Numbed by crime, South Africa goes about its business as police make inroads into the daily toll of hijackings, robberies and murders at such snail’s pace that citizens feel no safer. We have come to view violent crime as a part of life. Our national conversation runs as follows: “Your house was broken into — so was mine. You were hijacked — so were my cousin and my brother.” Murdered friends, raped sisters — the horrors have become banal and everyday.
Until a four-year-old was strangled and, semi-clothed, stuffed under a bed like a discarded rag doll. Until a two-year-old is raped, as baby Tshepang was in Upington a few years back. Until a college student is murdered on a lonely road, the tragic fate that befell Leigh Matthews.
Occasionally crimes are so horrific or receive such publicity that they force South Africans to pause and consider what we are becoming.
Such a moment occurred last week when Makgabo Matlala’s body was found under a bed in her Lenasia home. Her cherubic face and liquid eyes, flashed across television screens, sparked a national outcry about the sheer bestiality of her killers. Fuelling the outcry was the police bungling that left the body undiscovered for more than a day, training a spotlight on the way South Africa underfunds, underpays and undertrains the men and women who should keep us safe.
But apart from the gratuitous brutality of the crime, what was particularly striking was the speed with which Makgabo’s alleged killers were apprehended. Under the glare of publicity and apparently galvanised by the national outcry, detectives applied investigative methods that should be standard, but are not. Leads were followed, intelligence gathered and stolen cellphones tracked to the shack where three 20-year-olds were found in possession of goods stolen from the Matlala household.
It will not bring back their child, but for the parents, the prospect of closure and justice at least lie closer. For the nation, the swift response to the crime shows what can be done with commitment — and some public shaming.
The latest official figures show that fewer than 5% of child murders in the year ending May 2005 led to a prosecution. Each of the three children killed each day deserves such committed police work, so there are no anonymous, forgotten deaths. This will require far more attention to the detail of policing: better management, better pay, better training, improved technology, more detectives. And as lawyer and family friend Ishmael Semenya said at the child’s memorial this week, it implies the constant awareness that “our collective security will come from the justness of our social conditions”.
Deep flaws on display
To listen to Jacob Zuma’s supporters, one might think he was the victim of conspiracies by every clandestine force on earth — the presidency, the Scorpions, British intelligence, ex-Rhodesian judges, big business (except, of course, Saint Brett of Blessed Memory), the media, and now, his rape accuser. In the grand tradition of Allan Boesak and Hansie Cronje, he has become the object of zombie-like idolatry.
Notably missing is any appreciation of how Zuma has damaged himself, and of how the court cases in which he is embroiled have exposed his shortcomings as a leader and as a man.
Whether Zuma is guilty of corruption must still be determined in court, but the Schabir Shaik trial showed him to be irresponsible and of poor judgement. Determined to lead a lifestyle he could not afford, he bounced cheques and ran up huge debts with gay abandon. A senior political leader, he allowed himself to become dangerously dependent on a man since convicted of corruption and fraud.
The Johannesburg High Court must decide whether he is guilty of rape — but the proceedings have deepened the sense that he is deeply flawed with little sense of personal responsibility and even less self-control. While he is indeed personable and popular, willing to listen and easy at the grassroots (all the things which would have made him a good president), his deeper flaws speak to a self-destructive streak.
With the eyes of the world already focused on him, one would have expected him to make a special effort remain squeaky clean — yet he becomes embroiled in a sex scandal which reverberates across the world.
Even by his own account, he had sex with a woman half his age who, by common consent, regarded him as a father-figure and protector. He knows she is HIV-positive, yet he fails to use a condom — running the risk of himself becoming infected. What calibre of leadership does this suggest in a country with one of the world’s highest HIV-infection rates?
Come the trial, he conspicuously fails to repudiate the rabble of his supporters outside court who called for the burning of the rape complainant. And he allows his counsel to pursue a line of questioning straight out of the Dark Ages, which the long-stalled Sexual Offences Act would subject to much tougher restrictions.
Zuma may get off on both charges — but if this happens, it will still be at a heavy political cost.
A weathervane is the backlash among women activists, politicians and businesswomen against the shenanigans at the Johannesburg High Court, reported in this edition of the M&G. Together they represent a sizeable chunk of South African women, suggesting that even if he is acquitted he will have lost the women’s vote.
Most ordinary South Africans, too, may be acquiring a different sense of the former deputy president. To quote one of the M&G‘s correspondents, featured on this week’s letters pages: “They can grill her until Zuma wins the case. But the fact remains: he was evil to this girl.”