never said that, I mean his party (rightly, in my opinion) upholds the ban on capital punishment citing the constitutionally enshrined basic human right of “the right to life”. It would be counter-intuitive to advocate “shoot to kill”, wouldn’t it? Perhaps more convincing is the president and his supporters’ constant chants of “innocent until proven guilty”, which I would assume they mean to not only apply to the ruling elite.

However, giving the police service more firing force is apparently not enough. “That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”, right? Well apparently the upper echelons in the police “service” don’t agree. Police officers supposedly have tainted reputations and bruised egos, not the result of inefficiency, inadequate training and a lack of man (and woman) power, but rather because of semantics. They supposedly feel emasculated (I apologise for the male gaze) and are apparently the laughing stock of the nation because they are called inspectors, like those individuals operating buses. People will take them seriously, they will take themselves and their jobs seriously, if they are called generals and if we re-militarise the police. Maybe there’s some truth in that, I don’t know, I’m not an expert in psychology. Perhaps someone can study the impact of shifting away from using the term “housewife” to “home-makers” and tell us whether these ladies perform better and whether their husbands demand more and take them seriously.

As if renaming and re-empowering the police is not enough, talks of centralisation abound — rightly criticised by the opposition. Worse, disastrous in my opinion, however, is reports emerging (via the SABC though, which for some reason does not appear on the main website) that Minister Mthethwa intends to change the law to allow the police to enter private property without permission.

I’m vividly reminded of Benjamin Franklin’s profound statement (here paraphrased): “Those who are willing to give up a little liberty to ensure a little security, deserve neither and will lose both.” If we are willing to sit back and applaud the police and the securocrats as they successively gnaw away at our basic liberties, if we allow this process to go unchecked, unmonitored and unwatched, then we deserve the effective, repressive police state and its implications.

Instead of appreciating the complexity and magnitude of the problems in the police service and security cluster more broadly, we’re seeing this administration tinker around the edges, failing yet again to appreciate the imperatives of running an efficient, effective modern state with a liberal democratic and constitutional framework. They engage, instead, in quick fixes and highly publicised reforms to pacify the masses and prove that something is being done. Fine, treat the symptoms and ignore the diagnosis, sideline reservists and further undermine the legitimacy and public support of the police by endowing them with extra-constitutional powers while failing to address critical manpower shortages and a lack of adequate training.

In a society where private security guards are taken more seriously, are more trusted, more pervasive, more visible and outnumber the police “service” two to one, it is no wonder that the police is seen as a non-entity while crime skyrockets and they squabble over restructuring and renaming issues, looking for quick fixes that will indubitably create more problems in the long run than it solves.