The worst of the people who presided over the courts during the apartheid anni horribiles (horrible years) believed they were serving a cause. That their cause was destroying people’s lives in their multitudes and had no semblance of nobleness was, to them, a mere terrain of the execution of the cause.
It was that, all the many excesses and devastating manifestations of apartheid that made the fight against apartheid a just and singularly noble cause, a characterisation that can never be reasonably disputed, notwithstanding the loss of shine that has been visited on the cause by the wanton corruption and malfeasance that has been revealed as having been a feature of the post-1994 era.
The lesson for all of us today is to examine anything that we are tempted to ascribe the honour of the title “cause” to. A quality of a cause, in my book, is that its goodness and altruism must stand the test of time.
People speak, for example, of the “cause” of justice. Indeed, the fight against apartheid was a pursuit of the cause of justice. And courts all over the world deem themselves, and are indeed created, to be in the service of the cause of justice.
But what happens when the courts appear to use cases presented to them for other possibly nefarious ends, and there is an almost sacrosanct refrain in society, that courts and judges in particular, should not be “attacked” (read “criticised”), as this threatens the rule of law, which is paramount for democracy?
A lucky thug stitched for himself a luxurious lifestyle through theft, fraud, lying and bribing everyone he thought stood in his way when he, brick by brick, destroyed the foundations of a bank with investments collected from among the poorest in Limpopo.
The case naturally generated national and international interest for several years, with nothing tangible hitting our news in the direction of justice and accountability for the thug and his cohorts. And then, suddenly (really, suddenly!), society is woken up from its induced lull over the matter, by the news that the thug had struck a deal with the prosecuting authorities and the court of law whereby he was sentenced to 15 years for each of the 33 charges and … wait for it … in the interest and pursuit of the “cause” of justice, all the 32 sentences of 15 years, will run concurrently with the first one.
Some of the elderly victims of the thug’s crimes succumbed to depression and other stress-induced ailments and died. All of them had their hopes and aspirations of building their lives and those of their families through their savings dashed because they trusted a registered bank that was supposed to be regulated.
When it became time for their nemesis, the thug, to be made to pay, and pay dearly, for his mayhem of thuggery on people’s lives, a court in South Africa agreed with the defence and the prosecution authorities that the thug needed to spend as little time as possible in jail for him to come out to spend what remained of his heist. “Sick” does not adequately define this.
If the thug was left with two or even three of his 15-year sentences to run normally and have the rest running concurrently, he would have been enticed enough to tell all, as he is believed to have done in his affidavit.
It will be difficult to dismiss people who will speculatively charge and say there’s politics and other shenanigans and more in this matter of a near “free-passage” that has been extended to the thug, because it just not look like there isn’t.
And the fact that Matodzi admitted to a history of generously scratching his opponents’ backs to get his way into innocent poor people’s money, muddies the waters further in this and begs the question: Did the generous scratching of backs not overlap into the moments when the thug was supposed to be served, and genuinely served, with justice?.
Society is left to ask: What cause? Under thee circumstances, another question that will gnaw society is: Why should anyone be serving a sentence of 20 years or more in South Africa?
Dan L Nkosi is a retired public servant.
The Star