Mbeki+and+Co+reduce+SA+to+state+of+fear,+Malala,+S+Times



=Deafening silence as Mbeki and Co reduce South Africa to a state of fear=


 * Justice Malala, Sunday Times, 14 October 2007**

I am angry and I am afraid. I am deeply afraid for my country.

The sound of silence has fallen over our country while the government of President Thabo Mbeki, in its anger and its shame over its numerous failures and acts of deceit, uses state security apparatus to go after every man and woman who dares to speak truth to power.

While all this happens, the many good men and women in Cabinet, in government, in business, in the trade unions and in civil society, keep quiet. Where are the good men and women of the United Democratic Front? Where are the many good men and women of the SA Council of Churches, such as Brigalia Bam?

They are silent. They are in agreement while the democracy they fought for is abused to protect the increasingly paranoid and discredited presidency of Mbeki and to settle petty personal scores.

We should all hang our heads in shame.

I write this having just heard that the editor of this newspaper, Mondli Makhanya, and its head of investigations, Jocelyn Maker, will be arrested this week. Their crime is that they published a story alleging that the Minister of Health, Dr Manto Tshabalala- Msimang, screamed at hospital staff and drank huge amounts of booze while in hospital for a shoulder operation.

The minister, the custodian of our nation’s health, has denied none of these allegations. This newspaper also published allegations that Tshabalala- Msimang was a drunk and a thief. This story has not been refuted by the minister nor any other government official.

Instead, the minister of Health has abused public funds by getting two of her generals to publish wasteful, unintelligible advertisements in various newspapers to allege that it is a crime to access personal medical records. No one has said a word about the public interest. Instead, the case was handed to the Western Cape’s top detective.

The imminent arrest of Makhanya and Maker is nothing new in the ignominy that is now the Mbeki regime. It has long been alleged that Jacob Zuma, the ANC’s deputy president, was investigated by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) under Bulelani Ngcuka, husband of the current deputy president, because he dared dream of succeeding Mbeki while the President did not wish it to be so.

I have always dismissed this allegation as conspiratorial bunkum. I am not so sure anymore. Where once I would have asked Zuma’s supporters to show me the evidence, I am forced to ask Mbeki and his cronies to show me the evidence that they did not indeed set the Scorpions on Zuma’s trail.

Of course, the worst abuse of state apparatus is playing itself out today while we consider the fact that Makhanya and Maker will be arrested, prosecuted and perhaps even jailed. That abuse is the refusal by Mbeki to let the law take its course and have National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, an Mbeki confidante, arrested by the Scorpions.

Mbeki went to extraordinary lengths to stop the current NPA head, Vusi Pikoli, from arresting Selebi on corruption-related charges, despite a warrant of arrest and search warrants being issued by magistrates and judges.

But Mbeki went further. For more than a week he and his office lied to the public and the parliamentary opposition about the existence of such a warrant. These past two weeks they have been going to extraordinary lengths to cover up this outrage.

The question has to be asked: is this the South Africa of Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli? Did the heroes of June 1976 and the veterans of the fires of the ’80s lose out on schooling and normal lives to be in a country where journalists are prosecuted as happened under apartheid?

The Mbeki regime has been an unmitigated disaster from the onset.

But ineptitude — ranging from the failure to deal with HIV/Aids and rampant crime to consorting with criminals such as Robert Mugabe — is different from pure, unadulterated corruption such as we see unfolding today in the Pikoli saga and now the persecution of Makhanya and Maker.

These are steps into the worlds of Mobutu Sese Seko and Mugabe. Only 13 years into our democracy, Mbeki’s Stalinist learnings are fully on show: journalists and editors arrested and jailed; opponents jailed on trumped-up charges; everyone in government living in fear that they are being followed, watched and bugged.

How long before a bullet arrives for a pesky journalist or Jacob Zuma? Remember, we used to say Mbeki would not interfere with the judiciary. We were wrong.

The worst part of this whole outrage is that Makhanya and Maker could go to jail. They will go to jail while good men and women stand and watch. They will be jailed while Mandela and many others stand and watch while the country they fought for so valiantly falls deeper into the hands of a corrupt and power- mad coterie at the Union Buildings.

I am angry and I am afraid. But mostly I am ashamed. Ashamed and embarrassed to call myself South African. Ashamed that in this country we all keep quiet while evil is so routinely perpetuated by a bunch we ourselves put into power.

When, one day, we open our eyes and our mouths, our children will not have a country to live in. This country will be a Zimbabwe because we allowed Mbeki and his cronies to rape it.


 * From: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=586595**

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