A PROFESSIONAL dog-fight is raided and three of the spectators are found to be police officers. The Cape Law Society discovers that 20 of its members have been making under-the-counter payments to public officials and tries to protect them. Nearly two million schoolchildren go hungry, because someone has defrauded the national feeding scheme. A study shows that serious crime has risen by 30 percent; prosecutions have fallen by seven percent …
“Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” In present circumstances South Africa can be forgiven for asking, along with WB Yeats, “what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born” ? There is a sense of crisis, bordering on panic, in the country. What is to be done ?
The answers vary. The chat shows are inundated with demands to bring back the rope. Mr Justice Claasen indulges in a piece of judicial fundamentalism, sentencing three killers to 135 years apiece. A parliamentary committee rounds on Mr Justice Kriegler for suggesting a general amnesty. The captains of commerce and industry launch an anti-crime initiative.
In practical terms none of them are a great help. There is perhaps a case to be made that the introduction of boiling oil, amputations, drawing and quartering and public executions would deter criminals, but the very ridiculousness of such a suggestion is in itself an answer to the hang-’em-high brigade. Resort to penal extremism obscures the fact that something is seriously out of camber in both judicial sentencing policies and the administration of the prisons. As for the business leaders, the record of insider trading in this country suggests that they are as ill-qualified as the Cape Law Society to lead a law-and-order campaign.
At the same time, all these suggestions and initiatives are helpful in that they send a message to the government: “Rule us!” The prevention of anarchy is fundamental to the social contract between the rulers and the ruled. But the “rough beast” needs to be faced coolly, with level-headedness. Reform must be the key; reform of the police; reform of the prisons; reform of society.
But reform is a necessarily slow process and a little grand-standing would not be out of place, to reassure the ruled that the rulers are indeed ruling.
So how about starting by getting the bastards who stole the kids’ sandwiches?