C
Robert Kirby
LOOSE CANNON
You knew the way it was going to go that moment, a few weeks back, when a morose Hansie Cronje stepped into the press room flanked by two politicians and his greaseball Christian mentor. It was like finding that soft tomato at the bottom of the bag. You don’t have to cut it open to know it’s rancid, all those fronds of blue penicillin inside it. When first discovered the Cronje tomato was thoroughly putrid. How else were the politicians so quickly attracted, only moments ahead of the flies?
What is more sordid is the way the politicians won’t let it alone. They are still crawling all over the Cronje affair leaving long trails of drivel to show where they’ve been.
The latest to the feast is the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Bulelani Ngcuka, who apparently has offered immunity from prosecution to Cronje (and a few of his fellow sportsmen) if, in return, he promises to tell the full story when his turn comes up at the King commission of inquiry into match-fixing in cricket. Which is a little like asking a pig to stop grunting.
I do not intend any slight to Mr Ngcuka by comparing him to a politician, it is merely that in making such an offer he is acting exactly like one – which doesn’t do much for his own credibility; nor, for that matter, for the credibility of an already punch-drunk judicial system. As one visiting sports reporter commented: “Offering immunity to Hansie Cronje is like telling a murderer he’ll be acquitted if only he’ll reveal where he’s hidden the body.”
Apart from Cronje being guided to an escape hatch, it is interesting to speculate on the corollary to the immunity-in-return-for-full-disclosure
offer.
Did Cronje respond to Ngcuka’s offer by saying that unless he was guaranteed immunity he wouldn’t guarantee that he’d tell the whole truth to the King commission?
In this wise there arises the possibility that Mr Ngcuka’s offer could compromise, if not seriously prejudice, the commission by anticipating its findings; in effect cast doubt on the efficacy of the commission by demonstrating a need to apply outside pressure on its witness participants. In the face of Cronje’s recent mendacities, it’s more than a little naive of Ngcuka to believe he can guarantee anything vaguely akin to truth out of The Big C. Unless, of course, Bulelani has also got a direct view of the Saviour.
In response to criticism, Ngcuka has exposed the reasoning behind his bizarre proposal: he didn’t want witnesses at the King commission refusing to answer questions on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves. Does South Africa have something akin to the Fifth Amendment in the United States? Can the legal status of the King commission be that easily sidestepped? If so, why go through with the thing?
Whatever the outcome of the whole queasy affair, we are again left wondering just how far the normal processes of the law are being distorted to serve what remain suspiciously recondite ends.
There is no acceptable reason for Cronje and his fellows to be offered immunity. Hour by hour in the commission hearings these men are being revealed as direct contradictions of everything they have presented themselves to be.
If nothing else such profound public hypocrisies deserve harsh penalty. That these little fakes now attempt to hide behind protestations of religion, probity and – God help us – good fellowship, makes everything even more corrupt.
For all this Bulelani Ngcuka offers what amounts to a reward. In so doing he underwrites the newly hatching tendency to do things in the affective quasi-legal modes of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “Just tell us all, Craig old chap, and we’ll give you a tiny slap on the wrist and send you off to slaughter some more children.”
As a friend of mine commented: Cronje, himself, is simply abject, a somewhat pathetic figure promoted – mainly by cynical commercial exploitation of a fine sport – far beyond his moral competence.
Like Allan Boesak, Cronje and his mates are venal little shits. And again like Boesak, it is their symbology that is taking the severest beating.