Zuma protests: Do your job, Minister, and stop the anarchy

11 July 2021

South Africans might be excused for asking where the Intelligence Services are as the country burns around their ears.

Where is the domestic branch of the State Security Agency as our infrastructure is destroyed? Where is Crime Intelligence as our supermarkets are looted? Do we even have a crime intelligence structure?

It’s not as though the Free Zuma protests have come as a surprise. Posters advertising when and where protests will take place have been passed about social media for days, the latest of which is warning workers to stay home tomorrow, that all shops must be closed, that all trucks must be parked.

Yet have the authors of these incendiary, treasonous flyers been arrested? No. Do we see any attempt to prevent these attacks from happening? No. Do we see battalions of public order police standing by, on the scene, waiting? Not a single one.

Usually one might expect the Ministers of Police and State Security to be putting out statements as fast as their members put out the fires.

Sadly all we are feeling is a giant vacuum of leadership: no intelligence, no preparedness, just the wanton destruction of trucks, and thieving of microwaves and goods from supermarkets. All filmed and posted on social media.

To have our security services stand back and watch from their air-conditioned offices is not what we expect when we pay billions of rands for these services to exist.

The DA says to the Minister of State Security – do your job. Stop the anarchy before there is nothing left to burn.

Issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, DA Shadow Minister of State Security, 11 July 2021