From water jug to cold stone jug — now ANC must find the guts to put more comrades behind bars

Andile Lungisa, a lowly Port Elizabeth councillor with a penchant for self-promotion, hogged national headlines this week when he finally made his way to prison to begin a two-year sentence for assaulting a fellow councillor with a water jug. He was accompanied by a throng of supporters who serenaded his entry into martyrdom. For the ANC, that’s par for the course. It always stands by its delinquents.

Lungisa — with his supporters posing for selfies amid the boisterous singing and expressions of bravado — still maintaining his innocence, complained he was not looking forward to prison food. His gaggle of supporters brings to mind another day that will live in infamy — when, almost two decades ago, Tony Yengeni was carried shoulder-high into Pollsmoor prison to begin a four-year sentence for fraud. Among those ululating supporters serenading Yengeni were ANC bigwigs such as Lindiwe Sisulu, then Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool and minister in the presidency Essop Pahad.

“It’s a very sad day,” Pahad lamented. “I’m here to wish him well as a friend and as a member of the NEC [national executive committee] of the ANC.” Even more outrageous was the fact that then correctional services minister Ngconde Balfour — the man responsible for making sure prisoners fulfil their obligation to society — also showed up as part of Yengeni’s send-off party. That must have had a chilling effect on prison personnel and driven home the fact that Yengeni was untouchable. He spent his time living almost like a king, and was often allowed to go home on weekends. He was out in four months.

Yengeni is now head of the ANC’s committee on crime and corruption — just the man for the job. At an NEC meeting last month he called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to resign. Ramaphosa’s sin, apparently, was to call for strong measures to be taken against those involved in corruption.

The Yengeni prison episode was probably the first inkling that the ANC had lost its way. The arms deal, the source of Yengeni’s troubles, is still a huge albatross around its neck. Lungisa should consider himself unlucky, though. No party bigwigs were on hand to chaperone him to his new residence. Pillars of the establishment stayed away. Not even Jacob Zuma, his hero, sent commiserations to his foot soldier. Despite the ebullient crowd, it was a lonely walk to the cooler for Lungisa. The party cut him loose. It asked him to resign as a councillor. He doesn’t have Yengeni’s cachet.

But why has this case become a cause célèbre? It has a lot to do with the complete breakdown of law and order in this country, and the abject failure of the criminal justice system to bring the bad guys to book. The public is yearning for justice and accountability. There’s almost a feeling that the system sides with the criminals. People complain that bail, for instance, is granted too readily. Suspects, even in serious cases such as murder, rape and drugs, are often arrested and days later seen walking the streets — or they return to torment their victims. Police officers are accused of being friends with criminals, and of being on the payroll of drug dealers. Dockets go missing, frustrating crucial investigations. Because of the lack of public trust in the justice system, people tend to be reluctant to report any wrongdoing to the police. The result is an increase in vigilantism as ordinary people take the law into their own hands. Without shoring up public trust, it is difficult to imagine how rampant crime — the country’s Achilles heel — can ever be solved.

Lungisa’s fit of madness happened in a political context, but it was a straightforward criminal offence, a thuggish act in a forum where brains, not brawn, should have prevailed. It was therefore relatively easy for the ANC in the end to throw him to the wolves, as it were. It doesn’t carry any political repercussions for the party. In fact the incident may even be seen by some as reflecting well on the party.

What has been difficult for the party to deal with is the other major ill in society, corruption. Despite protestations to the contrary, the ANC doesn’t seem inclined to deal decisively with the cancer. Ramaphosa, despite his elevated position in the party, sounds like a voice in the wilderness. The police have, for instance, been eager to arrest people for allegedly breaking lockdown regulations — more than 300,000 arrested at the last count. Yet, despite tomes of evidence and some lurid details before the Zondo commission, most of it against politicians and their friends, very few people, if any, have been arrested or prosecuted.

If Lungisa had been involved in some corrupt activity, for instance, chances are he would not only still be walking the streets of Port Elizabeth as a free man, he probably would have been promoted to a senior position by his party. And this is not some cynical comment. Ample evidence is staring us in the face. The corruption charges Zuma is facing date back more than 20 years, and since then he was twice elected the country’s president and defended countless times against impeachment by the ANC caucus. Ace Magashule was elected secretary-general despite the swathe of devastation — all meticulously documented — he left behind in the Free State. Parliamentary committees are chaired by shameless wrongdoers. And even as Ramaphosa was vowing to fight corruption, the party was reinstating senior officials involved in the VBS scandal.

Lungisa is small fry. What the country would love to see soon is some of the big fish entering prison gates — in chains if necessary, and without the adoring crowds.