JUSTICE MALALA | Even the jailers are lawless: we are unequivocally a corrupt nation

I see Glynnis Breytenbach, the fiery former prosecutor and DA MP, is in trouble again. This time she is being accused (by some) of being disrespectful after she told police minister Bheki Cele he should hang his head in shame after the absolute disaster that is the Thabo Bester case.

In an exchange in parliament last week, when police top brass appeared before the justice and correctional services portfolio committee to answer questions about the assisted escape of “Facebook rapist” and murderer Thabo Bester in May last year, she told Cele and his officials: “It is an absolute disgrace that the victims of this man were not warned, prepared and protected. You should hang your head in shame, all of you. It is no way to treat people.

“If, while you were so busy protecting the secrecy of your investigation, Bester had murdered another woman, if he had raped another woman, what would you have said?”

Breytenbach deserves a medal for the way she skewered these incompetent nitwits over the past week. What she is engaged in is what American civil rights activist John Lewis called “good trouble”. The late Lewis, a member of the US House of Representatives, said: “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

All of us should be as outraged as Breytenbach is. Bester was living it up in hotels, with access to his former victims, and the SA Police Service did not have the decency to even warn his former victims that the criminal was on the prowl. When confronted with these facts, officials — from ordinary prison warders to directors-general and right up to ministers — were evasive and defensive. The appearance of security firm G4S in parliament last week, together with prisons officials, was depressing: their evasive and even dishonest answers suggested they should be inside the prisons and not running them.

Several things come up.

As Breytenbach rightly puts it, Cele should hang his head in shame that for a year his officials did nothing while Bester ran amok. Why, over and above his incompetence and failures in July 2021, is this man still police minister?

First, why is Ronald Lamola still in his job after this debacle? If Lamola does not want to be fired, he should surely have suspended a few of the key officials overseeing the prison that allowed Bester to essentially live as a free man even before his escape. By not acting, by appearing before parliament without any real action being taken, Lamola is telling the nation that he approves of this incredible, wanton, wrongdoing. His failure to act is an endorsement of these illegal acts.

As Breytenbach rightly puts it, Cele should hang his head in shame that for a year his officials did nothing while Bester ran amok. Why, over and above his incompetence and failures in July 2021, is this man still police minister? What does he say to his boss when asked about this and other failures in law enforcement?

Does Cele have a boss? Does Lamola have a boss? If President Cyril Ramaphosa is their boss, why hasn’t he acted when they have failed to act? Why is he failing to do his job, leaving it to people like Breytenbach to make the points he should be making?

There is another culprit here: the ANC. Where is the party that purports to speak for and represent “the masses of our own people”? Who will speak for the women Bester raped and murdered when the ANC does not?

Let us be clear. If it was not for the dogged reporting of the media start-up GroundUp (which also burst open the national lotteries corruption scandal, among others) and others we would not know that this criminal had been set free by corrupt correctional services officials. The police, who knew all along, would not have told us. Thabo Bester would be walking free, laughing at us and free to assault his previous victims and others. So who protects the people of SA?

Criminal cases such as the Bester saga do not happen in isolation. By their frequency in our country, they reflect a deep malaise in our culture and our psyche. The Bester saga once again shows that corruption is now entrenched at every level of society. In this case, the private security firm was corrupt, officials at the prison were corrupt, correctional services bigwigs were corrupt, and the police were corrupt. The entire system was corrupt. In such a system, the few good men and women could not operate. They were either pushed out or forced into silence.

So it figures that the corruption at Eskom, at Denel or in the City of Joburg or in many parts of our government, has become par for the course. The Thabo Bester saga is a mirror being held up to us: our nation is corrupt to the very core. Next May we will vote for the same people who have encouraged this corruption to flourish to continue doing the same.

Unlike Breytenbach, we are afraid of “good trouble”.

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