Last week, as the rand plummeted following our junk status downgrade, the Washington Post called this South Africa’s ‘Mugabe Moment’ (HERE). Not a good look, and the clouds haven’t exactly cleared since then.

You might have seen the images of Mmusi Maimane wearing a bulletproof vest on Friday, arriving at the Jozi anti-Zuma march prepared for the worst-case scenario.

According to Maimane’s chief of staff, Geordin Hill-Lewis, that’s because of threats made against his life.

Below from TimesLive:

“We received a number of threats in the days preceding the march. There were the publicly made threats from the ANC Youth League, the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans’ Association and various others, and then there were some threats that we received directly against Mr Maimane, obviously all anonymous,” Hill-Lewis said, adding that two men were detained by private security shortly after Maimane arrived.

“On the day of the march itself, we obviously had security in and around the march with their eyes peeled. There was one person detained with a number of knives.

“Another was posing as a security guard trying to get close to Mr Maimane, but was fortunately discovered and detained before he could get any closer.”

Mmusi caught criticism on social media, some saying that he was overreacting for political gain, to which he responded:

Scary stuff, and if you ask the the Institute for Security Studies incidents like this, as well as threats being made against ANC dissenters, “are an early indication of South Africa becoming an authoritarian state”.

Here’s the head of the governance, crime and justice division of the Institute for Security Studies, Gareth Newham:

Newham said many touting “radical economic transformation” rhetoric could not explain how they were actually going to improve the lives of South Africans, most of whom were becoming “increasingly aware that the existing political system and the rule of Jacob Zuma has been devastating to their futures and prosperity”.

“This is how dictatorships start moving because you have nothing to offer people other than empty slogans.

“The next step is to use violence and intimidation. So if you look at how political systems change to populist authoritarianism or dictatorships, it starts with violence. It starts when you can’t win the argument, when you start using your political power to intimidate and threaten people to either stop them from challenging you or try to coerce them.”

When you’ve racked up 23 years of empty promises, and seen recent local election results that can only be described as disastrous for your party, desperate times call for desperate measures.

It’s sad that those trying to cling to power are willing to watch their citizens suffer in order to stay in power, but then again that’s straight out of the dictator playbook.

You only need to look at the behaviour of the ANC Youth League at yesterday’s Ahmed Kathrada memorial in Durban, where they disrupted speeches by ANC members who have criticised JZ, to know that democracy here at home is reeling.

Stay vigilant, South Africa.

[source:timeslive]