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Dear reader,

Justice for sale. Outrageous, is it not? When we looked into this, it became clearer that the rich are, thanks in part to dysfunction in the justice system, able to buy their way out of getting criminal records.

Hundreds of thousands of people charged with crimes are paying their way out of criminal records in deals brokered by prosecutors in court hallways. Out-of-court settlements in criminal cases have become commonplace in an attempt to clear court backlogs and save the state the cost of a trial.

Some 150,000 were settled in a year in the South Gauteng region, an overview by Africa Criminal Justice Reform showed. But the “perverse incentive” of money opens the door for the rich to buy their way out of a trial and a criminal conviction, say some legal experts.

In politics, President Cyril Ramaphosa has laid down the law to DA leader and agriculture minister John Steenhuisen, warning him that any attempt to pull out of the interministerial committee (IMC) on the national dialogue will be seen as insubordination.

This is the first time Ramaphosa has threatened to pull the trigger against Steenhuisen. Should Ramaphosa fire him, the implications for the already strained government of national unity could be dire. But how would it all work? Would Steenhuisen remain active within the IMC, helping to put together the national dialogue that his party has decided should be boycotted? Or it’s another season of upmanship? We break it down in the Sunday Times.

Meanwhile, the Sector Education Training Authority remains en vogue, much thanks to higher education minister Nobuhle Nkabane. But the controversial multimillion-rand purchase of a building, through a closed process, by one of the department of higher education & training’s sector learning authorities has now been flagged as irregular by the auditor-general. Leaked documents from the embattled Construction Education and Training Authority (Ceta) show auditors from the AG’s office were dissatisfied with Ceta’s process to buy the building, finding it fell foul of Treasury regulations guiding procurement. This is a R49m headache for the Ceta board. More details are here.

Elsewhere, ratings agencies, facing a barrage of criticism over the way they assess sovereign credit in Africa, have defended their methodologies — though S&P Global Ratings acknowledged it should boost its presence on the continent. S&P, along with the other two major ratings agencies, Fitch and Moody’s, have come under fire for their sovereign assessments. They were criticised in the Jubilee Report for 2025, commissioned by the late Pope Francis and published last month. S&P Global Ratings president Yann Le Pallec said the company was confident its system was correct but it would increase its footprint in Africa to gain better insight into its economic dynamics.

There’s this and more in your favourite Sunday read today.

Happy reading.