tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/political-assassinations-28680/articlesPolitical assassinations – The Conversation2024-03-18T18:33:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2255082024-03-18T18:33:20Z2024-03-18T18:33:20ZChad presidential election: assassination of main opposition figure casts doubt on country’s return to democracy<p><em>The <a href="https://www.miragenews.com/chad-opposition-leader-assassinated-1185873/">assassination</a> of Chad’s main opposition leader, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68435145">Yaya Dillo</a>, is hanging heavy over <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2024/02/28/chads-election-agency-sets-dates-for-presidential-polls//">presidential elections</a> due in early May. Dillo was killed on 28 February when the headquarters of the opposition <a href="https://psf-tchad.org/">Party Socialiste sans Frontières</a> (Party of Socialists without Borders) in the Chadian capital N'Djamena was <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/chad-announces-several-deaths-after-foiled-intelligence-office-attack">besieged</a> by the newly formed Rapid Reaction Force.</em> </p>
<p><em>It’s not the first violence meted out to the opposition. In October 2022 Chadian security forces <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2023/02/24/deadly-chad-protests-death-toll-now-estimated-at-128//">killed</a> hundreds of protesters. They were protesting the extension of the transition to democracy from 18 to 36 months and the decision of transitional <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/mahamat-idriss-deby-itno-named-chad-s-transitional-president/2706374">president Mahamat Idriss Déby</a> to stand as a candidate in presidential elections.</em></p>
<p><em>An expert on democratisation in sub-Saharan Africa, especially Chad, <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/helga-dickow-1209876">Helga Dickow</a>, sets out what this level of violence portends for the country.</em> </p>
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<h2>Who was Dillo, and why was he important for the upcoming poll?</h2>
<p>The assassination took place one day after the publication of the electoral calendar for the presidential elections. For the first time a member of the ruling clan was killed publicly in N'Djamena. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.state.gov/chads-national-dialogue-commission-report/">resolutions</a> of the 2022 national dialogue, elections must take place before October 2024 to end the political transition and return to constitutional order. No dates have been set for the parliamentary and local elections. It is more than doubtful that they will take place in the near future.</p>
<p>Dillo was determined to take part in the elections and challenge the rule of his cousin, Mahamat Déby, even though he’d faced heavy intimidation. His <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/01/chad-prominent-opposition-leader-killed">stated ambition</a> was to see Chad return to democracy, to end widespread corruption and improve the living conditions of poor people in the country. </p>
<p>Dillo had clear ideas about fighting poverty based on insights he’d gained doing a doctorate in economics in Canada.</p>
<p>There are a number of reasons, in my view, why his death is a tragic loss for Chad.</p>
<p>Firstly, Chad has lost a political leader whose competences are desperately needed in the country.</p>
<p>Secondly, Yaya Dillo was one of the few politicians from the north of the country and the only one from the ruling Zaghawa clan who reached out to and connected with the opposition in the south. </p>
<p>He had shown that he was able to overcome ethnic, religious and regional boundaries in a highly divided country. An example of this was that he <a href="https://eng.fatshimetrie.org/2023/12/11/political-tensions-in-chad-one-week-before-the-vote-on-the-new-constitution-the-country-is-preparing-to-make-a-crucial-decision-for-its-future/">joined</a> the opposition coalition Groupe de concertation des acteurs politiques (Group of Consultative Political Actors), which opposes the dynastisation of the Déby family and stands for better living conditions for all Chadians. </p>
<p>This voice has now been silenced. His supporters are in <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/01/chad-prominent-opposition-leader-killed">hiding</a> or have already been arrested and taken to the Koro Toro high-security prison in the desert. His party has been dissolved by the government.</p>
<h2>What does the assassination mean for the presidential elections?</h2>
<p>Dillo’s murder hasn’t changed the programme for the upcoming elections. Three days after Dillo’s death, transitional president Mahamat Déby <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/2/chad-interim-leader-deby-confirms-plan-to-run-for-president-in-may">declared</a> himself a candidate. </p>
<p>Déby, who became interim president in 2021, is the candidate of a new coalition of more than 200 political parties and more than 1,000 civil society organisations, the so-called Coalition pour un Tchad uni (<a href="https://www.trtafrika.com/news/for-a-united-chad-coalition">Coalition for a United Chad</a>).</p>
<p>The driving force behind this coalition is the former ruling party <a href="https://tsep.africa.ufl.edu/the-party-system-and-conditions-of-candidacy/chad/">Mouvement Patriotique du Salut</a>, which was led by his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Idriss-Deby">father, the late Idriss Déby</a>. </p>
<h2>How prepared is Chad to conduct elections?</h2>
<p>The transitional president and his allies, especially the Movement Patriotique du Salut and some members of the parliament, are in a hurry to hold the elections to replace the “interim president” with a “president”.</p>
<p>But the key question is whether the presidential poll will be followed by parliamentary elections, as was agreed in the transition plan of the <a href="https://www.state.gov/chads-national-dialogue-commission-report/">national dialogue of 2022</a>. </p>
<p>There are many, including myself, who doubt this will happen. Mahamat Déby is likely to act like his father, who attached great importance to presidential elections but steered clear of parliamentary polls. Before <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-signs-of-a-true-transition-in-chad-a-year-after-idriss-debys-death-181203">Idriss Déby’s death</a> in 2021, the last parliamentary elections were held in <a href="https://www.electionguide.org/elections/id/3518/">2011</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, there are strong doubts about the independence of the electoral authorities. Mahamat Déby nominated most members of the Agence nationale de gestion des élections (<a href="https://eng.fatshimetrie.org/2024/01/26/the-national-election-management-agency-in-chad-a-crucial-issue-for-democracy-in-a-period-of-political-transition/">National Election Management Agency</a>) and of the Constitutional Court, which must validate the election results. All of them were loyal to his father in the past and have been members of the Movement Patriotique du Salut for many years.</p>
<p>Potential candidates in the presidential election could submit their candidacy from 6 to 15 March. The list of candidates approved by the Constitutional Council will be published on 24 March. Voter registration has already taken place in preparation for the constitutional referendum in December 2023. The same lists will be used. But anyone who reached the age of 18 in the period between the registration exercise and May 2024 will not be able to vote.</p>
<p>From a logistical point of view, everything seems to be ready for the presidential poll.</p>
<h2>What’s behind the political violence in the country?</h2>
<p>Violence against the political opposition is nothing new in Chad. It has always taken the form of attacking anyone in the way of either Déby. In 2008, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/afr200032012en.pdf">Ibni Oumar</a>, a widely respected political opponent of Idriss Déby in the north and south, was arrested. He <a href="https://sudantribune.com/article26131/">disappeared</a>. No trace of his body was ever found.</p>
<p>On 28 February 2021, Yaya Dillo was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68435145">attacked</a> in his home and his mother and other members of his household were killed. He managed to escape. He had declared his intention to run against <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Idriss-Deby">Idriss Déby</a> in the presidential poll that year. </p>
<p>On exactly the same day three years later, he was killed in very similar circumstances. </p>
<p>Dillo was one of the few Zaghawa who <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202403060514.html">continued</a> to call for an investigation into Idriss Déby’s death. Three years later, the circumstances are still unclear. Salay Déby, a younger brother of Idriss Déby, has gone as far as to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/violence-against-chads-opposition-escalates-before-polls/a-68450630">accuse</a> Mahamat Déby, the (adopted) son and president of the transitional government, of being behind the death of his own father. </p>
<p>Yaya Dillo and Salay Déby, both members of the ruling clan, joined forces two weeks before Dillo’s assassination. The party headquarters that has now been destroyed was located in Salay Déby’s house.</p>
<h2>How inclusive is the electoral process?</h2>
<p>Looking only at the Coalition pour un Tchad uni, the electoral process might appear to be inclusive. But democracy is not a one-party system. It is doubtful that all the parties and associations joined out of conviction in favour of Mahamat Déby and his allies in the parliament.</p>
<p>On the contrary, it is obvious that the regime used and will continue to use violence. The fear is that recent events are only the beginning of another permanent dictatorship in Chad.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helga Dickow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is feared that the current violence against political opposition in Chad could signal the beginning of another long term dictatorship.Helga Dickow, Senior Researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institut, Freiburg Germany, University of FreiburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2040512023-05-03T13:40:44Z2023-05-03T13:40:44ZPaul Kagame could be president of Rwanda until 2035 - what’s behind his staying power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522545/original/file-20230424-16-d7xzj9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rwandan President Paul Kagame.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Shaul Schwarz/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rwanda’s ruling party, the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), recently concluded its 16th <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/article/6363/news/politics/kagame-re-elected-as-rpf-inkotanyi-chairman">congress</a>. This also marked <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/article/6344/news/politics/kagame-reflects-on-rpf-inkotanyis-35-year-journey">35 years of its existence</a>. The centre piece, however, was the election as chairman, yet again, of the country’s president Paul Kagame. With 99.9% of the votes – 2,099 of the available 2,102 votes – Kagame was re-elected and put on course to potentially run for yet another electoral term in 2024.</p>
<p>The constitution allows Kagame to seek re-election until 2035. That’s a long way off and he has not indicated when he would be willing to usher in a transition from himself. He has acknowledged the need for change as he so often implores his party to reflect on <a href="https://newafricanmagazine.com/15830/">change in continuity</a>. At 65, there is no sign that he will exit the stage just yet.</p>
<p>Kagame who had been the driving force behind the RPF Inkotanyi’s armed wing, took over the chairmanship of the party in 1998. Since then, he has shown himself to be a shrewd political operator, vanquishing political enemies (real and imagined). He has also built a messianic persona and a reputation for being a no-nonsense statesman.</p>
<p>For all these reasons he has become an international icon who is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/opinion/paul-kagame-rwanda-britain.html">liked and loathed</a>. In Rwanda, public sentiments are largely supportive of his legacy.</p>
<p>It is also clear that only Kagame will decide at a time of his own choosing when to exit the political stage. As a long-term researcher and author on Rwanda’s <a href="https://www.perlego.com/book/717192/ethnic-politics-and-democratic-transition-in-rwanda-pdf">political transformation</a>, I believe there are five reasons for this. They include the role of his party in keeping him in power as well as personality traits.</p>
<h2>1. Rwanda Patriotic Front an economic powerhouse</h2>
<p>The dominance and longevity of political parties can sometimes boil down to one simple thing – finances. The Rwanda Patriotic Front has demonstrated that it has <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/rwanda-today/opinion/rpf-s-involvement-in-business-is-problematic-but-it-spurs-growth-1363996">plenty</a> and has used it to eclipse all other political actors. It has built a self-sustaining finance infrastructure buttressed by its <a href="https://taarifa.rw/what-they-dont-tell-you-about-kagame-and-crystal-ventures/">deep involvement</a> in the economy. If real estate were evidential, its <a href="https://www.independent.co.ug/analysis-museveni-criticised-kagame-unveils-fancy-party-headquarters/">over $10 million headquarters</a> in the capital is testament to this financial clout.</p>
<h2>2. The disciplinarian</h2>
<p>Many political observers around the world have come to associate Kagame with a trait that some argue is simple <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20210405-new-book-shows-a-very-different-side-to-rwanda-s-paul-kagame">ruthlessness</a> or otherwise <a href="https://thisisafrica.me/politics-and-society/africas-top-four-disciplinarian-presidents/">strict disciplinarianism</a>. Perhaps this is because of his military and in particular intelligence background.</p>
<p>In Rwanda, he is known for having very little time for government officials’ indiscipline and in particular corruption. Cabinet members have been dismissed if implicated in <a href="https://www.minaffet.gov.rw/updates/news-details/president-kagame-in-abuja-for-anti-corruption-summit">corruption</a> and others made to <a href="https://www.ktpress.rw/2020/06/we-will-continue-holding-you-accountable-kagame-to-sworn-in-leaders/">account for lapses in performance</a>. He has a very high work ethic and abhors laxity.</p>
<p>It is this that endears him to even those that disagree with his politics. As such, Rwanda is one of the least corrupt countries, one of the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dpr.12578">easiest in doing business</a> in Sub Saharan Africa. Efficiency, less red tape and transparency being key to an enabling environment.</p>
<h2>3. The pragmatist</h2>
<p>Longevity in Africa’s executive office requires shrewd pragmatism and Kagame has proven adept at this. To ensure dominance of his Rwanda Patriotic Front and himself, he has had to be willing to adopt practical positions that further this interest. For instance, while he has taken <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2021/02/09/7-times-rwandan-president-kagame-called-out-the-west-s-neocolonialism/">very stern public stance</a> against those seen as disagreeing with Rwanda’s actions or politics, he has been careful to mend bridges when it serves his purpose.</p>
<p>The recent <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-03-29/freed-hotel-rwanda-hero-paul-rusesabagina-to-arrive-in-us">release of government critic</a> Paul Rusesabagina after US designated him as unlawfully detained and imprisoned is a case in point.</p>
<h2>4. Public strategist</h2>
<p>For a tiny country of only 13 million people, Rwanda has secured <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/magazine/paul-kagame-rwanda.html">outsize</a> media coverage under Kagame’s leadership. He has taken bold, some would say risky, decisions that have set him apart from any domestic pretenders to the throne and international peers.</p>
<p>The country has been a sponsor of some of the <a href="https://apanews.net/2019/12/04/from-arsenal-to-psg-rwanda-uses-football-for-rebranding/">world’s biggest football clubs</a> sports kits emblazoned with the “visit Rwanda” logo. It has agreed to a humanitarian albeit controversial gesture to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/rwanda-defends-controversial-asylum-pact-with-the-united-kingdom/a-61581479">host refugees</a> repatriated from Libya and recently UK.</p>
<p>The FIFA world 73rd congress summit held for the first time in Africa has recently concluded in Kigali while the country will host, for an African first, the 2025 World Cycling Road Championship.</p>
<h2>5. The omnipresent force</h2>
<p>There is no one in Rwanda more omnipresent than Kagame in particular and his Rwanda Patriotic Front party in general. He has personally dominated and defined the political space of the country since the end of the genocide in 1994.</p>
<p>The Rwanda Patriotic Front, the political wing of the then rebel force of the Rwanda Patriotic Army, has established a <a href="https://www.cmi.no/publications/822-multiparty-elections-in-africas-new-democracies">dominant party system</a> in which no other party contender stands a realistic chance of over taking it. To do this the party used its parliamentary dominance to pass strict rules that govern political parties. These have seen the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/110/438/1/78893?login=true">disbanding of parties</a> like the Mouvement Démocratique Républicain (MDR) while co-opting others into a coalition. This, the Rwanda Patriotic Front argues, is the spirit of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/9/15/rwandas-consensual-democracy-needs-a-reset">consensus governance</a> rather than conflictual competition.</p>
<h2>The risks of dissension</h2>
<p>Political commentators have argued that for those involved in politics in the country, <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/rwanda-paul-kagame-americas-darling-tyrant-103963/">the risks of criticising Kagame</a> or his government are simply too high. According to Human Rights Watch many critics have ended up <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/24/africa/paul-rusesabagina-released-rwanda-intl/index.html">in jail</a>, exiled or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/13/do-not-disturb-review-the-disturbing-death-of-a-rwandan-dissident">assassinated</a>.</p>
<p>This sends a rather chilling message to anyone who dares challenge the status quo.</p>
<p>For now, Kagame appears to provide a kind of certainty and predictability to the nations’ politics, allowing the country to rebuild on a firm footing. But this doesn’t make him indispensable. As Rwanda puts distance from its traumatic past, gains confidence in its future, it may need or indeed demand a change of guard.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David E Kiwuwa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s a near certainty that Kagame will be here for some time to come; but as Rwanda looks to the future, it may need or indeed demand a change of guard.David E Kiwuwa, Associate Professor of International Studies, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1960552022-12-08T13:04:08Z2022-12-08T13:04:08ZJanusz Walus parole: South Africa’s constitutional court was right - but failed the sensitivity test<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499534/original/file-20221207-11743-v1gh9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protests outside the constitutional court at its decision to grant parole to Chris Hani's killer, Janusz Walus.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fani Mahuntsi/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 21 November 2022 the Constitutional Court of South Africa <a href="https://collections.concourt.org.za/bitstream/id/62084/%5bJudgment%5d%20CCT%20221-21%20Janusz%20Jakub%20Walus%20v%20Minister%20of%20Justice%20and%20Corre....pdf">ordered</a> the release on parole of Janusz Walus, the Polish national who <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63700284">assassinated Chris Hani on 10 April 1993</a>. Hani was the secretary-general of the South African Communist Party, and one of the leading anti-apartheid stalwarts. The court’s decision, understandably, caused outrage, anger and controversy in the country, in particular for <a href="https://www.enca.com/news/watch-outrage-over-hani-killers-release">the Hani family</a>. </p>
<p>Hani’s assassination nearly caused the country to descend into civil war. But this was averted. Walus subsequently received the death penalty. The dawn of democracy in the country in 1994, and the subsequent <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/1995/3.html">abolition of the death penalty in South Africa</a>, saw his death sentence commuted to <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2022/11/22/south-africa-janusz-walus-killer-of-anti-apartheid-leader-chris-hani-to-be-released-on-par//">life in prison</a> in 2000.</p>
<p>As fate would have it, a decision by <a href="https://www.supremecourtofappeal.org.za/index.php/component/jdownloads/send/38-judgments-2022/3920-national-commissioner-of-correctional-services-and-another-v-democratic-alliance-and-others-with-south-african-institute-of-race-relations-intervening-as-amicus-curiae-33-2022-2022-zasca-159-21-november-2022?Itemid=0">the Supreme Court of Appeal</a> revoked the medical parole of Jacob Zuma, the third democratically elected president, on the same day as the Walus decision. Zuma had been sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment <a href="https://cdn.24.co.za/files/Cms/General/d/11313/b8ee947ddd3e4a79a0cc5dcfa6f4abfd.pdf">for contempt of court</a> by the Constitutional Court – the same court which now ordered Walus’ release. This added more controversy to an already tense situation. </p>
<p>Unlike Walus, who killed a prominent anti-apartheid hero, and whose release has been considered a threat to political stability in the country all these years, Zuma is considered a liberation struggle hero by millions in the country. There was <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-deadly-july-2021-riots-may-recur-if-theres-no-change-186397">deadly unrest in July 2021</a> after he was jailed.</p>
<p>Against this background, we argue that the Constitutional Court’s decision to release Walus was legally sound. But it could have done a better job of communicating its decision sensitively.</p>
<p>These two opposing parole decisions have the potential to result in societal instability caused by those who feel – understandably – aggrieved by both decisions.</p>
<h2>Zuma and Walus parole decisions</h2>
<p>The decisions have also created wrong perceptions of the fairness of the application of the law. The Constitutional Court has been accused of being an <a href="https://twitter.com/EFFSouthAfrica/status/1594707886336352257/photo/1">“instrument that reinforces white supremacy”</a>. A <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/saturday-star/news/janusz-walus-parole-is-justice-served-after-three-decades-behind-bars-27f76ac4-0aa8-4b40-bdd7-2db6d1a530df">poll</a> by the national television channel Newzroom Afrika found that 41.8% of the people surveyed felt that Walus’ release was “a great injustice” and 32.7% felt that “the family were let down”. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2022-11-21-sending-zuma-back-to-jail-serves-no-rehabilitation-purpose-eff/">A number of arguments</a> question the rationality of the Supreme Court judgement on Zuma. Some wondered what purpose it would serve to send an 80-year-old man back to jail. Others argued that it would be good for the stability of the country if he were sent back to jail because Zuma had blatantly ignored the legitimacy of South Africa’s justice system. He had ignored a court order to testify at the Zondo inquiry into corruption and state capture during his presidency and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/south-africas-top-court-says-ex-leader-zuma-contempt-absences-2021-06-29/">was sentenced to 15 months in prison</a>. </p>
<p>Furthermore, all those South Africans who revere Zuma might reason that his medical parole should not have been revoked as his offence was much less egregious than Walus’ crime.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Walus, whose crime nearly derailed negotiations on democracy, benefits not once but twice from South Africa’s democratic dispensation. Firstly, his death sentence was commuted because the constitution grants everyone the right to life. Secondly, he walks free because the courts uphold the rule of law above anything. </p>
<p>It’s clear from reading the Constitutional Court judgement that the court meticulously applied South African law that regulates parole for offenders – the <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/a111-98.pdf">Correctional Services Act 111</a> of 1998, the <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201505/act-8-1959.pdf">Correctional Services Act 8 of 1959</a> (dealing with people who were sentenced before the new parole dispensation became effective) and the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1977-051.pdf">Criminal Procedure Act 51</a> of 1977. </p>
<p>Law professor Jamil Mujuzi has aptly explained <a href="https://theconversation.com/janusz-walus-and-parole-for-prisoners-serving-life-sentences-in-south-africa-the-weaknesses-of-the-courts-decision-195403?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1669831920">South Africa’s parole system for prisoners serving a life sentence</a>. The relevant legislation fully adheres to the internationally recognised principle that criminal law is not retroactive.</p>
<p>In adhering so closely to the parole laws, the Constitutional Court has demonstrated that applying the rule of law is its main concern. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/janusz-walus-and-parole-for-prisoners-serving-life-sentences-in-south-africa-the-weaknesses-of-the-courts-decision-195403">Janusz Walus and parole for prisoners serving life sentences in South Africa: the weaknesses of the court's decision</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/general-council-of-the-bar-calls-on-south-africans-to-respect-rule-of-law-amid-outcry-over-ruling-to-free-hani-killer-janusz-walus-on-parole-193110c9-976a-48e9-9c23-bca55ca031e0">All South Africans</a> should agree that the rule of law should always prevail in the courts. Any deviation could have had wide repercussions for the application of the law.</p>
<h2>What the Constitutional Court could have done differently</h2>
<p>However, the court could have communicated its reasons in a more compassionate way. As Arthur Dobrin, Professor Emeritus of University Studies, Hofstra University, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/am-i-right/201108/why-the-law-cant-do-without-compassion">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Law is rooted in ethics and the impetus for ethics is empathy. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In order to speak to the public and serve society, the courts have to show compassion. This might have made the impact of the decision feel less extreme to those who feel that justice was not served. </p>
<p>In line with the age-old proverb that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1326348/">justice is blind</a>, judges in the democratic world tend to apply the law without fear or favour or allowing any emotions which could potentially cloud their judgements. This maxim ensures that the law is applied in an impartial way.</p>
<p>Some situations, however, require judges to give more attention to the potential societal consequences of their decisions. These situations require judges to show a sense of <a href="https://scholarship.law.uc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1166&context=uclr">empathy during adjudication</a>.</p>
<p>It can safely, and with respect, be argued that all 11 members of the Constitutional Court knew that a decision to release Walus on parole would be very painful to millions of South Africans. Thus, the court should have prepared better and more empathetic ways to communicate the reasons for its decision, as many South Africans are not well versed in the law. </p>
<p>It could have explained more simply the laws applicable to Walus’ position and the reasons why he qualified for parole. </p>
<p>This would have given the public a much clearer understanding of how the court came to its decision, and what considerations it had given to public opinion.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the court could have allowed the Hani family a more visible platform through a victim impact statement. This would have stated their position on the granting of the parole. The statement could have been made part of the main judgement. </p>
<p>As argued by Wits University honorary professor <a href="https://obiter.mandela.ac.za/article/view/12327">Monde Makiwane</a>, it is long overdue for South Africa to embrace victim impact statements in its criminal justice system. </p>
<p>Even though the Hani family would not have agreed with the court, at least the public would have seen that everything was done to get the family involved. Perception can have real impact and greater involvement of the family might have softened the blow.</p>
<p><em>This article was co-authored with Sasha-Lee Stephanie Afrika (LLD), Attorney of the High Court of South Africa and former lecturer at Stellenbosch University and University of Johannesburg.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196055/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sascha-Dominik (Dov) Bachmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The court should have given the public a much clearer understanding of how it came to its decision, and what consideration it had given to public opinion.Sascha-Dominik (Dov) Bachmann, Professor in Law and Co-Convener National Security Hub (University of Canberra) and Research Fellow (adjunct) - The Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa, Faculty of Military Science, Stellenbosch University- NATO Fellow Asia-Pacific, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1954032022-11-30T15:57:58Z2022-11-30T15:57:58ZJanusz Walus and parole for prisoners serving life sentences in South Africa: the weaknesses of the court’s decision<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497963/original/file-20221129-14-aex9ak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters demonstrate outside the high court in Cape Town against parole for Janusz Walus.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brenton Geach/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The murder of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chris-hani">Chris Hani</a>, a South African liberation struggle hero, by Janusz Walus <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv03370/05lv03422.htm">on 10 April 1993</a> almost derailed the country’s transition from apartheid to democracy. Now, almost 30 years later, the constitutional court has ruled that Walus (69) must be released on parole. The move has been met with anger by many in the country, including some in the governing African National Congress alliance. Law professor Jamil Mujuzi explains the country’s parole system for prisoners on life sentence, and what he considers to be the weaknesses and strengths of the court’s decision.</em></p>
<h2>Parole in South Africa</h2>
<p>South Africa has one of the highest prison populations <a href="https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total/trackback?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All">in the world</a>. As at 1 April 2022, there were 143,223 inmates in the country’s correctional centres, of whom <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202210/2022-09-22-dcs-ar-202122.pdf">96,079 had been sentenced</a>. </p>
<p>Section 73(1) of the <a href="http://www.dcs.gov.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/CORRECTIONAL-SERVICES-ACT-111-of-1998.pdf">Correctional Services Act (the Act)</a> (1998) provides that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(a) a sentenced offender remains in a correctional centre for the full period of sentence; and (b) an offender sentenced to life incarceration remains in a correctional centre for the rest of his or her life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, the Act also provides for circumstances in which offenders may be placed on parole. This explains why there are also <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202210/2022-09-22-dcs-ar-202122.pdf">thousands of parolees</a> in South Africa. </p>
<p>In some countries, such as the US, an offender sentenced to life imprisonment (lifer) spends the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980662">rest of his or her life in prison</a>. In South Africa, section 73(6)(b)(iv) of the Correctional Services Act provides that a lifer</p>
<blockquote>
<p>may not be placed on day parole or parole until he or she has served at least 25 years of the sentence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In terms of section 73(5)(a)(ii) of the Act, it’s the minister responsible for correctional services who has the power to determine the date on which a lifer is to be placed on parole. Thus, section 78 of the Act provides for the “powers of the minister in respect of offenders serving life sentences”. These powers include refusing or granting parole to a lifer. </p>
<p>However, when the minister refuses an application for parole, he or she is empowered to make</p>
<blockquote>
<p>recommendations in respect of treatment, care, development and support of the sentenced offender which may contribute to improving the likelihood of future placement on parole or day parole.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The case of Janusz Walus</h2>
<p>There were lifers in South Africa before the commencement of the Correctional Services Act in 1998, and their placement on parole is <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/10.10520/EJC52960">governed by section 136 of the Act</a>.</p>
<p>Under sections 78 and 136 of the Act, it is only the minister who has the power to grant parole to a lifer. However, in the case of <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2022/39.html">Walus v Minister of Justice and Correctional Services</a>, the constitutional court has ordered the minister</p>
<blockquote>
<p>to place the applicant (a lifer) on parole on such terms and conditions as he may deem appropriate and to take all such steps as may need to be taken to ensure that the applicant is released on parole within ten calendar days from the date of this order.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The court made that order after finding that the minister’s decision to reject Walus’ parole application was irrational. This was so because, among other things, the applicant had served the minimum period he had to serve – 13 years and four months before being considered for parole. His 1993 death sentence was commuted to life in prison <a href="https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/judgement/492-janusz-jakub-walus-v-minister-of-justice-and-correctional-services-cct221-21">in 2000</a>.</p>
<p>The court also observed that Walus could do nothing to change the two grounds on which his parole application was rejected – the comments made by the sentencing court and the seriousness of the offence. </p>
<p>In justifying its order, the constitutional court referred to, among others, sections 78 and 136 of the Correctional Services Act (CSA) and held that it</p>
<blockquote>
<p>is quite clear that under the CSA a court has the power to grant parole to prisoners who are sentenced to life imprisonment. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The court reached that conclusion because it relied on the 2004 version of section 78. Between October 2004 and September 2009, section 78 of the Act empowered a court to grant parole to lifers. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A man wearing a shirt, tie and jackets displays a serious look." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498220/original/file-20221130-14-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498220/original/file-20221130-14-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498220/original/file-20221130-14-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498220/original/file-20221130-14-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498220/original/file-20221130-14-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1264&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498220/original/file-20221130-14-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498220/original/file-20221130-14-8w1kao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1264&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A younger Janusz Walus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Raymond Preston/Sunday Times</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my view, however, the court erred in holding that the Act gives it power to grant parole to lifers. With the commencement of the Correctional Services Act 25 of 2008 on 1 October 2009, it is only the minister who has the power to grant parole to lifers. It can only make an order if it finds that the minister’s decision was irrational – as it did – but only under the <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/promotion-administrative-justice-act">Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, 2000</a>.</p>
<p>The court held that Walus’ sentence is governed by the 1959 Correctional Services Act. But, both in the 1959 Act and in the 1998 Act, the court does not have the power to release a lifer on parole. </p>
<p>Since Walus was not sentenced between 2004 and 2008, the court does not have power to grant him parole under section 78 of the 1998 Act. His death sentence was commuted to life in 2000, and not 2004 when section 78 came into force. </p>
<p>Section 136 is a transition provision. It does not change the law that governs the release of Walus on parole (and that is what the court recognises). </p>
<p>The second weakness of the judgement is that it equates a non-parole order to a remark at sentencing. A non-parole period is an order which the Department of Correctional Services must comply with. It is not a mere remark. It is part of the sentence. That is why in the 2016 case <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2016/27.html">Jimmale and Another v S</a>, the constitutional court held that a non-parole order must be made in exceptional circumstances “because the imposition of that kind of an order has a drastic impact on the sentence to be served”.</p>
<h2>Rehabilitation</h2>
<p>The court also held that the minister (and by implication the parole board) should not make parole decisions based on the remarks of a sentencing court, and the seriousness of the offence. This is because these are conditions over which the offender has no control. Any future parole decisions should be made based on conditions over which an offender has control.</p>
<p>The decision also shows that the offender’s rehabilitation is the most important factor that should be considered in deciding whether or not he or she should be granted parole. Therefore, any offender who is not rehabilitated is likely to have his or her parole application rejected. This then imposes a duty on the Department of Correctional Services to ensure that effective rehabilitation programmes are available in every correctional facility.</p>
<h2>Looking forward</h2>
<p>This decision is likely to be relied on by courts to order the Department of Correctional Services to grant offenders parole. However, an inmate has to remember he or she does not have a right to parole. As the supreme court has <a href="https://lawlibrary.org.za/akn/za/judgment/zasca/2022/159/eng@2022-11-21">reiterated</a>, inmates have </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the privilege to be released on parole if they so qualify.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If an inmate breaches the parole conditions, his or her parole will be cancelled. It has to be emphasised that a sentence of life imprisonment means that an offender has to be in prison for life. </p>
<p>Granting him parole means that he or she serves part of the sentence outside the correctional facility. This means that an offender sentenced to life imprisonment has to be on parole for the rest of his life unless he or she is pardoned, or the sentence is commuted by the president under section 84 of the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>. </p>
<p>In the case of foreign offenders, there may be a need for South Africa to enact prisoner transfer legislation, or to ratify prisoner transfer treaties such as the <a href="https://rm.coe.int/1680079529">Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons</a> (1983), or the Southern African Development Community Protocol on the Inter-State Transfer of Sentenced Offenders (2019) so that these offenders are transferred to serve their sentence in their countries of nationality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195403/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamil Mujuzi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The decision is likely to be relied on by courts to order the Department of Correctional Services to grant offenders parole.Jamil Mujuzi, Professor of Law, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1765972022-02-09T14:02:18Z2022-02-09T14:02:18ZWhite Malice: how the CIA strangled African independence at birth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445362/original/file-20220209-13-1t2q9l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Patrice Lumumba, left, first Prime Minister of independent Congo in 1960. The CIA celebrated his death. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Historian <a href="https://research.sas.ac.uk/search/fellow/185/dr-susan-williams/">Susan Williams</a> grew up in Zambia. Like other scholars of her generation raised in former settler societies of southern Africa, she empathises with the continent’s people.</p>
<p>Williams’ widely acknowledged new book, <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/white-malice/">White Malice – The CIA and the Neocolonisation of Africa</a>, adds to her track record, testifying to this engagement. Almost a forensic account, its more than 500 pages (supported by close to 150 pages of sources, references and index) are as readable as a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-le-Carre">John le Carré</a> novel. </p>
<p>But make no mistake: Williams ruthlessly reveals through factual evidence the unsavoury machinations of the American <a href="https://www.cia.gov/">Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)</a> in Africa during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War">Cold War</a> until the late 1960s. While scholarly analyses of this era have increased, the literature mainly focuses on how geostrategic aspects had an impact on international policy. In contrast, this is the first detailed account disclosing a Western dirty war through detailed quotes from original documents and by those involved.</p>
<p>Published in 2011, her investigative research titled <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/who-killed-hammarskjold-2/">Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa</a> made history. The evidence strengthened suspicions that the plane crash that killed the United Nations Secretary General and 15 others on 17/18 September 1961 near Ndola, in then <a href="https://www.history.com/news/dag-hammarskjold-death-plane-crash">Northern Rhodesia</a>, was no accident. As continuously updated by the Westminster branch of the <a href="http://www.hammarskjoldinquiry.info/">United Nations Association</a>, the disclosures triggered <a href="https://theconversation.com/speaking-truth-to-power-the-killing-of-dag-hammarskjold-and-the-cover-up-65534">new investigations</a> by the UN.</p>
<p>In 2016 Williams published <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/spies-in-the-congo-2/#:%7E:text=Spies%20in%20the%20Congo%20is,to%20build%20its%20atomic%20bomb">Spies in the Congo: The Race for the Ore that Built the Atomic Bomb</a>. The focus was on <a href="https://www.mindat.org/loc-4328.html">Shinkolobwe</a>, the world’s biggest uranium mine, in the Congolese Katanga province. Of crucial geostrategic importance, in the 1940s it supplied the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-manhattan-project">Manhattan Project</a>, which produced the first atomic bombs, which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shinkolobwe remained the main resource in the American nuclear arming of the 1950s.</p>
<h2>White Malice</h2>
<p>Williams’ new book seems like the third in a trilogy. Its title, White Malice, captures the racist arrogance of power, unscrupulously destabilising and (re-)gaining control over sovereign states as a form of colonialism by other means. </p>
<p>Not by coincidence, the book revisits the circumstances of Hammarskjöld’s death and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Katanga-province-Democratic-Republic-of-the-Congo">relevance of Katanga</a>. More room is devoted to a step-by-step account leading to the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/L/bo20598433.html">elimination of Patrice Lumumba</a>, the first prime minister of an independent Congo.</p>
<p>Another major focus is on Ghana since independence <a href="https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/was-the-gold-coast-decolonised-or-did-ghana-win-its-independence">in 1957</a>. Documenting the continental role of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kwame-Nkrumah">President Kwame Nkrumah</a>, it explains why and how he was removed from office. His role in promoting <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313574089_Kwame_Nkrumah_and_the_panafrican_vision_Between_acceptance_and_rebuttal">pan-Africanism</a> was equated with an anti-Western attitude. </p>
<p>All this is tied together by the interventions by the CIA and its predecessor, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Office-of-Strategic-Services">Office for Strategic Services</a>, often in cahoots with the <a href="https://www.sis.gov.uk/">British MI6</a>. The detailed accounts offer insights into the secret operations then. The display of mindsets and their consequences do not require theory or analytical comment. The facts speak for themselves. </p>
<p>Both agencies shared access to the encrypted messages used in confidential communication by Hammarskjöld and other high-ranking UN officials. As quoted by Williams (p. 290), the CIA celebrated this as “the intelligence coup of the century”.</p>
<p>The UK and the USA have still not disclosed insider knowledge concerning the deaths of Hammarskjöld and his entourage. Their secret agents were also involved in deliberations to kill Lumumba. Though they weren’t directly participating in his abduction, torture and execution in Katanga, it suited their agenda.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Book cover shows a map of Africa with its western parts in a sniper's sights." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nkrumah was luckier. A state visit to Beijing saved his life, when in his absence the <a href="https://www.eaumf.org/ejm-blog/2018/2/23/february-24-1966-dr-kwame-nkrumah-overthrown-as-president-of-the-republic-of-ghana">military coup took place</a>. Nelson Mandela was also “spared” by being imprisoned for most of the next 30 years. His <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/trials-and-prison-chronology">arrest in South Africa in 1962</a> under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">Suppression of Communism Act</a> was based on information provided by the CIA (p. 474). </p>
<h2>Western mindset</h2>
<p>Williams quotes (p. 77) a high-ranking CIA agent to illustrate the overall Western mindset. He declared in 1957:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Africa has become the real battleground and the next field of the big test of strength – not only for the free world and the communist world but for our own country and our Allies who are colonialist powers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The strategy included replacing independent nationalist leaders with <a href="https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/anthos/vol2/iss1/5/">“big men”</a> – autocrats who based their power on Western support, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mobutu-Sese-Seko">Mobutu Sese Seko</a>. A track record in or commitment to democracy and human rights was not a prerequisite.</p>
<p>In contrast, leaders like Guinea’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sekou-Toure">Sékou Touré</a> were considered enemies. Arguing for a referendum rejecting continued dependency from France, he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/28/obituaries/ahmed-sekou-toure-a-radical-hero.html">declared in 1958</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Guinea prefers poverty in freedom to riches in slavery (p. 74).</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Cultural operations</h2>
<p>CIA operations were not confined to plots ending in brute force. Some were cultural programmes, unbeknown to many artists and scholars who received CIA sponsorship.</p>
<p>This included stipends to South African writers in exile, such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/eskia-mphahlele">Es'kia Mphahlele</a> and <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-01902011000100004">Nat Nakasa</a>, as well as the sponsoring of cultural festivals and conferences in Africa. Williams (p. 64) quotes the future Nobel laureate <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/biographical/">Wole Soyinka</a>, who after discovering that he had unknowingly received CIA funds <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/biographical/">declared</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>we had been dining, and with relish, with the original of that serpentine incarnation, the Devil himself, romping in our post-colonial Garden of Eden and gorging on the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a spectacular disclosure (pp. 324-331) Williams presents details of CIA-funded concerts by <a href="https://npg.si.edu/exh/armstrong/">Louis Armstrong</a>, touring 27 African cities in 11 weeks during late 1960. This included a concert in Elisabethville, the Katanga breakaway province of Congo, at a time when Lumumba’s end was near. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/12/louis-armstrong-and-the-spy-how-the-cia-used-him-as-a-trojan-horse-in-congo">According to Williams</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Armstrong was basically a Trojan horse for the CIA … He would have been horrified.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Facts, not fiction</h2>
<p>The US’s <a href="https://www.ushistory.org/us/53a.asp">obsessive anti-communism</a>, which escalated in the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, at times took lethal forms when governments or leaders were considered to be obstructing Western interests. </p>
<p>A sense of guilt or remorse remains absent. Mike Pompeo says it all. Then CIA director from January 2017 to April 2018 and Donald Trump’s <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/pompeo-michael-r">Secretary of State</a>, “celebrated immorality”, as Williams drily comments (p. 515). “I was the CIA director,” Pompeo boosted in a quoted speech in 2019:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The story, unlike John le Carré’s, is definitely not fiction. CIA operations, at times in collaboration with other Western intelligence agencies, were pursuing a hegemonic agenda with lasting impact.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Detailed accounts from original documents offer insights into the secret operations of the CIA in Africa.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1706552021-11-03T14:46:25Z2021-11-03T14:46:25ZA hitman’s confessions expose brutality of white supremacists who served apartheid<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429698/original/file-20211102-25-1i1k8co.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Winnie Mandela was among key targets for disinformation by apartheid police</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mujahid Safodien/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A raft of confessions have been published in the past three decades chronicling the stories of white men in uniform who plied their trade as apartheid heavies and enforcers. The brutality they dispensed – killings, assassinations, torture, beatings – also came to light in two commissions: the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02046/05lv02047/06lv02049/07lv02062.htm">Goldstone Commission</a>, which exposed the a dirty tricks campaign of the apartheid-era South African Defence Force to forment violence in black townships in the 1990s; and the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)</a>, which was established to help South Africa deal with its violent past.</p>
<p>A new book, <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/confessions-of-a-stratcom-hitman/">Confessions of a StratCom Hitman</a>, has been written by Paul Erasmus who left the police in 1993. He served during the most brutal years of the apartheid regime, and prior to the book had already testified <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/1995-06-30-the-dirty-tricks-campaign-to-trash-winnie/">to the Goldstone Commission</a>, and the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/amntrans/2000/201127jb.htm">Truth and Reconciliation Commission </a>.</p>
<p>His book is nevertheless a welcome addition because it covers a raft of new revelations. </p>
<p>These relate to both the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03497.htm">Special Branch</a>, the notorious police unit that targeted anti-apartheid activists; and <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2020/04/27/stratcom-what-it-actually-was-and-means">Stratcom</a>, the strategic communications section of the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/161023">National Security Management System</a>. This entity clustered various government departments under brigadiers or other military officers.</p>
<p>One theme of interest is the revelation that the rise of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/afrikaner-weerstandsbeweging-awb">Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging (AWB)</a>, a racist militia of far right-wing Afrikaner nationalists, from 1987 caused serious schisms in both the Special Branch – which led to factionalism and some police refusing orders to fire on AWB members attacking others – and in the uniform and detective (CID) branches of the police force.</p>
<p>The rise of the right-wing faction led to the police force being split into two camps – those with more extreme rightwing views and those with marginally less radical views who supported the ruling <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a>.</p>
<p>This was significant because it led to some police refusing orders to fire on Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging members who were committing crimes.</p>
<p>Stratcom routinely fabricated smears against Winnie Mandela, for instance claiming that she smoked marijuana and was an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu1YXC2npdg">alcoholic</a>.</p>
<p>The book is also a useful reminder of how the Special Branch’s white racism was buttressed by anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism and homophobia. One Stratcom project – Project Epic. (p.192) – was devoted to indoctrination against Catholicism. Erasmus intriguingly names, without any details, a Project Drama, proposed to destabilise the government that would be elected when apartheid ended in 1994. (p.191)</p>
<p>This tells both about the failed ambitions of the state security apparatus under apartheid, and confirms what is known about the brutality of the period.</p>
<h2>Antagonism in the ranks</h2>
<p>Erasmus writes about how shabbily the apartheid regime treated its own staff. Salaries were appallingly low. And the police financiers often refused to refund him for overseas phone calls made on official duty. </p>
<p>This may be the first book to expose the extent of antagonism between the Special Branch and the uniformed and detectives branches of the apartheid-era South African Police, and antagonistic office politics within the Special Branch. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429352/original/file-20211029-27-1kf6dg3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429352/original/file-20211029-27-1kf6dg3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429352/original/file-20211029-27-1kf6dg3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429352/original/file-20211029-27-1kf6dg3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429352/original/file-20211029-27-1kf6dg3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429352/original/file-20211029-27-1kf6dg3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429352/original/file-20211029-27-1kf6dg3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>South African Police officers of the uniform branch regarded the Special Branch as either “glory-seekers” or “arse creepers” (p. 13). The unit’s members on the ninth and tenth floors of the notorious <a href="https://www.saha.org.za/publications/between_life_and_death.htm">John Vorster Square</a> police station nicknamed a Major Arthur Cronwright “little Hitler”. (p. 68). John Vorster Square was the biggest police headquarters in Johannesburg, then as now the largest South African city.</p>
<p>But I am sceptical of Erasmus’ claim that the Special Branch was shocked by the assassination of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/richard-albert-turner">Rick Turner</a>. The political philosopher and anti-apartheid activist was shot as he opened his front door in 1978. Erasmus argues that he didn’t believe that the security forces killed white people. </p>
<p>But he contradicts himself by writing how a superior ranking officer ordered him to murder a released white convict, (p.101) and a Special Branch major ordered him to shoot a police station commander because he was giving his son, a new constable, a hard time. (pp. 154,167)</p>
<h2>Murder, prejudice and unconscious ironies</h2>
<p>Confessions of a StratCom Hitman usefully also provides evidence of a Special Branch culture preferring casual lawlessness to prosecutions or legal repression. It is striking how a Special Branch major demanded his subordinates “fuck up” University of the Witwatersrand politics professor <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tom-lodge-1256885">Tom Lodge</a>, (p. 99) when he never ordered Lodge’s deportation or banning. Lodge currently lives in the UK. </p>
<p>Erasmus also reveals the line of command on parcel bombs. These were used to assassinate leading South African activists who had fled abroad. He writes that every parcel bomb required individual permission from the Minister of Police. (p.18). These included those that killed <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-heloise-first">Ruth First</a>, a communist intellectual and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jeanette-eva-schoon-nee-curtis">Jenny Curtis</a>, a former leader of the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students. </p>
<p>His memories of a tour of duty in Ovamboland, Namibia, include discovering that a gay conscript complained to a policeman about repeated rapes by South African Defence Force officers, and South African Air Force helicopter gunships machine-gunning elephants to poach their ivory. (p.158)</p>
<p>Equally interesting is the author’s memories of an academic from the International Relations Department of the University of the Witwatersrand more than once lecturing Stratcom and the Special Branch members. The liberal open universities had a diversity of academics, and included some hard-line participants in both the censorship board, and the support to the police unit revealed here.</p>
<p>One interesting topic is apartheid South Africa’s foreign policy. The Special Branch vetted all personnel who applied for jobs in the civil service and parastatals. It also vetted all South African job applicants to the Israeli airline El Al. (p.34)</p>
<p>Erasmus is determined to expose the National Party’s abuse of the Special Branch and Stratcom for its party political purposes particularly between 1990-1993 when negotiations were underway to end apartheid. </p>
<p>Projects and operations included one to form a new political party, ideologically positioned between the National Party (NP) and the Democratic Party (today’s Democratic Alliance) with the aim of winning the first democratic elections in 1994. (p.103) Erasmus calls this abuse as it would be using taxpayers money to fund a political party, and the NP was simultaneously negotiating with the ANC over the transition to democracy.</p>
<p>During 1991, when the end of apartheid seemed imminent, the Special Branch shredded 185,000 files on people and organisations. (p.110) </p>
<p>Perhaps these dated all the way back to the founding of the notorious police unit by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/general-jan-christiaan-smuts">Prime Minister Jan Smut</a>’s government in 1947?</p>
<p>Erasmus writes that his work and what he witnessed caused him depression, nightmares, heavy drinking, post-traumatic stress disorder, and the loss of 49 kgs in weight. He estimates he committed 500 crimes during 80 incidents. (p.221) </p>
<p>The author died earlier this year, aged 65: these revelations are among his legacy for South Africans to learn from.</p>
<p><em>Confessions of a StratCom Hitman is published by <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/confessions-of-a-stratcom-hitman/">Jacana</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the ANC, but writes this review in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>A secret plan to destabilise the new democratic government reveals the failed ambitions of the apartheid state security apparatus and confirms what is known about the brutality of the period.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1456642020-09-09T16:52:57Z2020-09-09T16:52:57ZAlexei Navalny poisoning: what theatrical assassination attempts reveal about Vladimir Putin’s grip on power in Russia<p>Vladimir Putin’s intelligence and security organs have used a variety of lethal ways over the past few decades to dispatch those who oppose him or the Russian state – an increasingly difficult line to draw. These murders and attempted murders are often theatrical and laced with morbid messaging. The recent poisoning of Putin opponent Alexei Navalny <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54002880">with the nerve agent Novichok</a> has again illustrated the Russian president’s willingness to sanction dramatic homicide as a tool of the state. </p>
<p>Putin’s prioritisation of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2019.1573537">theatrical vengeance</a> – even at the expense of large-scale diplomatic reprisals and biting economic sanctions – reveals both the nature of his regime and his obsession with maintaining and projecting power.</p>
<p>Political assassination during Putin’s reign is in keeping with Soviet and Russian traditions, but the brazenness of the Navalny poisoning and its timing during the swelling <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54068451">Belarus protests</a> shows both continuity and change. After Stalin’s death in 1953 the Politburo of the Communist Party, not a single person, was the embodiment of the state during the cold war. Putin has blurred and conflated such distinctions since he assumed power in 2000.</p>
<h2>Ruthlessness</h2>
<p>Like his Soviet forebears, Putin presides over a declining state in which power intermingles with corruption and <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250119346">extrajudicial murder</a>. The attempted poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer and British spy Sergei Skripal in 2018 first introduced Novichok into the British vernacular. Fellow Russian intelligence officer and British agent Alexander Litvinenko did not survive his poisoning in 2006 with Polonium-210 in a cup of tea. His murder, <a href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090324/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/report">according to the official British inquiry</a>, was “probably” approved by Putin personally.</p>
<p>Putin’s well of ruthlessness runs deep, and he has not hidden his willingness to engage in “wet affairs” – such as murders, kidnapping or sabotage. It would be self-defeating to keep his readiness for vengeance secret: it’s a message he wants those Russians who may get grassroots political inspiration from the protests over the border in Belarus to hear. </p>
<p>When asked about specific killings, Putin routinely evades such questions as deftly as a talented spy evades surveillance. But when speaking in general terms, Putin has been clear. <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/russia/fsb-wet.htm">Globalsecurity.org</a> and others quoted the Russian leader as threatening that “traitors will kick the bucket, trust me”, after Skripal was released in a spy swap in 2010.</p>
<p>Given the melding of leader with state, Putin has increasingly characterised personal disloyalty as a threat to the Russian state. So although former intelligence turncoats are frequent targets of Putin’s vengeance, victims also include journalists and political rivals, particularly those who investigate, expose, and criticise corruption among Putin and his inner circle. Navalny’s apparently <a href="https://theconversation.com/alexei-navalny-suspected-poisoning-why-opposition-figure-stands-out-in-russian-politics-144836">effective efforts to organise legitimate opposition</a> through the ballot box would be intolerable for any autocrat who is unsure how to govern without complete control. </p>
<h2>Soviet poisoning playbook</h2>
<p>Although poisoning is arguably the most dramatic form of Russian state-sponsored murder, outspoken Putin critics have been assassinated with more pedestrian means: in politician <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31669061">Boris Nemtsov’s case</a>, four bullets in the back in February 2015. Likewise, Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/ten-years-putin-press-kremlin-grip-russia-media-tightens">was shot on October 7 2006</a> – also Putin’s birthday – in her Moscow apartment building. Such killings could be cynically attributed to unfortunate street crime in a case of implausible denial, but Novichok leaves no room for doubt.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/novichok-how-are-victims-surviving-poisoning-145574">Novichok: how are victims surviving poisoning?</a>
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<p>Perceived enemies of the Russian state, like the Soviet Union before it, have met their ends in a dizzying variety of gruesome ways, but why does the fascination with poison endure? There are tactical and strategic considerations. An assassin cannot expect a clean getaway after shooting a pedestrian on Waterloo Bridge in London, but a puncture wound with a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-37376130">ricin-tipped umbrella</a> would suffice, as in the case of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov’s assassination by Soviet intelligence in 1978. </p>
<p>Today, Soviet-created Novichok has replaced <a href="https://theconversation.com/handle-with-care-the-worlds-five-deadliest-poisons-56089">ricin</a>. It offers the assassin advantages such as stealth and time for escape. It can be administered by exposure to everyday items such as doorknobs or tea. It appears in a sleepy city like Salisbury, as in the case of Skripal, or on Navalny’s flight from Siberia.</p>
<p>Additionally, a poison victim suffers, often publicly, yielding strategic effects. The photographs of the pitiable Litvinenko, hairless, gaunt, suffering in his hospital bed, grimly underscored the intended message. While any thug can murder with a gun, Soviet and subsequently Russian leaders have made assassination into a dramatic art form. The use of exotic poisons shows that confrontations with power are not a battle between two people, but rather bring the full resources of the state to bear against an individual, framing the situation as hopeless and futile. Poison evokes fear that you are never safe, never out of reach.</p>
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<h2>Choppy waters</h2>
<p>Putin is a standard-bearer, rather than a pioneer in the long history of Russian political assassination. Still, the brazenness of an unambiguous assassination attempt on a figure like Navalny, and the political circumstances in Minsk, matter. They can be interpreted as the act of a leader whose hand may be feeling unsteady on the rudder of the ship of state. </p>
<p>At the same time, however, <a href="https://theconversation.com/vladimir-putin-secures-constitutional-changes-allowing-him-to-rule-until-2036-what-this-means-for-russia-141103">recent Russian constitutional reforms</a> have erased any line between leader and the state, and may give Putin the confidence to deal even more harshly with opponents. But this expanded power has not offered more tools to deal with, or co-opt, the most vocal opponents. Those who cannot be bribed must be intimidated. Those who cannot be intimidated must be silenced. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/belarus-what-role-could-russia-play-in-alexander-lukashenkos-future-144701">Belarus: what role could Russia play in Alexander Lukashenko's future?</a>
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<p>If Putin has successfully manipulated the political process to make himself president for life, the coronavirus has been less cooperative in bending to his will. Claims of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/russian-coronavirus-vaccine-results-have-been-published-heres-what-they-reveal-145636">successful COVID-19 vaccine</a> notwithstanding, Russia’s ineffective response to the pandemic has laid bare the inadequacy of the regime. With the economic consequences of the pandemic and the oil crisis, combined with general Russian <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahead-of-constitutional-reform-vote-two-thirds-of-young-russians-think-vladimir-putin-should-step-back-from-power-141306">Putin fatigue</a>, opposition to Putin is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-09/russia-elections-will-navalny-s-poisoning-spur-the-protest-vote">likely to expand</a>. </p>
<p>Given Putin’s apparent legal impunity, his need to distract from state failures and corruption, and disconcerting Belorussian anti-authoritarian protests on his doorstep, it’s hard to imagine Putin losing his taste for the loathsome theatre of political assassination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145664/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Frey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. This analysis does not represent any official United States Government or Department of Defense position. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Gioe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. This analysis does not represent any official United States Government or Department of Defense position.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael S Goodman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Vladimir Putin is a standard-bearer, rather than a pioneer in the history of Soviet and Russian political assassination.Michael S Goodman, Professor of Intelligence and International Affairs, King's College LondonDavid Frey, Director Center Holocaust and Genocide Studies, United States Military Academy West PointDavid Gioe, Associate Professor of History, United States Military Academy West PointLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1405422020-06-11T17:33:35Z2020-06-11T17:33:35ZWho killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341243/original/file-20200611-80774-4ji83p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C21%2C4890%2C3380&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The murder weapon in the Palme case was never found.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/digital-art-of-shooting-handgun-royalty-free-illustration/165768245?adppopup=true">zbruch via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It took 34 years, 10,000 interviews and <a href="https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/juni/utredningen-om-palmemordet-avslutad/">134 murder confessions</a>, but the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme has now been solved. </p>
<p>Palme was shot on the Stockholm street Sveavägen – roughly, “Mother Sweden Way” – in February 1986, after a night at the movies with his wife and son.</p>
<p>On June 10, 2020, chief state prosecutor Krister Petersson identified the killer as <a href="https://www.svt.se/nyheter/snabbkollen/skandiamannen-pekas-ut-som-skyldig">Stig Engström</a>, an eyewitness dubbed “Skandia Man” during the initial murder investigation. However, no charges can be brought against Engström because he died in 2000, in an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/swedish-investigators-name-suspect-in-1986-assassination-of-prime-minister/2020/06/10/4e6244e6-ab05-11ea-868b-93d63cd833b2_story.html">apparent suicide</a>.</p>
<p>Engström is not the first person to be singled out or charged in Sweden’s most famous cold case. As I <a href="https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295988047/crime-and-fantasy-in-scandinavia/">write in my book on crime fiction in Scandinavia</a>, the Palme killing and bungled investigation represent a traumatic chapter in Sweden’s otherwise relatively peaceful history. </p>
<h2>Botched investigation</h2>
<p>In 1989 a man named Christer Pettersson was convicted of murdering Palme, leader of Sweden’s Social Democratic Party. Pettersson had a <a href="https://www.thelocal.se/20110228/32310">criminal past</a>, including <a href="https://murderpedia.org/male.P/p/pettersson-christer.htm">a manslaughter conviction</a>, and Olof Palme’s wife Lisbeth identified him in a police lineup as the man who killed her husband. </p>
<p>But an appeals court later overturned the conviction because the prosecutor <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801479366/blood-on-the-snow/#bookTabs=1">failed to present a murder weapon</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The crime scene on Sveavägen street in central Stockholm, 1986.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-file-picture-taken-on-march-1-1986-shows-people-laying-news-photo/1218383594?adppopup=true">Eif R. Jansson/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Now Swedish authorities seem <a href="https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/juni/utredningen-om-palmemordet-avslutad/">confident Engström is their man</a> – or moderately confident, at least. </p>
<p>Engström came forward to police in 1986 after Palme’s murder because he worked as a graphic designer for the Skandia Insurance Company, located near the crime scene. He claimed to be one of the first on the scene, and told police he tried to help resuscitate the prime minister. </p>
<p>But in their recent reexamination of interviews and other material, police found problems with Engström’s eyewitness story. </p>
<p>“No one saw anyone resembling Engström in the role he described himself <a href="https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/juni/utredningen-om-palmemordet-avslutad/">playing</a>,” said investigative lead Hans Melander in the press conference announcing the conclusion of the case. His story “doesn’t hang together.” </p>
<p>Engström was also a political opponent of Palme, who became prime minister in 1969. Palme had an aristocratic background and studied in the United States but became an outspoken socialist. His 15 years in office positioned Sweden as a “wealthy, advanced democracy that stood for equality, compassion and humanitarian values,” according to Jan Bondeson’s book “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801479366/blood-on-the-snow/#bookTabs=1">Murder on the Snow</a>.”</p>
<p>Palme’s progressive vision and his opposition to the Vietnam War, apartheid South Africa and dictatorships worldwide created many enemies, including the right-wing Engström.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Olof Palme four weeks before his death in 1986.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/swedids-late-primemminister-olof-palme-social-democrate-4-news-photo/526642472?adppopup=true">Francis Dean/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1992, Engström turned up at the door of journalist Jan Arvidsson and spoke at length about Palme’s murder – just as he had done with police in 1986. In the press interview, Engström provided details about a possible <a href="https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/7lw493/sista-intervjun-med-skandiamannen-var-valdigt-lugn">murder weapon</a> and suggested Palme’s murder could be a crime of opportunity. </p>
<p>However, “I personally would have used a more versatile weapon, a smaller caliber,” he said, adding: “If I had been the murderer.”</p>
<h2>‘We’ve come as far as we are able’</h2>
<p>Despite the official closure of the Palme case, <a href="https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/live-presskonferens-med-statsminister-stefan-lofven/">many Swedes have reservations</a>. </p>
<p>The prosecutor, Petersson, presented no new or especially convincing evidence about why he believes Engström is the killer. The murder weapon remains missing, <a href="https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/mordet-pa-olof-palme-folj-presskonferensen-direkt/">despite 738 weapons having been tested</a>.</p>
<p>But, Petersson explained, “We’ve come as far as we are able to come when it comes to a suspect.”</p>
<p>Doubt has shadowed the Palme investigation, which was criticized for failures to seal the crime scene and flawed analysis of witness testimony. Petersson took over the “Palme Group” in 2016 – one of many changes in leadership – and brought in a new team to review the voluminous material yet again. </p>
<p>The case also received renewed attention, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/world/europe/sweden-olof-palme-murder.html">possibly some useful new information</a>, with the 2018 serial publication of journalist Thomas Pettersson’s “<a href="https://magasinetfilter.se/tag/palmemordet-den-osannolika-mordaren/">The Unlikely Murderer</a>” in the magazine Filter. Petersson, who is not related to the suspect Christer Pettersson, turned over his findings to the prosecution. </p>
<p>Olof Palme’s son Mårten acknowledged that errors marred the <a href="https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/live-presskonferens-med-statsminister-stefan-lofven/">investigation of his father’s killing</a>. </p>
<p>But, he said, “I believe the Skandia Man is guilty,” citing the compelling case presented in Filter magazine. “And I believe the case should be closed.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial plaque where Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bouquets-of-flowers-lie-on-the-memorial-plaque-at-the-news-photo/1219076532?adppopup=true">Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Closure</h2>
<p>Solving the Palme killing may be an injection of good news for Sweden, which has suffered an <a href="https://www.livescience.com/results-of-sweden-covid19-response.html">exceptionally high death toll during the coronavirus pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>Sweden, which has not fought a war since 1814, has avoided the historical traumas of its European neighbors and become a leader in advancing international peace and cooperation. </p>
<p>But the assassination of Palme, who represented these values, is one of several traumatic domestic events to shake the country. In 1973, a prolonged hostage crisis at a bank spawned the term “<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/scandinavian-crime-fiction-9781472529084/">Stockholm syndrome</a>.” In 2003, Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was murdered in a Stockholm department store.<br>
Swedes often speak of these events as a loss of innocence for the famously peaceful, trusting nation. In that sense, closing Palme’s case represents an ambivalent coming to terms with their modern history – a foothold of wisdom, perhaps, in a particularly difficult present. </p>
<p>“The shot on Sveavägen [Street] has been a crisis, a wound, a riddle without a solution,” <a href="https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/live-presskonferens-med-statsminister-stefan-lofven/">said current Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven</a>. “The murder of a prime minister is a national trauma. It’s my deepest hope that the wound can now begin to heal.”</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140542/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Nestingen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Prosecutors say they’ve closed Sweden’s most famous cold case. But many Swedes still have doubts. The crime and botched investigation have been a ‘national trauma’ for this normally peaceful place.Andrew Nestingen, Professor, Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1313132020-02-11T11:58:28Z2020-02-11T11:58:28ZProbe into the death of UN boss 60 years ago needs South Africa’s help<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314234/original/file-20200207-27564-dm1ezm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dag Hammarskjöld died along with 15 others when his plane crashed in Zambia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Democratic South Africa has skeletons in the closet that it needs to address. One of these is the death of <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1961/hammarskjold/biographical/">Dag Hammarskjöld</a>, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) in a plane crash shortly after midnight on 17 to 18 September 1961. The plane went down as it approached Ndola, a mining town in Northern Rhodesia (today’s Zambia) bordering the Congo.</p>
<p>On board were 15 other people. Hammarskjöld planned to meet Moïse Tshombe, leader of the secessionist Katanga province, to find a solution to the conflict in the Congo. All but one, Hammarskjöld’s bodyguard Harold Julien, died. He succumbed to his injuries six days later in a local hospital. He could have been saved if treated properly. His eyewitness report was also neglected.</p>
<p>Foul play has never been eliminated. Hammarskjöld had engaged in crucial negotiations bringing the secession of the Katanga province to an end. This was followed with concerns by Western interests. His engagement in the <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/dag-hammarskjold-the-united-nations-and-the-decolonisation-of-africa/">decolonisation of Africa</a> provoked dismay among the white minority settler regimes. The crash, therefore, immediately provoked suspicions that it was not an accident. As recently as <a href="http://www.hammarskjoldinquiry.info/pdf/ham_245_Final_UN_report_071019.pdf">September 2019</a>, António Guterres, the current UN Secretary-General stated in a letter to the General Assembly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It remains our shared responsibility to pursue the full truth of what happened on that fateful night in 1961. We owe this to Dag Hammarskjöld and to the members of the party accompanying him. However, we also owe this to the United Nations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>New evidence substantiates the early suspicions of possible foul play. This means a UN Secretary-General and those in his company were possibly the victims of an attack in air. This ought to be verified.</p>
<p>Apartheid South Africa had interests in the region and followed closely the events unfolding in the Congo. It must be taken for granted that there are records, which offer additional information to verify assumptions. But access to classified documents needs a state’s active support.</p>
<h2>New investigations</h2>
<p>Fifty years after Hammarskjöld’s death, the Zambian-born scholar Susan Williams published a <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/who-killed-hammarskjold-2/">book</a> which pointed to omissions, flaws and failures of the earlier investigations. It triggered a new inquiry conducted by an independent commission of jurists. It submitted <a href="http://www.hammarskjoldcommission.org/index.html9">a report in 2013</a>, which concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is persuasive evidence that the aircraft was subjected to some form of attack or threat as it circled to land at Ndola. … the possibility that the plane was in fact forced into its descent by some form of hostile action is supported by sufficient evidence to merit further inquiry.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a result, <a href="https://theconversation.com/speaking-truth-to-power-the-killing-of-dag-hammarskjold-and-the-cover-up-65534">official investigations</a> by the UN resumed. The United Nations Association Westminster Branch <a href="http://www.hammarskjoldinquiry.info/">in London</a> has provided regular updates on developments since then.</p>
<p>In 2017 the former Chief Justice of Tanzania, Mohamed Chande Othman, was appointed as Eminent Person, tasked with further investigations. He concluded in his <a href="http://www.hammarskjoldinquiry.info/pdf/ham_150_Othman_report_251017.pdf">first report</a> that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>(an aerial attack) would have been possible using resources existing in the area at the time (and) that there is likely to be much relevant material that remains undisclosed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Justice Othman identified “the continued non-disclosure of potentially relevant new information in the intelligence, security and defence archives of member states” as “the biggest barrier to understanding the full truth” about what happened.</p>
<p>He stressed that it depends on the UN member states to become active in the search for further evidence in their national archives. The burden of proof had, therefore, shifted to them. They should show that they have conducted a full review of records and archives in their custody or possession, including those that remain classified, for potentially relevant information.</p>
<p>In support of Othman’s report, Guterres in 2017 <a href="http://www.hammarskjoldinquiry.info/pdf/ham_150_Othman_report_251017.pdf">recommended</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>that relevant member states appoint an independent and high-ranking official to conduct a dedicated and internal review of their archives, in particular their intelligence, security and defence archives, to determine whether they hold relevant information.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/72/252">UN General Assembly</a> extended Othman’s mandate in early 2018. He presented his <a href="http://www.hammarskjoldinquiry.info/pdf/ham_245_Final_UN_report_071019.pdf">second report</a> in September 2019.</p>
<p>New information, Othman concluded</p>
<blockquote>
<p>highlights the fact that there were many more foreign mercenaries in and around Katanga, including pilots, than had been considered by earlier inquiries.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These had the logistics and necessary conditions (suitable planes and airfields) to intercept with the plane approaching. For Othman </p>
<blockquote>
<p>it remains plausible that an external attack or threat was a cause of the crash.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>New information also confirmed that the crash site was discovered much earlier than officially reported – and testifies to the deliberate neglect of the only survivor. As Othman notes, this</p>
<blockquote>
<p>calls into question the acts of various governments directly after the crash and leaves open the issue of why the earlier crash discovery time was not reported.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Othman based his conclusions partly on reports of the independent, high-ranking official appointed by several UN member states. But, states such as South Africa, the US and the UK, where most discoveries could be expected, did not comply. </p>
<h2>A challenge to South Africa</h2>
<p>South Africa subsequently assigned a high-ranking official at its foreign relations department in <a href="http://www.hammarskjoldinquiry.info/pdf/ham_245_Final_UN_report_071019.pdf">May 2019</a> with the task to look into potential sources, which could offer new information. But no report has so far been submitted.</p>
<p>On delivering his most recent report, Othman recommended: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>that an independent person is appointed to continue the work;</p></li>
<li><p>that key member states again be urged to (re)appoint independent high-ranking officials to determine whether relevant information exists within their security, intelligence and defence archives;</p></li>
<li><p>that a conclusion be reached over whether member states have complied with this process;</p></li>
<li><p>that key documents be made public.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In December 2019 another <a href="https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/74/248">Swedish draft resolution</a> was adopted to extend Othman’s mandate, with a record number of 128 co-sponsoring countries, including South Africa, out of the UN’s 193 member states. Once again, the resolution was not supported by the US and the UK.</p>
<p>It is one thing for the US and the UK to be unwilling to assess and disclose classified material. It’s quite possible that they want to avoid any embarrassment. </p>
<p>But South Africa has no reason to want to hide anything. There were plausible reasons for the apartheid regime’s refusal to cooperate with the probe into Hammarskjöld’s death. But these no longer stand under a democratic government.</p>
<p>It is inconceivable that the country’s archives contain no information on what happened at Ndola. Concerned about apartheid, Hammarskjöld had visited South Africa in early 1961. South African agencies and individuals played an active role in the region. This needs to be more closely investigated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131313/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber is Director emeritus of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. He was a member of the Hammarskjöld Inquiry Trust.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barney Pityana is affiliated with The 70s Group, an independent gathering of South African political activists from the 1970s. It aims to contribute to informed political and economic thinking in society. </span></em></p>Does South Africa have skeletons in the closet over the death of the UN Secretary-General?Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaBarney Pityana, Professor Emeritus of Law, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1281672020-01-21T14:14:40Z2020-01-21T14:14:40ZSouth Africa fails to get to the bottom of killings in KwaZulu-Natal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310477/original/file-20200116-181603-hq7rke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African police minister Bheki Cele (left) claims success in the investigation of political killings in KwaZulu-Natal. With him is the head of the police, Khehla Sithole.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The assassination of political figures in South Africa has a long and horrible history. That the practice has continued since the country became a democracy is deeply disturbing.</p>
<p><a href="https://globalinitiative.net/the-rule-of-the-gun-hits-and-assassinations-in-south-africa-2000-2017/">Research</a> by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime between 2000 and 2017 ranked one province in South Africa – KwaZulu-Natal – well ahead of the other eight provinces in killings of people in the political sphere and the taxi industry. </p>
<p>I have conducted <a href="https://www.violencemonitor.com">anthropological research</a> on political violence in the province since 1983. My work has been of a qualitative nature, using information obtained from my own research networks, interventionist work with the police, and media reports. </p>
<p>My work, among other things, confirms the close links between political and taxi violence in the province, with taxi hitmen often deployed in political attacks. It is a cause for great concern that despite the availability of information about such activities, little progress has been made in bringing perpetrators to justice.</p>
<p>In May 2018 President Cyril Ramaphosa formed a national <a href="http://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/ministerial-committee-to-look-into-kzn-political-killings/">inter-ministerial investigative team</a> drawn from different parts of the country to investigate the killings. Its work has stirred controversy, amid allegations it has been <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-03-28-cele-defends-political-killings-probe/">selective</a> when making arrests. Questions have been raised about <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/task-team-probing-political-killings-in-kzn-slammed-as-incompetent=34518425">the quality of its investigations</a>, which have had little impact on exposing those behind the violence. </p>
<h2>The nature of political killings</h2>
<p>According to my statistics, around 90 people with some official standing have been killed in KwaZulu-Natal since 2015. They were either municipal councillors, political party officials or, in a few cases, senior municipal officials. Most of the deceased were affiliated to the African National Congress (ANC), the party that governs both the province and the country. </p>
<p>This figure is bound to be an under representation of the situation as not all such deaths are reported. Also, the figure does not include over 100 murders in Durban’s Glebelands hostel, which was built during the apartheid era to house male migrant workers, but is now home to <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-07-23-glebelands-part-one-durbans-hostel-dwellers-the-collateral-damage-as-public-protector-fights-battles-on-all-fronts/">22,000 people</a>, including families.</p>
<p>Prominent municipal employees are included in the deaths because of links between corruption and killings confirmed by a <a href="http://www.kznonline.gov.za/images/Downloads/Publications/MOERANE%20COMMISSION%20OF%20INQUIRY%20REPORT.pdf">commission</a> set up in 2016 to investigate political violence in KwaZulu-Natal.</p>
<p>Many of the deaths have been linked to intra-ANC politics. But the motive may not necessarily be political. For example, a death could be linked to the taxi business, known for its high levels of <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sunday-tribune/news/taxi-violence-on-the-up-in-kzn-north-coast-after-murders-33637750">violence and assassinations</a>. The violence, as my own research confirms, is usually linked to fierce competition over routes. </p>
<p>What’s common to all the deaths is that the violence is motivated by a battle over scarce resources. For example, prior to elections, competition over candidature might have been a motive, as seen in the spike in killings <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/sacq/n57/06.pdf">ahead of the 2016 local government elections</a>. Becoming a councillor guarantees a <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-governing-party-celebrates-with-eye-on-tough-year-ahead-52989">lucrative salary in all working class wards</a>. </p>
<h2>No transparency</h2>
<p>The inter-ministerial task team investigating the political killings started work on over 100 dockets in mid-2018. Over a year later, the only known high profile conviction for any of the 90 murders I documented was secured by KwaZulu-Natal detectives in March 2019 for a 2016 murder. </p>
<p>There may well have been convictions for the murders of less well known victims in regional courts which have not been reported. But none have been reported for the many prominent victims during this period. </p>
<p>This hasn’t stopped the police minister, Bheki Cele, from <a href="https://www.politicalanalysis.co.za/cele-says-the-imc-has-made-progress-in-addressing-political-violence/">claiming</a> that the task team has had many successes and secured several life sentences. He has failed to provide full details of these convictions. </p>
<p>From my personal experience, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain information from the South African Police Service about progress in criminal investigations.</p>
<p>I have also experienced a lack of transparency relating to the structure of the task team itself, including who commands it. </p>
<p>I have been able to establish that many people have been arrested. Some have been released without being charged while others have had charges withdrawn after appearing in court. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305647/original/file-20191206-90588-10i9unp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305647/original/file-20191206-90588-10i9unp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305647/original/file-20191206-90588-10i9unp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305647/original/file-20191206-90588-10i9unp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305647/original/file-20191206-90588-10i9unp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305647/original/file-20191206-90588-10i9unp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305647/original/file-20191206-90588-10i9unp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sindiso Magaqa, a municipal councillor in Umzimkhulu, KwaZulu-Natal, paid the price for opposing tender fraud.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">African News Agency Archive.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A number of examples of high profile cases – some of which were included in the dockets taken by the task team – show how the justice system is failing to conclude cases. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The assassination in May 2018 of prominent ANC activist Musawenkosi “Maqatha” Mchunu <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-witness/20191008/281539407705788">in Pietermaritzburg</a>. Six people were arrested for the crime, including Gift Zungu and Nkosinathi Gambu, the son and the nephew of the former deputy mayor of the district municipality under which the city falls. Almost a year after their arrests, murder charges were withdrawn against all the accused. Zungu and Gambu still face lesser charges.</p></li>
<li><p>Earlier last year the mayor of the KwaZulu-Natal town of Newcastle, Dr Ntuthuko Mahlaba, was arrested and charged for the 2016 murder of local ANC Youth League leader Wandile Ngubeni. Five months later <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-08-15-murder-charges-dropped-against-kzn-mayor-as-witnesses-wont-testify/">charges were withdrawn</a>. In May a local ANC activist, Martin Sithole, who was believed to be a witness in the Ngubeni matter, <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-05-13-witness-in-kzn-political-murder-gunned-down-in-apparent-hit/">was gunned down</a>. He was with a friend who was also killed.</p></li>
<li><p>Three ANC councillors from the town of Umzimkhulu were shot and badly injured in July 2017. One of them, Sindiso Magaqa, died in hospital months later. He had been working to expose corruption in the award of tenders for <a href="https://www.violencemonitor.com/2018/08/19/why-the-callous-disregard-for-the-safety-of-corruption-busters/">repairs to a hall in the area</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>In March 2019 the task team arrested the mayor of the district municipality, Mluleki Ndobe, a very senior ANC politician, together with the local municipality manager and three other men. Charges against Ndobe and the municipal manager were withdrawn 10 days later, but murder charges against the other three accused, including two former policemen, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-03-25-charges-provisionally-withdrawn-against-ndobe/">remain</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Evaluating task team performance</h2>
<p>These high profile arrests, followed by subsequent withdrawal of charges, have led to charges by the provincial ANC and the South African Communist Party of political partisanship and <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/task-team-probing-political-killings-in-kzn-slammed-as-incompetent-34518425">shoddy work by the task team</a>. </p>
<p>In the absence of empirical evidence to substantiate claims by the minister of police about convictions secured by this team, the inevitable conclusion is that their deployment is a waste of scarce criminal justice resources.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128167/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Natal Monitor Research Project Mary de Haas was part of at the University of Natal received funding from Norwegian People’s Aid between 1995 and 2005. She is affiliated with MeRAN, a small self-funded voluntary non-profit organisation of bioethicists working on medical rights.
</span></em></p>The task team established to investigate political killings in KwaZulu-Natal has had little impact on exposing those behind the violence.Mary de Haas, Honorary Research Associate in the School of Law, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1296222020-01-13T18:56:51Z2020-01-13T18:56:51ZPolitical assassinations were once unthinkable. Why the US killing of Soleimani sets a worrying precedent<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309608/original/file-20200113-103982-1yregsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani has sparked protests in a number of countries – both Muslim and non-Muslim.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">RAHAT DAR/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the US <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/01/07/was-americas-assassination-of-qassem-suleimani-justified">assassination</a> of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the immediate crisis <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-security-trump-relief/after-close-brush-with-iran-trump-finds-an-off-ramp-for-now-idUSKBN1Z8025">appears to have dissipated</a>. However, the wider ramifications pose a worrying precedent for international affairs. </p>
<p>For many, the killing was unexpected. But this was no Trump administration miscalculation. It’s the latest in a wider decay of the liberal norms that underpin diplomacy, conflict resolution and the day-to-day functioning of interstate relations.</p>
<p>Once championed by Washington, these rules have become increasingly rejected under President Donald Trump. That threatens to inject even more instability into our global system.</p>
<h2>What are norms in international relations?</h2>
<p>“Norms” is the term foreign policy people use to mean actions that are implicitly or explicitly acknowledged as reasonable for states to undertake - like a rulebook that guides the conduct of international relations. Norms influence everything from human rights protection to when and how it is appropriate to use force.</p>
<p>Norms differ from laws, as they lack formal enforcement mechanisms. Nevertheless, there can be major repercussions when they are violated.</p>
<p>Norms change over time, often shaped by dominant cultural, ideological and political trends. </p>
<hr>
<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-iran-showdown-conflict-could-explode-quickly-and-disastrously-129306">In Iran showdown, conflict could explode quickly – and disastrously</a>
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<p>For instance, in previous centuries, war was seen as a natural part of statecraft and something to be celebrated. However, this view has <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Norms-War-Cultural-Beliefs-Conflict/dp/1588263614">changed markedly</a>, largely due to the catastrophic great wars. Today, war is viewed by most countries as something to be avoided, and only used as a last resort. </p>
<p>This has led to an overall decline in major conflicts and the establishment of a <a href="https://www.opcw.org/">range</a> of <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/">international</a> <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/chr/pages/commissiononhumanrights.aspx">bodies</a> designed to prevent, constrain and moderate war. </p>
<p>Norms provide a kind of “standard operating procedure” for states, which is especially pertinent in times of crisis and uncertainty. Understanding that one’s rivals generally wish to avoid conflict allows states to formulate policies aimed at deescalation and détente.</p>
<p>When countries deviate from these norms, however, it injects unpredictability into the system. This can lead to miscalculation, panicked escalation and, ultimately, violent conflict.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309388/original/file-20200110-80132-vz5uie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309388/original/file-20200110-80132-vz5uie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309388/original/file-20200110-80132-vz5uie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309388/original/file-20200110-80132-vz5uie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309388/original/file-20200110-80132-vz5uie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309388/original/file-20200110-80132-vz5uie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309388/original/file-20200110-80132-vz5uie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The US was once the biggest proponent of the rules-based international order. Not anymore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Reynolds/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The rise of the ‘liberal international order’</h2>
<p>The most influential body of norms today are encapsulated in what foreign policy analysts call the <a href="http://www.gmfus.org/publications/what-liberal-international-order">liberal international order</a>, which emerged from Western consensus after the second world war.</p>
<p>This order does several important things, such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>incentivises collective action over unilateralism; </li>
<li>encourages democracy, dialogue and understanding over authoritarianism and aggression; and </li>
<li>seeks to lessen violence by providing alternative means of resolving conflict. </li>
</ul>
<p>The liberal international order rejects actions – such as the assassination of state officials like Soleimani – which are likely to inflame, rather than resolve, tensions.</p>
<p>Many scholars and analysts argue that such norms have been <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2012/02/18/the-democratic-peace-theory/">a significant factor</a> in the period of relative global peace since the second world war. </p>
<h2>The US and liberal international norms</h2>
<p>Over the past 70 years, the US been at the centre of many of the institutions that promote these rules, including the WTO, NATO, UN and IMF.</p>
<p>While the constraints of the liberal international order have not always benefited it – Washington has lost numerous trade disputes in the WTO, for instance – the US has been able to shape the very nature of the international system. </p>
<p>It’s one thing to win in a game, quite another to dictate the rules by which that game is played.</p>
<p>As a result, the US has sought to promote itself not just as an adherent of liberal norms, but as an exemplar of them. <a href="https://www.cfr.org/timeline/iraq-war">Notable</a> <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-latin-american-studies/virtual-special-issue-the-cold-war-in-latin-america">exceptions</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-role-1953-iranian-coup">not</a> <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/all-feasible-means">withstanding</a>, this has been a position held across both Republican and Democratic administrations, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309605/original/file-20200113-103963-4zrqyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309605/original/file-20200113-103963-4zrqyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309605/original/file-20200113-103963-4zrqyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309605/original/file-20200113-103963-4zrqyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309605/original/file-20200113-103963-4zrqyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309605/original/file-20200113-103963-4zrqyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309605/original/file-20200113-103963-4zrqyw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mourners taking part in the funeral procession for Qassem Soleimani in Najaf, Iraq.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ALI Al-MUMEN/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why assassinations matter to international norms</h2>
<p>The US abandoned the practice of political assassinations in the wake of the infamous <a href="https://history-matters.com/archive/church/reports/ir/contents.htm">Church committee of 1975</a>. </p>
<p>This inquiry exposed repeated CIA attempts to kill foreign leaders and officials. Such clandestine activities were seen as out of sync with the strengthening liberal norms of the day. If the US was really committed to promoting the order, how could it engage in actions that <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/who-ordered-the-assassination-that-started-the-civil-war-in-ireland-1.3492199">flagrantly undermined</a> <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/commemorating-100-years-since-franz-ferdinands-assasination/">peace and stability</a>? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/iran-vows-revenge-for-soleimanis-killing-but-heres-why-it-wont-seek-direct-confrontation-with-the-us-129440">Iran vows revenge for Soleimani's killing, but here's why it won't seek direct confrontation with the US</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>After the inquiry, the US halted its assassination programs, and adopted alternative methods of dealing with troublesome regimes. These included <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm0338">sanctions</a> and <a href="https://www.ned.org/">funding and training</a> opposition groups. </p>
<p>In the modern era, the targeting of state officials in assassinations is understood to be strictly verboten and reckless. This position allows officials to engage with more confidence and good faith in diplomacy, and dissuades states from engaging in such activities. </p>
<h2>Upsetting the balance of the world order</h2>
<p>In retrospect, Trump’s willingness to reject liberal norms on assassinations hardly seems out of character for someone who has shown profound hostility for them. </p>
<p>Trump has <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/nato-summit-braces-friction-after-bruising-first-day-n1095296">undermined longstanding alliances</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38721056">weakened</a> important <a href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/11/04/trump-begins-formal-us-withdrawal-paris-agreement/">mechanisms</a> of collective <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/14/chaotic-brexit-trump-plan-europe-president">cooperation</a>, all while encouraging the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/us/politics/trump-duterte-phone-transcript-philippine-drug-crackdown.html">worst predilections</a> of <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/03/politics/trump-putin-russia-timeline/">authoritarian leaders</a>. </p>
<p>Trump’s blase attitude towards the importance of liberal norms and institutions has left traditional allies feeling increasingly insecure and unable to rely on the US.</p>
<p>Dictatorial leaders of rival states have felt empowered by Trump’s own penchant for authoritarian behaviour at home, and more confident to violate international norms without fear of significant collective reprisal.</p>
<p>Soleimani’s assassination presents a further worrying decline in the influence of liberal norms. Not only does it position the US as a transgressive state with little concern for the rules of the international system, it also provides precedent for states to engage in such activities themselves.</p>
<p>At the best of times, this would be an unpleasant development. </p>
<p>Within the chaos of our current world “order”, however, the resumption of political assassination poses serious concerns for the future stability of the entire international system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129622/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Rich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In recent decades, most nations have agreed on certain norms to ensure peace, including an end to assassinations. Trump’s move to kill an Iranian general upends this carefully balanced system.Ben Rich, Senior lecturer in International Relations and Security Studies, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1248132019-10-18T10:01:31Z2019-10-18T10:01:31ZOnkgopotse Tiro: revolutionary who paid a heavy price for shaking apartheid to its core<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297643/original/file-20191018-56215-1hgbigw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Onkgopotse Tiro</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Book cover</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The book, <a href="https://www.takealot.com/parcel-of-death/PLID55073335">“Parcel of Death”</a>, is a journey to a revolutionary past. It is a journey but not a return to the past. Former journalist <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.co.za/blogs/news/writing-the-little-told-story-of-onkgopotse-tiro">Gaongalelwe Tiro</a> has written a book about his uncle Onkgopotse Tiro – a revolutionary spirit who powered the student <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">uprisings of June 1976</a> in Soweto, Guguletu – Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Umlazi – Durban, Bloemfontein and Pietermaritzburg. </p>
<p>It is the same spirit that was to galvanise another generation decades later in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/feesmustfall-the-poster-child-for-new-forms-of-struggle-in-south-africa-68773">fees must fall</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/it-will-take-critical-thorough-scrutiny-to-truly-decolonise-knowledge-78477">decolonisation </a> movements at the turn of the century.</p>
<p>Tiro was a student leader at the University of the North, now <a href="https://www.ul.ac.za/index.php?Entity=Home">University of Limpopo</a>, in the early 1970s and one of the early exponents of the revolutionary Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. He fled to exile in Botswana, where he was killed by a parcel bomb in 1974. It has always been suspected that it was sent by the apartheid security forces.</p>
<p>The book begins with a chapter entitled: “Blown to Smithereens”. The power and emotion contained in this chapter is enough to stop you from continuing. Even though I know the events that are described in the chapter and, had my own emotion and response on the morning of the day in February 1974 when the news of Tiro’s assassination came through, I still read the chapter over and over and hesitated to face up to subsequent chapters.</p>
<h2>Onkgopotse Tiro</h2>
<p>Onkgopotse Tiro was born in Dinokana Village outside the small town of Zeerust, in what is now known as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/north-west">North West Province</a>, South Africa. These origins automatically define him as son of poor parents.</p>
<p>Like other African young men and women, Tiro somehow managed to make it to university. For him, being of a particular tribal origin, it could only be University of the North, also known as Turfloop, a blacks-only university for students designated for the Tswana, Sotho, Pedi, Venda and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/tswana">Shangaan tribes</a>, located east of Polokwane. This, in line with the Apartheid racist segregation policies of the white minority state of the time.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=909&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297534/original/file-20191017-98648-3aqqvl.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The family and social background and experiences that Onkgopotse brought to the university immediately came into conflict with the colonial and racial texture inscribed in every facet of the university life. The critical, questioning mind of the soon to be born philosophy of <a href="http://azapo.org.za/about-azapo/black-consciousness/">Black Consciousness</a> soon showed its real character when Tiro and other black students immersed themselves in debates about how they should organise themselves around their own reality, black reality.</p>
<p>Political existentialism was the core mark of the strategy of black resistance by university students in those early days of black consciousness. Tiro was a key leader in this regard and, this is how this revolutionary edge catapulted him to the helm of student political organisation.</p>
<p>The anger of the white racist administrators and staff at the university and on behalf of all other white racists was provoked beyond measure when Tiro <a href="http://azapo.org.za/graduation-speech-by-onkgopotse-tiro-at-the-university-of-the-north-29-april-1972/">delivered a graduation speech</a> in 1972, that ignited black student political uprising throughout the land.</p>
<p>Thus in the first chapter the author details the events preceding, surrounding and, following the assassination of Tiro. The book depicts how Tiro’s time at Turfloop amounted to a revolutionising political script for generations to come. It is particularly helpful to have this history of the Black Consciousness Movement which provides background to the later assassination of <a href="http://azapo.org.za/azapohistory/bantu-stephen-biko/">Steve Biko</a>, who similarly died brutally at the hands of agents of a white racist regime.</p>
<p>The message is simple: White supremacists murdered Onkgopotse Tiro. They also murdered his associates, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mthuli-ka-shezi">Mthuli Ka Shezi</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mapetla-mohapi-1947-1976">Mapetla Mohapi</a> and Steve Biko. The list is long.</p>
<p>Students of Black Consciousness need to grasp this in order to understand the movement and the people that Tiro died for. Deliberately, or not, the author’s choice of the starting point for the biography of his late uncle is inspired by the same spirit that shook the foundations of a racist settler-colonial regime.</p>
<p>The rest of the book walks back to the events that led to Tiro’s assassination. It is a biography that refuses to engage in political narcissism. Its story comes back to us from the future. We understand who Tiro was through the lens of what happened long after he was no more.</p>
<p>It is well written and does not confuscate, not even politically or ideologically. Through the chapters that follow the first one, we come to meet and know the people who gave birth to a movement and died for a country. We also come to understand how relationships change even among the closest of comrades. Readers will be served with the truth of events and intricacies that professional historians and ideologues <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-steve-bikos-remarkable-legacy-often-overlooked-82952">conceal for no good reason</a>.</p>
<p>The biographer is more than a family member. He is himself a player, activist and combatant in the theatre of struggle in which his uncle’s extinction was plotted and carried out. He navigates the terrain professionally and does so like a revolutionary.</p>
<p>The writer shares the initial circumstances that surrounded the moment of political ignition that led to expulsion of Tiro from the University of the North and set the country on fire. This discussion happens, rightfully, later in the book. It helps to remove the temptation to write the story chronologically. As we have said, the story of Onkgopotse Tiro comes to us from the future. For indeed, in his life story, to borrow from <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/18th-Brumaire.pdf">Karl Marx’s unforgettable words,</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>the phrase does not go beyond the content; the content goes beyond the phrase.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is a story that draws its “poetry from the future”.</p>
<p>The book, therefore, shares snippets of the famous graduation speech that led to Tiro’s expulsion from Turfloop and subsequently galvanized black students in all the black campuses to solidarity action. </p>
<p>The rest is history.</p>
<p>The real pity, though, is that the biographer deprived the readers of Tiro’s speech in its totality. It is not enough to have quoted parts of it. It is a classic by itself and in its own right.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124813/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Itumeleng Mosala has received funding from universities for his research. He is a patron of the June 16, 1976 Foundation and the owner of Still Nascent Ventures (Pty) Ltd. He is a member of the Azanian People's Organisation and the party's past president. </span></em></p>The book depicts how Onkgopotse Tiro’s time at Turfloop amounted to a revolutionising political script for generations to come.Itumeleng Mosala, Research Associate professor, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882242017-12-07T11:09:59Z2017-12-07T11:09:59ZWhat better forensic science can reveal about the JFK assassination<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197009/original/file-20171129-12069-12zia6l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The immediate aftermath of the shooting of President Kennedy in November 1963.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Texas-United-Sta-/9ca283d2f3efda11af9f0014c2589dfb/58/0">AP Photo/Mary Ann Moorman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Popular television shows such as the “Law & Order,” “CSI” and “NCIS” franchises glorify forensic science as a magical, near-flawless tool for identifying criminals. Not surprisingly, Hollywood’s depiction of forensic science needs a reality makeover.</p>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/02/06/133497696/is-the-csi-effect-influencing-courtrooms">CSI effect</a>” is well-documented. As long ago as 2009, scientists with the National Research Council noted that <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12589/strengthening-forensic-science-in-the-united-states-a-path-forward">no forensic method</a> (except for nuclear DNA analysis) can reliably and consistently connect evidence to a specific individual or source. More recently, President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology reported that <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/09/20/pcast-releases-report-forensic-science-criminal-courts">pattern-matching forensic procedures are unreliable</a>. The <a href="https://www.innocenceproject.org/">Innocence Project</a> has exonerated many hundreds of wrongfully convicted people, and bad forensic science was found to be a contributing factor <a href="https://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/misapplication-forensic-science/">in about half of the original cases</a>.</p>
<p>These problems are not new. Six years before the National Research Council’s 2009 report, I was on a panel of the council that <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/10924/forensic-analysis-weighing-bullet-lead-evidence">looked at a particular forensic technique</a> used to match bullets found at crime scenes (typically murders) to bullets found in a suspect’s possession. That procedure, called comparative bullet lead analysis, was first used in the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/10924/forensic-analysis-weighing-bullet-lead-evidence">What the panel found</a> 40 years after the event contradicted the FBI’s analysis of the evidence at the time, and caused the bureau to <a href="https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-laboratory-announces-discontinuation-of-bullet-lead-examinations">stop using the technique altogether</a>.</p>
<h2>How many shooters were there?</h2>
<p>One of the main questions around the Kennedy assassination was whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the only person shooting at the president in Dallas that November day in 1963. Investigators had <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/28/truth-behind-jfks-assassination-285653.html">found three bullet casings</a> on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald had been shooting from. Audio evidence found <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1b.html">there had been another shooter</a> who had fired once.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1a.html">official congressional investigation</a> found that <a href="https://www.acsr.org/journal-archives/a-technical-investigation-pertaining-to-the-first-shot-fired-in-the-jfk-assassination">Oswald’s first shot had missed</a>, the second had hit Kennedy and the third had <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1a.html">hit and killed him</a>. The other shooter had missed, the investigation concluded.</p>
<p>These findings were based on the testimony of noted University of California-Irvine chemist Dr. Vincent C. Guinn. <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report">He claimed</a> that each individual bullet was chemically unique. By looking at the fragments of bullets that were recovered from Kennedy’s body and from Texas Governor John Connally, who was also shot that day (and survived), Guinn determined that there were <a href="http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/m_j_russ/hscaguin.htm">two and only two bullets</a>, fired by Oswald, that struck Kennedy and Connally.</p>
<p>Guinn’s testimony may have been as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016%2FS0379-0738%2802%2900118-4">accurate as was possible</a> in the 1970s, but by the 1980s FBI agents were <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/10924/chapter/6#91">routinely testifying in court</a> that “bullets from the same manufacturing batch were chemically indistinguishable.”</p>
<h2>Investigating more deeply</h2>
<p>In late 2004, Stuart Wexler, a high school social studies teacher in Hightstown, New Jersey, was examining this very contradiction. He approached me about helping with a study of the brand of bullets thought to have been used by Oswald to kill the president. Wexler and a chemist friend of his had bought a group of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/AR2007052401563.html">Western-Winchester Cartridge Co. Mannlicher-Carcano</a> bullets to verify Guinn’s assumption that bullets were individually chemically distinct. He wanted to analyze the bullet fragments using science-based techniques not available to investigators decades earlier.</p>
<p>I put together a team including Wexler, two chemists, a metallurgist and two statisticians. We used neutron activation analysis to measure the chemical composition of the bullets. This process irradiates the bullets and then <a href="http://nmi3.eu/neutron-research/techniques-for-/chemical-analysis.html">measures the gamma rays</a> the radioactive bullets emit, to reveal their chemical compositions. </p>
<p>Specifically, we wanted to test Guinn’s claim that each bullet was chemically distinguishable from each other. If that wasn’t true, we also hoped to identify whether any of our bullets matched any of the bullet fragments from the Kennedy assassination investigation.</p>
<p>We analyzed 30 bullets, and found that all but one matched at least one of the other bullets in the batch. The one that didn’t match any others we tested did actually match with fragments taken from Kennedy’s head. This meant that Guinn was incorrect: Individual bullets did not have uniquely identifiable chemical components. In fact, the number of bullets involved could have been as few as the two Guinn claimed, or <a href="http://doi.org/10.1214/07-AOAS119">as many as five</a>. Given the congressional conclusion that there had been four shots, it remains possible that Oswald was not the only shooter who hit the president – and that Oswald may not have fired the fatal shot.</p>
<p>Flawed forensic science had misled not only the congressional committee investigating the assassination, but also the entire nation. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1743490620070517">Our demonstration</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051601967.html?hpid=topnews">captured a lot of public attention</a>. But more importantly, it suggests that a deeper understanding of truth can come from improving forensic science. This is useful as <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-withering-public-trust-in-government-be-traced-back-to-the-jfk-assassination-87719">scholars examine newly released John F. Kennedy assassination documents</a>, and as criminal trials around the country seek justice for victims and accused alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88224/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clifford Spiegelman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Applying actual science to forensic investigations can yield substantially different results from the findings of standard methods in the field.Clifford Spiegelman, Distinguished Professor of Statistics, Texas A&M UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/877192017-11-22T01:56:42Z2017-11-22T01:56:42ZCan withering public trust in government be traced back to the JFK assassination?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195657/original/file-20171121-6055-iyt855.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What was lost, other than a life, on Nov. 22, 1963?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/akrockefeller/11855209644">AK Rockefeller</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent release of the JFK files led to a surge of media coverage about the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath. </p>
<p>But it’s not like public interest has ever really abated. On any day of the week, visit Dealey Plaza, the downtown Dallas site of the assassination. You’ll see curious tourists, sleuths trying to figure out what really happened and others who don’t agree about how it happened.</p>
<p>In some ways, it’s still Nov. 22, 1963. </p>
<p>In the days after the tragedy, the public was at a loss over how to interpret the events. People distrusted the government’s explanation – a suspicion that continues to this day. </p>
<p>Even so, it doesn’t mean there aren’t any lessons to be learned from the assassination. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s time for a different conversation about the Kennedy assassination – not one about who pulled the trigger, but about the lasting legacy of an unresolved event, and how it’s influenced what Americans do (and don’t) believe in today.</p>
<h2>A cottage industry of conspiracies</h2>
<p>On Oct. 28, President Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/924382919845666816?lang=en">tweeted</a> that he was going to release all the remaining JFK files in order to “put any and all conspiracies to rest.”</p>
<p>Good luck, Mr. President.</p>
<p>The journalists, conspiracy theorists and scholars who have sorted through the 31,334 documents <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/2017-release">disclosed this year</a> by the National Archives didn’t find anything that changes our previous understanding of the assassination or the events surrounding it. </p>
<p>But even if there were new revelations, would public opinion change?</p>
<p>For more than half a century, Americans have been exposed to a cottage industry of material about the Kennedy assassination. Over 1,000 books have been written, from “Crossfire” and “On the Trail of Assassins” to “They Killed Our President” and “CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys.”</p>
<p>It’s estimated that <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3175233&page=1">95 percent</a> of these books are pro-conspiracy and reject the Warren Commission conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy. Most point out discrepancies and unanswered questions. Many confuse innuendo and rumor with logic and evidence. </p>
<p>Then there are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy_in_popular_culture">fictional accounts of the assassination</a> – fantasy novels, comic books, comedies, a Broadway musical and even a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_Reloaded">video game</a> – that make no pretense of telling the truth. </p>
<h2>Rush to judgment</h2>
<p>Mark Lane’s 1966 book, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_to_Judgment">Rush to Judgment</a>,” was one of the first commercially successful books to criticize the methods and conclusions of the Warren Report. However, even before Lane’s book and the Warren Commission began its report, there’s evidence that a different rush to judgment had already occurred. </p>
<p>Belief in a criminal conspiracy took hold within days of the assassination. A <a href="http://news.gallup.com/vault/221048/gallup-vault-few-1963-thought-oswald-acted-alone.aspx">Gallup poll</a> taken the week of the assassination found that 52 percent of Americans already believed that the man who shot Kennedy didn’t act on his own and that others were involved. </p>
<p>In the minds of many Americans, a lack of a coherent narrative seems to have created a void that was filled by doubt and apprehension. <a href="http://news.gallup.com/file/poll/221069/1963_12_06%20JFK%20Assassination.pdf?g_source=link_newsv9&g_campaign=item_221048&g_medium=copy">The original Gallup news release</a> noted the “widespread fear” that Oswald didn’t act on his own.</p>
<p>Since 1963, <a href="http://news.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx">Gallup has continued</a> to ask Americans whether they believe in the “lone gunman” theory or in a criminal conspiracy, and has consistently found that a majority believes it was a criminal conspiracy. (In 1966, the number dipped to 50 percent. By December 1976 it spiked to 81 percent.) The polls also show there has never been consensus as to who other than Oswald may have been involved.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195674/original/file-20171121-6051-1w203lt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester attends a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza in November 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/JFK-Anniversary/3d0b5b7425b6418b99cef4ab81f4242f/133/0">Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s not like JFK conspiracy theories haven’t been thoroughly debunked. Gerald Posner’s 1993 book “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vV29AAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=case%20closed&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Case Closed</a>” effectively refutes all the major conspiracy theories. Vincent Bugliosi’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7jrKTKDhvfkC&lpg=PP1&dq=reclaiming%20history&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false">Reclaiming History</a>” (2007) – a more in-depth version of “Case Closed” – fastidiously explains the evidence establishing Oswald’s guilt and that he acted alone. </p>
<p>Was the proliferation of conspiracy books – which exploited deficiencies in the government’s handling of the case – a major reason <a href="http://www.history.com/news/why-the-public-stopped-believing-the-government-about-jfks-murder">the public stopped believing</a> the government account of President Kennedy’s murder?</p>
<p>Social scientists have been able to show how people don’t necessarily wait for the facts, that they instead <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-we-worry-that-half-of-americans-trust-their-gut-to-tell-them-whats-true-84259">trust their gut to tell them what is true</a>. <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/24/study-finds-that-we-still-believe-untruths-even-after-instant-online-corrections/">Study</a> after <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868309352251">study</a> has shown that the presentation of facts and contradictory evidence often doesn’t change beliefs. In fact, <a href="http://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_backfire_effect.php">it can sometimes make preexisting beliefs stronger</a>. </p>
<p>We also see how conflicting information about the assassination can sow confusion – to the point where people either aren’t sure what to believe or pick and choose what they want to believe. The JFK assassination is a case study for <a href="https://theconversation.com/confirmation-bias-a-psychological-phenomenon-that-helps-explain-why-pundits-got-it-wrong-68781">confirmation bias</a>, which is the tendency to search, interpret and favor information in a way that confirms our preexisting beliefs. </p>
<p>Is it possible that the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination helped lay the groundwork for today’s <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/uw-professor-the-information-war-is-real-and-were-losing-it/">alternative media ecosystem</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-origins-of-post-truth-and-how-it-was-spawned-by-the-liberal-left-68929">fake news peddlers</a>? Did it show how easily cultural fissures could be created and exploited, and how difficult it is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-princess-diana-conspiracies-refuse-to-die-82363">lay a conspiracy theory to rest</a>?</p>
<p>We do know that in 1964 – within a month of the Warren Commission’s official finding that Oswald was the lone assassin – public trust in federal government began a steady 54-year decline. </p>
<p>Today, it’s at a <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2017/05/03/public-trust-in-government-1958-2017/">near-historic low.</a></p>
<h2>A case never closed</h2>
<p>An important but often overlooked aspect of the Kennedy assassination has to do with the sociological importance of due process, and the consequences of when a trial is interrupted.</p>
<p>Within 48 hours of Oswald’s arrest, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby murdered him on national television. </p>
<p>This upended the American criminal justice process. Oswald’s death not only denied him his day in court, but it also denied Americans the sense of closure that can accompany a public trial. The presentation of evidence, the examination of witnesses, the deliberation of a jury, the rendering of verdict and the exhaustion of post-conviction remedies are all important elements of closure. Principles and process matter. </p>
<p>Not that there won’t be critics of courtroom-based outcomes, or that there won’t be differences between a legal verdict and popular opinion. </p>
<p>But a poignant lesson of the Kennedy assassination is that when the legal process is not allowed to run its course, it can have major, longlasting influences on what some believe – <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-endless-whodunnit-why-conspiracy-theorists-will-never-accept-who-shot-jfk-49465">and what others never will</a>.</p>
<p>Every day someone new learns about the Kennedy assassination. Interest in the government’s release of all remaining documents suggests that many still believe there are new things to learn. </p>
<p>But it doesn’t mean Americans are going to learn something that’s going to change what we believe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87719/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Kellus Turner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the minds of many, the assassination remains a tragedy cloaked in mystery. How does this lack of closure – and the general distrust it fomented – resonate in American culture and politics today?Ryan Kellus Turner, Adjunct Professor of Criminal Justice, St. Edward's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/755992017-04-05T14:54:45Z2017-04-05T14:54:45ZWhy every generation of students must find, fulfil or betray its mission<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163641/original/image-20170403-21966-10yk9fp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Student protests in South Africa have centred around free tertiary education.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Sumaya Hisham</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a recent opinion piece in the Business Day newspaper, author and academic Jonny Steinberg <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/business-day/20170303/281767039009215">suggested</a> that a “generational estrangement deeper than we have acknowledged” had emerged between the Fees Must Fall generation – those who’ve led protests against high university tuition fees and higher education structures they say are unjust – and their “scorn for almost everyone over the age of 40”. </p>
<p>At times over the past two years it may have seemed that a generation had emerged on South Africa’s campuses that has disowned the past. But generational rebellion is an enduring feature of all societies. Indeed, it’s the dynamic through which societies renew themselves and move forward. </p>
<p>Reflecting on more than 40 years of teaching three generations of University of Witwatersrand (Wits) students – incidentally, Steinberg was among them – I couldn’t help observing how each generation developed a distinct self consciousness; a world view. Each generation was shaped by particular political icons and engaged in particular forms of political action.</p>
<h2>Repression and state violence</h2>
<p>The first generation, the Soweto generation, looked for theories of radical – even revolutionary – change. The central figure was <a href="http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/marx.HTML">Karl Marx</a>, whether students chose to reject him and go in a different direction or to adopt one or other of the intellectual currents that had their source in Marx. These included <a href="https://global.britannica.com/biography/Antonio-Gramsci">Antonio Gramsci</a>, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/leon-trotsky-9510793">Leon Trotsky</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/23/ernesto-laclau">Ernest Laclau</a>, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/vladimir-lenin-9379007">Vladimir Lenin</a> and so on.</p>
<p>In 1981 half of the students in my honours class in industrial sociology were held under the <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01927.htm">Terrorism Act</a>. Some were detained for months without trial. It was the time of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a>; of trade union militancy and nationwide resistance to apartheid. </p>
<p>But it was also a time of repression, of state violence – even assassination. The assassination of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/david-joseph-webster">David Webster</a>, a colleague in the department of anthropology, was a dramatic illustration of those times.</p>
<p>The release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and 1994’s new democratic government was an event that profoundly changed the classroom. This, the 1994 generation, was quite different from those who’d come before.</p>
<h2>Decolonisation of knowledge</h2>
<p>For many, the classroom was an opportunity to escape the poverty and political turmoil of the townships for a career in a transformed public sector or the private sector. But they were rebels too. I recall students occupying the administrative building and trashing the campus in support of their demands for the transformation of Wits. Indeed, one of the demands was for free education. </p>
<p>By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, around 2009, I sensed a new assertive spirit in the corridors of the humanities faculty at Wits. A new generation was in the making, a third generation. It was to culminate in the Fees Must Fall movement of 2015 and 2016. </p>
<p>In February 2016 I was in discussions with my new, black female Masters interns about what they wanted to research for their theses. They announced: “We are tired of white people studying blacks; we want to study whites.” This generation had found its voice and the language to express their feelings of discomfort and <a href="https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/article/view/2839/2543">sense of racial injustice</a> in a world where knowledge production is still dominated by whites. </p>
<p>The decolonisation of knowledge was their aim. Post-colonial theory was their guide. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/arts/edward-w-said-literary-critic-advocate-for-palestinian-independence-dies-67.html">Edward Said</a> and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/national-culture.htm">Frantz Fanon</a>, and African intellectuals such as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/stephen-bantu-biko">Steve Biko</a> and <a href="http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com/">Ngugi Wa’ Thiongo</a> were now the key theorists. </p>
<p>What’s striking about this, the third generation, is the leading role played by black female students. Black feminism, the black body and sexuality become the dominant discourse of this generation. This third generation had found its voice. They were now comfortable in their skin and proud of their identity.</p>
<p>The teacher student relationship – what I call the chalk face – is a crucial interface between the generations. It’s here that academic generations are made. A central demand of the current generation of students is the need to recognise their dignity, their material needs, their distinct family and cultural backgrounds, and of course their language.</p>
<h2>Discovering a new mission</h2>
<p>But the generational rebellion that Steinberg refers to is not simply about the need for better communication. </p>
<p>It’s a demand that goes back many generations. Indeed it was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/robert-sobukwe-inaugural-speech-april-1959">a demand</a> made by Pan African Congress founder <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mangaliso-sobukwe">Robert Sobukwe</a> when he was a tutor at Wits nearly 60 years ago. </p>
<p>It’s a demand to change the content of the curriculum so that South Africans, especially black men and women from all over Africa, can become the producers of knowledge. </p>
<p>To rebuild trust and mutual respect between the generations we need to make our classrooms places where our students are not only the consumers of knowledge produced elsewhere. This is the challenge for the graduating class of 2016. In the memorable words of Fanon:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Each generation must discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Your mission is to become the authors of the books the next generation of students read; the articles they cite and the theories that shape their thinking. </p>
<p><em>This is an edited extract of the author’s speech on the occasion of being awarded an <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/graduations/2017/a-life-servicing-many-generations-.html">honorary doctorate</a> from the University of the Witwatersrand.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Generational rebellion is an enduring feature of all societies. Indeed, it is the dynamic through which societies renew themselves and move forward.Edward Webster, Professor Emeritus, Society, Work and Development Institute, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/636222016-08-26T10:43:22Z2016-08-26T10:43:22ZThe US has blurred the lines on assassination for decades<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135533/original/image-20160825-6614-1xjqt0a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold lands in Israel.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MR._Dag_Hammarskj%C3%B6ld_ARRIVES_AT_LYDDA_AIRPORT,_ON_HIS_WAY_FROM_BEIRUT_TO_CAIRO,_1956.jpg">http://www.gpo.gov.il</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki Moon, is set to open a new investigation into the death of former secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold, whose plane crashed during a peace mission in the Congo in September 1961. New documents have surfaced that seem to implicate the <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/01/u-n-to-probe-whether-iconic-secretary-general-was-assassinated/">CIA</a> – which should, perhaps, not come as a complete surprise.</p>
<p>From the late 1950s, the CIA was involved more or less directly in plots to assassinate several foreign leaders. Among them was Cuba’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/aug/03/cuba.duncancampbell2">Fidel Castro</a>, Congo’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/21/usa.davidpallister">Patrice Lumumba</a>, and the Dominican Republic’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/13/archives/cia-is-reported-to-have-helped-in-trujillo-death-material-support.html">Rafael Trujillo</a>. In the mid-1970s, a series of revelations about the CIA’s involvement in assassination attempts prompted numerous inquiries by the government and Congress.</p>
<p>One Senate committee <a href="http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94465.pdf">concluded</a> that the CIA had been able to get involved in these incidents thanks to a combination of secrecy, ambiguity about lines of responsibility between the agency and the White House, and “plausible deniability”. The term – initially coined to suggest that US covert operations should be conducted in such a manner as to plausibly deny US involvement – was later interpreted as the need to isolate the president from the details of covert operations in order for him to plausibly deny knowledge of them.</p>
<p>The committee recommended establishing a statute that would outlaw “assassination” and would specify the meaning of the word and identify categories of foreign officials that could not be targeted (including leaders of movements and parties). But in 1975 the <a href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB522-Church-Committee-Faced-White-House-Attempts-to-Curb-CIA-Probe/">Ford administration</a> blocked any congressional effort to reform the intelligence services. Ford did ban assassination in an <a href="http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo11905.htm">Executive Order</a> of 1976 but the meaning of assassination remained deeply vague. It stated: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The order was expanded during the Carter years by dropping the adjective “political” and was confirmed by Reagan in <a href="http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html">Executive Order 12333</a>. This remains the standing regulation when it comes to US involvement in assassination. Its inherent ambiguity has not ceased to cause problems ever since.</p>
<h2>Skirting around the order</h2>
<p>In the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration identified Muammar Gaddafi as its main enemy. Gaddafi had been sponsoring terrorist attacks and after Libya was connected to a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1653848.stm">1986 bombing in Berlin</a> in which two US servicemen and a Turkish woman were killed. The US retaliated. In Operation El Dorado Canyon, US planes bombed one of Gaddafi’s residences and military targets.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-truth-about-1986-us-bombing-in-libya/2011/07/03/gHQAjAWHyH_story.html">US officials denied</a> that the bombing constituted an assassination attempt. They argued that the strike was not directly aimed at the Libyan dictator, but at degrading his military capabilities and support for terrorism. Officials, including the secretary of state George Shultz, argued that terrorists represented a particular category of enemy and that a more aggressive posture – including pre-emptive strikes – was needed. </p>
<p>In 1989, officials in George H W Bush’s administration allegedly lamented that the constraints imposed by the ban on assassinations had prevented the US from playing a larger role in a (failed) coup to oust Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega. A few months later, a memorandum written by <a href="https://www.law.upenn.edu/institutes/cerl/conferences/targetedkilling/papers/ParksMemorandum.pdf">Hays Parks</a> in the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Army seemed to ease these concerns. The memorandum provided a new legal position for counter-terrorism operations. </p>
<p>The memorandum clarified that “a decision by the president to employ clandestine, low visibility or overt military force” did not constitute assassination.</p>
<p>It also added that the ban on assassination didn’t prevent the targeting of a broad category of enemy, including terrorists. Since they could be said to pose an imminent threat, they could be targeted in self-defence under both international law and the power of the president as commander-in-chief. These arguments – similar to those used in the Reagan years – would provide a baseline for future justifications.</p>
<p>Later on, the administration, targeted <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/18/world/confrontation-gulf-air-force-chief-dismissed-for-remarks-gulf-plan-cheney-cites.html">Saddam Hussein’s</a> residence and headquarters. When Air Force chief of staff Michael Dugan admitted that Saddam himself had been the target of the bombing, secretary of defense Dick Cheney <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1990-09-18/news/mn-585_1_air-force-official">fired him</a>.</p>
<p>In 1998, the Clinton administration also targeted the residence of Saddam Hussein. Once again, officials denied that Saddam himself was the target. </p>
<h2>Al-Qaeda and 9/11</h2>
<p>The rise of al-Qaeda in the late 1990s brought the issue of assassination back to the fore. The <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/sept11/911Report.pdf">9/11 Commission report</a> revealed that the Clinton administration had authorised several kill or capture operations against Osama Bin Laden. The operations never went ahead but US officials agreed that if Bin Laden had been killed in one of them, it would not have amounted to an assassination. He was a terrorist leader, they reasoned, and the US would have been acting in self-defence against him. </p>
<p>The waters were muddied further after 9/11. George W Bush gave the CIA authority to <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cias-license-to-kill/">target terrorists</a> abroad (including American citizens). The Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress also made clear that the US could now target “persons,” that is, conduct premeditated strikes against individual targets. </p>
<p>The Obama administration has dramatically increased the number of operations against suspected terrorists, especially through drone strikes. The alleged imminence of the threat posed by terrorists still plays a key role in the <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/whence-imminence-drone-memo-puzzle-and-theory">justification</a> used for these operations.</p>
<h2>Where are we now?</h2>
<p>So, while <a href="https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-12333-2008.pdf">Executive Order 12333</a> prohibits any form of assassination, a series of targets has been identified as permissible. Several operations (such as those described above) have been defined as legal, regardless of how close they have come to the commonsense understanding of assassination. What started as a black-and-white distinction soon developed into an endless series of qualifications and exceptions.</p>
<p>In this context, two main interpretations can be identified. If we interpret the order as being a ban on killing outside war, its erosion is almost complete. However, it could be argued that the order only aimed to prevent the type of stealth assassination conducted in the 1960s – operations using explosive shells, poisoned darts and other devices, like those conducted against Castro and Lumumba. In this second interpretation, the order has stood the test of time, but its applicability is so narrow as to be, perhaps, meaningless. </p>
<p>Still, the fact that the Obama administration has been hard pressed to explain why its policies – and even its aggressive drone campaign – do not constitute a violation of the ban might suggest that it prefers to assume the second interpretation over the first.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63622/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luca Trenta receives funding from the British Academy. </span></em></p>Attempts to outlaw the practice have proven difficult, thanks to a tendency on the part of leaders to skirt around the rules.Luca Trenta, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Swansea UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/614402016-06-22T14:25:50Z2016-06-22T14:25:50ZPolitical violence in South Africa points to rising tensions in the ANC<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127747/original/image-20160622-7154-f6noha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters angered by the ANC's choice of a mayoral candidate went on the rampage in Tshwane, South Africa, . </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Protesters allied to South Africa’s governing <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/">African National Congress</a> (ANC) have been on a rampage following a fallout over the party’s <a href="http://anc.org.za/show.php?id=12062">choice</a> of a mayoral candidate for the <a href="http://www.tshwane.gov.za/Pages/default.aspx">Tshwane metropole</a>, which includes the administrative capital Pretoria. The Conversation Africa’s politics and society editor Thabo Leshilo put questions to political scientist Keith Gottschalk.</em></p>
<p><strong>Is political violence part of the South African political landscape?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. Both in terms of <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/live-tshwane-protests-20160621">violent protests</a>, as in Pretoria, as well as political assassinations.</p>
<p>Recently <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/our-family-needs-closure-son-of-murdered-eff-member-tells-malema-20160621">two Economic Freedom Fighters members</a> were killed while campaigning in Tembisa in Johannesburg. </p>
<p>Since 1998 <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/03/30/another-official-in-mpumalanga-mysteriously-murdered">14 ANC supporters</a> have been killed in Mpumalanga. And there have been more than <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/uploads/PolBrief64.pdf">450 political assassinations</a> in the <a href="http://www.kznonline.gov.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82&Itemid=174">KwaZulu-Natal</a> province alone since 1994.</p>
<p>Over the past ten years there have also been assassinations of civil servants. These included three auditors, among them <a href="http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/justice-for-lawrence-moepi/">Lawrence Moepi</a>, a forensic auditor attached to the Public Protector’s office. </p>
<p>What can be inferred from this is that there are individuals who want to ensure state contracts go to their supporters, who will in turn make donations to politicians. This includes <a href="http://www.gov.za/tenderpreneurship-stuff-crooked-cadres-fighters">tenderpreneurs</a> – business people who enrich themselves, often dubiously, through government tenders – and “<a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Political-hyenas-in-feeding-frenzy-20100826">political hyenas</a>” – the country’s corrupt political elite.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.news24.com/elections/news/cops-brace-for-violence-as-tshwane-smolders-20160622">violence in Tshwane</a> is just the latest event in this trend. It was sparked by the ANC announcing that its chosen mayoral candidate for the area wasn’t a local person but a senior party member from elsewhere. The violence has included the killing of one ANC member, as well as opportunists looting shops while the police are tied down dealing with protestors.</p>
<p>In many working-class neighbourhoods the losing faction in an election or after a selection process has its clientele network rioting in the streets, or taking a bus to the local ANC headquarters.</p>
<p>One major change is that during the late 1980s to early 1990s interparty rivalry between the ANC and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv03275/05lv03294/06lv03299.htm">Inkatha Freedom Party</a> at times claimed more than 1,000 lives a year; today’s killings are almost entirely intraparty – between <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/uploads/PolBrief64.pdf">factions within the ANC</a>.</p>
<p><strong>How are prospective councillors and mayoral candidates chosen in the ANC?</strong></p>
<p>Each branch must propose three candidates for its ward, plus three candidates for the proportional representation list. These are forwarded to the regional list committee. The committee makes the selection and sends it back to the branch for response.</p>
<p>The committee must select and remove prospective candidates to ensure certain objectives are met. These include meeting the criteria for the ANC’s “<a href="http://ewn.co.za/2012/06/29/50-50-gender-spilt-goal-of-ANC">zebra policy</a>” (half men, half women), an intergenerational mix, demographic representivity and the inclusion of scarce skills. </p>
<p>The party’s provincial and national executives can intervene if there’s a deadlock.</p>
<p><strong>How democratic is the process? What does it tell us about democracy within the ANC?</strong></p>
<p>The elephant in the room is that whichever faction dominates the regional list committee gets to select candidates from only that faction. We need to note that in South Africa both the major parties, the ANC and opposition <a href="https://www.da.org.za/">Democratic Alliance</a> (DA), have their national executives intervening to select mayoral candidates and the mayoral committees. This is true for major metropoles as well as small country towns such as <a href="http://www.oudtshoorn.gov.za/">Oudtshoorn</a> in the Western Cape.</p>
<p>Both major parties’ national executives routinely switch elected representatives between parliament, a provincial legislature and a municipality. This would be unthinkable in the US or the UK.</p>
<p><strong>What went wrong this time?</strong></p>
<p>First, mobilisation between the two leading candidates – the incumbent mayor <a href="http://www.tshwane.gov.za/sites/Council/Ofiice-Of-The-Executive-Mayor/Pages/Profile-of-the-Mayor.aspx">Kgosientso Ramokgopa</a> and <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=270534684&privcapId=113021856&previousCapId=113021856&previousTitle=City%20of%20Tshwane%20Metropolitan%20Municipality.">Mapiti Matsena</a> – grew so intense that the ANC higher structures thought only a <a href="http://anc.org.za/show.php?id=12062">third-party candidate</a> could minimise the dangers of a split.</p>
<p>Second, the ANC’s national executive wanted to select a senior party figure commensurate with the capital’s standing. This was because it feared the humiliation of South Africa’s second capital, Pretoria, also falling under a DA victory. Cape Town, the seat of parliament, is run by the DA. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pa.org.za/person/angela-thokozile-didiza/">Thoko Didiza</a>, a former cabinet minister who has also worked for a Christian ecumenical organisation, seemed to be appropriate.</p>
<p><strong>What is the solution? Surely people have a right to chose their own mayors?</strong></p>
<p>One solution is for the ANC to revise its voting procedures to ensure that the maximum number of candidates that members may vote for is less than the number of posts being contested in all internal elections. This will avoid the winner-takes-all scenario, and ensure that the losing faction may win a minority of positions.</p>
<p><strong>What are the likely wider repercussions for the party and the country?</strong></p>
<p>The increase in rioting during a municipal election year suggests that the general election in 2019 could also be more violent than previous elections. The <a href="http://www.cfcr.org.za/index.php/latest/490-statement-constitutional-court-s-tlokwe-judgment-a-warning-to-iec-and-political-parties">Electoral Commission of South Africa</a>, whose credibility is lower than in previous elections, and the police are going to have their work cut out for them. </p>
<p>Signs to watch for are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>how many rejected candidates stand as independents, and if any of them win; and</p></li>
<li><p>localised abstentions by ANC voters in particular wards.</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61440/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member. He writes this in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>The increase in rioting ahead of municipal elections in South Africa, such as that in Pretoria, suggests that the country’s general election in 2019 could be more violent than previous elections.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.