Shame on those who sold our integrity to save their skins

Mbeki ought to reflect on his part in the downfall of Jackie Selebi as the Supreme Court of Appeal sends South Africa's former police chief to prison for 15 years

I AM certain there was not a single person who ever a sang a freedom song, punched an amandla fist in the air or threw a stone at a police van who didn't feel some pain on hearing that Jackie Selebi was definitely headed for prison.

Not because he should not be headed in that direction. Selebi deserves every day of his 15-year sentence for breaching the trust that citizens put in those who are supposed to serve and protect. The crime he committed - colluding with Mafia bosses - is worse than the crimes of many he put away as chief of the South African Police Service.

The pain of Selebi's fall is because it confirms the collapse of the moral superiority of the liberation struggle.

I know that the writer of this column and others of his ilk have naively held the notion that products of South Africa's liberation struggle should be on a higher moral plane. Fighting the devil should in theory develop the nostril sense to smell evil from afar.

But, yes, it is naivety. Freedom, and the power that comes with it, does corrupt. And besides, South Africa's struggle was not a saint factory. There were those who were always going to be prone to corruption. For instance, not many were surprised when Tony Yengeni went rotten and started wearing bright yellow jackets.

But there are people who are not supposed to go bad. Selebi was one of them. He was one of the good guys.

But before I wet the keyboard with the waters of sentimentality, let me go back to October 2007, just a few months before the ANC's Polokwane conference. It was in that month that Thabo Mbeki really convinced South Africans why he should not be the leader of this republic.

Versions differ slightly, but it is known that during that October Mbeki and his lieutenants pulled out all the stops to protect Selebi from prosecution. Over the previous two years he had ignored mounting evidence that the nation's top policeman was corrupt. But that October, with incontrovertible evidence before him, he went into active defence mode.

Mbeki, a long-time personal associate of Selebi, had abused the policeman for his own political ends. Selebi had been Mbeki's trusted point man in the security cluster - to the point that he had better access to the president's ear than ministers and close advisers.

It was Selebi who presided over the infamous coup plot investigation into Cyril Ramaphosa, Mathews Phosa and Tokyo Sexwale. At the behest of a paranoid Mbeki he wanted the three deemed treasonous for daring to harbour presidential ambitions in a democratic South Africa. A high crime indeed.

Well, as we all know, one favour deserves another.

So, when confronted with proof that Selebi was in bed with top criminals such as Glenn Agliotti, Mbeki found it presidentially proper to abuse state power to protect his friend.

In that process he destroyed the reputations of several South Africans who had to step forward and do as they were told. One of them was Menzi Simelane, who this week was found by the Supreme Court of Appeal to be "unfit" to hold the office of national director of public prosecutions. Simelane, when he was director-general of the Department of Justice, was instrumental in Mbeki's schemes to protect Selebi. He was later found by the Ginwala Inquiry to have given "misleading and untruthful evidence".

There were others, too, who were used by Mbeki to shield this terrible criminal. They included former justice minister Brigitte Mabandla, former Presidency DG Frank Chikane and Mbeki's then legal adviser Mojanku Gumbi.

These were all solid citizens who had devoted their lives to ensuring that South Africa became a sound constitutional state. Yet in 2007 they were prepared to bring down the house to prevent the law taking its course.

Fortunately, the house that the South African people had built stood firm. It was rattled. Roof tiles were dislodged and windows broken, but the damage was not beyond repair.

One wonders what must have gone through the minds of Mbeki and his acolytes on Friday as the judges of the SCA declared that "on all the evidence contained in 66 volumes amounting to more than 600 pages that we had to wade through in this application for appeal, we are satisfied that the high court was correct in finding that the applicant did receive payment from Agliotti".

That he felt "beholden" and "indebted" to Agliotti and that, because of favours received from the Mafia boss, he would "remain willing to do him favours".

That he "breached the trust placed in the positions he held".

On Friday, did these individuals consider the grave harm they could have done to the country had they succeeded in saving the skin of the criminal underworld's favourite cop?

Or were they, like Selebi, now devoid of conscience and incapable of shame?