Loose cannon Robert Kirby
Yet again poor Mr Thabo Mbeki has been sorely misconstrued. On this latest occasion it was his pugnacious refusal to free Mpumalanga of its Premier, Mr Ndaweni “Lies-Are-Cool” Mahlangu, which got everyone up in arms. Mr Mbeki said that he would not be prepared to “worsen things in Mpumalanga” by firing Comrade Ndaweni. What he was repeating was the old truism: rather the devil you know. In other words, let’s hang on to Mahlangu. If you think he’s bad, you should see what horrors we’ve got waiting in the wings.
This was not at all surprising. If there has been one factor, paramount to all others over the first five years of its political tenure of South Africa, it has been the ANC’s impassioned love affair with the scofflaw. It seems the ANC will go to the ends of the earth to sustain and fortify the criminal parish. Over these last five years the party has improvised and installed a fantastic panoply of hinderlaws and legal pitfalls, all intended to make punishment and retribution for any transgressor as remote a prospect as possible.
Take just one instance – reported in last Sunday’s papers – of the school janitor who was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment for sexually assaulting 11 schoolchildren. For the first 15 months of his sentence this affable gent had been paid his full salary by the education department – on the grounds that he could not fairly be discharged before the niceties of the Labour Relations Act had formally been observed. He was entitled to a disciplinary hearing and only then and only if declared a criminal would he be deprived of his salary and perks.
And wasn’t the rest of last week a lulu? A 14-year-old girl gang-raped and stabbed 42 times. A visiting Brazilian journalist gang-raped by 10 thugs. Another 200 vehicles hi-jacked, another 500 murders, the inhabitants of a squatter camp passing the hat round to raise bail for a rapist so that they could necklace him.
If you yet need evidence of the ANC’s tolerant attitude towards criminal behaviour, seek no further than the revelation of last week’s theft of a quarter-million-rand diamond from the parliamentary library. Not including Tony Yengeni’s sidearm, this theft lifted the total value of goods pilfered from the parliamentary offices and precincts over the last five years to R1-million – R700 a day.
Petty, I know. But if you ignore the safety of your cellphone, your office fax machine, scores of valuable books and paintings from the Parliament library, well then …
Are you feeling a bit jaded this week? Did you also watch the response to South Africa’s unremitting criminal outrage by the latest trio of Cabinet-issue crime- busters?
When they first came up on the telly screen I thought we’d crossed to a board meeting at Republic Funerals. No such luck. Instead these three personified Mr Mbeki’s inspiring new frontal assault on crime and immorality. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Steve Tshwete, Penuell Maduna and Ben Skosana, the Jurisprudential Wind Trio! Marvel at them as they undergo a pitiless inquisition by mankind’s answer to Muff Andersson – Mr Chris Gibbons.”
It would seem that the criminals in this country are in for another five year boom. All Mr Tshwete seems to have achieved since being dumped with his new portfolio is some impressive power-dressing. He’s now shaved his head, swathed himself in dark cloths and, but for a gold necklace and some diamond teeth, could well be taken for one of those feral Hollywood pimps. All crime will vanish under the violet intensity of his gaze.
Weighing in for “justice”, Maduna showed that he’d already fully adopted the established role of the venerable legal grumblewit, a comedy drollery masterfully played to many hollow laughs by “Bags” Omar.
Skosana was most profound. Rolled over from the bull’s-eye Mandela Cabinet, Ben’s already broken all records for the surprise emancipation of prisoners. Looking like a giant collapsed rugby ball, Ben spoke from a fatalistic accidie, some gloomy cryptology called “the four pillars of democratic governance”. Nothing Dr Muff said would dislodge him from his grievings.
All of which reinforces the conclusion above. No matter what draughty promises Mbeki generates, his new administration is already revealing that it has no serious intention of doing anything to inhibit crime other than emitting curdled platitudes like “setting appropriate structures in place” and “securing consultative forums for community involvement”; the standard Mufamadi/Fivaz/Kahn dosh.
So far the “new look” crime strategy is just another piece of rather maladroit window-dressing.