SOME OF THE (MANY) CASES FOR WHICH SA HAS WAITED TOO LONG
The murder of the Cradock Four: The NPA was handed evidence relating to the 1984 murder of the anti-apartheid activists known as the Cradock Four by the TRC in 2003. No prosecution on this or many other TRC matters has happened, though the NPA has promised a renewed focus in 2022.
Steinhoff: The company’s fraudulent accounting practices were made public in December 2017. Alleged mastermind Marcus Jooste has yet to see the inside of a local court.
Mosebenzi Zwane and other Gupta enablers: There was already clear evidence from the 2017 Guptaleaks stories, let alone the State Capture inquiry, that former Cabinet ministers such as Mosebenzi Zwane bent over backwards to facilitate Gupta corruption. Where are those prosecutions?
On-Point Engineering: EFF leader Julius Malema and others were charged with more than 50 counts of fraud and corruption in 2012 over a construction firm part-owned by Malema’s family trust, which is accused of winning kickbacks on contracts to fix Limpopo’s failing infrastructure. The case was struck from the roll in 2015 after too many state delays. Some charges were reportedly reinstated against Malema’s co-accused in 2019, but inexplicably not Malema.
Pandemic procurement looters: The SIU has referred 386 cases relating to Covid-19 procurement corruption to the NPA. Some of these – such as the involvement of former Health Minister Zweli Mkhize – were exposed by the media months before.
The instigators of the July 2021 unrest: Some arrests have been made for incitement of the July 2021 violence on social media, but South Africa still awaits meaningful prosecutions of those suspected of being behind the unrest.
The Malema firearm case: In July 2018, Malema was filmed firing an assault rifle during an EFF rally. Surely an easy-peasy case, with video evidence to hand: the law is clear that it is illegal to discharge a firearm in public. After more than threeand-a-half years, Malema was only just pleading in court by March 2022. We could fill this list with further, far more serious, unresolved Malema matters – not least the allegations relating to the collapse of VBS bank.