We’d have more sympathy if justice system were fair
THERE has been an unseemly brouhaha raging about the incarceration and subsequent hospitalisation of former national police commissioner Jackie Selebi. The public has generally shown an uncharacteristic lack of sympathy for the plight of the ageing and apparently ailing Selebi.
I am ashamed of my own growing scepticism about Selebi’s reported terminal illness. Such malicious thoughts are usually foreign to my usually benign persona.
For instance, I was pleased that the French justice system had shown clemency on the basis of advancing age and ill health when sentencing former French president Jacques Chirac. He was found guilty of embezzling a substantial amount of money many years ago when he was a mayor.
While justice has to be seen to be done if it is to have any deterrent value, we must never lose our compassion.
When I interrogated my own antipathy to Selebi’s situation, I deduced the reason many of us are so sceptical is because of poor management and lack of transparency by the correctional services ministry and the glib prisons department spokesmen. The system is mired in confusion and secrecy, and obfuscation is the order of the day. No wonder the public has become sceptical and seemingly heartless about the plight of an allegedly critically ill prisoner. Who would blame us after the Schabir Shaik outrage? Nothing seems to have improved since Shaik was released to improve his golfing handicap.
To restore public confidence in the prisons system, a total overhaul of correctional services, with a special emphasis on the parole system, is needed. After the outrageous diagnosis of Shaik’s fallacious terminal illness, do we have any faith in the competence and integrity of doctors used by correctional services to pronounce on the medical condition of inmates such as Selebi? The release of the “Waterkloof Two” murder-
The public has no sympathy for the elderly and ailing former national police commissioner Jackie Selebi because it has lost faith in the country’s justice system, the writer says. PICTURE: REUTERS ers into correctional supervision after serving a mere fraction of their sentence has added to this cynicism. I respectfully suggest that the media also play a stronger role in interrogating the questionable motives and operations at many poorly administered state facilities.
Often when I see television visuals of bored-looking junior journalists attending media conferences, I am reminded of the same scenario that we so often see when US journalists are being addressed at news conferences by the US military hierarchy. Rarely are the generals asked the searching questions concerning US military adventurism that the public want answers to and that will expose any military excesses.
I have watched heart-rending television exposés showing frail prisoners that are so ill that fellow inmates have to bathe them and assist with rudimentary ablutions. There are reportedly tens of thousands of critically ill HIV/AIDS prisoners who receive abysmal medical attention and scant recognition of requests for parole on compassionate medical grounds.
Some of the questions I would have liked our journalists to ask of prison officials at the media conference after Selebi’s incarceration were:
Selebi has been diagnosed as a diabetic suffering from terminal kidney failure. Was he undergoing dialysis before his imprisonment, or was his condition only diagnosed after his appeal failed?
Are there other elderly convicts who have kidney failure and are any of them receiving dialysis from specially trained nursing staff ?
If so, will the same admirable treatment be accorded to all inmates, regardless of their previous civilian status?
I doubt if the average compassionate South African would quibble if Selebi or any other chronically ill prisoner was treated humanely while incarcerated, or even released on medical parole, as long as the same benevolent treatment applies equally to everyone – not just to ANC luminaries who have gone astray – that the prison physicians employed to give medical recommendations are beyond reproach, and that there won’t be any more Schabir Shaik-type malingerers or “Waterkloof Two” thugs shamefully cheating the system.
And please media, keep the correctional services department on its toes by asking all the pertinent searching questions of reticent officialdom.
Highlands North, Joburg THE PROBLEM with the Reverend Kenneth Meshoe (The Star Letters, January 5) is that his understanding of contextual theology and Hebrew scriptures is thin and selective.
What is unchristian about anybody wanting to venerate their ancestors both in the African context and in Christianity? It seems unhelpful to read the ancient sacred biblical texts narrowly, without giving some thought to various contexts, a tool that helps modern readers visualise the golden past in relation to the present if they are to give meaningful interpretation to the biblical passages.
We venerate the biblical God as revealed in scriptures in many ways, as we do the African ancestors as revealed in the traditional African cultures. There are no contradictions, but only complementaries.
Those who do theology diligently will know that we do not talk of theology, but rather of theologies, which in many instances do find expression in the Hebrew scriptures through the invocation of ancestors or spirits. The examples are replete in biblical passages.
The Book of Exodus 27, 28, 29 provides an example in which allusions to the veneration of God and cultures of different communities are made. To deny this, as Meshoe does, is to show ignorance of the sacred texts.
Meshoe should apply his mind, and not simply misuse the scriptures to fight his political battles. Jesus was not without Earthly ancestors, and the Good Book and its editors make this abundantly clear.
Reverend Meshoe, if Jesus could commune with his ancestors – Moses and Elijah – on the mountain, why would you want to deny the ANC the right to do the same on such an auspicious occasion as the celebration of the 100 long years of Struggle? Anglican Chapel of St Stephen’s the Martyr, Thokoza, Alberton