ANC-regime
is turning South Africa into its infamous Camp Quatro exile torture camp: with
294 deaths in police custody last year...
11:47 Mar 5 2013 Luthuli House, Johannesburg
After twenty years under the ANC-regime all of South Africa is being
turned into the ANC's nfamous Camp Quatro torture camp where there is no
accountability for cruelties, torture and terror: Paul Trewhela writes- 1 March
2013 - "After nearly 20 years of ANC government, Camp Quatro was the
'model' of the ANC in exile, under the reign of terror of its secret police
force, Mbokodo ("the grindstone."" Immune to demands for
individual accountability of office-holders to their members, an arrogant,
self-serving political elite responded in that period with ongoing harsh
repression.
As confirmed in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (1998), the killings of dissidents by Mbokodo (the grindstone) took
place at will, while ANC members who refused to conform found themselves
detained without trial for years at a time in Quatro prison camp in northern
Angola, often enduring daily beatings and torture. This was the model for the
licensed killings at Ficksburg, Marikana and now Daveyton," writes Paul
Trewhela.
"SA's electoral system has left ordinary citizens powerless to stop
abuses: - Paul Trewhela writes: "After the death in police hands in
Daveyton this week of the Mozambican taxi driver, Mido Macia (27) - hauled
handcuffed behind a moving police van before the eyes of the world on
television news services yesterday - South Africa is today faced with the
threat of a Quatro state, with an unaccountable police force and an
unaccountable political system.
Worldwide media interest in the violent death of model Reeva Steenkamp at the
hands of her Olympic hero boyfriend, Oscar Pistorius, was succeeded yesterday
by the front page of the Daily Sun, with its headline "Murdered by the
South African Police Service", waved by angry citizens in
Daveyton.Horrific footage has been shown on television, iPads and cellphones
world-wide.It is now reported across the world that, according to Amnesty
International, there were 294 deaths in police custody in South Africa in
the 12 months before March 2010.
This appalling statistic relates to a period more than two years before
the police killings at Marikana last August, preceded as these were by the
killing by police -again, on film - of Andries Tatane at Ficksburg in April
2011. Inmates at Daveyton police station have alleged that Macia was beaten to
death by police in the cells, after having been dragged handcuffed to the back
of a police van for several hundreds of metres. He was found dead in his cell
on Tuesday.
Moses Dlamini, spokesman of the Independent Police Investigation Directorate,
stated: "We are shocked by the footage which has been released."
Trewhela: "Instead of the civic and democratic constitutional system that
South Africans and the world believed had been set in place by the reforms set
in place under guidance of Emeritus President Mandela following his release
from prison in 1990, the country now finds itself trapped in an unaccountable
political system, with unaccountable police killings."
The manhandling and murderous abuse of Mido Macia this week in full public view
gives point to increasing calls by eminent public figures in South Africa for a
reform of the political system, so as to bring politicians under control of
local communities.
Three of the most recent demands for electoral reform were made by Dr Mamphela
Ramphele, announcing the formation of a new political party, Agang, which will
place electoral reform at the head of its political programme (18 February); by
the Cape Town-based political commentator and former Oxford academic, RW
Johnson, in a long article on Politicsweb (17 February); and by the Catholic
archbishop of Durban, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier (27 January).
In her address announcing the formation of Agang, "Rekindling the South
African dream", Mamphela Ramphele stated that South Africa was being
"fundamentally undermined by a massive failure of governance. Our rallying
cry during the struggle for freedom was for the people to govern, yet the
system of choosing Members of Parliament from lists drawn up by political
parties gives disproportionate power to party bosses at the expense of ordinary
citizens. We should be able to vote for the person in our own area we want to
represent us in Parliament, so we can hold them accountable for the electoral
promises they make.
"We want an MP for Marikana, an MP for De Doorns, and an MP for Sasolburg,
so if the people are unhappy and the MP is not responsive enough, they will be
voted out at the next election. South Africa's people are effectively being
prevented from governing by the country's electoral system. We will be working
with fellow citizens to launch a million signature campaign for electoral
reform. Electoral reform must be the first order of business of the post-2014
election parliament."
Just as there is no MP for Marikana, De Doorns or Sasolburg under the current
electoral law, so the citizens of Ficksburg and now Daveyton find themselves
powerless to insist on justice in the face of police lawlessness.
In his article, "The state of the opposition", RW Johnson has
similarly emphasised that "South Africa's bizarre electoral system ...
removes all accountability to voters from MPs and hands all power to the party
bosses", noting that more and more voices were being raised "against
our appalling electoral system."
In the same way, in an article in the Sunday Independent headed "Speaking
truth will set our country free", Cardinal Wilfrid Napier made a searching
criticism of the lack of democratic representation under what he descibed as
"party list system".
The principal problem with the list system, he wrote, is that "candidates
chosen to represent the electorate are failing in their task because they are
beholden to the party which can promote or demote them at will and without
reference to their performance in the eyes of those they are supposed to
serve."
It is high time, he added, that "the findings of the Slabbert Commission
[of 2003, into electoral reform] were dusted off, studied, debated and put into
practice."
Trewhela: "All the more urgently, after the shameless killing of Mido
Macia, should these sound and sober criticisms of an increasingly dictatorial
political system be 'studied, debated and put into practice,' as Cardinal
Napier has urged.
The alternative, already showing its flagrant brutality, is the Quatro state.
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308
