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The horrors of free looting and destruction of property in South Africa, which are currently on global display, were predictable and preventable.

Even when the threat of chaos of war and disorder was there for everyone to see, the intelligence, Police Minister Bheki Cele and the country’s president had their blinders on.

Perhaps, these horrors are telling us that we have little or no functioning police service with an intelligence division that works to improve public safety.

South Africa is a country riddled with some of the highest crime statistics in the world, and one would assume that an effective intelligence division that worked to improve public safety should be one of our top priorities.

Yet, in the last decade the SA Police Service (SAPS) has fallen victim to budget cuts and capture with truly little crime-fighting and intelligence work being done.

The SAPS budget has suffered a steady decline, despite South Africa’s corruption-busting agencies warning that such cuts would reverse their gains.

In 2021, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni slashed the police’s budget by R11.8 billion to R96.3 billion to help fund bailouts like the floundering SAA. Look at us now.

The oldest and simplest justification for a government in a democratic society is to protect and safeguard the lives of its citizens.

That is where the public interest lies. It is essential to the preservation of democracy, and it is the duty of the court to do all it can to respect and uphold that principle.

However, we cannot solely blame budget cuts for the current catastrophe. What is clear is that we have a failing state that lacks a clear overall plan to improve policing.

The deterioration and problems in South African policing have been ongoing for years, with little evidence of a clear plan to address them. The government’s National Development Plan 2030, approved in 2012, identified possible reasons for the lack of professionalism in the national police.

As a country infused with violence and susceptible to violent protest, we knew what was coming and that it was preventable, despite all the red warnings, the threats of chaos of war and disorder, but it now appears we were ill-prepared for this kind of situation.

Last year the country was in an identical situation wherein looting, destruction of property and violence was the order of the day – a year later we are still unprepared. How long must law-abiding citizens tolerate this? Why is our government always reactive? They wait until there’s a crisis.

The idea of government as a protector requires: taxes to fund, train and equip a police force and not cut their budget; reviewing the current systems of recruiting, training, promoting, disciplining and equipping police officers – all of which generally seem to be failing.

This can only be achieved with a strong, ethical and highly skilled top management team in place, and not cadre deployment.

The president and his advisers must hang their heads in shame for once again failing to provide law and order and protect citizens from each other.

The horror of this violence is their doing – at least by omission. They are always slow to respond.

Nkosi is a public relations specialist and director of Lilanga Creatives

Here we are in 2018, celebrating 24 years of our democracy, trying to rid ourselves of the apartheid legacies. These are evident in our country, through land ownership that is still in the hands of the minority, apartheid-era street names and other social ills.

One would ask why it is taking so long to deal with these apartheid legacies. Perhaps the answers to these questions can be found within the policies you are pointing at, including the Constitution.

Interestingly, these are the same policies right wing groups like AfriForum are using to contest street name changes and the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s attempt to have the display of the apartheid-era South African flag criminalised. They praise apartheid as a good system and commit other despicable acts aimed at derailing transformation.

Let’s sample the Mala Mala land claim, the largest and the oldest private Big Five game reserve in South Africa. It covers around 130km² or 15 000 hectares. The Tsonga people, who occupied the land before the establishment of the reserve, were forcibly removed from this land during the early 1900s and were dumped in what is now Bushbuckridge.

The Nwandlamhlarhi community successfully claimed the Mala Mala game reserve and the land was restored to them in 2015, at a cost of about R1 billion, a third of the national budget at the time, paid to one white family. How long can we sustain paying such exorbitant prices?

Let’s look at the Tshwane street renaming project. The ANC started it in 2012 in a drive to take down 25 apartheid-era street names and replace them with the names of those who fought for the liberation of the country.

As soon as it started, the project hit a snag with the opposition, including the so-called rational thinkers – the DA and the usual suspects AfriForum – wanting to retain the names of people like Hendrik Verwoerd. As usual, AfriForum approached the high court for a restraining order against transforming these streets by using every law available to them.

Every day when I go to work, the streets I use include Hendrik Verwoerd and John Vorster. Keeping the spirit of Verwoerd alive is an insult to black people, if one considers that he was the chief architect of the apartheid system, particularly the creation of homelands.

Sanity only prevailed four years after legal wrangling started, which cost millions of rands in taxpayers’ money as the city tried its best to justify the decision. Shortly before the local elections in July 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the City of Tshwane, allowing it to go ahead and remove the 25 street names and replace them.

As a people and sufferers of colonialism, we cannot continue to harbour, nurse and cherish apartheid legacies like the ownership of land – which is currently in the hands of a few – apartheid-era street names and other social ills that are being perpetuated by those who are hellbent on controlling our future.

A change of strategy is needed and the time is now. Otherwise, we will remain conquered.