Test case for police

THE former head of the homeowners’ association at De Zalze Winelands Golf Estate in Stellenbosch tells the Sunday Times that within a day of three members of the Van Breda family being killed in an axe attack in January last year, police made it clear they had only one suspect: Henri van Breda.

Yet it took a further 502 days for Van Breda to taste life behind bars, and even then it was just for a night. After being allowed to walk into Stellenbosch police station with his lawyer on Monday, the following day he left in the back seat of a lawyer’s BMW after lodging bail of R100 000. He now has 12 weeks to contemplate his next court appearance.

The National Prosecuting Authority in the Western Cape is evidently keen to ensure that it will not be embarrassed again by taking a weak case to trial, as it did when it charged Fred van der Vyver with the murder of his girlfriend, Inge Lotz, and dragged Shrien Dewani back from the UK to try him for allegedly plotting to have his wife, Anni, killed on their honeymoon in Cape Town.

That may explain why the Van Breda docket went back and forth several times between the police and prosecutors.

But the delay did almost as much to erode confidence in the criminal justice system as those bungled prosecutions did.

It allowed rumours to take root and flourish — that corrupt detectives had been bought off, that “money talks”, that “whites can get away with murder”.

Now a textbook prosecution is needed. Before standing up in the High Court in Cape Town in September, the state advocate must be totally confident about the case.

Only in this way can the reputation of the police avoid further damage.