In his poetry book, a South African poet writes,
Because we know not the clouds
The rain is a stranger to us
Rivers are flowing past us
Our buckets are empty, we thirst
Gardens are dry and dying;
Yet it continues to rain on us
In his rendition, he interprets rain in the absence of clouds as a post liberation phenomenon where 'the liberators' are able to let 'breeds and creeds' of rain to fall on 'their people' without clouds. They create conditions of thirst and drought to justify the rains they let to fall on society. They hype hate, fear, despair and hopelessness so that their 'rain' without clouds is justifiable from this context as an incentive to declare correct.
In other writings, the poet warns of the abundance of overrated benevolence by leaders in politics and the judiciary. He warns of overreach by both into each other's spaces. He cites the inability of those in the judiciary to disengage with the politics surrounding the matters brought before them for adjudication. He also laments the inexperience of being governed in 'rule of law' society by members of the judiciary as persons outside the green cloaks they are wearing.
He cites in many a writings about the dangers of a colluding cognitive elite when it is monolithic on a matter affecting society. Their consensus on a matter requiring the sharpest eyes of lady justice can be a trigger for the establishment of a dictatorship whose normative basis might amount to elite collusion to suppress those outside the consenting establishment. In the matter that led to the arrest of Jacob Zuma, and the subsequent 'establishment defined' insurrection, the consensus seems to be yielding 'cognitive agreement' and 'media consent' that the country needs a 'strong army', a 'highly centralised intelligence service', and a 'strong police force'. The question is, really? Any answer proffered must have clouds.
Whist these consensuses, agreements and collusions harden as a normative context to celebrate the arrest of Jacob Zuma, the authority of international instruments in the firmament justifying the greatness of our constitution seem to have burst open the potential irrationalism that undergirded the entire facade celebrated as the epitome of our 'rule of law'. In his request for a review of the court judgement, Jacob Zuma created an opportunity for our judiciary to return into the green cloaks as a proverbial 'sober community'. The instrument, as an institution of judicial leadership, is now leading the individuals in our judiciary to consider if their judgement can pass the test of being an institution through which leadership on such matters can be given beyond them. They can redeem themselves, now or never.
Submissions by law scholars, articles written on the correctness of the detention of Jacob Zuma without trial, and many other 'sober voices' that agree with the 'civil guilt' but differ with the 'criminal sentence' of Jacob Zuma, have found their way into the scrapping for precedence citations of judges. These scrapes have brought to the attention of the court its obligations to international instruments on detention without trial. Truth is, there is no evidence of a trial that preceded the detention, save for the absconding of a contempt case.
It is these international instruments that might recreate the clouds which were absent as the 'rain' was let loose on Zuma. The judges have now requested responses on the justice issues of the arrest outside the civil guilt and criminalisation of a conscientious act by an otherwise political being. What is unfolding might well be the beginning of the reversal of an almost concretising dictatorship form which is so brave and relentless in its charge that the gains of the liberation struggle might be in reverse mode.
Without passing any judgement on the NASREC victors, power has the capacity to blur the judgement of even the most meticulous in sensing oppression. In fact, history records as the most oppressive those that were oppressed, because oppressing others is a normality they lived inside for the longest time. Psychologists have also found a direct correlation between abusive persons and the backgrounding of abuse they lived. In South Africa, the success of its capitalist template has roots of the existence of a racial caste, anyone that affirms this caste becomes a natural enemy to the crankshafts driving the capitalist machine. Our 'markets' might have factored this caste condition as a variable on how 'they' behave.
As this rain that fell on Jacob Zuma is falling and storming, we had been digging the furrows to direct its waters away from us. The media complexes have developed narratives to make us see it has rained but never interrogate the clouds. We were made to thirst only for 'consensual' justice, and never true justice. As the responses come through let us hope those that manufactured consent find an opportunity to educate us and themselves of the ultimate tolerance of our constitutional democracy to human rights, however inconvenient and annoying.
🤷🏽♂️A ndzo ti vulavulela
🤷🏽♂️Be ngisho nje
🤷🏽♂️E se maar net
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