WATCH | People must face the wrath of the law: Modise on July 2021 unrest

Nobody is above the law, including members of the ANC, who may be found to have committed criminal acts during the July 2021 civil unrest.

This is what defence minister Thandi Modise said on Friday while addressing a media briefing by the justice, crime prevention and security cluster (JCPS) on prosecutions after the riots and looting in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

“At the level of government we are not interested in protecting this faction or that faction. Anybody who goes against the established norm must face the wrath of the law,” said Modise, who was accompanied by police minister Bheki Cele, minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele and national police commissioner Gen Fannie Masemola.

The Report of the Expert Panel into the July 2021 Civil Unrest, published last November, noted that “what appears to be factional battles in the African National Congress, have become serious source of instability in the country”.

Modise was asked about the factions and tension in the ruling party and what the cluster’s assessment was this year as it undertakes several conferences.

“Members of the ANC are also taxi drivers, bus owners, business people, domestic workers, teachers, nurses; they are everywhere within society. So I suspect that sometimes, driven by economic needs, they will take a stand on whichever line they would like to stand.

“When criminal acts that may be defined as economic threats, political threats against the states, it would not be in the interest of the ministers sitting here to look at whether this one is sitting in this faction or not in that faction,” Modise said.

She said when criminality happen, at police and prosecutorial level, they must look at what that person has done and act on that.

Modise said nobody will be protected

“If I do something in my private capacity and if I do my things in my colours of the ANC I must be able to stand for them as an individual who took the decision to whatever act that I have done in that capacity.”

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