There is an interesting, and yet revealing, debate or discourse which is concretising the fault lines of the divisions at the core of our constitutional democracy. Cabinet, the apex institution embedding our national executive authority is sending different messages of what happened in the aftermath of Jacob Zuma's arrest. If the beginning of wisdom is indeed the naming of things right, there are definitely two strands of wisdom in the characterisation of the immediate post-Zuma arrest events.
In psychology there is a now developed field explaining human behaviour, including performance, called neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). NLP claims that how we communicate or characterise situations is determining on our response to what we see. It claims that naming of events and situations define the basis of our entire relationship with such. In a rendition on the importance of concepts, Steven Moudley argues that conceptual understanding better equips humanity to participate in its world.
There are further findings that concepts or terminology opens up perspectives. It is through concepts that a significant shift in perception or paradigm can be seen in society; it is through concepts that previously held interrelatedness can be exposed; it is through concepts that we can imbed in our minds what would be difficult to unlearn; and, it is through concepts that collective human solidarity can be built against a situation or event. The diversity of condition associated with politics, makes characterisation of situations by those in power to embody the general attitude of society towards what power understands it to be.
The concentration of state power that is vested in the hands of a head of state, especially one that enjoys unquestionable support from an otherwise monolithic fourth estate, creates in such a leader, a god-like power to name and characterise situations in the image of that leader's fears and insecurities. In a democracy that allows the plurality of views, and thus islands of executive authority power, the recharacterisation of events, including their rebuke, by sub-power centres such as the defence ministry can create spasms in the general flow of power with catastrophic implications to the stability of a democracy.
The debate on whether South Africa has been through an insurrection or riotous episode is not only a public relations disaster between the Minister of Defence and the Head of State, but an exposure of poverty in analysis at the centre of how our democracy is managed. The mix signals this gives to society, and indeed dangerously to the South African Army, including the security establishment, can only be a sign of a vulnerability at the centre of our national security management system. The refusal to characterise the immediate post-Zuma arrest events as an insurrection, maybe rightly so, by the Ministry of Defence manifests a fissure in the general response planning to quell what happened, and might be indicative to the late deployment of the army to troubled areas.
In a liberal democracy like South Africa is, the use of the military is a sacred affair. The centrality of the rule of law in government and governance makes any use of the army to be easily characterised as martial law. The characterisation therefore of situations should be guarded not to create sieves within which the high handedness of the military prowess of the state could be unleashed to manage power interests under the guise of a manufactured 'national security' threat.
It is in how conceptual consensus is created that consent can be manufactured on how to respond to situations. The politics within the governing party are fluid, and this makes those in control of state power to rely on that power to navigate the political quicksand their leadership rests upon, intra-party speaking. The characterisation as insurrection will, if unchecked, and accepted as an incontestable fact, create a context within which the army could be deployed for longer than required. It might also result in the constraint of an already COVID19 constrained free political activity, whose absence manifested itself in the haphazardness we saw in the recent looting and riots. It might hyper-sensitise the security establishment to be blurred in understanding genuine political discontent at the current leadership and 'insurrection'.
The insurrection mindset that might settle in an otherwise riot control under-capacitated security establishment, could resuscitate a trigger euphoria directed at those identifiable as instigators of the 'insurrection'. The unsettled decriminalisation of political discontent within the security establishment might find sieves of policing and intelligence abuse reminiscent of dictatorship in a election driven democracy. The COVID19 regulations, that are reminiscent of a martial law context, might find a near state of emergency traction, without a State of Emergency being declared.
The question is thus, why insurrection and not riots. What is an insurrection and what is a riot. Or rather what is it important for the governing party to have this characterised as an insurrection. Are there immediate political benefits. Why has the ministry of defence chosen to characterise it as not being an insurrection? Could her refusal be a window into the interior of the army on what is obtaining in the land?
In order to have a sober relationship with these questions we might need to start by unpacking what is an insurrection? What was insurrectionary about the post-Zuma arrest events? This I will leave for the next rendition, and am inviting contributions to the above questions.
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo tivulavulela
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
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