‘TIS the season to be jolly and if you’ve been good then Santa will be coming down the chimney on Tuesday night because, as the carol tells us, he knows who’s been bad and who’s been good.
Our President seems to know
too, if his early Christmas present
of sentence remissions is anything
to go by - indeed some might well be celebrating the New Year, if not freed on pardon, then at least out
on parole.
On Monday, fittingly on the Day of Reconciliation, Cyril Ramaphosa announced a special remission in sentences, in honour of South Africa’s 25th anniversary as a free country. Not everyone qualifies though - murderers, child molesters, robbers, instigators, wife beaters, and those serving life, won’t get any discount, according to the Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola.
In fact, only 8.99% of the
more than 165000 convicts behind bars will benefit - which is still
just under 15000 people, among them a couple of South Africa’s more celebrated prisoners: Abathembu King, Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo and #FeesMustFall activist Kanya Cekeshe.
There’ll be those who quibble, but it’s not uncommon: Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela did it in the past, to mark high days and holidays in the South African calendar - and it’s not like Ramaphosa was pardoning anyone, which would have meant expunging criminal records entirely and rendering the convict a free person.
Dalindyebo and Cekeshe
will be out on parole but, if they can’t curb their appetites for kidnapping, assault and arson - or setting police cars alight respectively - they could well find themselves back behind bars.
But, with Christmas around the corner, other South Africans - especially those who don’t break the laws, do pay their taxes and generally keep their lives together - might be asking what’s in it
for them. It’s not Ramaphosa’s
fault - we have certainly no reason to be shocked by it - but rather a malaise in our society that seems to reward wrongdoers and chase a quick buck.
There’s plenty of incentive to move to another bank, open a credit account with a new retailer or even get a different news service, but very little for the loyal customer, who’s been there for years - no discount in the rate and certainly no free diary from the banks.
So why stay loyal? Why do the right thing?
The retailers only have themselves to blame, chasing
client numbers at the expense of actually keeping the people they have, while effectively encouraging an increasingly fickle market to shop around for the best deals all the time.
Where does that leave Ramaphosa, you might wonder?
Well, given that his entire administration is dependent on as many of us as possible, paying for the services that we receive, as well as taxes on the salaries that those of us privileged to be able to work pay, perhaps he might have reached out to us too, with a little Christmas box of his own?
If we can’t get a discount on our taxes, not even a year off, how about a year of no load shedding?
* Ritchie is a journalist and a former newspaper editor.
** The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of Independent Media.