The extraordinary times we are living through with Covid-19 have, quite rightly, called for equally extraordinary measures to contain the spread of the virus. Measures we thought we would never again see in our country — army personnel in the streets, curfews and even surveillance of our movements and communications — have become commonplace.
We, the people, were prepared to give up many of the freedoms and rights we take for granted for the greater good, for all of us to survive the pandemic. These are extraordinary times, we told ourselves, and all of us needed to make extraordinary sacrifices for the sake of our country and our fellow citizens.
It is, however, always useful as we complete the three weeks of our first lockdown to remind ourselves that these freedoms we fought for — the rights that are enshrined in our bill of rights and which suffuse our entire constitution — are sacrosanct. In times of major stress in societies, here and elsewhere, the temptation to discard these most fundamental of rights is at its highest.
It is already clear that the war to defeat the coronavirus will test our leaders’ commitment to these rights. It is a time when the use of the army and its might will most tempt many of our leaders to think: "Hey! Maybe things should always be this way." We must guard against such temptations. We are not a military or police state.
The past three weeks have illustrated that many of our leaders would like us to be a police state. They would like to issue orders, act with impunity, and not be accountable to any institutions we have established (such as the Independent Police Investigative Directorate) or to the people themselves. As visuals of police brutality flooded social media, some of our politicians let their masks of "commitment to democracy" slip. The dictator within them is not very far under the skin.
There are many among our ‘leaders’ who believe dictatorial actions and violence are the medicine that SA needs
On the first day of the lockdown, a journalist asked police minister Bheki Cele if he believed the police were using more force than they should. Cele laughed: "Wait until you see more force."
This is not a matter to laugh about. After just a week of lockdown, eight deaths had allegedly occurred at the hands of the SA Police Service. Only seven deaths had been recorded from Covid-19 at that point.
We are a constitutional state. When a citizen breaks the law, you don’t force them to perform push-ups or leg lunges. You arrest them and give them a fair trial. Many might disagree. Yet imagine it was you, holding your Woolworths bags, going to do some shopping, and you encountered an overzealous cop. Would you want them to be judge, jury and executioner? No.
Cele’s response is not the only one that convinces me that there are many little dictators in our ruling elite. Thabo Mmutle, a member of parliament’s defence committee, praised soldiers who had beaten civilians, saying they were correct to do so because in his view, the bill of rights had been suspended. This is a man who is supposed to provide oversight of the army. He is telling them to go forth and torture civilians.
You know you are really in trouble when the liberal DA’s Makashule Gana, in response to images of police torture, tweets: "This is the best way to deal with them. People must learn to listen and STAY Home. What’s so difficult with staying Home."
The great Helen Suzman would have been ashamed.
There are clearly many among our "leaders" who believe that dictatorial actions and violence are the medicine SA needs. That sentiment can be found among political actors and leaders in the ANC, the DA, the EFF and many other political parties.
The battle, then, for those who love freedom is to continue to make noise — now and into the future — about the need for accountability and the return to the tenets of our constitution as soon as possible after this crisis. We must not linger here, in this extraordinary state, because there are too many among us who want to stay forever in a country that is like a dictatorship.
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