Zuma’s silence speaks volumes

The president’s pointed silence as Helen Zille was heckled undermines the spirit of democracy once again, says Judith February.

Cape Town - It’s December 2007. Delegates at the ANC conference in Polokwane fill the marquee on the first day of the conference. The mood is impatient. Surely Thabo Mbeki’s time as president of the country and of the ANC must be up? The now infamous football “hand signals” demanding a change of player greet Mbeki as he enters the room.

Jacob Zuma, on the other hand, is welcomed with cheers and singing. ANC electoral commission chairwoman Bertha Gxowa gets on to the stage to explain election proceedings for the conference. She is shouted down unceremoniously as the crowd wants Zuma. It became clear then that the conference would end as it had begun: with an air of intolerance.

As Mbeki made his exit on the final day, the mood was no different – “alien”, was how Joel Netshitenzhe described it to me in passing, somewhat ashen-faced. And the rest is the “unstoppable tsunami” of history.

Recently when Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane attended a church service in Bekkersdal, angry protesters stoned the church and she was forced to flee. Last week it was Western Cape Premier Helen Zille’s turn. Zille, meant to welcome President Zuma at the launch of the Saldanha Industrial Development Zone, was jeered by a section of the crowd and prevented from speaking, while Zuma sat in silence, according to all reports. Zille let rip and Zuma was seen in press pictures pointing a finger at her. Meanwhile, pesky Marius Fransman just so happened to be there. Surely he did not attend in his capacity as Deputy Minister of International Relations? Is industrial development now Fransman’s core business?

But the 2014 election will see Zille go head to head with Fransman for the top job as premier, and so the only conclusion to be drawn is that Fransman saw this as an electioneering opportunity. The event, however, was funded by the state and allowing it to descend into an ANC rally of sorts is an abuse of state resources. This blurring of party and state has real potential to undermine free and fair elections in 2014.

If the hecklers were Zuma supporters, as we are led to believe, Zuma ought to have exercised control as president of the whole country – and not simply of the ANC – and told the crowd to afford Zille the courtesy of allowing her to speak.

But that has never been Zuma’s style. He is far too deviously divisive for that.

Yet, while Zuma’s silence shows a lack of inclusive leadership, we would do ourselves a disservice to see this as only about Zuma and Zille, or indeed Zille and Fransman, or a “Western Cape problem”.

Zille is right when she says she will not be intimidated and will go to the deepest parts of the ANC heartland in her election campaign.

For intimidation has no place in an open society. Democratic societies have as their bulwark tolerance of “the other”, of different perspectives and points of view. When Mokonyane is jeered and forced to flee a church service, we also have to acknowledge that we have reached an unacceptably low point in the way in which we deal with disagreement and the way in which those who are excluded and marginalised express their anger at the status quo.

And so, what happened in the CBD of Cape Town last week where a small group of protesters looted stalls and created mayhem forms part of a larger pattern of rising intolerance in our country. Its roots are complex and varied. There is no point in pretending that this was anything other than unacceptable criminality. Ironically, it was the stalls of those eking out a living on the margins which were destroyed.

Violent protests happen when anger boils over and when citizens have no stake in the environment around them. The often too slow pace of change, the skewed nature of post-apartheid spatial development and matching inequality have not helped us, but exacerbated matters. Dignity has been eroded by poor living conditions, sewage running in the streets of townships and often uninterested elected representatives.

While we need to urgently deal with these challenges of underdevelopment, we have to also learn to listen and respect the right of others, even – especially – the politicians we disagree with. Whether it is Zille or Mokonyane, their right to speak and be wherever they wish is entrenched in the constitution.

Zuma, who remained silent in the face of such abuse, would do well to lay down some principles during these elections and beyond, for the anger of the crowd might not be that far from his own door, one senses.

* Judith February is executive director for Democracy and Governance at the HSRC, Cape Town

** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Newspapers

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