Ed Herbst: #RMF/#FMF and the Constitution
By Ed Herbst*
UCT is a high-quality university being shut down under threat of lawlessness from a minority who believe that violent crime should have no consequences. As usual, the majority of students suffer and those who bear the brunt of this lawlessness are the black poor, make no mistake. Only a strong counter-voice from the public and a concerted response from the highest levels of government, can stop the rot. – Jonathan Jansen on Facebook 19/9/2016
Why is it that students involved in burning, barricading and intimidation believe they are above censure? Calling for disciplinary action is not condoning police or security brutality, yet somewhere, somehow, a line must be drawn in the sand. It might well be an unpopular or politically incorrect position to take but how can universities afford not to? – Judith February Daily Maverick 20/9/2016
Last year British historian Professor Mary Beard described the demands of people like Ntokozo Qwabe that a statue of Cecil Rhodes be removed from Oriel College at Oxford University as "barking mad."
Qwabe's racially–motivated misogyny saw him deliberately humiliate a waitress earning R15 rand an hour to support her mother who was dying of cancer – because she was a white, and a woman in a subordinate position who was poorer than him. World-wide revulsion saw her being given about R140 000 which was raised in a crowd funding initiative.
His shining moment, though, came earlier this week when he led a group of RMF/FMF students – some of them so proud of what they were doing that they bravely covered their faces with scarves to disguise themselves – to disrupt lectures of law students studying for exams, physically threatening them with a stick as captured on this video clip.
He then boasted about the assault which clearly violates the concept of 'peacefully and unarmed' in section 17 of the Constitution:
"Everyone has the right, peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions."
Earlier that day the brave RMF/FMF warriors were at it again, humiliating a white woman who merely wanted to access the campus where her child was studying.
On the same day members of RMF/FMF assaulted a woman employed at the University of Stellenbosch with the clear intention of stealing her phone.
Abusive behaviour
There is nothing new in this abusive behaviour and Judge Rosheni Allie specifically mentions how the great hero of the Cape Times, Chumani Maxwele, in contravention of Section 17 of the Constitution, attacked a student who had had the temerity to access a section of the campus which Maxwele, in his arrogance and hubris, assumed he controlled.
She returns to this theme again and again in her judgment, the essence of which has been withheld from readers of the Cape Times:
- Before 10 am on the morning of 15 February 2016, a student walked under the duct tape that was used to cordon off the shack. An altercation ensued when twelfth respondent (Maxwele) physically pushed the student, on twelfth respondent's own admission, allegedly because according to twelfth respondent, the student failed to obey the cordoned off area as being off-limits.
- Students, staff and a person who dropped off a student were assaulted and verbally abused by protesters.
- The respondent's right to protest, demonstrate, assemble, picket and petition cannot serve as justification for destroying property, threatening to harm people and physically pushing a person who disagrees with their form of protest.
- Section 17 rights are qualified by the requirement of peaceful and legitimate forms of protest.
- It could not have been within the contemplation of the drafters of the Constitution that section 17 be used to justify hooliganism, vandalism or any other unlawful and illegitimate misconduct.
- When protesters who resort to vandalism, physical and verbal abuse, seek refuge in section 17 of the Constitution, they effectively seek to erode the legitimacy of the hard won freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.
- Twelfth respondent (Maxwele) dismisses altercations between protesters and other students as "small scuffles of no significance." In adopting this cavalier approach to physical altercations, twelfth respondent is treating with disdain, the right of students not allied to his cause to protest.
- It is apposite to remind the respondents of the sentiments expressed by the late State President, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela on 20 April 1964 in his opening address in the dock:
"…I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony with equal opportunities."
That passage would be rejected with contempt by the thugs who invaded the law lecture at UCT, they would trash Mandela as a sell-out anyway.
Intimidation tactics
One of the intimidation tactics that the Fees Must Fall movement has very successfully implemented is to not to allow distinguished academics like Adam Habib to stand by forcing them to sit. They are ordered to "humble" themselves.
Only Gwede Mantashe refused to humiliate himself in this way and he is to be commended for that.
Nobody is immune from this coercion – even passing motorists are ordered to "humble" themselves.
It is now common cause that the education provided at South African schools by the ANC in the past 20 years is inferior to what it was under apartheid.
One sees this in the intellectual rigour which RMF/FMF have displayed in the past year of protests at UCT and two examples will suffice.
Such was their lack of historical knowledge that when, in April last year the people who routinely chanted "One settler, one bullet!" spray-painted the words "F**k black exclusion" and "F**k white people" on the war memorial at UCT they did not seem to realise that among the fallen whose memories were thus desecrated by them were the black soldiers who, with extraordinary fortitude, lost their lives in the sinking of the SS Mendi in February 1917.
One recalls the voice of one of them, Isaac Williams Wauchope:
"Be quiet and calm, my countrymen. What is happening now is what you came to do…you are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers…Swazis, Pondos, Basotho…so let us die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war-cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies."
One settler, one bullet indeed.
Twenty years of ANC education manifested itself again when, in order to "burn whiteness" as part of their "decolonising" project the RMF/FMF vandals destroyed paintings by the black artist Keresemose Richard Baholo.
Historic antecedents
Are there not historic antecedents for this "decolonisation" project?
In 1972 Idi Amin started a process to "de-indianise" Uganda by giving the country's Indians three months to vacate the country. Ugandans flocked to the businesses thus vacated and took what goods were left. When they returned later they found that the shelves, to their dismay, remained stubbornly empty.
Fast forward to May this year and students arrive at the Sanlam Auditorium at the University of Johannesburg to study only to find that as part of the "decolonising" process the building had been gutted by arsonists – this being a more successful project than the UCT one where all that was managed was to burn a vehicle used by the UCT biology department to assist the rural poor in the Northern Cape, to firebomb the office of the vice chancellor Dr Max Price and to gut the Jammie Shuttle bus which is used to transport students who are too poor to afford cars, to and from campus.
If, at first, you don't succeed, try and try again and so an attempt was made to decolonise the law library at Howard College at UKZN by setting it alight.
Ntokozo Qwabe, the man threatening law students at UCT with what he claims is his "cultural weapon" just before their exams and driving them out of the lecture theatre is a co-founder of the Rhodes Must Fall movement.
During his years at Oxford University his studies were never disrupted by masked thugs but this is what he visited upon students at UCT.
Threatened violence
In his threatened violence at UCT he treated our Section 17 rights with contempt but the RMF/FMF contempt for the Constitution also extends to section 16 of the Bill of Rights.
Section 16 of the Bill of Rights provides that:
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes:
(a) Freedom of the press and other media;
(b) Freedom to receive and impart information or ideas;
(c) Freedom of artistic creativity; and
(d) Academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.
(2) The right in subsection (1) does not extend to:
(a) Propaganda for war;
(b) Incitement of imminent violence; or
(c) Advocacy of hatred that is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes incitement to cause harm.
Qwabe's actions at UCT directly contravene section 1 (d) of the Constitution relating to academic freedom.
Furthermore, right from the start, the RMF campaign of "burning whiteness" specifically advocates hatred based on race and ethnicity as defined in section 2 (c) of the Bill of Rights as outlined above.
This is perhaps not surprising.
In Rwanda, 800 000 people were murdered within a hundred days because, as 'the other' and 'them' they were vilified on the broadcasts of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines as 'cockroaches'.
Media freedom
But what about our hard won media freedom, as defined in the Bill of Rights.
Have a look at the photograph of this member of the RMF/FMF movement in an article about how reporters and photographers covering their violence have been racially abused, assaulted and had their property stolen.
Like Ntokozo Qwabe who is at his bravest when humiliating people on the basis of ethnicity, gender and income, he is giving the finger to you, me and the Constitution.
Ordinary folk, though, are not short of courage and humour in the face of such openly-expressed ethnic hatred which has gained no traction with the majority of South Africans.
At 2:23 of this Facebook video by Josh Drizzy Bergh of Touws River makes the following point in Afrikaans and, shortly after it was posted, it had more than a quarter of a million hits.
How on earth must "fees fall" if you vandalise what you, your children and the children still to come must use? The manner in which you are acting is absolutely wrong and absurd."
It is imperative, however, that at all times you must manifest your sartorial rectitude. We thus had the brave MK veterans, some of whom were too young to have inhaled the smell of cordite, rushing off to Mr Price to buy the requisite camouflage fatigues and matching Crocs before defending Luthuli House with their buttocks or anything else available – against fellow ANC members…
In similar vein, the brave RMF/FMF members at UCT, spitting in the face of Mandela's philosophy of national building through reconciliation, sported T-shirts which combined the concepts of white ethnicity and fornication.
The white students at UCT responded, so I am told, by pointing out to the wearers of these T-shirts that they would profoundly benefit from such an endeavour …"Because it's the best one you will ever have".
- Ed Herbst is a retired veteran journalist who writes in his own capacity.