SACP strongly condemns acts of violence, criminality, looting;
4 September 2019
The South African Communist Party (SACP) strongly condemns the acts of violence, looting and other criminal activities perpetrated in the provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, as well as elsewhere in the country, regardless of the nationality of those involved and affected. Several shops belonging to foreign nationals, mostly, as well as South Africans, were looted in Gauteng Province and others burnt this week and the week before by lumpen elements. Others have used trucks to erect blockades in certain areas of our national roads infrastructure network in KwaZulu-Natal Province, thus clearly engaging in acts of sabotage. There can be no justification whatsoever for these and other criminal acts, regardless of what the underlying causes are.
State organs established to combat crime and corruption must decisively enforce the rule of law and accordingly deal with acts of criminality and corruption, regardless of the nationality of the lumpen elements, gangs and syndicates involved.
Drug dealing, human trafficking and abduction, in particular but not exclusively of young women who are then subjected to forced sex work and other forms of gender based violence, are among other acts of criminality destroying our youth, their future and that of our society at large. The unabated prevalence of these acts of criminality and violence, including but not limited to high rate of murder – for example in the Western Cape, the wider scourge of gender based violence including femicide, attacks on foreign nationals and destruction of public infrastructure, among others, is indicative of virtual functional collapse of law enforcement agencies to successfully combat crime and corruption.
The erosion of the capacity, strategic discipline and authority of the state, allowing what we are presently witnessing in our country to take place unabated, is a direct consequence of state capture. There is a general outcry in many communities about the failure of state organs established to combat crime and corruption. As a result, there are rising levels of mistrust and lack of confidence in our law enforcement agencies.