Statement by the South African Institute of Race Relations on causal factors behind the violent unrest in and around Johannesburg - 20th May 2008
The South African Institute of Race Relations this morning described the wave of violence that has gripped Johannesburg and surrounding areas for the past week as a direct response to policy failures on the part of Thabo Mbeki’s government. According to the Institute, poor and ineffective governance had created a tinder box of unmet expectations which exploded in Alexandra and has now spread to several other areas – similar to many of the causal factors that contributed to apartheid era unrest. Essentially these failures contributed to create a perfect storm of lawlessness, poverty, and unfulfilled expectations which has now erupted into violence.
This statement was issued by Frans Cronje, the deputy CEO of the
South African Institute of Race Relations, on Tuesday 20 May at
07:00.
For further comment please
contact the Institute’s spokespersons on the violence, Mapeete Mohale
or Frans Cronje, directly at +27 (0)11 403
3600.
Policy
failures
The Institute identified the
following key policy failures:
Failure
to maintain the rule of law
The government’s repeated failures
to bring levels of violent crime under control contributed to an
environment which saw people resort to violence without fear of arrest
or successful prosecution. In failing to maintain the rule of law the
state had conditioned many poor communities to violent behaviour.
The failure to protect communities from criminal elements and to remove
those elements had allowed criminals to take full advantage of chaos
and disorder to rob, rape, and loot during the violent uprisings.
Incompetence in the ministry of
safety and security, falling standards in the South African Police
Service, corruption up to the highest levels of the police, and
affirmative action had eroded the capacity of the police to provide a
safe and secure environment in South Africa. This was further
exacerbated by the poor performance of the prosecution service in
securing convictions for offenders and the failure of the department of
correctional services to rehabilitate offenders. South Africa was
faced with an effective breakdown of the organs responsible for
maintaining law and order.
Warnings to this effect from a
variety of sources had been largely ignored or treated with arrogance
and contempt from the office of the minister of safety and security
downwards. That not a single minister or deputy minister responsible
for law and order, justice, or prisons was dismissed over close on ten
years of Thabo Mbeki’s presidency suggests that the government was
either unable to identify the risks presented by lawlessness or had
resigned itself to the consequences.
Regardless of which of the two
options is correct the failure of the state to maintain law and order
is the first direct contributing factor to the violence.
Border
control
The collapse of proper border
control mechanisms saw literally millions of people gaining entry to
South Africa illegally. The responsibility for this law enforcement
failure rests jointly with the army, police and the government who saw
fit to hand many border duties to the police when it should have been
obvious that the police were unable to handle the responsibility. The
closure of the commandos is instructive in this regard as it suggests a
government more interested in ideology than in pragmatism. During a
period when South Africa experienced some of the highest levels of
violent crime in the world the state saw fit to close down one of the
key organs responsible for rural policing.
Poor policy decisions and simple
incompetence in border policing therefore contributed directly to the
presence of a large illegal population in South Africa. Without
adequate legal standing in the community these people became easy or
soft targets for mob violence. The police’s own heavy handed raids on
illegal immigrants further created the impression that they were fair
game in South Africa.
The policy response to the cross
border influx revolved chiefly around a programme of arrests and
deportations often without regard to the human rights and due process
issues that should have applied. This policy continued long after it
was apparent that it was having no effect on the number of illegal
immigrants in South Africa. Again no senior political official with
responsibility for this critical area of policing was dismissed for
underperformance despite the obvious threat to national
security.
Corruption
Corruption in the state sector
became endemic under Thabo Mbeki and very little was done to curb it.
The examples of Travelgate, Armsgate, and Oilgate served to create the
impression that the South African state was corrupt up to the highest
levels of government. Such corruption in turn filtered down into
the various government departments at local, provincial, and national
level. In the home affairs, social welfare, and law enforcement
areas literally tens of thousands of officials were implicated in
corrupt dealings.
Anger by South Africans at
immigrants with illegal documents getting access to services is
therefore understandable and was brought about in large part by the
failure of the police and the department of home affairs to crack down
on fraudulent documents.
Evidence of widespread corruption
was uncovered by a host of agencies and the media. The government,
however, failed to act with due diligence and most corrupt officials
got away with a slap on the wrist. Even where the law took its course
as in the case of Tony Yengeni the ANC saw fit to carry him into prison
like a conquering hero.
Confidence in the state was
substantially eroded by corruption policy failures and poor judgment on
the part of government. Consequently it is not surprising that
communities saw the need to take their anger onto the streets.
Widespread corruption undermining the role of the state is therefore a
further direct contributing factor to the violence.
Employment
With close on 40% of South Africans
failing to secure a proper job it is not surprising that scores of
youths were able to conduct days and nights of violent campaigns in
informal settlements around Johannesburg. Unemployment was
therefore a direct contributing cause to the violence.
Among young black South Africans the
unemployment rate extends to over 50% in some areas. Overall only 50%
of African households get their main source of income from employment.
Social welfare which now reaches 25% of South Africans was never going
to be sufficient to meet communities’ expectations of a better
life.
Warnings as to the risks of
sustained levels of high unemployment were largely ignored by
government. Labour legislation, hopelessly inappropriate for a largely
unskilled workforce, has contributed to keep many mainly black South
Africans out of jobs. Immigrants were able to secure employment as
these labour policies did not apply to them and were in many cases able
to make a living free from government grantsor regulation. Policy
responses such as the Expanded Public Works Programme were a case of
too little too late to prevent the turbulence that has gripped parts of
Johannesburg for the past seven days.
The government showed limited
urgency in dealing with an unemployment crisis that required dramatic
changes in policy to address. A host of talk shops, forums, and
strategies were substituted for actual progress. It is a valid question
how the government could ignore such an obvious political risk factor
for so long without an adequate policy response. Partly the answer may
lie in the ANC misjudging its electoral support for satisfaction with
its policies.
Education
This has been government’s biggest
failure and carries much of the blame for the high unemployment levels.
It is arguable whether current state education is in its totality any
better than that under apartheid. Only 1% of black matriculants achieve
a good HG maths pass. The output of the school education system was
therefore far from adequate to free households from state dependency or
to acquire the skills necessary to find employment in a heavily
regulated labour market.
The education system is a good
example where policy failures in one area compounded those in another.
In this case poor education compounded the inappropriate labour market
policy which in turn compounded the unemployment problem.
Many warnings to government in this
regard have been dismissed as alarmist and sensationalist. That
combined with critical policy misjudgments such as the adoption of
outcomes based education and the closure of teacher training colleges
sabotaged any chance of rehabilitating the education system. The
failure of education is therefore a further direct contributing cause
to the violence.
Slowing
economic growth
The failure to take proper advantage
of a global boom in commodities meant that South Africa attracted
limited benefit from the economic climate of the last five years.
Empowerment policy, affirmative action, and bureaucratic interference
in mining for example saw South Africa’s mining sector stutter over a
period when it should have boomed. In many cases racial bean counting,
self enrichment through economic empowerment, and ideological arguments
for transformation trumped the need to boost economic growth rates
above 4.5%. South Africa was therefore unable to use the global
commodity boom to establish subsidiary industries or to invest in its
industrial base.
Policy failures in electricity
supply and telecommunication technology in turn further hampered the
economic growth rate in South Africa and further compounded the failure
to adopt an industrial policy aimed at facilitating growth off the
commodity boom. Education and skills shortages share some of the blame
for this.
In many cases ideologically driven
beliefs in the state’s role in managing the economy overruled pragmatic
policy responses.
Agriculture is a prime example where
the governments’ policy on commercial producers could best be described
as hostile even as food prices begun to rise. Increasing food prices
directly compromised the welfare of poor communities and must be
identified as one of the key causal factors
responsible for the violence.
Rising inflation is a second
key causal factor for the violence where a failure of
the Reserve Bank’s inflation targeting policy has largely undone much
of the anti-poverty impact of social grants spending. Again this
is an example of one policy failure compounding failures in a host of
other areas.
Both food prices and inflation
together with rising fuel costs directly impacted upon poor households
and must have forced them to cut down on basic staples. That alone may
have been sufficient to spark much of the anger visible in and around
Johannesburg this week. These three factors directly undid the efforts
of social grants in alleviating poverty as they undermined the value of
those grants. Two of the three factors were in government’s direct
policy responsibility to address.
An analysis of economic policy
failures would not be complete without examining the role of
empowerment policy in establishing a very small and often politically
connected black middle class. Government saw fit to celebrate this
limited success even as the majority of black South Africans continued
to live in relative squalor and poverty. In retrospect it is
extraordinary that government would flaunt such limited participation
in the broader economy by a select group of individuals when most of
its supporters had no hope of ever becoming the beneficiary of an
empowerment transaction. The now regular site of a high speed
government convoys of black luxury sedans escorted by scores of police
shoving through traffic points to a similarly misguided and
extraordinary arrogance on the part of those who had promised a better
life for all in 1994.
Warnings of political risk
accompanying such policy blunders where sharply disputed by government
most notably in the example of Tony Trahar who was admonished by Thabo
Mbeki for raising the issue of political risk in South
Africa.
Foreign
policy
Particularly in the case of Zimbabwe
foreign policy was wholly inappropriate and incompetent. Thabo Mbeki’s
quiet diplomacy provided a lifeline to the ailing Zimbabwe regime that
kept it in power longer than would otherwise have been the case.
The failure to condemn initial
violence and electoral fraud in Zimbabwe contributed directly to the
massive inflow of foreign immigrants. Such quiet diplomacy stands in
strong contrast to the unanimous condemnation by government of the
current violence in South Africa and creates the impression that
violence targeted at Zimbabweans was acceptable as long as it took
place in Zimbabwe.
Seen in light of South Africa’s
inability to secure its borders our foreign policy on Zimbabwe was
destined to have only one effect - the inflow of illegal
immigrants.
It is far from convincing to argue
that the best South Africa, as Africa’s economic superpower, could do
was to quietly engage the Harare regime. Targeted economic and
financial sanctions together with clear criticism of human rights
abuses in Zimbabwe were a perfectly feasible alternative policy.
As in almost every area of policy
failure warnings directed at government were scoffed at and dismissed.
In the Zimbabwe case Thabo Mbeki’s government was quick to describe as
racist any criticism of his Zimbabwe policy. Need one only remember the
tumultuous reception Robert Mugabe was given at Thabo Mbeki’s
inauguration? Ideology again trumped pragmatism, a failure for
which South Africa is paying heavily.
Service
delivery
While a host of government targets
were met service delivery provision was far from adequate to meet
expectations of a better life for all. A policy failure is again at the
heart of the problem as the state took it upon itself to provide
services and jobs and thereby tied households to its ability to
deliver. Where delivery appeared to falter public protest was the
outcome and literally thousands of protests, many of them violent, have
been directed at the state over the past 36 months.
In many cases the government relied
on corrupt and incompetent local authorities to implement its policies.
Despite much bluster and posturing not enough was done to bring these
authorities into line even as a growing trend of protest actions became
visible over the past 36 months. The failure of local government
in delivery was never adequately addressed and communities lost faith
in the willingness of government to address their queries when these
were made through official channels. Communities learnt to express
their dissatisfaction violently and this is set to continue as long as
local authorities remain corrupt and incompetent.
High unemployment was again a
further contributing factor exacerbating other policy failures.
The protests of the past 36 months
have in the main been isolated and sporadic but should have sent a
clear warning to government that dissatisfaction with delivery could
spark large scale unrest. Government however continued to insist that
it was on the right track and that dismissed criticism as alarmist or
aimed at threatening the national democratic
revolution.
The government effectively
miscalculated that continuing strong voter support for the ANC
translated directly into support for its delivery efforts. This has
proven to be a tragic misjudgment.
Current legislation pending in
provinces to ‘eradicate’ informal dwellings is a perfect example of a
type of heavy handed delivery blunder that has characterised the
government. If implemented it will no doubt aid in creating exactly the
kind of havoc currently experienced around Gauteng. It is in a sense a
good measure in deciding whether the government has learnt any lessons
from this week’s violence.
Race relations
Thabo Mbeki’s efforts at
re-racialising South Africa and the numerous pieces of race based
policy and legislation that accompanied his time in office undid much
of the progress in improving race relations accomplished under Nelson
Mandela. Mbeki’s tenure re-enforced differences and assigned
values based on race. It was not surprising therefore that racial
conflict could be an end result of his government’s numerous policy
failures. That that conflict is black on black and not black on white
is unsurprising considering that levels of latent ethnic tension remain
present in South Africa.
Obsession with black on white racism
meant that the apparently more widespread form of black on black racism
was never adequately addressed. Overzealous self censorship and
political correctness prevented many commentators from speaking up
clearly about a possibly far more deep seated racism between black and
black than existed between black and
white.
The perfect
storm
Combined failures in these key
policy areas have come together to create a virtual tinderbox of
dissatisfaction with government delivery and the protests originating
in Alexandra where merely a matter of a spark igniting the tensions at
the right time in the right place.
Risk that violence could
spread
Similar political risk factors exist
throughout South Africa and there exists the danger that the violence
could spread further at a point in time. A second danger exists
that the violence could come to take on a more ethnic nature and
devolve into a renewed conflict particularly if it spreads in
KwaZulu-Natal. It is a risk that South Africa will have to live with
for several years as there is no quick fix solution for the current
crisis.
Appropriate short term
response
The appointment of a panel to
investigate the violence is a useful academic exercise but is again a
wholly inappropriate policy response to resolve the crisis. This is
equally true of revitalising the failed Roll Back Xenophobia
campaigns and the like which cannot adequately capture the underlying
causes to the violence.
The short term response should be a
well thought out and coordinated law enforcement response that aims to
identify and arrest anyone responsible for inciting violence or the
destruction of property while isolating violent hotspots and saturating
these areas with police personnel. It should be intelligence driven and
managed by detectives. Tragically it is questionable, however, whether
the police have the skills or equipment to conduct such an operation
effectively.
Military
deployment risks major disaster
Employing the military in a civilian
capacity risks a major disaster. They are not trained, equipped, or
prepared for such a function. There is a real risk of the army shooting
into a crowd with live ammunition and causing casualties that could
inflame tensions even further and will almost certainly see a
nationwide uprising against the state.
Conclusions
The violence we have experienced
over the past week can be directly attributed to a series of policy
failures on the part of Thabo Mbeki’s government. Warnings to that
effect were too easily dismissed by government spokespeople who accused
analysts of racism and ‘doom and gloom’ scenarios. A ‘worst possible
scenario’ has now materialised and requires a more mature and measured
response from government. Failing that we should expect that similar
unrest could occur with little warning in any area of South
Africa.
SAIRR Today: Service delivery - An Overview - 21st November 2008
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