Mbeki the only 'third force': Qwelane in his weekly column in 2008

By Jon Qwelane

While the mainstream media downplayed Qwelane's gigantic role in South Africa's media sphere and beyond; we continue to immortalise him. This article appeared on News24 website on 26/05/2008. It was also published on his weekly column on the Sunday Sun newspaper the same week…

The horrifying xenophobic violence sweeping across vast tracts of our black communities has been as shocking as the government's useless, predictable and false theory of a so-called "third force" behind it all.

That excuse is as lame and tired as claiming that the alarming incidence of crime and the spread of Aids can be blamed on people of a criminal mindset and of loose morals only.

In every calamitous instance the answer is always one, and one only: government ineptitude and incompetence is the reason things are in such a sorry state. If there is any "third force" to blame, then that force is Thabo Mbeki and his bunch of equally incompetent ministers.

This week I drove around Ramaphosa informal settlement across the road from Reiger Park in Boksburg, and saw incensed residents rushing to and fro in search of their neighbours, the Zimbabwean and Mozambican immigrants.

The worrying factor about the search was that no goodwill was intended: the searchers had one desire only - to kill their hitherto good neighbours.

I got a good idea of who the so-called "third force" was when a middle-aged woman carrying a child stated quite loudly: "(Home affairs minister Nosiviwe) Mapisa-Nqakula says these illegal immigrants are welcome to stay because they have been invited. We did not invite them to stay in our country; they are not welcome. If Mapisa-Nqakula says they have been invited here and are welcome, then she must take them to her home because here we do not want them."

Chillingly, Mapisa-Nqakula's husband, police minister Charles Nqakula, had barely 48 hours earlier opined that the violence was "not a crisis" - a favourite but false Mbekism - and his rationale was that if it were a crisis, it would be spreading to other areas! The "third force" is the (Mbeki) government, finish and klaar.

Fast asleep

Had Nqakula been fast asleep a mere two weeks earlier when Mamelodi, right on his Union Buildings doorstep, erupted in an orgy of hate and violence? Was the outbreak in Alexandra not a sign the malaise was spreading and was therefore, in his terms, a crisis?

Anyway, after his infamous "not a crisis" statement, Diepsloot erupted, rapidly followed by Thokoza, Tembisa, parts of central Joburg, the Diepkloof Baragwanath taxi terminus, Boksburg, and by this week it was still spreading.

The savagery of the image of a man slowly roasting to death, "necklaced" with his only worldly belongings - a mattress, duvet and some strapped to his back is haunting, more so that people joked about it.

It reminded me of the barbaric scenes in Kwanobuhle in Uitenhage in 1987, when I was the only journalist around to witness the first "necklacings" of alleged sell-outs.

The intensity and cruelty of such barbarism cannot be described in words. There is no word for the nauseating smell of burning human flesh, and the frightened and loud screams gradually reduced to moans and groans, while around the wretched victim the people dance, scream and hurl abuse.

It did not matter what the reasons for such barbarity were then, and it does not matter now: savagery and cruelty of that level simply dehumanise us all, and if this government does not see it as a crisis, then they deserve to be kicked out of office immediately.

Mindless

On Sunday morning I had a call from a friend who works in the intelligence services. He was telling me he was in Thokoza where "it is very bad, my brother", and just two hours later he called to tell me that Wattville township in Benoni was also very restless. Would the situation then compel Nqakula to describe it as a crisis?

I believe the trouble with our fat-cat cabinet ministers is simply that they are hopelessly out of touch with reality and with the people. They wouldn't be able to "organise a piss-up in a brewery".

Another thing that I have been told is also sensibly right: why would a foreigner selling apples and oranges be seen as "taking jobs away from locals"?

The government has frittered away the decency and dignity which Nelson Mandela brought to the post-1994 dispensation. They are now just a mindless gang of men and women who pale into frightful tikoloshes and morally bankrupt pygmies beside their own shadows; corruption, lying, ineptitude and hopeless incompetence are their trademarks.

The sooner Mbeki takes his blighted henchmen and women with him on his imminent exit, the better for us all.

  Jon Qwelane's column was published each week on News24, courtesy of Jon Qwelane and the editor of Sunday Sun, which originally carried the article