Article by listed attorney: Fawzia Khan
There is no doubt that South Africans are at a crossroad in our still relatively young democracy. I believe that a responsibility rests on us as ordinary South Africans and members of civil society, to respond decisively and in a united manner to demonstrate our disgust at the recent actions of President Zuma that has brought the country to the crisis it now faces. For this reason I am breaking with the norm of discussing different aspects of the law but have chosen to rather focus our collective attention on the need to protect our democracy and more importantly our constitution.
One of South Africa’s greatest feats of achievement post apartheid, must undoubtedly be our constitution. This blueprint document was created to ensure that all South Africans from different walks of life, regardless of gender, race, colour, class, religion and so on, are able to live in a free and democratic society, where those who lead us do so with the interests of the country in mind and not their own vested interst. We can no longer sit back and watch our hard fought struggle to attain democracy crumble simply because we believe that we don’t and/or can’t make a difference towards effecting change to stop the rot. History will show that the voice of the people, if it is loud enough, will ultimately be heard. If we allow the present shenanigans of a corrupt president to go unchallenged, we will suffer the consequences. Regardless of one’s political affiliation, the time has come for us to stand united and do whatever is lawful to remove President Zuma from office. All ANC supporters should immediately demand that the ANC recalls President Zuma. Every South African who has the country’s best interest at heart should participate in whatever mass action is called for in order to show support for the call that he step down.
Social media platforms are awash with messages, clips and articles bemoaning Zuma’s antics. One of the messages which I received suggested that Zuma used and continues to use well thought and planned military strategies and offensives to keep him in office. Some of the reasons included the propaganda he uses by getting a groundswell support from many uninformed voters, creating means of diversions, e.g. Nenegate and the Nkandla debacle, formulating a scorched earth policy, which sees state capture of our country’s resources, as well as placing his own people in power, so that by removing all those people who showed opposition to his plans would allow him the opportunity to build enough support among his cabinet and ANC members of parliament. This would then protect him against any vote of no-confidence which may be brought against him by parliament.
Whether or not Zuma’s actions emanate as a result of a strategic and well-planned military offensive or not, the sad reality is that ordinary South Africans and especially the poor and marginalised people of the country are grave risk in having our economy collapsing with corruption being the order of the day.
What we do or don’t do now will have a direct impact on what future we handover to our children, grandchildren and later generations of our beloved country. We need to protect our democracy, our constitution and the future of this country.
Long live democracy! Long live!
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