THE #FREEJACOBZUMA CAMPAIGN CONDEMNS THE ILLEGAL USE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES TO TARGET AND INTIMIDATE SUPPORTERS OF PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA

Date: Tuesday, 10 August 2021

The #FreeJacobZuma campaign is outraged by the by the increasing number of incidents of targeting, and outright intimidation, of supporters of President Jacob Zuma by the law enforcement agencies.

In one of the latest incidents an ANC member, comrade Sizwe Nyambi, was arrested at Park Station in Johannesburg, while he was waiting to board a bus to Kwa-Zulu Natal. He was arrested for no other reason than carrying ‘Wenzeni UZuma’ t-shirts. The fact that comrade Nyambi has now ultimately been released from custody, does not make the outrageous treatment that he had been subjected to any less despicable. We commend him for the exemplary manner in he which stood his ground, and resisted being intimidated.

This is only one of many cases where supporters of President Jacob Zuma, who support the perfectly legal and legitimate #FreeJacobZuma campaign are throughout our country being harassed, intimidated, interrogated and even arrested for no legitimate reasons.

Let us be crystal clear: It is NOT illegal to support the call for the immediate release of President Zuma. To do so is entirely legitimate and legal in terms of every citizen’s right to freedom of speech, and our other civil liberties, as enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. However, what is indeed TOTALLY ILLEGAL is to abuse the state law enforcement agencies in order to undermine and curb our constitutional rights.

It is evident that there is a malicious and deliberate campaign to disseminate fake Stratcom propaganda - akin to the manner in which the apartheid regime used to operate - to falsely try to link the #FreeJacobZuma campaign to the recent violence and looting.

This is the politics of deliberate scapegoating in order in order to tarnish legitimate political and ideological opposition as “insurrectionist” and “vigilantism”, so that instead of engaging us on the democratic political playing field to abuse state security apparatuses to “criminalize” such legitimate political, democratic, opposition and to use state agencies (i.e. State Security, NPA, SAPS and a biased, bought, judiciary) to suppress, arrest and imprison fellow citizens. Such repression of our legitimate constitutional rights indicate a growing, alarming, tendency to subvert our democratic state into becoming a dictatorship.

Let us spell it out again: The #FreeJacobZuma campaign has never called, and will never call, for violence and looting. Our campaign does not have a “first” or “second phase”. We have a seamless continuous message, that President Jacob Zuma must be released immediately, and that the successful future of our beloved country depends on addressing the needs and hopes of black (especially African) South Africans, as contained in the Radical Economic Transformation demands contained in our petition to President Cyril Ramaphosa.