Elections 2021: Beware the politics of hate

In a WhatsApp video, a man wearing an ActionSA T-shirt shouts obscenities at undocumented foreign nationals, telling them to f**k off.

It is the politics of hate, where some are treated as less than human. Unchecked it could lead to trouble. Rwanda’s 1994 genocide began with the dehumanising of “others”.

The get-out message is in line with ActionSA tweets: if foreigners are “illegal” or “undocumented” they are fair game.

Last week, the Constitutional Court found otherwise. Reporting on a ruling against operations instigated by former mayor Herman Mashaba in Johannesburg, The Citizen quoted the court as saying: “While the raids were conducted under the guise of clamping down on violent crime, they were, in truth, aimed at exerting pressure on residents to vacate the ‘hijacked’ buildings and rounding up undocumented migrants.”

Lawyers representing the evictees said the “court found the raids of the residents’ homes were egregious and showed no consideration for the residents’ rights to privacy and dignity.

The raids were used by officials as a way to unjustifiably violate the rights of the most vulnerable members of society.

The Constitutional Court found that far from being a way of restoring public order, the raids were conducted with an ulterior purpose: “not only to seek out and arrest undocumented immigrants but also to frighten and harass the applicants into leaving their homes”.

So, according to our highest court, you cannot violate people’s rights on the basis that they do not have correct documentation. This ruling contradicts ActionSA’s stance. Don’t expect any apology. Their spin doctors think they have it under control. Just as they did with the bizarre business of ActionSA’s name not appearing on ballots for Monday’s elections.

Negligence which saw ActionSA sign off ballots excluding its name but not its logo are transformed into suggestions of persecution.

The truth is also twisted in Mashaba’s reinterpretation of how he became an instrument of the racist, pro-land-grabbing EFF. We are told he was forced into the relationship by the DA and did his best to keep the EFF on board for important council votes.

Compromise is indeed necessary in many political situations but to pretend he could not act in any other way is existential bad faith. We always have choices. Mashaba made poor choices.

I have accused Mashaba of being too soft on corruption around the EFF and the IFP because he needed their votes. These two parties are cited in documentation I submitted for forensic investigation. They are accused of collusion to exclude white people from Johannesburg Roads Agency contracts, for example.

Nor has Mashaba shaken off the allegation that, under his watch, the EFF scored hundreds of millions from fleet contracts, where failure to deliver resulted in chaos at Pikitup, JMPD, and Emergency Services, among others.

Load shedding close to election day will be bad for the ANC, despite misleading attempts by the mayor to give the appearance of “rejecting” Eskom’s strictures.

But if the electoral beneficiaries include hatemongers, dark days of a different sort loom.

Vote wisely.