We need more leaders like Asmal

South Africans from across the political divide who are serious about building a democracy where a free exchange of ideas is tolerated and rights of people respected must cringe and be disgusted by Fikile Mbalula’s tirade against Kader Asmal in recent weeks. To define this conduct as hate speech is an understatement.

I hold no brief for Asmal nor do I need his permission to be totally appalled by a pedestrian attempt to vilify his legacy as a freedom fighter and one of the best ministers this country has ever known. To point at policy flaws that were policies of the ANC during his term of office is a cheap shot indeed.

It boggles the mind how a member of our country’s national executive believes it’s okay to spew such hostile bile against a fellow citizen, a hero of our liberation struggle and elder worthy of all our respect. If these are the future leaders of our people, it leaves me cold. Mbalula like Julius Malema thrives on simpleton-like hyperbole to cover for the lack of depth in serious national dialogue expected from people of relative influence in our body politic. I can fully appreciate why Kader would rather be dead than be led by someone who has lost all sense of respect and has abandoned what we as Africans describe as the basic manners of ubuntu.

It is one thing to differ with Asmal on his legitimate views about what may become of our police service under Mbalula, his cronies and his belief that the ANC has lost its moral compass, it’s quite another to delegitimise his views by branding him a post-Polokwane loser, a raving lunatic and so on. It’s worse to attempt some poor dictionary rebuttal of what he meant when he said, correctly, that SA may be turned into a police state. Such a rebuttal is cold comfort to the families of Olga Kekana in Mabopane. With no sense of irony Mbalula repeats the shoot-to-kill madness that I am certain will not stand constitutional scrutiny. In his world of shoot to kill, the rights of citizens take second place to populist sentiments that will make no dent whatsoever on the escalating robberies taking place in people’s homes. Police pitch late if at all, with no robber in sight, to shoot and kill. It is clear that in such a police state the loss of innocent lives like those of Kekana will soon become frighteningly common place. All you need is for criminals to use a car similar to yours and you are a sitting duck for the trigger happy.

Similarly the lives of the very police we are trying to defend will be lost in the cross-fire of the law of the jungle. There are numerous examples around the world that an eye for an eye only serves to make the world blind, with each side trying to out-arm the other with fire power. It is the war of values that we must win to bring crime down.

So, in Mbalula’s dictionary of policing, ordinary citizens might be shot and killed, assumed guilty and sentenced whereas Zuma insisted, in the face of glaring corruption allegations, that he be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Back to the tedious subject of protecting people’s freedom of expression — everyone knows that this was not an ideal deployment, firstly as a deputy minister, but more importantly as one that has to worry about protecting people’s lives and not gamble with precious life in the name of being seen to be talking tough. There also seems to be an attempt to prove that he is not just a mere deputy minister whose minister asks him every two minutes whether he is at work. There is an obligation nevertheless to try and make a success of this very important job. The public expects a deputy minister of police at least to pretend to respect the Constitution at all times. One of the most progressive suggestions to come from his desk is the recruitment of unemployed youth to join the police service. As they join, they need to be taught a sense of humility, service and respect.

If they do so, they stand a better chance of mobilising the communities to support the police. Using language such as “shoot and kill the bastards” and labelling anyone who disagrees with you as a chauvinist, lunatic and baboon must rank as the lowest form of lack of good manners — something not to be associated with the high office of a deputy minister of police. The young people who will join the police force need to know that this is precisely how not to behave. Those who point out this madness need not be angels or “saviours” or “better than thou”, they only need to be citizens who have enough conscience and courage not to allow their rights to be trampled upon in the name of new-found power.

In a funny way what Asmal is saying about the ANC losing its moral compass shows them up in their silence on this very matter. I admire him for refusing to be made to “shut up” about the moral rot that has beset a movement he spent his life building. We need more like him who will not silenced in the name of the tired party line.

An attempt to vilify Asmal instead showed up the superficiality of the politics of the latter-day ANC — full of triumphalistic post-Polokwane fury, signifying nothing but the banality that passes for leadership. I believe that despite the singing and dancing of the new-found princess and kings of the Zuma administration the tables shall one day turn as history can tell. Someone is yet to pay for turning their backs on the vision of an inclusive South Africa that our forebearers had in mind when they declared at the Congress of the People in 1955 that South Africa belongs to all who live in it — black and white and that there shall be peace and friendship in our land.