There’s horror in the air. Read it in the words of Mathatha Tsedu, the City Press editor, when he writes of pain so fierce it is like an arrow piercing his soul as he mourns his son.
Thirty-one-year-old Avhatakali Netshisaulu was forced off a Johannesburg road two weeks ago and murdered. His body was stuffed into the boot of his car. The car was torched and his body charred. He will be buried two days before Christmas because DNA sampling is difficult when a body is burnt beyond recognition.
Look at the photographs of the men bearing singer Taliep Petersen’s body down an Athlone street after his murder on Sunday night. There is horror in their eyes. And anger. And anguish.
If there is one way in which South Africans are joined this reconciliation month it is in the horror and fear that runaway crime leaves behind once the body bags have been carried away.
This currency of fear is not just that of “white whingers”, as Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula claimed this year. It crosses mercilessly across cultures and classes and his crass statement reveals that we do not have a political leader who knows this.
When crime afflicts the wealthy and the well-known, it makes news (and that is no bad thing since any murder is one too many).
But the reign of terror is more acute in townships and informal settlements, where residents are quickly losing faith in the system. Justice is being replaced by vengeance; vigilantism is on the rise.
Last week, after a robbery at an Emmarentia pub, patrons watched as young robbers writhed in pain and then died slowly. They laughed; there was no empathy for the “fuckers”, as one bystander called them. Across the country, people are turning on criminals, beating them up and often killing them.
Before, I would have decried this jungle justice. Now it’s perfectly reasonable. And “fuckers” seems a fine adjective.
Crime makes animals of us. It makes us hostages to the freedom we should be enjoying for it seems like the criminal classes have us imprisoned by the very Constitution that liberated us. Its emphasis on rights and rehabilitation is being abused by criminals, while justice has given way to impunity.
What has our police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi and the series of stories in the Mail & Guardian to do with this?
Everything.
The saga of slain businessman Brett Kebble, murder accused Glenn Agliotti and Selebi is about so much more than the cracking of a syndicate and the death of a man.
It is about how far we, as a nation, will allow the rot to set in. A fish rots from the head.
In 2002, Selebi stood grinning beside a Mandrax haul. It was one of the largest ever in South Africa. Fours years on, the men who were arrested are long gone; the prosecution went nowhere; the Mandrax was stolen!
That picture, together with the way in which the bust scandalously fizzled out, should have got Selebi the boot, but in the culture of impunity, the revelation too is fizzling out.
It is symbolic of an entire system, as our investigation on pages 26 and 27 reveals. The fish is rotten. The Mandrax allegedly belonged to Agliotti though he is only one crime boss; there are many others each of whom has friends in the police service and in the various parts of the criminal justice system.
The smaller crime boss, Ananias Mathe, did not squeeze through his bars by lathering himself with Vaseline; he walked out after paying R80 000 to his warders.
How are we ever to crack crime bosses when the police, prosecutors and warders are in their pockets? How much more literal does “in their pockets” get than Agliotti taking Selebi on a shopping spree?
If a crime boss takes the national police commissioner on shopping sprees, what example does that set to lowly-paid police officers? Corruption has become business as usual.
A young cop told our reporter, Yolandi Groenewald, who was investigating how dockets go missing, that cops are offered money all the time. He’d been offered a grand to lose a docket and turned it down, but he couldn’t guarantee that a higher fee would not have done the trick.
Syndicates control entire criminal industries; their organisation is corporate and military-like as revelations about the workings of cash-in-transit heists have recently revealed.
Cracking crime is hard but not impossible work.
As the Scorpions showed in the heady days of their early history, if you match grass-roots intelligence and good detective work with immaculate prosecutorial skill you can make a dent. Until this year, a tough-guy approach (with a team that included the former safety and security minister Steve Tshwete and former justice minister Penuell Maduna) with a well-resourced, politically unhindered National Prosecuting Authority had begun to dent crime levels.
It’s all coming asunder now. Crime is spiking, the syndicates are back in business and they’ve infiltrated the system, as the story of Kebble and Agliotti reveals.
The NPA is under severe political pressure and it is no leap of logic to assume that some of it is exercised by the very crime bosses who have inveigled their way into the post-apartheid democracy.
President Thabo Mbeki says he knows of no Scorpions investigation into criminal syndicates in connection with which senior security men are named.
Yet, in an affidavit in open court in November, the Scorpions said as much when they tried to gag the M&G from publishing details of the Mandrax bust and the shopping sprees.
Perhaps Selebi is too powerful and Mbeki too politically weak to do anything, but the fish is rotten and the horrors are piling up.
There is an unbroken link between corruption and criminality and, in the culture of impunity, it seems nobody is brave enough to draw a line.
Hands in the cookie jar
Jacob Zuma, former deputy president. He was charged with two counts of corruption in connection with his relationship with Schabir Shaik. Result: The case was thrown out of court, but prosecutors have filed an application for a court order that could clear the way for new criminal charges.
Schabir Shaik, Durban businessman and Zuma’s former financial adviser. Shaik was found guilty of two counts of corruption and one of fraud in July 2005 and was sentenced to 15 years in jail — a verdict upheld by a full bench of the Supreme Court of Appeal on November 6. Result: Shaik is serving a 15-year sentence and this week launched another appeal, to the Constitutional Court.
David Malatsi, the former Western Cape environment and planning minister, was convicted on one count of corruption after the court found that he had accepted a R100 000 donation to the New National Party, of which he was then a member, from Riccardo Agusta in 2002. Result: Sentenced to five years. His co-accused, Peter Marais, was found not guilty. Agusta paid a R1-million fine in terms of a plea bargain agreement with the Scorpions.
Thuso Motaung, Lesedi FM DJ. Motaung, his wife, Mmamontha, and their business partner, Joshua Ramme, allegedly defrauded the SABC of more than R30-million in an advertising-related corruption scam. Result: The accused were released on R100 000 bail and are scheduled to appear in court in January next year.
Glenn Agliotti, businessman and friend of police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi. He has been arrested in connection with the 2005 murder of mining tycoon Brett Kebble. Agliotti will be named as an accused in a multimillion-rand drug smuggling trial next year. Result: Out on R500 000 bail and the case has been postponed to January 25 next year.
Clinton Nassif, provided security and investigations for Kebble. He was arrested in connection with insurance fraud amounting to R500 000. He allegedly ordered the premature removal of Kebble’s car from police custody. Result: Out on R300 000 bail.
Maanda Manyatshe, former MTN South Africa managing director. Alleged, when he was CEO of the Post Office, to have received favours from a contractor who got a R100-million contract to revamp SA Post Office branches without going to tender. Result: Resigned from the cellphone giant in November.
Tony Yengeni, former ANC chief whip. He lost his Constitutional Court challenge to his 2003 fraud conviction and sentence for accepting a discount on a luxury vehicle from one of the bidders in the multibillion-rand arms deal. Result: Yengeni is currently serving a four-year sentence.
Thirty people, 21 of whom are MPs and seven travel agents, accused of defrauding Parliament. Fourteen current and former lawmakers were convicted of fraud after they pleaded guilty to abusing travel allowances. Result: The Cape High Court approved plea bargain deals reached with the NPA.
Geophrey Ledwaba and Ayanda Dlodlo, former Scorpions bosses, appeared in the Pretoria Special Commercial Crimes Court on charges of theft, fraud and corruption amounting to more than R1,5-million. Result: The case was postponed to February next year.
Pappie Mokoena, former Mangaung mayor, and nine co-accused charged with fraud and corruption amounting to about R170-million. Result: The case is before the Bloemfontein courts.
Alexander Forbes, a retirement fund administrator, faces a total bill of R500-million to compensate retirement funds and other clients for unlawful bulking of retirement fund bank accounts. Result: Alexander Forbes will pay an additional R100-million, and paid a R12-million “fine” to the educational trust of the Financial Services Board and another R20-million to cover problems unearthed by an Ernst & Young investigation.
Linda Mti, the former prisons chief. A company with links to Mti wrote a large part of a multimillion-rand security tender that was subsequently awarded to it by the department of correctional services. Result: Mti’s resignation from his position was accepted by the Cabinet in November.
Roger Kebble and Hennie Buitendag were found guilty after a protracted legal battle involving insider trading and contraventions of the Stock Exchange Control Act. Result: Kebble struck a deal in which he will have to pay a fine of R1,5-million, in three instalments, by January 31. He was also sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, suspended for four years.
Dave King, still battling the South African Revenue Service over alleged massive tax fraud. King allegedly owes Sars R2,5-billion. The taxman hopes that a portion of this figure will be acquired from the principle asset of Hawker Air Services, which is an interest in a Falcon B900 jet aircraft. Result: The case is ongoing.