EFF statement on utterances by Minister of Police Bheki Cele
24 November 2020
The Economic Freedom Fighters notes the empty and grandstanding utterances made by Minister of Police Bheki Cele, in relation to the address made by the Commander in Chief Julius Malema at a community meeting in Mohokare Municipality, ward 6 in the Free State.
In what can only be described as hypocrisy and a performance of outrage, Bheki Cele and the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) have taken the Commander in Chiefs condemnation of police brutality against protesters out of context, to present an image of a threat to law-enforcement in the country from the EFF. It is a blatant lie and manipulation of the facts.
The EFF has long held a stance against police brutality in South Africa, since it was founded.
This can be traced back to our inception when we stood against the massacre of mineworkers in Marikana, who were shot and killed execution style by a South African Police Service that has an uncontrollable desire for the blood of black people. We stood against SAPS when they were brutalizing student activists who were making a genuine call for free education during the #FeesMustFall era. The Commander in Chief simply reiterated a long-held position that the patience of our people, with a police force that resembles that of the Apartheid State, is wearing thin.
As an organization, we have exhibited our respect for the rule of law, but our respect for the rule of law must never be mistaken for an endorsement of repression and the use of state apparatus to victimize those who take a stand against the state and injustice. It must be remembered that law-enforcement abused, tormented and killed black people during Apartheid, and all of their actions were within the realm of the law. It was accepted practice that state security agencies would abuse our people, and any retaliation to this repression was deemed illegal.
The Commander in Chief places the current crop of police within that context, as a group of men who regard themselves as superior and above the law, brutalizing our people should they dare take a stand against injustice. As the EFF, we do not recognize people who shoot at women from close-range, unleash violence on unthreatening civilians and treat black people differently and harsher than white citizens, as law enforcement. In the same spirit of the defiant generation of the 1980's, we reject completely a law-enforcement that thrives on the abuse of black people.
We therefore find it ironic that those who claim to have been part of a defiant generation that stood against state-brutality during Apartheid, suddenly want to tell us that lines have been crossed when a repressive machinery is confronted. We ask Bheki Cele what line has been crossed and who drew it? When was this line drawn?
Where was this line he speaks of when AndriesTatane was murdered by police? Where was his line when the mineworkers of Marikana were shot in cold-blood, and no one was held accountable? Where was the condemnation of the self-glorifying POPCRU when police were being shoved around like children at Senekal and Brackenfell by white racists?
The subjective morality of Bheki Cele and the toothless POPCRU must be rejected with the contempt it deserves. The EFF is an organization inspired by decades of resistance against colonialism, racism and all state-agencies that enforce the rule of a minority at the expense of a majority.
If the current regime makes the suppression of differing voices through guns, teargas and water cannons law, we will confront them directly. Police must never be regarded as immune to confrontation and activism, should they make it their duty to brutalize those who stand for justice.
We are therefore not fazed by Bheki Cele's comments and maintain that the EFF will strive for the defeat of racism and those who act as its security guards by any means necessary, in the same spirit of the defiant youth that rendered South Africa ungovernable in the 1980's.
We will pursue justice for all of those who were shot at and abused by police at Brackenfell and ensure they are held to account. We maintain that if the South African police behave like Apartheid police, and protect the interests of a white minority violently, they will be treated and responded to as such.
Issued by the EFF, 24 November 2020
