It is a shocking affront to the intelligence of all South Africans that a deputy cabinet minister can say all is well in the criminal justice system, says Robin Carlisle.
Cape Town – Deputy Minister of Justice John Jeffery’s reply to my contention that the criminal justice system had collapsed could not miss the point more widely.
It is not the police, the prosecutors or the magistrates that are responsible for the crime catastrophe in South Africa. It is the political bosses like Jeffery and former Minister Jeff Radebe who have ensured that crime will and does triumph.
It is therefore a shocking affront to the intelligence of all South Africans that a deputy cabinet minister can write a lengthy piece claiming all is well in the criminal justice system, especially while the Khayelitsha Commission of Enquiry is finishing its work, and the whole mess has been dragged into the light of day for all to see.
Jeffery points to a decrease in selected serious crime rates as proof that criminal justice is working effectively but does not support this contention with evidence that other factors are not involved. And he certainly doesn’t raise the spectre of under-reporting. Economic growth, albeit slow, has undoubtedly played a part. More effective gun control is widely believed by the academic and scientific community to be behind the decrease in the murder rate, rather than effective policing and the conviction of murderers.
What is telling is that Jeffery relies for his contention that the criminal justice system has “maintained exceptional conviction rates” on a handful of crimes that are not central to the day-to-day threat of violent death or assault that the average South African faces. He should have provided the conviction rates for murder, attempted murder, assault, rape, attempted rape, aggravated robbery and housebreaking, not to mention road death-related culpable homicide.
The real insult here is to ordinary South Africans, who actually have to deal with the real criminal justice system, as opposed to the fantastical one that appears for celebrity trials, or when the deputy minister attempts to assure us that all is well. These are the people who are ignored or fobbed off when they go into a police station to report a crime. People attacked in their homes who identify the assailant, with no consequences. Girls who are raped, then raped again in the child protection unit when they report the crime. The ageing gogo of an Aids orphan who is ignored when she tries to lay charges against the drunk who killed the little boy. The parents who watch, helpless, as the case against a gangster who shot their small child dead in a crossfire, is thrown out of court after the key state witness was put in the back of the same van as the accused on the way to court, and mysteriously changes his testimony.
I, along with millions of others, have experienced that too few crimes are investigated, that dockets are often lost, that investigating officers often don’t pitch and that prosecutors have been known to go on lunch break in the middle of proceedings…
South Africa Today – South Africa News
