No less than life sentence

JUDGE Gayaat Salie-Hlophe handed down an excoriating judgment on former real estate supremo Jason Rohde this week before sentencing him to an effective 20 years in jail.

Not only had he murdered his wife, Susan, he tried to defeat the ends of justice by pretending she had tried to kill herself. To do so, he laid her out like a show house he was trying to entice buyers for; “regardless of the obligation (he) owed to protect her, her body, her dignity and her legacy”.

Rohde got five years for defeating the ends of justice and 18 years for murder – the minimum sentence.

Salie-Hlophe ordered that only three years of the five-year term be concurrent, meaning that Rohde should theoretically be behind bars for 20 years.

The problem is that he will be eligible in terms of the Correctional Services Act to be considered for parole after serving half his sentence – in 10 years’ time.

Shouldn’t a life mean a life? Ten years is not a lifetime, it’s a blip after which Rohde, a wealthy man, will be free to live his life to the full – something he denied his wife forever – when he strangled her to death at Spier Wine Estate in 2016.

Indeed, it was only thanks to first-class detective work that he didn’t get away with it.

If we are to get serious about fighting gender-based violence, we need to get serious about applying the law.

There is no point in having minimum sentences if a successful parole application can make a mockery of this.

Life should mean life. Until it does, we will continue to see lives being taken, brutally and with impunity, because quite frankly the deterrent isn’t much of one at all.

Jason Rohde deserves to go to jail. Let’s make sure he stays there.