All the ingredients for a climactic eruption in South Africa have been present for almost two decades.

Almost universal agreement on the untenability of the present is matched by equally deep differences on the pattern for the future. The conflict is also rooted in the divergence and diversity of hopes about what is to come.

South Africa is not a hopeless society; perhaps that is why its central conflict appears to be so intractable. Some have what others want, and others are determined to monopolise what some want to get at. It is a deeply divided society where one side's dreams and expectations for the future becomes the other's threat to, and frustration of, the present. That is also why it is increasingly becoming a violent, bitter, and brutalised society.

The question is, why? What is the underlying issue?

***

I must ask the spirit of Frederik van Zyl Slabbert to forgive me. Professor van Zyl Slabbert ("Slabbert", or "Van") died two years ago, and the words above are his, only slightly changed from when he first spoke them. They appear as the first words in his address, "The Dynamics of Reform and Revolt in Current South Africa", delivered 25 years ago in the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Brasenose College, Oxford, in October and November 1987.

They can be spoken or written today, as I've just done, only very slightly changed.

After those crucial questions, "Why? What is the underlying issue?", Slabbert continues:

"Is it class, race, ethnicity? Obviously greed, intolerance, fear, are primordial emotions that run deep in South Africa, but they epitomise rather than explain the dilemma."

He goes on to state:

"Because analyses of South Africa are often so starkly divergent, it provides a fertile climate for ideological dogmatism. Differences of opinion, tactics and strategy, often blow up into major confrontations and are seized upon....

"Ideological certainty depends on intellectual compromise, and South Africa is rife with compromised intellectuals who know better but refrain from saying so. The need for certainty is often the most compelling evidence for uncertainty."

Now, nearly four weeks after the mass shooting by police of armed miners at Marikana on 16 August, followed by repeated reports of cold-blooded executions by police of miners who were wounded, in hiding or surrendering with their hands held straight up in the air, these words by Slabbert have a terrifying immediacy.

Like the zing of a bullet, they ricochet off the rocks at Small Koppie. After a quarter of a century, they demand an answer from the new governors, the new Masters of the Universe, whom Slabbert did his best to assist into office - the greed, intolerance and fear of the old South Africa, which he critically discussed, now brutally revealed as the template (only slightly changed) of the New.

Four documents reveal the limitations - even, the failure? - of the project of transformation which Slabbert did his remarkable best to assist into being. Each should be read with care, and in relation to the others.

The first is the official, state-sponsored report from nearly ten years ago which popularly bears his name, the "Slabbert Report": more precisely, the Report of the Electoral Task Team (of which Slabbert was chairman), issued in January 2003.

The second is a press statement on 23 March this year giving the rejection by the government and ANC administration in Luthuli House to calls for attention to be given to the buried words of the Slabbert report, delivered by Mathole Matshekga MP, the chief whip of the ANC's voting herd in the National Assembly.

The third is the report in The Star last Wednesday, 5 September, headed "Begging miners 'shot for fun'".

The fourth is the official "ANC Alliance Statement on the Situation at the Lonmin Platinum Mines" issued on Friday 7 September, following a meeting the previous day by the bigshots of the ANC Alliance - ANC, South African Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions - in response to what they modestly and demurely referred to as the "tragic" and "unfortunate" departure from this world of the shot miners.

Slabbert Report

In an article in the Dispatch on 21 August, I wrote that the "long history of unaccountable power in South Africa has time and time again produced these turns to violence, followed by mass slaughter by the state, followed by wider and wider political disenchantment with the previous political elite, perceived as responsible for the slaughter. So it was after the crushing of the white miners' strike by Jan Smuts in 1922, so it was after Sharpeville, and so it will be now.

"The new, democratic constitution arising from the end of the Cold War and the unbanning of political organisations in South Africa was supposed to have provided a process in which a law-bound system of democratically elected representatives, mediation and arrived-at consensus would end this bloody history. Clearly it has not. ...

"This must mean a return to the issues examined by the electoral task team under the chairmanship of the late Frederik van Zyl Slabbert....

"As it stated then in its crucial section 4.3.5 of the report - its section on accountability - ...with 'very few exceptions a lack or perceived lack of accountability was identified as a problem in the current system.'

"Polling of the electorate showed that already more than 10 years ago 'only 60% felt that the system helped voters hold individual representatives accountable'. Today any adequate poll would surely show this figure very far below 60 percent.

"Already at that time, the commission continued, this resulted in '71% feeling that candidates should come from the area they represent, which was seen as a means of improving their individual accountability. Lack of accountability and availability/responsiveness was thus also seen as the weak point' of the entire political process."

ANC high command rejection of Slabbert Report

In its statement issued by ANC Chief Whip Motshekga last March, the ruling party high command - now answerable for the mass shootings and executions at Marikana - rejected calls for implentation of the Slabbert commission's call for electoral reform enabling a majority of MPs to be elected on a constituency basis, with local voters empowered to vote for a specific individual and sack that MP if he or she proves corrupt, brutal, lazy or otherwise no good.

With astonishing crassness, Motshekqa stated the ruling party's reason for opposing any change from its current party-list system in language and concepts identical to those of the apartheid period. The unaccountable party-list system had to stay, he said, because South Africa has "a largely illiterate population."

As reported in the Sowetan, the commission "suggested a hybrid electoral system where at least half of the 400 MPs would be directly elected by their constituencies in place of the current list system.

"Motshekga said South Africa's democracy was still not mature enough to entertain the kind of system suggested by the commission.

"'The Van Zyl Slabbert report does not take into account the fact that we are a young democracy; we have a largely illiterate population,' he said."

(Mr Motshekga did not explain how he and his superiors explain this confluence of their own political concepts with those of their former apartheid masters).

Cold-blooded executions reported by survivors

Lungisile Lutshetu was among those arrested at Marikana on 16 August and released on bail on Monday 3 September last week.

He returned to Small Kopppie with journalists from the Star the next day, to where "bright-green alphabetic marks on rocks and trees" indicated "where bodies lay after the shooting." Lutshetu said he "believed more people than reported were killed between the rocks."

Chased by police, he said he "'found a hiding place between large rocks, but then police were already all over the place. Those in front of me were shot at close range and fell over me, and that's how my life was spared.

"'There was a Sotho man who I saw kneeling next to a big stone with his hands up. He begged for his life and apologised profusely for something he didn't know about, but the heartless officers riddled him with automatic rifles, which pierced through his body.'

"Lutshetu said he had seen at least 15 people being shot dead or left injured, 'only for some of the injured to be shot again in the head later and finished off'." When arrested miners were made to lie prone, Lutshetu said, 'The unlucky ones who dared raise their heads were killed'."

Lutshetu's firsthand account gave powerful support to evidence already provided by the photo-journalist Greg Marinovitch on the Daily Maverick website on 30 August(before arrested miners were released on bail) and again on 2 September (also before their release).

On Thursday 6 September, Sky News in Britain carried a lengthy report by Ms Alex Crawford, its special correspondent in South Africa, with lengthy television coverage of the scene of carnage at Small Koppie, including interview on camera with a named miner who reported deliberate executions of miners, in the same manner as reported by Mr Lutshetu.

At the time of writing, no policemen have been stood down and arrested on suspicion of murder. The Commissioner of Police, the director of the National Prosecuting Authority and the Minister of Justice should be held to account.

ANC Alliance Statement

Obtuse denialism.

Incapacity to face the truth.

Blame always located somewhere else.

A government and ruling party purblind to reality.

As Slabbert warned 25 years ago: "All the ingredients for a climactic eruption...untenability of the present....a violent, bitter, and brutalised society."

And 10 years ago: "Lack of accountability...the weak point" of the entire political process.

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