The Big Read: President or Mob boss?

31 March 2015 - 02:00 By Justice Malala

When the history of South Africa is written a special chapter will be dedicated to the collapse of its institutions of accountability. It will be a sad chapter and it will show how we all sat and fiddled while the foundations of our democracy were brought down.Last week we had the extraordinary sight of the police visiting the National Prosecuting Authority to serve a summons on its controversial deputy head, Nomgcobo Jiba.She was absent without leave, so the summons was left with her boss, the equally embattled Mxolisi Nxasana.It now transpires that some very powerful people did not want Jiba to receive the summons. So the police said the policeman who served it should not have done so.Then Nxasana received a call, perhaps two, from national police commissioner Riah Phiyega asking him to take it easy on Jiba.Jiba is alleged to be close to suspended crime intelligence head Richard Mdluli, who is said to be close to President Jacob Zuma.Jiba's argument in the matter seemed to be that she wanted to be in charge of choosing which policeman was to investigate her.How does that happen?It's okay if you are confused, but the tale becomes even more confusing the deeper one digs.It drags in Hawks head Anwa Dramat, who is now being kicked out of the unit, allegedly because he started asking some pointed questions about Nkandla.It also involves suspended Independent Police Investigative Directorate head Robert McBride because he started asking why exactly Dramat was being suspended.This is a complicated narrative but, in fact, it is a simple, transparent, hoary enough old tale of skulduggery.The police and those who police them have now become divided: there are those who are protecting the president and those who just want to be ordinary, good cops.All the while, virtually every category of violent crime is on the increase in South Africa.The past five years have essentially been a period in which every institution of accountability has been compromised to ensure that one man, Jacob Zuma, never sees the inside of a courtroom to answer to allegations of corruption connected to the arms deal - for which his friend and financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was convicted and jailed - and to the scandal of the R246-million spent on his homestead in Nkandla.It continues to boggle the mind that, a year after the public protector's report comprehensively and clearly stated that the president had benefited unduly from the Nkandla "security upgrading" he still has not done anything about paying back even a cent of the taxpayers' money.Instead, the criminal is now Public Protector Thuli Madonsela. She is being investigated for being a "CIA spy" by a weak state security minister who seems to believe that his role in our society is to "deal with" those who ask for something simple of the president: to account to the people of this country.So what do we have here? We have a police service that is compromised, run by an incompetent who carries the stain of having killed 34 mineworkers in cold blood at Marikana.We have an independent police unit, the Hawks, that is now under the thumb of the police minister, and therefore of the president, who appointed the minister.You have a prosecuting service that cannot move against any member of the Zuma inner circle.You have a public protector who has been spied upon, who believes her communications are tapped and who believes that the way is being paved for the president to suspend her.Look at all the bald facts and the conclusion is simple and chilling: Zuma is running a Mafia machinery, the sole aim of which is to keep him from being held accountable.The one thing that has not happened - yet - is fiddling with the army and overtly politicising it.The army has so far stayed out of the fray, appearing only once when the Gupta family landed their wedding guests from India at a military installation and got away with it because, well, they are the president's benefactors.The problem is, what happens when the army starts being used to target political opponents and protesters?What happens when the army is seen as the next tool to be used to quell legitimate dissent and questioning of the president?We have, after all, recent memory of this: the SADF was used in the 1980s to kill innocents in the townships.It was a political army.This will, of course, happen only if we all don't scream, shout and otherwise protest at what is happening to the police, the Hawks, the NPA, the public protector and other state institutions.They are being stolen from us, the people, and are being put in the president's pocket. The next thing will be the army.South Africans need to smell the coffee and wake up. All is not good in our country...

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