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Leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, centre, and members of his party, wearing red uniforms, clash with security forces during South African President's State of the Nation address in Cape Town on Feb. 12.Rodger Bosch/AFP / Getty Images

There was a moment, in the madness of Thursday night, that was perhaps the most dangerous of all. Several dozen armed police and security men had just wrestled and dragged about 20 opposition MPs out of the South African parliament and into a side room, where they could be roughed up without any witnesses.

I ran out of the press gallery with a couple of colleagues and raced down the stairs to see what the police were doing to the ejected MPs. But the plainclothes security men – tough cops and trained guards in white shirts and black pants – were having none of it. They spotted us, shoved us back and then furiously ordered us out of the parliamentary building.

When I didn't leave immediately, one thuggish man ripped my media badge off my neck and pushed me from room to room until I was out on the rainy street. Nobody had even accused the media of violating any rules, but we were ejected too.

It was a tiny glimpse of the violence on display in the heart of South African democracy these days. The ejection of every MP from the Economic Freedom Fighters party was forceful enough to leave some MPs with bruised and bleeding faces and other injuries.

Earlier in the evening, outside parliament, several members of another opposition party, the Democratic Alliance – including an MP and official spokesman – had been drenched by water cannons and detained by police. A helicopter hovered ominously overhead.

And inside parliament, the cellphone signal had been mysteriously scrambled, so that nobody could provide any live coverage of the expected protest by opposition MPs at President Jacob Zuma's state of the nation speech. To communicate with the outside world, I had to sneak away to a washroom with an outside window, where a weak cell signal could be found.

After most of the opposition MPs had been ejected or had walked out in protest, Mr. Zuma proceeded with his speech in an echo chamber of guaranteed approval. He chortled and joked with the MPs of his ruling party, who applauded him loudly.

Was it a turning point in South Africa's post-apartheid history, as some opposition leaders and media commentators have suggested? It was certainly a more violent crackdown than anything parliament has seen in the 21 years since apartheid died. It would be excessive to claim that South Africa has become a police state, but the government's enforcers have assuredly become more powerful in the past few years.

Police brutality has intensified, most notoriously at the Marikana platinum mine where the police shot and killed 34 protesters in 2012. The government has introduced a "secrecy bill" to prohibit whistle blowers from disclosing state secrets. Mr. Zuma himself has increasingly seemed above the law, ignoring a public watchdog's report on how he personally benefited from state spending on his palatial village home. Corruption charges against him have been mysteriously dropped, and state prosecutors now seem to be under the thumb of his ruling party.

At the same time, the government has taken steps to gain greater control over the media. Its cronies have created pro-government newspapers and television channels, benefiting from government advertising money that is now routinely funnelled to its favoured media.

But this doesn't mean that South Africa is a police state – at least not yet. Its elections are still generally free and fair. Its independent media are lively and fearless. Political scandals are enthusiastically exposed. Many politicians and activists are still as feisty as they were in the days of the anti-apartheid struggle, which helps to explain the rowdy battles in parliament on Thursday night.

Perhaps the best example of this culture of freedom was the response of the South African media when they discovered that the cellphone signal had been scrambled in the parliament building. The journalists in the press gallery jumped to their feet, waved their cellphones in the air and chanted, "Bring back the signal, bring back the signal." Soon the opposition MPs joined in the chant, and social media amplified the protest. Then several MPs stood up and formally raised the issue of the cellphone jamming which they described as a blatant violation of the Constitution.

By the time Mr. Zuma was ready to give the opening words of his speech, the government was so embarrassed by the furor that the cellphone scrambling was unscrambled, without explanation.

It was the kind of victory that would never be allowed by the ruling party in a true police state. But it didn't obscure one central fact: Mr. Zuma's government was veering closer to the temptations of authoritarian rule than any of his three post-apartheid predecessors.

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