STATEMENT BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD SECRETARY GENERAL
13 July 2021
The deployment of soldiers to support police battling to quell unprecedented looting and destruction of property in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng can’t succeed without the active support of good people and organisations.
Some may question the competency of the country’s law-enforcement officials but they are also in a very difficult position. The last thing South Africa needs right now is another massacre of civilians by law-enforcement officials, which could fuel further instability.
Forty-five people have already died in the wave of lawlessness that was evidently sparked last week by the incarceration of former President Jacob Zuma.
Good people significantly outnumber bad in all communities across the land. These people have a significant role to play in leading their communities, many of which are suffering acute hardships and indignity due to poverty, unemployment and State neglect.
South Africa is a tinder box. People are desperate, and they are fed up with the government. But desperation and anger don’t excuse looting and vandalism. Besides which, many of the looters appear to be driven more by opportunism than desperation.
Whichever it is, they have grown so socially and economically alienated from their society that they feel they have nothing to lose.
The police must do their work protecting lives, infrastructure and property. We welcome the arrests that they have made to date.
It would be good to start seeing the impact of the work of our intelligence community, through better-planned law-enforcement responses including the arrest of people responsible for instigating and fanning the violence (to the extent it has not been spontaneous).
We also welcome the response of good people and organisations, from neighbourhood watches to municipalities to churches, who have stepped forward to assert collective societal values.
They must continue to work for good, in support of police and other security services, demonstrating leadership, protecting property, making peace – and avoiding resorting to vigilantism.