Now that almost everyone has expressed their views on the five-year jail sentence imposed on EFF leader Julius Malema for firing shots in the air at a party rally in 2018, it is time we discuss the fascination with guns and militarism in South African politics.
As a society, we have every right to be shocked, even outraged, by magistrate Twanet Olivier’s decision to impose a custodial sentence — not to mention the length of the prison term — for a crime that, in previous cases, hardly ever led to the imprisonment of the perpetrators.
That the original complainant in the matter is associated with a white nationalist movement that stands opposed to what Malema purports to represent is reason enough for some to suspect political motive.
However, now that the court has granted Malema’s legal team permission to challenge the sentence, let’s leave the matter to the higher courts to decide whether the magistrate acted within the ambit of the law or not, based on the evidence presented before her.
Whatever one’s views on the sentence, the fact is that the EFF leader got into this trouble by firing shots in the air from a semi-automatic rifle, hence risking the lives of anyone within striking distance of the bullets.
The incident happened at an EFF 2018 birthday rally in KuGompo City, which, to correct fellow columnist Peter Bruce in yesterday’s Sunday Times, was at the time ludicrously called “East London” even though the city is some 14,000km from England.
In court, Malema’s lawyers argued that the shots had harmed no one and that they were “celebratory”.
They didn’t explain, however, why a parliamentary political party founded some 20 years ago in a multi-party and constitutional democracy deemed it fitting to “celebrate” its birthday with a “gun salute”.
Reading up on the debates following the sentencing, I came across one argument that placed Malema’s 2018 actions in the context of the centuries-long anti-colonial struggles in this part of Africa we now call SA. The writer argued that weapons, from rudimentary spears to sophisticated rocket-propelled grenades, came to be associated with those struggles, and Malema’s actions, therefore, ought to be seen as part of acknowledging and celebrating SA’s armed anti-colonial heritage.
To state the obvious, we are not the only country to have engaged in anti-colonial wars. It can be argued that the history of 19th and 20th-century Africa is the history of anti-colonial and liberation wars.
In Southern Africa, no less than five countries spent much of the period between the late 1950s and 1980s engaged in armed guerrilla struggles to rid themselves of foreign domination and control.
Yet, you don’t get to see any MPs in a liberated Zimbabwe or democratic Namibia rocking up in their parliaments wearing military fatigues.
You never hear leaders of parliamentary parties, whether in government or opposition, in Mozambique or Angola giving themselves military titles such as “commissar”, “general” or “commander-in-chief”.
You don’t hear of breakaway political parties in Namibia, Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe calling themselves the Plan Party, FAPLA Party, FPLM Party and Zanla Party – all names of the armed wings of those countries’ now defunct liberation-struggle movements.
These countries all experienced guerrilla warfare on a scale that was never seen in urbanised SA, where conditions allowed mainly for armed military propaganda whose objective was to spark a mass urban popular uprising. So why is it that these countries’ politics aren’t dominated by military symbolism and an almost infantile obsession with guns, and ours are?
Is it because the liberation Struggle here never reached the stage of open civil war, and, therefore, some of our politicians are hankering for what could have been had the political leadership of yesteryear not settled with the Nats.
If so, how do we explain that some of those who seem to have now grown fond of military uniforms didn’t actually join the liberation armies when they were of age in the 1970s and 1980s?
Whatever the case may be, the reality is that this fascination with military symbolism and guns is not taking us as a country anywhere. It is potentially harmful as it glamorises guns and “military men” in a country that already has an unhealthy relationship with weapons and violence.
It is important to remind the current crop of politicians who are militaristically inclined that radicalism and militancy don’t always equate to militarism.
When the South African radicals of yesteryear took up arms, they did so reluctantly because, especially after the Sharpeville massacre, no other peaceful avenue was open to them. Even as they formed themselves into guerrilla groups, they always insisted that “politics guides the gun” and that the ultimate objective was democracy.
It is high time the infantile disorder of infatuation with guns and military uniforms becomes a thing of the past
— S'thembiso Msomi
Now that we live in a democracy, however imperfect, it is high time the infantile disorder of infatuation with guns and military uniforms becomes a thing of the past.
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