Let’s stop judging our law enforcement agencies

SOUTH Africans are unpredictable individuals; today they condemn crime and call for action from the government and when that action is taken, they are quick to judge.

This country is an easy target because of, among other things, its accommodating constitution that protects everybody living on our shores.

Immediately after the xeno- phobic attacks, the government acted. Seven people had been killed; three of them were South Africans. So were they xenophobic attacks or just opportunistic criminality?

Some of the state’s interventions include Operation Fiela under which we have seen more than 800 illegal immigrants arrested. Truth be told, South Africa is a sovereign country with its own laws and entering the country illegally without proper documentation is a punishable offence.

To my surprise, many South Africans see this operation as another form of xenophobia. So must we allow illegal immigrants to grace our shores without being checked?

No. People who come to our country must be known and recorded. This will go a long way in dealing with terrorism, human and drug trafficking.

Before we blame the government, we must have our facts straight. Places like Hillbrow are full of drug lords, most are here illegally. This can’t be ignored. Let us allow our law enforcement to do its work.

Malelane, Mpumalanga RONNIE Kasrils would paint the Soviet Union as the saviours of humanity from the perils of fascism (“Russia’s extraordinary sacrifice”, The Star, May 14).

What he conveniently omits from his article is that Stalin and the Soviets were in the beginning entirely happy to set about carving up Eastern Europe between themselves and the Nazis and that this position only changed when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union. That this attitude did not change is evident in the fact that, unlike the West which liberated Western Europe and set people free, the Soviets continued after the war to dominate the Eastern European territories they had wrested from the Nazi grasp and there was to be no true freedom for those people for decades to come.

While it is true that the Soviet Union tore the guts out of the German war machine, it was done entirely on a basis of self-interest and it is a canard to suggest that the rest of the world owes a debt of gratitude to the Russians for so doing.

Joburg

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