ANTHONY BUTLER: AmaWinde just not the same as amaPanyaza

Gauteng premier looks much more presidential and ready for a military green bean coup

 First published in Business Day

23 FEBRUARY 2024

A lot of unfair criticism has been levelled at Panyaza Lesufi this week. On Monday the visionary Gauteng premier delivered a majestic state of the province address, radiating the quiet authority one associates with a president.

However, his detractors complain that his promises of new housing, private hospitals and job creation are unrealistic. Some even liken him to the inmate of a psychological facility, who suffers from the delusion that he has just seized power through a military coup.

This latter complaint derives in part from the presence at the venue of 7,000 “crime prevention wardens” — popularly known as amaPanyaza — resplendent in quasi-military green uniforms and dubbed “military veterans” by the caudillo. Counter-revolutionary forces may have robbed these recruits of automatic rifles, but Lesufi can now provide them with air support from “the Gauteng Air Wing unit”.

While this policing model reminds some critics of the Ciskei Defence Force of the 1980s, there is merit to Lesufi’s proposals. After all, there are high levels of violent and property crime in Gauteng — only some of it committed by ANC politicians — and the national police service has failed to curtail it.

Lesufi came under fire from EFF Gauteng deputy chairperson Phillip Makwala, who memorably described the wardens as “green beans”. But EFF commissars in red uniforms and berets can scarcely complain about the militarisation of society.

Criticism from the DA is also hard to take, not least because Western Cape premier Alan Winde also deploys thousands of law enforcement officers to crime hotspots, where they are backed up by data analytics, policing control centres and surveillance technology. Worse still, the amaWinde are now reportedly working hand in glove with the military wing of the DA, known as Fidelity ADT.

But despite these superficial parallels between parties there are three reasons to be uniquely fearful of Lesufi’s militarised policing initiatives. First, the premier has been talking absolute nonsense about every sector of provincial government. Statistical analysis suggests a low probability that he is right about policing.

Second, initiatives in the Western Cape are backed by broad agreement between the provincial government and the City of Cape Town, where mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has taken the lead in the devolution of policing. In addition to law enforcement officers jointly funded with the province, Cape Town has 600 metro police officers, 690 traffic officers and specialised units for tactical response, environmental enforcement, gang and drug matters and metal theft, among others.

The city has invested in body cameras, dash cams, drones and an emergency police incident control centre. The fact that city and province are governed by the same party has proved a great boon to co-operation and co-ordination.

The situation is quite different in Gauteng, where Johannesburg public safety MMC Mgcini Tshwaku — an EFF cadre — accused Lesufi of trying to take credit for a CCTV initiative that originated in the city. Although it is difficult to get at the truth, both province and city have evidently made deals with a private company, VumaCam, which can monitor crime hotspots across the province.

While the EFF and ANC are pretending to fight — who will vote for the EFF if they know it is just a provincial ANC faction? — this problem may be resolved in a post-election sharing of the tenders (technically known as a “provincial coalition government”).

The third key point of difference is that it is not easy to imagine Winde or Hill-Lewis dressed up in a military uniform — at least not in public. As for Lesufi, nobody would be surprised if he arrived at the next state of the province event perched on the turret of a battle tank.

• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.