South Africa: What Would a Meaningful Agenda for Human Rights Day Look Like?

analysis

On 21 March 1960, the apartheid police opened fire on a crowd of protestors in Sharpeville, killing 69 people. Five decades on, post-apartheid South Africa remembers these events on Human Rights Day. The government has attempted to depoliticise the event, shifting the day from one that is associated with the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) to one that South Africans generally commemorate, irrespective of their political persuasions.

Yet the annual commemoration of this day did not stop a post-apartheid massacre from taking place in Marikana. It did not stop the ejection of the Economic Freedom Fighters from Parliament en masse even before they had become disruptive.

It did not stop the State Security Ministry from insulting the public's intelligence with a nonsense excuse for why cellphone signals were jammed in the National Assembly chamber. It has not stopped the State Security Agency (SSA) from announcing that it intends to investigate, on the smell of an oilrag, the claims that several public and political figures are Central Intelligence Agency spies.

It did not stop the indiscriminate arrests of women in Chaneng in the North-West on Human Rights Day in 2013. Predictably, charges against them of illegal gathering and public violence were withdrawn for lack of evidence over a year, and many court appearances, later. It has not stopped this all too familiar cycle from unfolding in Thembelihle in the past two weeks.

The security cluster's stunning disrespect for basic human rights gives credence to arguments made by the PAC and others that, in being depoliticised, the day has been rendered irrelevant and commemorated as a ritual with little meaningful content. So what should a more meaningful agenda for Human Rights Day look like? Based on the events of the last few weeks, here are four agenda points for the day:

Firstly, the political intelligence mandate of the SSA should be removed entirely during upcoming debates on a new intelligence policy and the SSA Bill. To its credit, Parliament did narrow this mandate somewhat during legislative amendments in 2011, but it clearly still remains overbroad in its everyday practice.

While it could be (and has been) argued that political contests could threaten national security if they turn ugly, it has become abundantly clear that the SSA will not interpret this expanded mandate impartially. It will inevitably lead to politically important but inconvenient figures such as Greenpeace leader Kumi Naidoo, Public Protector Thuli Madonsela and others being investigated, rather than those who really need investigating.

Secondly, the SSA and the National Prosecuting Authority should do something about the real threats to national security, such as the xenophobic attacks and the growing number of political and whistleblower assassinations in the country.

It is a national disgrace, but an unsurprising one, that while the security cluster has committed itself to fast-tracking the investigations and prosecutions of those engaged in disruptive protests, the investigation into the burning to death of Mozambican Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave, and other victims of xenophobic attacks, have gone nowhere. This is in spite of the Sunday Times having claimed to have tracked down eyewitnesses to Nhamuave's gruesome murder. The security cluster's lack of seriousness in dealing with xenophobia conveys the message that human rights belong to South Africans and non-African foreigners only.

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South Africa: What Would a Meaningful Agenda for Human Rights Day Look Like?