"Usurpers always choose troubled times to
enact, in the atmosphere of general panic, laws which the public
would never adopt when passions were cool."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
LET'S face it — we're sick of crime. Every single one of us who has in some way or the other been touched by the non-stop mayhem of robbery, rape, and murder is desperately looking for a way to clamber out of this abyss. And each time we find ourselves hit back by a Charlene Smith or a John Rubython and find ourselves backsliding again.
I desperately want to see this madness at an end. I want my child and all the children of my country to grow up with a sense of community that is not primarily demarcated by locked doors and barred windows and where the defining emotion is not fear.
But I also have a deeper sense of despair that overshadows my fears about the possibility of becoming yet another victim of violent crime. It's a sense of despair at the possibility that all of those hard-earned rights now protected in our constitution will be swept aside by our eagerness to subvert due process in the interest of quick justice.
Let me put that thought process on hold for a second and let's talk about the Western Cape. This is one of the most astonishingly beautiful places in the known universe. This is also the place where Planet Hollywood has been bombed, where police officers and gangsters alike are gunned down in the streets, where women are executed in front of their children in hairdressing salons, where children are caught in crossfire and end up dead.
How do we fix this mess?
There's something fundamental we have to come to terms with here. The New National Party is not responsible for the mayhem. (Yes, I know about the 'legacy of apartheid' argument but the fact is that Gerald Morkel has never asked anyone to take up arms or pipe bombs.) Neither is the ANC responsible for the mayhem.
But the process of the province blaming national government and national blaming provincial government finally led to a compromise of sorts with Operation Good Hope led by the affable but increasingly stressed-out Assistant Commissioner Ganief Daniels.
I know why he is so stressed out. I've never in my life come across a greater group of bungling blockheads than the mishmash that seem to fall under Operation No Hope (as cynics on the Cape Flats refer to it).
Here's why. Every time a Serious Incident occurs, these defenders of justice raid homes of Pagad members. People are taken in for questioning and later released. Premises are turned upside down but nothing is found.
This is so stupid. If I was a Pagad member engaged in illegal activities, the last place I would store anything suspect would be at my home. Secondly, if I was involved in terror attacks and knew I was prime suspect, I would make damn sure that I had a cast iron alibi whenever it hits the fan.
Then there's this much publicised bust where cars supposedly used in recent terror attacks have been recovered over the past week. The first question that nearly everyone has been asking is: "Why did they not stake out the place?" Perhaps the answer is that in their haste to show some tangible gains, they rushed forward with sirens blaring and lights blazing — and then tried to stop journalists taking pictures. Nice work, guys. I see you've taken lessons in subtlety from Slobadon Milosevic ...
There is a constant clamour for abandoning the rule of law, for draconian legislation to combat terror, for asset forfeiture to be used as a substitute for due process, for the restoration of capital punishment in the absence of a single trial followed by conviction.
This, South Africa, is what we need to most be afraid of. The days of police breaking down our doors at 3 am and beating confessions out of us are still fresh in our minds. If we allow ourselves to forget this, we deserve what we get.
Pagad member Ebrahim Jeneker has been arrested yet again. For heaven's sake, let's not forget the basics. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Everyone is entitled to due process. No person should ever be considered a criminal because of perceptions created by repeated police harassment or bungling. If Jeneker loses those rights, so do we.