It is rather endearing that President Jacob Zuma thinks one of the most diverse and fractious societies on earth will heed his plaintive plea to “just for four weeks, be good. Just for four weeks.”
One thing is certain, though. The intention towards those who ignore his fatherly words is that any bad behaviour that does occur will, at all costs, be hidden from Soccer World Cup visitors.
While all tourist destinations try to present their best profile during major events, there are limits imposed by law and human decency. South Africa, however, has a sanitisation programme that rivals the image management of the Beijing Olympics, when the Chinese went to great lengths to ensure that no crime, no squalor and no political dissent would mar the idyllic picture that it wanted to present to the outside world.
This week the Independent Democrat’s Haniff Hoosen slammed as illegal the countrywide round-ups of street children, seen as an “eyesore” for visitors. He identified Durban as the biggest culprit during previous international events, including a “shocking operation” earlier this year, when they ‘forcefully bundled children into police vehicles and used pepper spray to prevent them from escaping”.
There are 56 special courts to deal with offences against visitors. More than a quarter of the entire SA Police Service, about 44 000 officers, has been mobilised solely to ensure the safety of spectators. That’s approximately one cop dedicated to every eight foreign visitors, although the geographic dispersal of World Cup venues makes the SAPS task harder than that of the 100 000 police and troops deployed in Beijing in 2008.
But beyond the admirable containment of crime, at least so far as it affects overseas visitors, there is the problem of the unconstitutional curtailment of civil liberties. The evidence is that SAPS has instructed municipalities not to allow demonstrations for the duration of the tournament.
SAPS won’t admit that there is a total ban, but in one of those wonderful bits of Alice-in-Wonderland logic at which bureaucrats are expert, told the Mail & Guardian about one application: “The march is not banned, it’s just not approved.”
Any application for a politically related “gathering” over the tournament period will be refused by municipalities, at the request of SAPS, because of manpower needs and ‘the potential for protest and unrest’. Not only on match days. Not only around stadiums.
The propensity of local toyi-toyiing protest marchers to scatter rubbish, bang bin lids with their knobkerries, and brandish poorly lettered and miss-spelled signs does not make for a pretty picture. Nevertheless, there is no danger to life and limb from the overwhelming majority of demonstrations, providing the state with no public order justification for withdrawing the right to assembly.
According to Rhodes University’s Professor Jane Duncan on the SA Civil Society site, unionists wanting to mobilise protest during the World Cup were told informally by the police that given the recent beating that SA’s image has taken overseas, the ban was justified to prevent further negative messages. In other words, as she put it, “the SAPS could well be motivated by the need to remake SA’s brand in the international media as a land of peace, reconciliation and stability”.
The reality is that SA is no different from many other developing countries: it is a disputatious, sometimes bloody-minded cauldron of competing interests. Unions have every right to use the conduit to international opinion shapers, offered by the World Cup, to advance their causes and, in any case, it is futile to think that two months of orchestrated charades would delude the world. The rainbow nation illusion has long been dispelled, not by bolshy demonstrators but by the likes of Julius Malema’s ‘kill the boer” rhetoric.
Robust democracies don’t exist because there is no conflict. They exist because they have mechanisms for channelling conflict in ways that relieve pressure, while simultaneously protecting public order and the freedoms of their citizens.
SA has such a mechanism. It’s called the Constitution and the police minister should acquaint himself with it.
FIFA has given us a taste of what life must have been like in France, Belgium and Holland in 1940. It intrigues me how the government is crowing already about how “they thought we couldn’t do it but we proved them wrong.” It ain’t over yet, kids.
You seem to have a personl conflict.While you like good behaviour from the South Africans, you equally lament deprivation of these liberties you talk about.
you cannot have both, China being the caset wereve you forgotten about the protests th violently squashea in point. Have you forgotten about the violent protests that were squashed in China.
It seems journalists wuld like to see themselves as the Almighty judges of the good and the bad. Nothing could be further from the truth-they are not perfect.
How many of these robust democracies are there? The UK has a long history of police brutality against demonstrators. The US uses demarcated areas far away from the press to hide demonstrations.
As for the unions I’m coming to support any opportunity to shut them up and shut them out. Their wage demands are out of control and they made no secret about their intent to disrupt the world cup to hold the country to ransom. They and others regularly have their protests and strikes degenerate into violence against other citizens and destruction of property. Preventing them from demonstrating for a couple of months is of course only putting off the problem. Ultimately something is going to have to be done to put a stop to union and ANCYL nonsense that undermines this country.
That the government is concerned that we as a nation should present a good face to the world is most commendable. Unfortunately however it does not seemed to be as concerned with getting the reality to coincide with the image that it wants to project instead it is more interested in trying to hide the South African reality from the football tourists.
I am reliably informed by a recent inmate, that The SAPS detention facility at Mussina consists of converted shipping containers, and that some of the “contents” have been held there without trial or hearing for more than a year. No exercise facilities exist and their clothes are worn out because the system only provides clothing for convicted persons.
Then let us not forget the mysterious detention and deportation of the Pakistani, Mahmoud Rashid. Five years have gone past without word of his whereabouts.
Our Government has yet to account for this action.
The Bill of Rights, is selectively applied it seems.
If you look at the Israel palestine situation you’ll realise that the raibow nation idea is not an illusion. The raibow is bigger than Malema, he’ll come and go. Kill the boer is an old ANC song, it is not new. The real danger to SA democracy is not Malema but is the SA’s whites persitent greed and lack of desire to share the wealth(intellectual and material) and uplift fellow citizens. This results in resentment and it is a perfect breeding ground for dictators who will exploit this for their own gain. So my advice to you is start by just going into the township and helping kids with Maths on saturdays. Adopt a group of black kids that you can inspire and metor to become better citizens so that the likes of Malema will not take advantage of them. The government will not do it. Only you and I can.
“The rainbow nation illusion has long been dispelled…”
Sez who??? Its actually your opinion thats about as much use to us as one of those 8-inch floppy disks….outdated and irrelevant…LOL
Seriously, the “Rainbow Nation” that Mandela envisioned is being forged today, by our new generation of kids will not be under the heavy apartheid indoctrination that your generation was subjected to – a negative mindset reflected by a media that wishes to create hysteria through a campaign of negativity and misinformation.
” one cop dedicated to every eight foreign visitors”
Playing around with numbers again I see…well don’t let the facts get in the way!
And oh, as a whinger, surely the idea of having more cops in a country is a good one given that for generations, our police force was created to protect only the interests of the white minority.
“The return of state repression” – is this another euphemism for “fear of black government” or could it be that in the minds of the previously privileged a successful black government simply does not compute!
well ja, they learned from the best didn’t they.
@Harris
Danny Jordaan hopes that the number of overseas tourists, outside of Africa will reach 300,000 although the present estimate is 200,000. Deloitte Touche believe, depending which countries go through to the semis and final, an overseas contingent 0f 323,000. Hence a cop to tourist ratio of 1:8.
The whole WC farce is starting to look like “through the looking glass”, if you ask me. If the facts are scrutinised, we, the tax-paying South Africans were hoodwinked to stage a mad hatter style tea party for Blatter, the ANC and the Chinese. Every single bit of paraphernalia that we are forced to buy, to “show support” for our country, proudly bears the label “Made in China”.
Uncle Blatter told Daddy Zuma to make sure we behave or he won’t visit. So like with any person that don’t like the host’s kids, we are being told to go and play outside (the perimeter). The one thing Daddy Zuma forgot, which is surprising since his biological children numbers in the 30′s, is that if the children does not see why they should be shunted aside for an unwanted visitor and punishment for transgressions aren’t allowed, the only other way to ensure the children’s cooperation is to bribe them. He did try the halfhearted one of the stadiums being there for us to play in afterwards but that just won’t wash with me, being a difficult child. I know I will have to keep the stadium clean and fixed, but will never play there.
So, Daddy Zuma, seriously, tell us, what is in it for us if we behave while uncle Blat and the Chinese merchants visit? Will we get some bona fide jobs afterwards? Will you built us a school? Hospital?
@ X Cepting
X Ceptionally well X Pressed!
Papa-Zuma’s plea ‘Just for four weeks, be good’ is as futile as it is puerile and infantile.
Mind you, perhaps,as the ANC Yowling Louts would have it, we are taking Papa-Zuma’s latest inanity ‘out of context.’
Perhaps he meant: ‘Be good at what you’re good at.’ (And we all know there’s only one thing that he’s good at!
Our country is not being run by the ANC. It is being run into the ground by the lying, cheating, stealing, self-enriching, incapable and inept goons who they put in as ‘leaders’,and who put themselves and their cronies ahead of any other consideration.
Like the W.C, the time has arrived for the ANC and its ANC Yowling Louts to be given the boot!