Jane Duncan
The ANC’s next elective congress is looming. Already, there are signs that President Jacob Zuma has lost the confidence of key constituencies in the ANC-led alliance, owing to indecisive leadership and his failure to re-orientate the state in a pro-poor direction. The growing disquiet among working-class alliance members may well trigger a succession battle.
In response, the new elite clustered around Zuma could be tempted to fight back to retain power, using the same strategies that former president Thabo Mbeki used.
Fractious leadership conflicts in the ruling party should be of concern not only to ANC members. If left unchecked, they are bound to spill over into broader society. In the Zuma-Mbeki battle, several state institutions were compromised as Mbeki’s supporters manipulated them in an attempt to keep Zuma out of office.
When he came to office, Zuma promised to rise above Mbeki’s dirty politics and unify the party. But there are worrying signs suggesting that his supporters may be employing the very tactics used by Mbeki to ensure Zuma a second term.
Dumisani Mahaye is an ANC activist from the township of Wesselton near Ermelo in the Msukaligwa municipality. The municipality falls in the most treacherous province in the country for activists with principles: Mpumalanga.
Mahaye is a staunch Mbeki supporter. According to Mahaye, “even a blind (person) can see that Zuma is not fit for office. The comrade is not disciplined. How can you have intercourse without protection? Everything that he has touched has had problems.”
Mahaye maintains that he and other Mbeki supporters in the area are paying the price for having campaigned against Zuma, as they are denied opportunities, while Zuma supporters are rewarded with jobs and tenders. According to Mahaye, “in my ward we supported Mbeki, but when the Zuma camp won, that is when they suppress you.”
Comrades
The Msukaligwa Community Committee, which he and his comrades formed, allege that residents need to produce ANC membership cards to qualify for jobs. They say tenders are available only to ANC members and a mining trust in the area is also controlled by the ANC. ANC members who are not in favour with the new ruling elite are unable to access opportunities.
The committee alleges that a powerful ANC member linked to the premier, David Mabusa, controls deployment decisions, starving Mabusa’s critics of resources. They allege that individuals linked to Mabusa’s rival for the premier’s job in 2008, Lassy Chiwayo, as well as ANC provincial executive committee member Fish Mahlalela, have been marginalised.
These grievances led to violent protests against the ANC-controlled council in February and Mahaye become the de-facto spokesman of this struggle.
After these protests, according to Mahaye, things took an ugly turn.
One night, he said, several armed policemen broke down his door saying they were looking for guns and petrol bombs. Mahaye said that even though they did not find anything, “they ordered me to lie down and pray, and after praying they said I must crawl to the car. In the car was someone who was involved in the protests who was beaten up. Both of us had to pray in the big van until we got to the police station.
“Then they gave us to the Hawks and Intelligence. We went to the control room. The first person introduced himself (as being) from the Middleburg Hawks. Some were from Nelspruit and Polokwane. They wanted to know who was paying me to instigate the protests. I was told I was supplying petrol bombs and that I was buying drugs for people. I was told to make it easy for myself otherwise I will be tortured. I denied all of this. That was when the torturing started.”
Mahaye demonstrated how they made him lie on his stomach. Some sat on him, he claimed, while others forced his arms back over his head to the point where he could not breathe. He also claimed that they smothered his face with plastic, and dipped his face into water to stop him breathing.
According to Mahaye, “you feel that you are gonna die now. They make you say things that are wrong. Until I ended up admitting everything they wanted me to, that I made petrol bombs and was paid for the protests, that I was being paid by Lassie Chilwayo and Fish Mahlalela. I made five different statements about this. They tell you, we know what is going on. We are the Intelligence. I was not the only one in the room. Thirty to forty people had been arrested. In each and every room you would hear screams.”
Mahaye was released several days after the alleged torture, by which time his injuries had almost healed. According to City Press journalist Sizwe Sama Yende, who covered the Wesselton protests, other activists released at the same time complained of police torture.
Tube
“Some said they were suffocated, others said they were kicked. Some were smothered with the tube (a piece of an inner tube). They were all asked the same questions. They were asked if they were linked to particular politicians.”
Sama Yende went on to explain: “The torture has become quite common these days, especially in Mpumalanga. The police ask people political questions. They ask you, which faction do you affiliate to?”
The provincial spokesman for the Mpumalanga police, Captain Leonard Hlati, declined to comment on Mahaye’s claims as the matter was under investigation by the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD). ICD spokesman Moses Dlamini said a complicating factor in Mahaye’s case was that he did not consult a doctor immediately after the incident.
It is unclear how widespread the phenomenon of political torture is beyond Mpumalanga. Activists from various social movements have alleged torture at the hands of the police in the past.
One of the most publicised cases took place in 2004, when several members of the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) alleged political torture at the hands of the police and the Crime Intelligence Division. They lost the criminal case at magistrate’s court level and did not pursue a civil case.
Last year, community leaders and their families from the former KwaNdebele homeland alleged that they were interrogated by members of the Middelburg Serious and Violent Crimes Unit who suffocated, kicked and punched them and gace them electric shocks.
Yet according to Wits University Law Clinic attorney Peter Jordi, who specialises in civil torture claims, criminal suspects are the main victims of torture and not political activists.
Activists tend not to document police harassment, making it difficult to pinpoint trends with precision. However, the anecdotal evidence points to a problem.
According to Dlamini, South African law does not recognise torture as a discrete offence, but defined it as assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. This meant statistics about the prevalence of torture were difficult to extrapolate.
But according to Jordi, using anecdotal evidence from his own caseload, the use of torture in prisons has continued from the apartheid era, with a slight decline in the early 2000s.
In a workshop last year on police torture, the ICD noted as one of its challenges the “code of silence and culture of cover-up prevalent in the police.”
Dlamini conceded that it was difficult to investigate torture cases. However, they dealt with this problem by using specialist investigators.
Given what appears to be an upswing in torture of criminals, it should surprise no one if South Africa experiences an upswing in political torture as well. Activists need to be forewarned and forearmed so that they know what to do if this happens to them.
The problem with torture cases internationally is that they are difficult to prove. The burden of proof differs between criminal and civil cases: in the former, the prosecution needs to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the torture took place, whereas in the latter, the judge decides on the balance of probabilities.
The two most common methods used by the police are electric shocks and suffocation.
Electric shocks are easier to prove afterwards, as muscle damage can be picked up in blood samples; but the instrument favoured by police to administer the shocks – the dynamo used to power landline phones – is difficult to come by now. As a result, suffocation is becoming more prevalent, and it provides little physical evidence is left afterwards.
An additional problem identified by Jordi is that police officers who use torture have learned how to cover their tracks to prevent successful prosecutions. Victims need to act quickly and provide evidence within a week of the incident having taken place, as prospects for success taper off sharply after that. Medical examinations need to take place as soon as possible after the incident.
According to Jordi, the ICD relies on the police to undertake investigations into torture, although it oversees the investigations. “You cannot rely on the police to investigate the police,” he said. By collecting direct and circumstantial evidence quickly, Jordi has won many civil cases.
Criminal cases are also traumatic for the victims, who may not want to continue with a civil case if they lose a criminal case. Furthermore, the prospects of an adverse costs order – always a risk in a civil case – is another chilling factor.
Intolerance
The ANC has a strong social democratic history but it also has a history of intolerance of those who think differently in the liberation movement. Many ANC members have allowed this culture of intolerance to take root, failing to take individual or collective responsibility for the actions it has led to. Now it would seem that the chickens are coming home to roost.
While all citizens must take a stand against political intolerance, ANC members have a particular duty to do so, if this intolerance begins within the ranks of the organisation. As insiders, they are more likely than non-ANC members to be privy to how intolerance develops and is practised.
The ANC forms the culture and identity of millions of South Africans. As a result, it will dominate the political landscape for some time to come. Yet in spite of its dominance and the complacency it may breed, ANC members must think beyond their own noses on the need for political diversity.
It is in the long-term interests of every member to break the cycle of retribution against critics. Today, an ANC member may support a particular leader’s bid for the highest office on the understanding that if that candidate wins, the member will be rewarded with jobs and tenders. But tomorrow, if the member’s leader is deposed, he or she may be subjected to the very treatment that those who fell out of favour were subjected to. This is an unsustainable way of running a political organisation.
Then there are the civic duties of all South Africans to mobilise against intolerance. Crime-weary South Africans must not turn a blind eye to torture of criminals, as tomorrow it could happen to them if they fall foul of the law.
South Africans should be especially concerned if specialist policing units such as the Hawks are manipulated to stifle dissent, which is why Mahaye’s allegations should be taken so seriously.
Revelations by the Sunday Times that journalists Stephan Höfstatter and Mzilakazi wa Afrika are being harassed by members of the security and intelligence cluster are a clarion call to all citizens to demand transparency and accountability from this in- creasingly powerful part of the government, which appears to be turning into the Praetorian Guard of the ruling elite.
To adapt Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous “First they came…” poem: first they came for the dissidents in exile and put them in the camps, and I did not speak out, because I was not a dissident. Then they came for the “Zim-Zims” with tyres and matches, and I did not speak out, because I was a “Warara”. Then they came for the LPM supporters with rubber tubes, and I did not speak out, because I was not an LPM supporter. Then they came for the Mbeki supporters with plastic and buckets of water, and I did not speak, because I was a Zuma supporter. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.
* Duncan is Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society, School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University. This article appeared on The SA Civil Society Information Service website.