There are people in our country today who are deluded enough — or stupid enough — to think that our leaders’ constant chipping away at the rule of law will have no consequences. They refuse to realise that the more we revert to political philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s "state of nature" (where there are no laws and the state is unable to enforce those that exist), the more we will fall into a state of anarchy.
As Hobbes put it in his work Leviathan, in this state all our lives would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
At the weekend we were treated to pictures of our former leader, Jacob Zuma, looking fit as a fiddle as he left a casino in KwaZulu-Natal with his good friend Dudu Myeni (the former chair of the SAA board, which she led into bankruptcy and business rescue).
Zuma was granted medical parole after serving just two months of a 15-month sentence for contempt of court. In his entire time in incarceration, he did not spend a single night in a jail cell. When the medical parole board refused to approve parole for Zuma, former national commissioner of correctional services Arthur Fraser — the spy boss during Zuma’s tenure — overrode its decision and approved his release. The board had found that Zuma’s condition was "stable" rather than terminal.
Zuma was not sick then and, as his meetings and the media circus illustrate, he is not sick now. He is laughing at all of us. Rule of law? Not for him, or other politically connected and powerful individuals. There are hundreds of terminally sick prisoners in SA. They languish in jail while Zuma walks free.
Now people such as Carl Niehaus are beating the drum for the release of the 56 "veterans" of liberation armies who took three ministers — defence & military veterans minister Thandi Modise; her deputy, Thabang Makwetla; and minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele — hostage last week. After more than three hours, the ministers were released when a police task team stormed the hall in which they were held and subdued the "veterans".
The country of our dreams won’t fall from the sky perfectly made. You don’t just get the country you want. You get the country you build
Just like Zuma, who has falsely likened his jailing for contempt of court to apartheid-era detention without trial, those who are calling for the release of these "liberation army veterans" are already making parallels to apartheid. The general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA, Irvin Jim, tweeted this word salad: "Eish, we back to the apartheid regime in action if you stand on the side of the working class and their plight this arrest of MK, PAC And Azapo armed forces is the complete liquidation of the liberation struggle and its revolutionary military forces are ejection with their heritage" (sic).
What? These alleged army veterans took three innocent people hostage. They held them against their will for three hours. That is a crime. What kind of society are we when we tolerate such lawlessness, or reward it with a free pass? What else shall we tolerate? Workers taking employers hostage to force a salary increase? ANC leaders inciting their followers to burn down shopping malls?
The noise for the release of these 56 hostage takers is already so loud that Modise had to reiterate that the state does not plan to drop charges.
"Are there any plans to drop charges? Not from this table. There was a violation. If they get released, let it be a process out there. We cannot set a precedent, and the law be put aside because it is me. I am a military veteran. It is not us asking for the dropping of the charges," she said.
South Africans need to realise that the great country of our dreams won’t fall from the sky perfectly made. You don’t just get the country you want. You get the country you build. Part of that hard work of building a country is enforcing the rule of law across the board. There can be no exceptions or special cases.
The Eastern Cape premier deserves to be investigated and tried in a court of law for allegedly stealing taxpayer money, just as Zuma deserves the same and just as the "veterans" deserve the same for kidnapping.
If this does not happen, anarchy is loosed upon the world and our lives shall surely be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
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