WELCOME to Tweet of the Week. Every Friday, I use this column to hand out an award to one person who has tweeted something of significance. There are no strict rules, only that the tweet in question must offer an important insight, define a debate (notorious or otherwise) or mark an occasion.
This week the Tweet of the Week goes to: @johnbrand11 for:
Profile: John Brand is one of the pre-eminent conflict mediators in South Africa. His profile on Bowman Gilfillan, where he is a consultant focusing on employment and alternative dispute resolution, states that he "specialises in dispute resolution and the training of negotiators, mediators and arbitrators". His Twitter profile concentrates on labour relations and has just more than 500 followers.
Citation: This week national police commissioner Riah Phiyega told Parliament’s portfolio committee on police that the South African Police Service (SAPS) required a R3.3bn capital injection to bolster its public order policing units.
The request was a response to the increase in the number of protests. Of the 13,000 protests last year (that it translates to about 36 per day), 1,907 were classified as violent (five violent protests per day). The police simply cannot cope. Elias Mawela, divisional commissioner in charge of public order policing, said, "The stability of the republic is essential, especially in the run-up to the local government elections coming in 2016."
Much has been written about service delivery protests. There is a strong case to be made, as I have argued elsewhere, that were it not for spatial apartheid, the country faces all the ingredients for a revolution. But we have no Tahrir Square, no geographic hub where discontent can coalesce. People are dispersed and thus conflict is never concentrated. It is sporadic and displaced. It is ironic indeed that apartheid should serve the African National Congress government’s interests on this front.
Nevertheless, Mawela is right. Stability is at stake. Public protests are growing, not declining and, historically, they peak before an election. Even more so around local elections, which bring to the fore municipal issues far more than national elections do. If you thought 2014 was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. When the SAPS itself evokes phrases like "national stability" that is cause for concern.
But it is insightful to view the issue through Brand’s lens. Any public protest is the penultimate form of a breakdown in the relationship between a state and its citizens. The ultimate form is when it actually arrests and prosecutes them. That, for all intents and purposes, is the end point. If the SAPS needs R3.3bn to manage a crisis, you can only imagine how much local government itself needs to avert the crisis in the first place.
This is the thing about so much analysis in South Africa today. Because crisis is so omnipresent, so intricately woven into public life, from Eskom to the Presidency, we have shifted our focus from the cause of chaos to managing its consequences. Emergency infrastructure spend, public order units, the outcome of court cases, the delivery of text books, credit downgrades, commissions of inquiry, bail-outs, golden handshakes, auditor-general reports. These are all means to measure the extent of a crisis.
We have become a nation of experts at gauging the extent of chaos. But in pre-empting it, we are amateurs. And our budgets reflect this. It would be interesting to collate the total cost of emergency measures taken to counter a crisis over the past 10 years, as opposed those that exist to re-enforce, expand and improve existing systems.
It is true that, in many cases, these response mechanisms do necessitate some introspection as to how things broke down. But the truth is, if these are the things that define public debate, the emphasis is on responding to chaos, not avoiding it. One doesn’t have the capacity to improve systems and decision-making if all one’s energy is poured into trying to contain the damage caused by systematic maladministration.
So it worth considering carefully the ingredients of a public protest. To trace back its origins. Yes, some of them are opportunistic. But the vast majority are the consequence of sustained neglect. Think of all the mechanisms involved that are ostensibly designed to negate any such problem, from ward councillors to the municipality, to political parties, to ratepayers’ associations, to community forums, to provincial and even national institutions — all purportedly dedicated to resolving such disputes.
A violent public protest is a litmus test for democratic failure. It is the informal, often illegal, response to weak systems. In this way it is the imposition of chaos on order. And our analysis is chaotic in turn.
The National Development Plan (NDP) is interesting in part because it has split the alliance. Despite its shortcomings, the NDP is a noble venture, held up by political inertia. But it is worth asking to what degree it could be implemented even if it was uniformly accepted. Many of its proposals assume a democratic order that functions properly. The reality is, in many portfolios, one would first have to stem the bleeding before introducing long-term solutions. South Africa needs emergency surgery, not facial reconstruction.
While the NDP does offer responses to current crises, its assumption is that the basic fundamentals hold up. And here one really does mean basic. For example, that the plan has actually been read and understood. It would be interesting to test members of Parliament on the NDP — to quiz them on its contents. Say 100 multiple choice questions. What do you think the result would be? And that is before you get to the provinces or local government. This kind of problem is replicated at every level and in many different ways.
Perhaps the ultimate question is what crisis response means for South Africa’s long term. If, for example, public order policing is able to stem the tide, then what? South Africa would be left with a disproportionately large police force and no job to address. And we know that reducing our public service is the last thing this government is prepared to do. That situation itself would have consequences, as all emergency measures do when their mandate expires.
These are all things to think about. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have the time or the space.
Picture: GALLO IMAGES/DIE SON/WILLIAM McKINTOSH
WELCOME to Tweet of the Week. Every Friday, I use this column to hand out an award to one person who has tweeted something of significance. There are no strict rules, only that the tweet in question must offer an important insight, define a debate (notorious or otherwise) or mark an occasion.
This week the Tweet of the Week goes to: @johnbrand11 for:
Profile: John Brand is one of the pre-eminent conflict mediators in South Africa. His profile on Bowman Gilfillan, where he is a consultant focusing on employment and alternative dispute resolution, states that he "specialises in dispute resolution and the training of negotiators, mediators and arbitrators". His Twitter profile concentrates on labour relations and has just more than 500 followers.
Citation: This week national police commissioner Riah Phiyega told Parliament’s portfolio committee on police that the South African Police Service (SAPS) required a R3.3bn capital injection to bolster its public order policing units.
The request was a response to the increase in the number of protests. Of the 13,000 protests last year (that it translates to about 36 per day), 1,907 were classified as violent (five violent protests per day). The police simply cannot cope. Elias Mawela, divisional commissioner in charge of public order policing, said, "The stability of the republic is essential, especially in the run-up to the local government elections coming in 2016."
Much has been written about service delivery protests. There is a strong case to be made, as I have argued elsewhere, that were it not for spatial apartheid, the country faces all the ingredients for a revolution. But we have no Tahrir Square, no geographic hub where discontent can coalesce. People are dispersed and thus conflict is never concentrated. It is sporadic and displaced. It is ironic indeed that apartheid should serve the African National Congress government’s interests on this front.
Nevertheless, Mawela is right. Stability is at stake. Public protests are growing, not declining and, historically, they peak before an election. Even more so around local elections, which bring to the fore municipal issues far more than national elections do. If you thought 2014 was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. When the SAPS itself evokes phrases like "national stability" that is cause for concern.
But it is insightful to view the issue through Brand’s lens. Any public protest is the penultimate form of a breakdown in the relationship between a state and its citizens. The ultimate form is when it actually arrests and prosecutes them. That, for all intents and purposes, is the end point. If the SAPS needs R3.3bn to manage a crisis, you can only imagine how much local government itself needs to avert the crisis in the first place.
This is the thing about so much analysis in South Africa today. Because crisis is so omnipresent, so intricately woven into public life, from Eskom to the Presidency, we have shifted our focus from the cause of chaos to managing its consequences. Emergency infrastructure spend, public order units, the outcome of court cases, the delivery of text books, credit downgrades, commissions of inquiry, bail-outs, golden handshakes, auditor-general reports. These are all means to measure the extent of a crisis.
We have become a nation of experts at gauging the extent of chaos. But in pre-empting it, we are amateurs. And our budgets reflect this. It would be interesting to collate the total cost of emergency measures taken to counter a crisis over the past 10 years, as opposed those that exist to re-enforce, expand and improve existing systems.
It is true that, in many cases, these response mechanisms do necessitate some introspection as to how things broke down. But the truth is, if these are the things that define public debate, the emphasis is on responding to chaos, not avoiding it. One doesn’t have the capacity to improve systems and decision-making if all one’s energy is poured into trying to contain the damage caused by systematic maladministration.
So it worth considering carefully the ingredients of a public protest. To trace back its origins. Yes, some of them are opportunistic. But the vast majority are the consequence of sustained neglect. Think of all the mechanisms involved that are ostensibly designed to negate any such problem, from ward councillors to the municipality, to political parties, to ratepayers’ associations, to community forums, to provincial and even national institutions — all purportedly dedicated to resolving such disputes.
A violent public protest is a litmus test for democratic failure. It is the informal, often illegal, response to weak systems. In this way it is the imposition of chaos on order. And our analysis is chaotic in turn.
The National Development Plan (NDP) is interesting in part because it has split the alliance. Despite its shortcomings, the NDP is a noble venture, held up by political inertia. But it is worth asking to what degree it could be implemented even if it was uniformly accepted. Many of its proposals assume a democratic order that functions properly. The reality is, in many portfolios, one would first have to stem the bleeding before introducing long-term solutions. South Africa needs emergency surgery, not facial reconstruction.
While the NDP does offer responses to current crises, its assumption is that the basic fundamentals hold up. And here one really does mean basic. For example, that the plan has actually been read and understood. It would be interesting to test members of Parliament on the NDP — to quiz them on its contents. Say 100 multiple choice questions. What do you think the result would be? And that is before you get to the provinces or local government. This kind of problem is replicated at every level and in many different ways.
Perhaps the ultimate question is what crisis response means for South Africa’s long term. If, for example, public order policing is able to stem the tide, then what? South Africa would be left with a disproportionately large police force and no job to address. And we know that reducing our public service is the last thing this government is prepared to do. That situation itself would have consequences, as all emergency measures do when their mandate expires.
These are all things to think about. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have the time or the space.
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