The recent history of similar types of initiatives does not bode well for our expectations of safety, says Jared Sacks.
Pretoria - I AM a South African citizen who despite a few speeding tickets and other minor transgressions, is law-abiding. I am not involved with drug gangs, nor do I own any illegal weapons. What then do I have to fear? When government spokeswomann Phumla Williams recently wrote about the intention to intensify Operation Fiela it made me think of the violent mess that is Mexico. This terrifies me.
According to Williams, Operation Fiela is a multi-disciplinary and interdepartmental operation “to rid our country of illegal weapons, drug dens, prostitution rings and other illegal activities”. She says the initiative is meant to make us all feel safe.
Yet, the recent history of similar types of initiatives does not bode well for our expectations of safety. The most prescient example comes from the “narcoland” of Mexico where the so-called war on drugs, funded in part by the US, provides us with an important reference.
The war on drugs was a joint programme between the US and various Latin American governments that began in the 1980s. It sought to undermine drug trafficking through the co-operative involvement of many countries. It featured the militarisation of such agencies and, in places like Mexico, the direct involvement of the army.
By the early 2000s, however, Mexican drug cartels dominated by the Federation under El Chapo Guzman, were not only stronger than ever, but controlled significant portions of the Mexican state – including the feared and highly militarised federal police.
How did the degeneration of the Mexican state get to that point?
Once the stuff of conspiracy theories, the rise of narco-traffickers in Mexico in the 80s and 90s has been linked by investigative journalists, such as the recently vindicated Gary Webb and also by the US Congress’s Kerry Committee Report to CIA, on funding for Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Thus, from the very beginning of the war on drugs, various government agencies, both in the US and in Mexico, were highly compromised in their relation to drug trafficking.
The more the Mexican state ostensibly involved itself in the drug war, the more organised cartels needed to find a way to protect themselves. They did so in two ways: they militarised their own organisations and they began buying off relevant units of the Mexican state.
By the time El Chapo “allegedly” walked out of Mexican prison in a Federal Preventative Police uniform and then, with his partner El Mayo, created The Federation, many drug bosses began to boast that the Mexican state, in fact, worked for them. They proclaimed their untouchability.
In 2006, when Felipe Calderon became president of Mexico, one of his first acts was to “intensify” the drug war. He restructured the Federal Police, and then, with the help of the US, put billions of dollars into funding an expanded war on the drug cartels. The Mexican army became a key role player in this war. The result of this expanded crackdown on the cartels was not what the Mexican public had hoped. The violence, rather than diminishing, shot through the roof.
Ciudad Juarez, gateway city to the US and therefore a key trafficking point, became the epicentre of this narco-war with the Juarez and Sinola Cartels battling each other and the Mexican army for control over the turf. At 130 murders per 100 000 inhabitants, Ciudad Juarez became for many years the most dangerous city in the world.
What those who have investigated Calderon’s expanded drug war have found out was that the initiative was not quite a war on the cartels as it had been portrayed by government propaganda. Instead it was war between the cartels, with Mexican security forces and the army itself used as its proxies.
There are even allegations that the killing of the powerful narco-boss Arturo Beltran-Leyva in 2009 by the Mexican Navy was ordered by El Chapo himself. In other words, divisions of the security forces, allied with specific narco-associations, were being sent to take down their rivals, thereby raising the stakes and plunging the entire country into violence. Calderon’s assertion of law and order became its opposite.
Despite high-profile arrests of most of the major cartel bosses in recent years, including the once untouchable El Chapo, the narco-state of Mexico remains and security forces continue to be complicit in dozens of massacres, including the that of the now infamous 43 students of Ayotzinapa.
In South Africa, we run the risk of going down that route. While organised crime and drug trafficking is not nearly as dominating here, Operation Fiela, through its militarisation of the fight against crime, endangers our country.
I am not only speaking about its reprehensible criminalisation of protest or its prejudiced targeting of black foreign nationals. Just as worrying, Operation Fiela raises the stakes for criminal syndicates which will inevitably choose to defend themselves through their own militarisation and by deepening their already significant corrupt relationship to those in government. Gangs will begin to resemble paramilitary armies and the number of Jackie Selebis in government will multiply.
You can see indications of this in the renewed outbreak of violence in Manenberg that occurred following Operation Fiela’s recent “crackdown on gangsterism” in that community. Many reports indicate that the operation has backfired and some community leaders have denounced the operation as setting off a gang war.
While this alleged failure is denied by police spokespeople, we will only know the outcome in time. If Mexico is any indication, however, these gangs will, in order to protect themselves, likely intensify their own operations with the residents of Manenberg and the wider Cape Flats becoming its ultimate victims.
In a country in which organised crime has already infiltrated the state, we are more likely to find that Operation Fiela’s unintended consequences will put our entire society at risk. This is why I find the prospect of Fiela’s intensification terrifying.
* Jared Sacks is a Cape Town-based social justice activist, editor of the anthology No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way and a founder of the non-profit organisation Children of South Africa.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Pretoria News